Received My First Scam Request!

[avatarjini]

I’ve been on this site for only a few days now, but I’ve been reading up on the forum and around various blogs on how to get started and what to look out for. I read a few posts saying that some sellers had been getting requests to have their accounts bought by some third party, so I was well prepared when I received a message today asking me to open a link to a google doc.

I’m skeptical as it is about open links from people I don’t know. I was polite to the person, initially assuming it was a customer, but when I asked them how I could help, they sent me a link and said, “Open the doc, in that is how you can help.” I was already wondering if this was a scam, so I responded by telling them that no, I cannot open the link until they tell me what they want me to do exactly. They insisted that I should open the link and I told them that I wouldn’t want to make any deals outside of Fiverr and that whatever it was, they should first tell me through the DM. They stopped replying after that.

Out of curiosity, I did open the doc in a separate window and skimmed through the text saying that they wanted to buy my account and that they would give me 10% of the shares (lol). I deleted the file, and haven’t heard back from that person, yet. I have a good feeling I won’t hear back from them for a while.

So, there you go! My first attempted scam job. I was hoping to get at least one legitimate offer before I got targeted, but oh well. xD

I’ll probably stick with the policy to not open links until I know what the customer wants exactly so as to avoid any other issues apart from potential scams.

Thought I would share this as I know that others have gone through something similar.

[maitasun]

Hi @avatarjini,

That was a welcome I’m sure you didn’t expect, but… life is so hard in so many ways… Just keep strong. 😉

You need to report the user and block afterwards.

Welcome to the Fiverr and the forum, and keep reading! You’ll find a lot of useful information. 😃

[humanissocial]

I try to never open links in messages. If a prospect wants to tell me something, the onus is on them is to share it. I find a lot of them just want to send the link to skip the work of having to explain what they need and what the status is of their project/what it looks like. It’s laziness on their part. I don’t work with people who create extra, unnecessary work for me.

Also, I’ve found that a lot of buyers like to sell Google Drive links. I HATE that! Ugh.