How to avoid scams?

[Oriade]

I recently read a forum post on Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/app/230410/discussions/0/1742227264189077980/

where a guy claims his friend was banned for selling something to a scammer who got his platinum against the TOS.

I have only traded like once or twice, but was unaware about this weird logic from DE. 

If someone somehow gets platinum against TOS (whatever that means) and then uses that platinum to buy something, the seller gets banned?

 

How is one able to ever know that someones platinum is legit? 

I have accumulated a bunch of rivens that I want to sell, but so far was just to lazy to do it.Now, I don´t know if I even dare to trade. 

 

So, how to avoid scams?  

 

[SordidDreams]

On 2019-06-19 at 3:13 PM, Oriade said:

If someone somehow gets platinum against TOS (whatever that means) and then uses that platinum to buy something, the seller gets banned?

The platinum that was fraudulently obtained by the scammer, such as by using stolen credit card info or issuing a chargeback, will be taken away from the seller who received it from the scammer. If the seller ends up with negative platinum as a result, they will be banned until they buy platinum at full price to make up the difference. This is based on the assumption that anyone receiving plat from a scammer must have paid real money to the scammer for it in an attempt to circumvent the normal way of buying plat.

On 2019-06-19 at 3:13 PM, Oriade said:

How is one able to ever know that someones platinum is legit? 

One is not. That's what makes DE's practice in these cases so anti-consumer. There's no way to avoid these things happening, however DE has a choice: Either let some guilty individuals slip through the cracks and lose a bit of money, or punish some innocent people and hold their accounts hostage until they pay for the damage the scammer caused. DE chooses the latter.

On 2019-06-19 at 3:13 PM, Oriade said:

So, how to avoid scams?  

Be lucky.

Edited June 25, 2019 by SordidDreams

[SastusBulbas]

You cant.

 

But ask yourself this, look at the cost of platinum, amount of players, age of game.

 

Ask why DE never made a better system to protect sellers from dodgy plat.

 

Hmm, ask where elsewhere in this planet a victim is charged money to replace what was stolen from them because they cant punish the criminal.

 

Its all dodgy, only victims are those spending real money and those selling items they made an effort to farm.

[Chewarette]

I'd say S#&$ happens. If you're really worrying about something, just don't spend the  you earned right away. You'll only get banned if DE "removes" the "false" platinum and that puts you in negative balance.

But to be honest... That's like saying "I've read a news about someone getting ran over while crossing the street, I'll actively avoid crossing the street from now on". Doesn't really make sense.

3 minutes ago, SastusBulbas said:

Hmm, ask where elsewhere in this planet a victim is charged money to replace what was stolen from them because they cant punish the criminal.

If you buy a stolen car and sell it afterwards, there is a chance the money you earned from this sale will be taken from you and you'll be prosecuted, probably. And nothing here guarantees you that the "criminal" didn't get punished as well. The "victime" only has to make his plat balance positive, the "criminal" is probably perma-banned.

Edited June 19, 2019 by Chewarette

[Guest]

Don't ever make trades that are larger than your current holding of plat, and do not immediately use any plat you gained.

That way, at least when the plat is removed, you will still be in the positives and won't get into immediate trouble.

[(PSN)drpunk-yo]

Not trading is the easiest way to avoid scams.

But if you want to trade you can't avoid them as such (unless trade feels really off) but you can stop yourself from being banned by not spending the traded platinum as soon as you get it so that if it is removed from your account you don't go into negative balance. Negative balance is what causes the ban.

Edited June 19, 2019 by (PS4)drpunk-yo

[Oriade]

1 minute ago, Chewarette said:

I'd say S#&$ happens. If you're really worrying about something, just don't spend the  you earned right away. You'll only get banned if DE "removes" the "false" platinum and that puts you in negative balance.

But to be honest... That's like saying "I've read a news about someone getting ran over while crossing the street, I'll actively avoid crossing the street from now on". Doesn't really make sense.

But how long until I should spend?  1 week, month, year?  

What is DEs recommendations?  Just #*!% you, give us your money?.. Sounds like it from you guys.  

 

Just how often does this happen?   Your street analogy is different on a street in a small town or the highway.

