How I go about NOT getting scammed

Say you get a message from someone, saying they wanted to give you a good deal on something. You get excited, you really want this to work. Here would be my steps in this situation, and for this I'll use DxGxAxF for an example assuming I don't know him and he's not a mod. I'm looking for 500k coins, and I get a PM from a name I recognize as his, offering to sell that to me for $45, a great price. It looks like him, I recognize that name as being around the boards for a while.

Is it him though? That's the first question. Well, we need to verify that. There's no need to break out a magnifying glass and reference material to judge this, just click on his name in the PM to bring up his reddit profile. It'll bring up his entire post history. You can look on the right side of this person's (remember, we don't know if it's DxGxAxF yet!) profile and see some important information. His account is a year old, ok, glad to see that it's not a week old (clear indication of a scam since I know the real version of him isn't new)! He also has over 1,000 link karma, and 4,000 comment karma. Ok this seems like a real account, not a scam throw-away account, let's move on.

Is this user trustworthy? (remember in this example I don't know him). That's a separate question. To find that out I have a few tools available to help my decision. Let's first go to his hutrep profile. Hutrep profiles aren't required, but they are encouraged, and not having one would raise a flag for me. It wouldn't kill my deal, but it would raise an eyebrow. Let's go to r/hutrep and check to see if DxGxAxF has a profile there. I search myself for his name within that sub's search bar. If I took a link from his PM, he could be directing it anywhere!!! By searching myself, I ensure valid information. Sure enough, he does have a profile there which is a good start. It looks like he has five vouches within his page. Are these vouches real (from real accounts) or fake (from impersonators in on the scam)? I find this out by clicking the names of the people who vouched for him. They all are legit accounts ("redditor for [x] years" + karma). Next I read what they say. He's been a middle man, he's bought and sold to people, and he has a strong vouch from a mod. If the responses here weren't enough, I could also check the "/r/NHLHUT's Trader Reputation Database" where I would find many entries, putting my mind at ease. I can also check his karma, high karma indicates that the account isn't an account he's likely (!!!) to want to blow up and delete for the sake of a few bucks.

Are we done? From all information we have available, he's legit. I can't say he with 100% certainty that he won't choose THIS TIME to not be honest and reputable, but all the given information points to it being very likely he's not looking to scam me. I believe that he is who he say he is (paragraph 1), and he's trustworthy enough (paragraph 2) for me to feel comfortable "going first" in most any dealings. If I want to further mitigate my risk, I can even propose doing two transactions, 250k/$22.50, then if that was problem free another 250k/$22.50.

Possible red flags

• Account is brand new
• Offer is too good to make sense
• Offering to use a mod who is fake (always verify! send them a message yourself by clicking their name on the mod list!)
• Account looks like someone reputable, but when you research their account is too new to be who you think they are. This is THE red flag that should make you drop the deal and report him immediately.
• No hutrep profile
• Asking you to give to "your half" to a contract or something like that, when the trade is players for coins or players for players.
• refusing to use a middle man YOU specify
• refusing to work in a cautious way (collateral, deals in smaller steps, etc.)

At the end of the day, start off trusting no one. Prove to yourself through due diligence that the person is who they say they are, that they're trustworthy, and the deal is legit by doing thorough homework on everyone involved. Honestly, it takes less than five minutes per transaction. This applies to all transactions where scams are possible.

This has also been archived into our FAQ