Scams in EVE Online: Difference between revisions

==Common Schemes==

This is the simplest scam around where a player simply asks for ISK in popular channels (trade hub local, rookie help, NPC corp chat, etc.). They'll always have a story about how they lost their ship or they got scammed themselves or any of a thousand reasons why they want something for nothing. It is of course possible that they're telling the truth, but it doesn't take long to get back on your feet in Eve, so there's little reason to give handouts.<br>

This shares similarities to begging in the sense that both take place in busy channels. With ISK doubling a player is offering to send back twice the ISK that you send them. This is ''always'' a scam in the long run. The scammer will pay back small amounts in order to 'drum up business' and get people talking, but as soon as they gain a large amount, they'll simply stop sending money back.<br>

Someone enters your mission space or ratting/mining belt and outright steals your loot or ore from a can, temporarily flagging themselves to you as a valid target. Sometimes they do this for a quick, small profit, but more often they're hoping to provoke you into firing on them. If you fire on them, they will then be free to attack you, possibly after swapping to a new ship. After destroying you (in almost all circumstances PvP-fitted ships will defeat PvE/mining-fitted ships) they can loot your wreck.<br>

Related to can flipping, but simpler. A player will put out a can and name it something like "free items" with some modules or ammo inside. They'll wait for someone to take the items and then destroy them as a thief. Someone who really wants to donate items to you will abandon the can so that it's blue. If it's still yellow then it's too good to be true. More sophisticated versions of this scheme are to fleet with someone for missions or incursions and give an item to you such as lyavite ore or your share of the loot, and then their friends pounce and destroy you.

This is the epic tale of selling someone the Golden Gate bridge: someone's selling something that either has no worth, is not verifiable, or simply does not belong to them. For example selling a bookmark to a wormhole with any kind of assurance of what is or is not in there (in terms of sites to run as well as presence of a hostile corporation inside). Another example would be ransoming your ship and pod for the assurance that they'll let you go, then destroying you anyway.

This scam is purely a timing thing. This typically happens when you're selling something. Someone offers you a great price and asks you to trade it via the trade window instead of using a private contract. (They might claim to not have enough money for contract fees.) The scammer will enter the amount of isk in the window, and as soon as you drop the item, they'll 0-out the amount of money and quickly accept the trade. (They have to pull this scam in between the time you drop your item in the trade window and when you hit accept.)<br>

In this scam an item is available in the market or contract for a great deal cheaper than the average. The catch is that you'll either have to lowsec or nullsec in order to collect the item. When you undock after picking it up, bang. The scammer has a 50% chance of getting his item back and pulling the scam again, along with any fittings your ship had.

To avoid this scam, always check the route that will get you to an item. (Checking the sec status of the destination alone is not fool-proof as some highsec systems require traversal of low or null sec.)

Related to the ambush sale (in that a scam victim is lured to low or null sec). Instead of offering a good price on an item, this scam involves a courier contract routing you to or through low or nullsec where the scammer is waiting to destroy you. He then gets the collateral (which will be far far higher than the item is worth). Be especially careful if the destination is a player-owned station, where you may lack the standings required to dock at all, in which case you cannot complete the contract and the scammer will get the collateral when it expires.

Avoiding this scam is the same as the ambush sale: always check the route before accepting.

In this scam, a contract appears to be a typical want-to-buy contract (possibly offering a slightly above average price) but in fact the contract is asking for 2 of the item and not 1. It can be an easy scam to fall for in cases where you have the 2 items and are not carefully reading the contract.<br>

Always take time to verify what a contract is asking for, and if you want a failsafe: only ever keep a single copy of an expensive mod on hand when selling to WTB contracts.<br>

In this scam, a contract appears to be a typical want-to-sell contract (probably offering a below average price) but in fact the contract is selling an item for cash <b>and</b> the item. For example, a contract appears to be selling 1xPLEX for 400m ISK, but is actually trading 1xPLEX for 400m ISK + 1 PLEX. This is not always easy to spot, since the item up for "sale" and the price you pay are next to each other at the top of the screen, but the item you give is futher down the screen.

Always take time to verify what a contract is asking for.

This is a very common scam. Usually a scammer will link a contract selling a ship (often a Hulk) for a seemingly very low price. They'll say that they're offering the ship and all the fittings, while in fact the contract will only have the fittings. This relies on people not properly checking the items in the contract.

This scam can involve market buy orders or contracts. Simply, the scammer sets up a buy order at 1000th the average price. It relies on people not noticing the difference between 121 thousand and 121 million.

This scam works can be assisted by someone announcing in local broadcasting the contract and announcing they are selling at the lower price when the contract is actually selling at the higher price.

This is yet another contract scam where a scammer will advertise a ship or module as its faction variant (sometimes a faction variant that doesn't even exist!) and rely on people not checking the actual item being offered. (Someone might, for example, advertise a normal Raven as a Raven Navy Issue.) This can also work with modules with similar names such as a Pith C-Type in a contract advertised as an A- or X-Type. (A unit of the element Carbon masquerading as the valuable [[Charon]] freighter is a good -- and amusing -- example.)

This is a market scam based on the skill Margin Trading. A player with Margin Trading can place buy orders and only place a portion of the required ISK in escrow and when someone sells to that buy order the rest of the ISK is taken from their wallet. However, if they don't have the ISK available, the trade simply fails. This allows the character to place "fake" buy orders by placing the orders and then transferring all of their ISK to another character. The scam comes in where an item (usually a rarely traded one so the victim has difficulty determining its real value) is offered on the market by sell order or contract at a hugely inflated price, and a fake buy order is set up for more than that price. A victim looks at the contract, sees that they can buy the item and then immediately sell it to the buy order for a huge profit and goes for it. The buy order then fails and the victim is left with the worthless item while the scammer pockets the ISK.