Even if its just 1% chance, would you gamble your whole account on that 1%?   

[Chewarette]

Just now, Oriade said:

But how long until I should spend?  1 week, month, year?  

What is DEs recommendations?  Just #*!% you, give us your money?.. Sounds like it from you guys.  

 

Just how often does this happen?   Your street analogy is different on a street in a small town or the highway.

Even if its just 1% chance, would you gamble your whole account on that 1%?   

Honestly you just sound paranoid, so that's better if you just never trade. But you should also avoid the Internet as the plague as every single website can be infected by whatever virus/keylogger.

That... never happens. Oh yeah, once in a lifetime, and the guys will cry on the Internet they got banned. As everyone complains when it happens, you can count it by searching on the forums. You'll find maybe 100 topics. So it happened maybe 100 times over the billions of trades that occur daily. Big deal.

You have more than 1% chance of dying in a car crash in your life. Are you actively avoiding cars ?

Just keep a safe platinum blanket and you'll never suffer this problem. Congratulations.

[Oriade]

Whats fishy to me is why you get banned for having negative plat...  

Just so convenient.  Why wouldn´t the game be playable with negative plat?

 

Never heard of this problem in any other free to play game.  Punishing the one being scammed.

[Oriade]

1 minute ago, Chewarette said:

Honestly you just sound paranoid, so that's better if you just never trade. But you should also avoid the Internet as the plague as every single website can be infected by whatever virus/keylogger.

That... never happens. Oh yeah, once in a lifetime, and the guys will cry on the Internet they got banned. As everyone complains when it happens, you can count it by searching on the forums. You'll find maybe 100 topics. So it happened maybe 100 times over the billions of trades that occur daily. Big deal.

You have more than 1% chance of dying in a car crash in your life. Are you actively avoiding cars ?

Just keep a safe platinum blanket and you'll never suffer this problem. Congratulations.

Sorry, didn´t know machoism was a rational response to design flaws.  

[Chewarette]

1 minute ago, Oriade said:

Whats fishy to me is why you get banned for having negative plat...  

Just so convenient.  Why wouldn´t the game be playable with negative plat?

 

Never heard of this problem in any other free to play game.  Punishing the one being scammed.

Negative balance = you owe DE money. Makes sense you have to regularize (?) your situation before being able to play again.

[Oriade]

1 minute ago, Chewarette said:

Negative balance = you owe DE money. Makes sense you have to regularize (?) your situation before being able to play again.

Ah, nice logic.  But you convinced me. The trading system is beyond dumb and I better spend my time playing better games. Was starting to tire of the grind anyway. 

[swiftasacoursing]

5 minutes ago, Oriade said:

But how long until I should spend?  1 week, month, year?  

What is DEs recommendations?  Just #*!% you, give us your money?.. Sounds like it from you guys.  

 

Just how often does this happen?   Your street analogy is different on a street in a small town or the highway.

Even if its just 1% chance, would you gamble your whole account on that 1%?   

It depends. If you’re selling prime stuff like maybe an equinox prime set then it’s probably only going to get you 100p. People wouldn’t risk their entire account to chargeback 100p...usually.

If I get over a hundred plat in a trade then I just wait a few hours, maybe even a day, and then go ahead and spend it. If you’re selling some spicy rivens for 2k plat...you might want to wait a little while to spend it. It’s highly unlikely they would remove the charged back plat AND some extra.

Also i tend to take screenshots of all my trades just in case something goes wrong and you can prove you didn’t purchase plat from a third party.

[Cyclouros]

This sort of victimblaming really doesn't belong in a modern society. I would definately quit playing if i got banned because someone else did something wrong and they are allowed to keep whatever they bought.

But i guess DE cares more about money than their players. Worse than EA.

[Chewarette]

3 minutes ago, Oriade said:

Ah, nice logic.  But you convinced me. The trading system is beyond dumb and I better spend my time playing better games. Was starting to tire of the grind anyway. 

Good for you I guess. But this kind of S#&$ happens in all F2P games with a Premium Currency (i.e. all F2P games, no exception). Good luck in your research of the perfect flawless game.

