DragonVale Wiki
Register
Advertisement
DragonVale Wiki

Have you ever made someone a Game Center friend and given them Gem template's because you thought they had agreed to give you some back only to get nothing in return? If so you are amongst the many people on this wiki who have been scammed and while the scammer is at fault there's a lot we can do to make things more difficult for them. To that end i've created this blog to highlight some of the ways people try to scam you so that you can avoid them in the future.

Petty Scams[]

These scams are of the lowest level and are quite often perpetrated by usually decent people when they are desperate for a few extra Gem template's during a limited dragon season or when they are close to buying things like the Epic Breeding Island or Dragonsai Gem Tree.

  1. "If you Gem first me I'll Gem you back" - while not all of these are scams a lot of the time when people demand that you give them a Gem template first they have no intention of giving anything back, luckily once you realise that they haven't gifted back you can de-friend them having only lost a single Gem template.
  2. "If you Gem me every day this week i'll Gem you back for a month" - this is much more obviously a scam but people still fall for it and if you do you're unfortunately out a week's worth of Gem template's, the basic thing you have to ask yourself is if this person can't gift during this week how and why would they be able to gift me later?
  3. "If you Gem me first i'll Gem you back later using a different account" - again this is suspicious, why can't they gift from their normal account? why do they have extra accounts? and how will you know that the other account is even their's (since they often don't give you the extra account's name) ?

Middling Scams[]

While the first group of scams only aim to trick a few users these scams aim to fool as many as possible and promise much greater rewards in order to do so.

  1. "I have a jailbroken device if you send me a Gem i'll send you back hundreds" - this has to be one of the most common scams and for some reason people keep falling for it even to the point that when there is no one trying the scam people actually request that someone with a jailbroken device does this for them. The fact is that if someone has a Jailbroken device one of the common things that they can do is set their resources (Gem template, Coin template and Treat template) however they like. So ask yourself this: why, if they can get infinite Gem template's would they go to the effort of giving lots of players Gem template's in exchange for a single Gem template ?
  2. "I have found a glitch that let's me send hundreds of Gems but it only works if you give me a Gem first" - It's pretty much the same scam as the last one but using a glitch angle. Again you have to ask yourself why if they have found a glitch like this they would go through the process of gifting to heaps of people when they could just tell a single friend the glitch (or set up a second account) and gift themselves for much less effort.
  3. "If you Gem me i'll tell you a guaranteed method of getting X dragon" - very suspicious, firstly there are no guaranteed methods of getting rare or limited dragons (beyond buying them or breeding 2 of them together), secondly if there is a method how does only this random person know it and why are they charging Gem template's for the info and thirdly how are they going to tell you (given DragonVale doesn't have messaging and they haven't left their email/facebook details)?
  4. "The I know a hacker, if you add and gift me i'll introduce you to them" - suspicious, if they know the hacker why don't they use their services themselves? Also there is no guarantee that they will get back to you with the info and even if they do the info might be fake.

Serious Scams[]

While the first two groups of scams are done by on a single person and only seek to trick you out of some Gem template's these ones are much more dangerous/illegal.

  1. "Check this site out <link to site> if you give them your game center details and make a small payment they'll give you heaps of Gems" - the implication here is that you pay them money and give them access to your game center account and they'll on a jailbroken device set your Gem template's how you would like, this is dangerous on multiple levels: 1. you are giving them access to person information about you (your game center), 2. you are giving a suspicious group money and thus potentially your credit card info and 3. what they are doing by selling you Gem template's is a direct form of theft from Backflip and as such illegal. There is also the danger of downloading dangerous Malware and the like from some of these sites.

Tricks to Avoiding Scams[]

So those were some of the common types of scams to avoid but what are some tricks that you can use to avoid those scams and similar?

  1. If it seems too good to be true it probably is - this is the golden rule, any time you are offered more Gem template's than you're giving away (particularly a lot more) it's almost certainly going to be a scam of some sort.
  2. If they ask you for cash or personal info then it's a scam - seriously, don't give cash for DragonVale resources to anyone but Backflip Studios! (and even then only through in-app purchases) and don't give personal info to anyone that you don't personally know/trust.
  3. If a bot has spammed the entire wiki with a "deal" then it's a scam - normal people don't need to post a "deal" over and over again all across the wiki, normal people don't use spam bots to do so, normal people use (or should use) the Friends page for friends requests, so when someone isn't acting that way it's abnormal and some kind of scam.
  4. Rave reviews = Suspicious - if you've seen a scam style request by an anonymous poster which is then followed by a review by a second anonymous poster saying something like "this guy is great, I did this and now I have heaps of gems, thanks mr x!" it's almost certainly a scam, a really easy way to check this out is to click the "A Wikia Contributor" link (which is under every post) and it'll show you a list of posts from that IP address, more often than not the original and second poster's will be the exact same person.
  5. Watch out for repeat offenders - when people manage to scam someone once they'll often decide to try again, watch out for anyone who makes "Gem for Gem" request on a regular basis, once they've got a group of friends together there should be no reason for them to keep asking for more Gem template friends unless people have de-friended them (Very suspicious) or they are trying to scam people. Being careful of people who get responses like "mr x is a bad friend, he never gifted me" etc. and checking the IP address info to see how often they ask is worthwhile.
  6. Watch out for hidden repeat offenders - because repeat offenders find their Game Center name becoming toxic they'll often change their game center name and try again. If the phrasing of the request is similar to a known scammer and the Game Center name while different is similar (IE. mr X become >mrx<) be cautious. You can find these people out by a combination of checking the IP data on the wiki and/or friending them but before gifting verifying if their real name or DragonVale park is the same as a scammer's.

Extra[]

While I do encourage that if you see a known scammer posting on the Friends page you warn others not to trust them please be careful when doing this not to punish innocent people. Not returning a Gem template within 24 hrs as part of a "Gem for Gem" deal does not necessarily make a person a scammer, they could for instance have accidentally added one too many people for their gifting circle which just happened to be you or the in-app announcement could have listed you as "and other friends" so they did not even know that you had gifted them. Anyone could make such simple mistakes and it would not be fair to label them a scammer because of it.


I hope that this helps people avoid some scams in the future, remember the golden rule (if it seems too good to be true it probably is) and if you see anyone trying to scam others then please Contact DragonVale Wiki Staff about it as soon as possible (particularly if it is a serious type scam and/or involves spamming the entire wiki). If anyone has any comments to make, be it about other types of scams they've seen/fallen for, other suggestions as to how to avoid scams or just want to make a point of some kind then please post. An additional related issue is that of hacking, for more info you can read my ID-ing a Hacked Park blog.

Sir Machius Talk Chat Contribs

Wikia

A link back to my blogdex if you want to check out other blogs like this one.

Advertisement