Here is a scam someone tried to pull on us a while back. It's called the officers alt banker scam.
Someone takes a look at the guild roster so see who the top officers are. They then create an alt with a name like on of those but sounds like a banker or an auction character. Kevbank is the name they tried. They waited for me to log off or they did not see me online. They would whisper all the high ranking officers asking for an invite.
Once invited they would ask to be promoted for guild bank access. Once promoted they would withdraw as much as they could before someone figured it out. I think that's how the scam should work. Like I said, this is a scam someone tried to pull.
He failed for several reasons. Most officers knew who my banker was and that was not it. The average age of our members is higher then most guild so the words he used put him way younger. I don't use the word "dude" when talking to people. I was also on an out of guild alt that one officer knew about. So he sent me a whisper shortly after it was attempted. I was able to log onto my main and tell them it was not me if anyone had any questions.
I point this out as something you should mention to your officers. So they think twice when inviting and promoting that alt. I had a mega guild once get very mad at me because officers would keep inviting me in. The guild was so big that one set of officers would gkick me on the spot and another set would invite me with out knowing they shouldn't.
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Haha... what did you do to piss off a 'mega guild'? (for some reason that reminds me of 'mega churches')
ReplyDeleteThis mega guild was on a US server. I remember one raid night they had 3 BWL raids and 1 MC raid going at the same time. When the armory was released it showed over 1000 characters in the main guild and I have no idea how many were in the splinter guilds that were still considered part of the main guild.
ReplyDeleteThey had a special set of rules to get invited. I found a loophole in them and got me and a few friends a instant invite. Guild was so big that once we were in, nobody thought twice about it.
They had several 20 man groups that never realy let anyone else into them. We loved the big raids but wanted the small ones too. So we started our own raid group that was very informal. We also didn't limit it to that guild.
So this group became so solid that we turned it into its own guild. We told the main guild it was a joke splinter. So we had our 20 man raiding guild and we could raid in the 40 man stuff.
Eventualy they figured out it was not a joke and that we stole a few of members from them in the process. That on top of some personal stuff between people in both guilds, out whole guild was black listed to them.
While my main was an officer in this small guild, I had 1-2 alts that I still had in the mega guild running 40 mans. Eventualy people connected the dots and would kick me. Then I would just sneek an invite the next day from someone else. "Sup, I am kev's alt. Where is the invite at?" type of a thing using whatever the code word phrase was.
I played that game for a while. Once they stoped inviting me, I still ran a few raids with my raid group. I knew the auto invite word and who to wisper it too.
Once my 20 man started running 40 mans and needed my alts, I stoped playing that game.
I think this is relatively common. We now confirm all alt invites (officer or not) over vent for added security.
ReplyDeleteyour blog is good stuff
ReplyDeleteActually it's easy not to fall for this scam. Have them 1) login into their main, say invite 'xxxbank'. Or 2) invite the bank, don't promote them. The lowest guild rank has no bank privledges. Or use vent or some security thing.
ReplyDeleteThe reason this scam works is not everyone has a policy in place. Some guilds are very informal. When the alt bank says he is someone you know, why would you not trust him?
ReplyDeleteIn this situation, 4 out of 5 officers knew it was not me. The other only gave him lowest rank invite and booted him when he requested more access.
This scammer was playing the numbers. He would have been much more effective if he would have done more over a longer period of time. He should have built trust before the invite.
First contact should have went like this. "Hello. This is Kevmar. is thatoneguy on an alt, do you know his alts name?" . That is something very generic. You state who are and move onto getting that person to help you.
In a few days or a week later send a message to the same person. "Do you need [Flasks of something], I see some cheap on the AH?". You are talking to him like he knows you. If he says yes, send him a few flask at no charge. At this point, he has no question you are who you say you are. If he does, you should be able to pick up on it by now.
Now that trust is established you can go for the bank. "Can I get this guy direct access to the guild bank so I can sell some of that stuff? it's just easier than mailing from my main". And your in. You my be able to hang out a while and snag a lot of stuff before anyone has any idea.
It is still a numbers game but this would be soo much more effective than a random "Sup dude, invite". That is why you need a good policy in place, need to limit officers powers, and you need to enforce it. If you grill every officers alt before an invite, they will do the same.