3 minutes ago, Cyclouros said:

This sort of victimblaming really doesn't belong in a modern society. I would definately quit playing if i got banned because someone else did something wrong and they are allowed to keep whatever they bought.

But i guess DE cares more about money than their players. Worse than EA.

The culprits are getting perma bans, what led you to believe only the "victim" was banned ? Never ever you will find a proof of what you're saying. Conspiracy theory is strong on this topic.

Edit: Plus, the "victim" is only banned temporarily, just the time for him to solve the negative balance issue, IF THAT HAPPENS. If the stolen Plat removal doesn't lead to negative balance, NOTHING happens to the "victim". But whatever fits your agenda I guess.

Edited June 19, 2019 by Chewarette

[Cyclouros]

6 minutes ago, Chewarette said:

Edit: Plus, the "victim" is only banned temporarily, just the time for him to solve the negative balance issue, IF THAT HAPPENS. If the stolen Plat removal doesn't lead to negative balance, NOTHING happens to the "victim". But whatever fits your agenda I guess.

 

And why should a victim have to pay for someone elses crimes?

[844448]

There's no way to tell if something is a scam or not so the safest step is not spending the platinum right away or cancel trade if you feel suspicious on the player that willing to spend massive amount of platinum without bargaining

[Mr.SpookSpook]

Don't trade more than 100p with less than mr10 players.

[DrivaMain]

My tip of facing scams is to always take screenshots of trades you have commited. It will be easier for DE support to sort your issues if you do in fact got scammed.

If you just traded an item for a lot of platinum (be it rivens and arcanes) never spend your plat immediately, I would suggest wait for at least a week before you start spending so you won’t get negative plat balance.

 

[Tsukinoki]

13 minutes ago, Cyclouros said:

This sort of victimblaming really doesn't belong in a modern society. I would definately quit playing if i got banned because someone else did something wrong and they are allowed to keep whatever they bought.

But i guess DE cares more about money than their players. Worse than EA.

Trade is reversed so the culprit doesn't keep anything.
Further DE is willing to work with you to get your plat balance above zero depending on what you bought.

For instance: If you bought cosmetics DE will undo those purchases, remove the cosmetics and adjust your balance accordingly.
Bought unused forma?  Same thing.
They just can't do it for things you've used (boosters, applied forma, bought weapons/frames, etc.)

6 minutes ago, Cyclouros said:

And why should a victim have to pay for someone elses crimes?

The victim has to pay only for what they bought.
Think about this: You trade for 3K plat and go on a spending spree and buy, oh I don't know, few dozen cosmetics, frames, weapons, full packs, and so on.
The person you traded with does a chargeback, which immediately removes the money from DE (and with next to no viable recourse for getting it back) and gives them a fine.
Should DE just let you keep what you bought?  Especially since they got no money frome it, and were slapped by a fine which costs them money, as well as a demarkation against their name?

DE wants the money for the items you bought.
And they are willing to work with you to fix the negative balance if possible.

Why should you get to keep the thousands of plat worth of items?

Think about it this way:
You basically bought a bunch of items with a bounced check.  You have two options: Pay back what you owe or give it back if its possible.

[KIREEK]

35 minutes ago, Oriade said:

I recently read a forum post on Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/app/230410/discussions/0/1742227264189077980/

where a guy claims his friend was banned for selling something to a scammer who got his platinum against the TOS.

I have only traded like once or twice, but was unaware about this weird logic from DE. 

If someone somehow gets platinum against TOS (whatever that means) and then uses that platinum to buy something, the seller gets banned?

 

How is one able to ever know that someones platinum is legit? 

I have accumulated a bunch of rivens that I want to sell, but so far was just to lazy to do it.Now, I don´t know if I even dare to trade. 

 

So, how to avoid scams?  

 

Players can say "don't do trades that are too good to be true", but sadly, there is no way of knowing really, altough low mastery accounts with weird names are often indicative that the account is discardable and not important.

