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Guild Bank Scam


GDukin

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This was not a scam of the buddies. I know 2 Different guilds this has happened to yesterday. This was well planned and I have an Idea of which guild did it. If I knew what this guys guild knows I could almost assure you which guild is behind these scams.

 

My guild (we are also on Shadowlands) got hit in a roughly similar fashion about 12-18 months ago. It wasn't a case of officer impersonation but we had a much more liberal g-bank policy then so it 'hurt' a bit but we learned and instituted our own 'trust but verify' measures like many have recommended here. No idea if it is the same people/guild but who knows, maybe we were some early trial run. Or maybe it is just a common scam. A**hats are everywhere.

 

So, Bran, I also doubt it was an 'inside job.'

 

OP, I totally feel for you. Hopefully they didn't get to any important endgame mats and such. Good luck on whatever new policies you all institute.

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Sorry to say this, but CS cannot help your with that. This was done entirely according rules of the game. The fault rests with your officers for admitting and promoting someone without verifying.
^^ This right here nothing will be done because it was the officers fault not them...
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I really do have to ask why an officer would accept a tell out of the blue from a person saying they were you, when the real you would hsve said, in guild chat "Hey, im going to log in my new alt named 'charname here', ill send you a message when i get in" let alone -promote- said person not asking via guildchat... Edited by XiamaraSimi
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So, Bran, I also doubt it was an 'inside job."

As I said, we will never know what actually happened. That's the problem with anonymous claims and accusations on the internet.

 

But in the end, tempest in a teacup.

 

I really do have to ask why an officer would accept a tell out of the blue from a person saying they were you, when the real you would hsve said, in guild chat "Hey, im going to log in my new alt named 'charname here', ill send you a message when i get in" let alone -promote- said person not asking via guildchat...

That is what I find so hard to believe.

Edited by branmakmuffin
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Im somewhat surprised you wish to advertise just how astronomically poor your replacement's judgement is, as well as yours for giving them that position. And you say this has happened before now?

 

Furthermore, I would be both surprised and incredibly disappointed if CS actually did anything about this. Your replacement promoted that person to a rank that was allowed to do what they then did. You cant complain when someone does what they were explicitly allowed to do.

 

Hopefully this wont have to happen to you a third time for you to finally learn the lesson.

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Caution, our guild was recently the target of a scammer, who pretended to be me, and proceeded to clear our our guild bank.

 

I am currently the GM of Kinetic (Mediicus) on the Shadowlands server, but I am on temporary leave due to the birth of a child.

 

Someone came on today claiming to be my alt, and was promoted to a rank commiserate with being my alt.

 

This person then proceeded to empty our guild bank of everything that (s)he was able to (up to the rank privileges).

 

This has been reported to CS, but if you haven't been requiring some sort of secondary verification for alts, I'd strongly recommend it (this happened because the person who had current GM powers wasn't actually me, as I'm on leave).

 

I'm going to laugh at your officer staff then, you should find better Officers.

 

When I was an officer of a guild, I always double checked (via text or Mumble) that it was indeed my Guildmaster whom I was inviting and promoting.

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Caution, our guild was recently the target of a scammer, who pretended to be me, and proceeded to clear our our guild bank.

 

I am currently the GM of Kinetic (Mediicus) on the Shadowlands server, but I am on temporary leave due to the birth of a child.

 

Someone came on today claiming to be my alt, and was promoted to a rank commiserate with being my alt.

 

This person then proceeded to empty our guild bank of everything that (s)he was able to (up to the rank privileges).

 

This has been reported to CS, but if you haven't been requiring some sort of secondary verification for alts, I'd strongly recommend it (this happened because the person who had current GM powers wasn't actually me, as I'm on leave).

 

sounds like one of your underlings was annoyed and wanted to get even. Otherwise how would some random person a) know you are GM/Officer in that guild b) know who to whisper to get invited c) know who to talk to to get promoted?

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Sorry to say this, but CS cannot help your with that. This was done entirely according rules of the game. The fault rests with your officers for admitting and promoting someone without verifying.

 

Since when did they put Voice chat into TOR itself. They haven't! So don't go giving people a hard time when Bioware actually doesn't have all the tools. Furthermore, Impersonating another player is against EULA, period.

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Since when did they put Voice chat into TOR itself. They haven't! So don't go giving people a hard time when Bioware actually doesn't have all the tools. Furthermore, Impersonating another player is against EULA, period.

