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Discord and Steam Scams
#1
These days, Steam and Discord are scam heaven.  It seems like every month there is a new one, or an existing scam gets worse.  I want to lay out the scams that exist so that you know what to be on the lookout for if you use either of these platforms.


Steam

Steam scams have been around for ages.  They are a plague on the platform, but outside of Steam it's understandable why no one has heard about it.  I admit, I've fallen a victim to a couple Steam scams, but I will have a dedicated topic where I talk more about this.  The most common Steam scam involves the popular game CS:GO.  In this game, you can buy and/or trade expensive in game items.  Scammers have a shit ton of bots and have programmed these bots to add you, and upon being added, will instantly DM you with a link, and they will say "get free knife" or some variation of this.

Upon clicking this link, you will be brought to a site where you need to sign in with your Steam credentials.  After doing this, your entire CS:GO inventory will be traded to another account and you have lost everything.  Back in the day, Steam would grant you one freebie and would replace your stolen items.  I'm not sure if they still offer it, though.  It has been years since I've touched CS:GO, so I'm not sure if there are new scams or not.

I need to be crystal clear about something: There is no such thing as free CS::GO knives! I don't care what anyone says, no website offers these items for free.  It is always a scam. 

Discord

Discord has a couple different scams, one of which involves Steam.  The first one I'll talk about is the one that incorporates Steam, and is a "newer" variation of their scams.  It starts off via receiving a DM where the person links to your Steam or provides a screenshot and asks "Is this your account?"  Upon saying yes, they will say they "accidentally reported you" and will then pawn you off to another person who supposedly can help you protect your Steam from being deleted.  I have not experienced or thoroughly investigated this, so I cannot say exactly how they do it once you start talking to the second person.

What I can say, simply reporting someone will not put their account at risk, nor can anyone "unreport" the account.  Additionally, it's not possible to "accidentally" report someone.  Once you click the report button, you then have to click an additional option that says why you're reporting.  If someone says they accidentally reported you, it is a scam. Something that's also worth mentioning and makes me laugh, your Discord name can be the exact same as your Steam, even with the same profile picture, yet they still ask "is this your account?"

The second scam is about free Discord Nitro.  Nitro certainly has some perks to it, but lets be frank, most of us aren't willing to pay for only one or two decent features.  Thus, when offered Nitro for free, we jump on it!  You will receive a DM that says "free nitro" and includes a link.  Here's where this gets interesting.  These links will often be dressed up to look like official links, but will have misspellings that most people don't think twice about.  I will provide screenshots of these links as an example, but I must stress, do not go to the links in the screenshot!

https://i.gyazo.com/98846218650224090413...e4cd5b.png

Doing a quick glance and not paying attention, they can seem like official links. It gets worse, because they are getting new links all the time. Granted, some of the newer ones are drifting away from "official looking". Always triple check the link you plan to click.

The third and final scam [for now] is also the newest, thus, I don't know a whole lot about it. This one involves someone on your friends list losing their account to a scammer. The scammer will then DM you and say they were working on a game and ask you to try it. They will send a .exe over titled "Umbrellajump.exe". This is a confirmed virus!


Do not download any file sent to you, even if from a friend unless you are 100% sure it is your friend actually sending it.

[Edit on 12/15/21]

It appears the Discord scammers are now using Tinyurl links to bypass link blacklists and/or sketchy link deletions. For those unaware, Tinyurl is a legitimate site that lets you shorten a URL. Using a Discord bot like Dyno, you can block a link without blocking the domain, meaning you can block the malicious Tinyurl link, but still let Tinyurl be used.
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