You don't get banned, you get the platinum removed, so if you don't spend it right away then there won't be a negative lat balance and you won't be automatically banned, you can at this point contact support to reverse a trade if it hasn't been already (check 1st if you received the contents or not, the ones you sold)

Platinum can be removed for a few reasons:

 - Compromised account required intervention from support and trades undone so that the original owner can play again. 2 factor authentication pretty much nullifies this because an account that is 2FA and is compromised is an account that will be permanently banned for the "lack of credential security by the owner" or because the account was sold intentionally

 - Chargebacks, certain bundles and plat purchases are then chargebacked later on (intentionally or because they were purchased using a stolen credit card), meaning the contents must be removed aswell

 - trades fall outside trading guidelines, if it's a plat for cash transaction for example, support can remove the plat even if the plat was purchased, DE retains the money and the plat is removed from existance, a cool perk in the free 2 play games with premium currencies. Obviously common sense is used, support doesn't remove plat left and right because they can, but they do pick and choose which trades should be undone.

My sugestions are simple, retain the platinum in your account for a few weeks before deciding on spending it, don't trade with clearly low MR players with a bunch of letters and/or numbers at random and enjoy the game.

Those situations are VERY rare, what you hear is from a very small number of players, players using the black market aren't also that many compared with the current active playerbase, so the chances of this happening to you are small

[_Kiro]

15 minutes ago, DrivaMain said:

My tip of facing scams is to always take screenshots of trades you have commited. It will be easier for DE support to sort your issues if you do in fact got scammed.

If you just traded an item for a lot of platinum (be it rivens and arcanes) never spend your plat immediately, I would suggest wait for at least a week before you start spending so you won’t get negative plat balance.

 

Rivens indeed are the biggest danger with a lot of the better rolls going for above 1000 plat, which for a free player isn't as easy to get. 

I agree with this though, I've been taking pictures of my trades for a year or something to prevent this from happening.

You can perfectly play the game without trading though, it's a bigger grind but it's doable.

[Cyclouros]

12 minutes ago, Tsukinoki said:

Trade is reversed so the culprit doesn't keep anything.
Further DE is willing to work with you to get your plat balance above zero depending on what you bought.

For instance: If you bought cosmetics DE will undo those purchases, remove the cosmetics and adjust your balance accordingly.
Bought unused forma?  Same thing.
They just can't do it for things you've used (boosters, applied forma, bought weapons/frames, etc.)

The victim has to pay only for what they bought.
Think about this: You trade for 3K plat and go on a spending spree and buy, oh I don't know, few dozen cosmetics, frames, weapons, full packs, and so on.
The person you traded with does a chargeback, which immediately removes the money from DE (and with next to no viable recourse for getting it back) and gives them a fine.
Should DE just let you keep what you bought?  Especially since they got no money frome it, and were slapped by a fine which costs them money, as well as a demarkation against their name?

DE wants the money for the items you bought.
And they are willing to work with you to fix the negative balance if possible.

Why should you get to keep the thousands of plat worth of items?

Think about it this way:
You basically bought a bunch of items with a bounced check.  You have two options: Pay back what you owe or give it back if its possible.

DE most likely have more money than the victim and can handle losing... well nothing. But they instead elect to ban victims and hold their accounts hostage.

[AlendasNaro]

Best ways to avoid getting scammed are: Prefer to ONLY trade with people you know. Clan members, friends you have played the game with and those players you have traded with and haven't gotten scammed. Best way to avoid getting scammed is to avoid trying to sell high value items mostly above 100 or 200 platinum items.

Edited June 19, 2019 by AlendasNaro

[bibmobello]

1 hour ago, SordidDreams said:

The platinum that was fraudulently obtained by the scammer will be taken away from the seller who received it from the scammer. If the seller ends up with negative platinum as a result, they will be banned until they buy platinum at full price to make up the difference.

One is not. That's what makes DE's practice in these cases so anti-consumer. There's no way to avoid these things happening, however DE has a choice: Either let some guilty individuals slip through the cracks and lose a bit of money, or punish some innocent people and hold their accounts hostage until they pay for the damage the scammer caused. DE chooses the latter.

Be lucky.

Sorry to say this but if this is true, this is pure sh*t. The buyer it's not responsible if someone else pay with fake platinum. DE has its database, they should only check the transaction and they must give back the item traded and block the scammer, It's easy.  

Luckily i never come across a such problem but if this happens to me you should hear the screams in Canada...