 

why does TOR need voice chat? There are 3 applications that do it better AND are free. They are there to make the game, and write story, and develop new content. Let someone else deal with VoIP,parsing, etc. Generalization just makes it worse for everyone. Let experts be experts and do what they are best at. Every in game voice chat i've used inevitably gets turned off for better products elsewhere.

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then that is a problem with your officers of the guild my officer know that no one is promoted unless they are on voice chat and say can you promote my alt named this. This should be a rule in your guild it save you from this fate. As for your loss nothing will be done as BW policy is you promoted the person to that rank if they took stuff then nothing was stolen from the guild. This issue has come up many times before and the guild always lost out. Sorry for your lost items it is just the way it is though. Best of luck in the future.

 

No voice chat SWTOR to be able to verify. Impersonating another player would be against EULA. This is why you can't name 2 toons the same exact name. So, yeah, Bioware could actually do something about it. I doubt Bioware will do anything though. I guarantee you this is not Bioware's policy that its ok to impersonate another player.

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why does TOR need voice chat? There are 3 applications that do it better AND are free. They are there to make the game, and write story, and develop new content. Let someone else deal with VoIP,parsing, etc. Generalization just makes it worse for everyone. Let experts be experts and do what they are best at. Every in game voice chat i've used inevitably gets turned off for better products elsewhere.

 

Still gives you the tool to verify who someone really is.

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Since when did they put Voice chat into TOR itself. They haven't! So don't go giving people a hard time when Bioware actually doesn't have all the tools. Furthermore, Impersonating another player is against EULA, period.

 

How about simple logging onto the main character and have this conversation

"Hey Jim, can you /ginv my alt Bob?"

"Sure"

"Ok, I will whisp you in a sec"

All the verification you need.

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No voice chat SWTOR to be able to verify. Impersonating another player would be against EULA. This is why you can't name 2 toons the same exact name. So, yeah, Bioware could actually do something about it. I doubt Bioware will do anything though. I guarantee you this is not Bioware's policy that its ok to impersonate another player.

 

tor does not need voice chat stop being ignorant. It is free to use mumble/vent/teamspeak BW does not know if the person Impersonating another player or not. All they will see is a convo of one player saying invite my alt pls and promote me. Yep that prove it was a scam. Just because the OP says it a scam does not mean there is proof to it BW CS is a joke and will do nothing.

Edited by Neoforcer
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Since when did they put Voice chat into TOR itself. They haven't! So don't go giving people a hard time when Bioware actually doesn't have all the tools. Furthermore, Impersonating another player is against EULA, period.

 

Don't need voice chat, just need some common sense and basic critical thinking skills. I am not even in a guild and I am more cognizant of guild security than one of your guild leaders.

 

How about simple logging onto the main character and have this conversation

 

All the verification you need.

 

This.

 

 

Seriously, if all you need to do to get promoted to max rank in your guild is to ask then your guild has access control issues, and that is what happened here. That the person claimed to be someone else doesn't much matter since they did nothing to prove it. If the person did this fearing reprisal from the guild leader if they took basic precautions then that is a problem as well.

 

No one, and I mean no one, should be promoted in a guild merely by stating that they are someone's alt.

 

That someone should first log in and tell someone else that they are logging in an alt and what that alts name is. That same someone can then log on later and promote said alt to whatever level.

 

Too much work? Then this is what you get.

 

But I am curious as to how this person knew that you would not be online so that they could safely claim to be you. Maybe they just figured it was a chance worth taking since being discovered wouldn't mean anything other than to possibly cause your guild to actually start thinking about basic security.

Edited by Mithros
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Caution, our guild was recently the target of a scammer, who pretended to be me, and proceeded to clear our our guild bank.

 

I am currently the GM of Kinetic (Mediicus) on the Shadowlands server, but I am on temporary leave due to the birth of a child.

 

Someone came on today claiming to be my alt, and was promoted to a rank commiserate with being my alt.

 

This person then proceeded to empty our guild bank of everything that (s)he was able to (up to the rank privileges).

 

This has been reported to CS, but if you haven't been requiring some sort of secondary verification for alts, I'd strongly recommend it (this happened because the person who had current GM powers wasn't actually me, as I'm on leave).

 

This is why I leave high level access promotable only by me (also the Guild Leader). Since you can promote offline members... all I require is an invite to the guild with my alt... but my main is the only one who could promote him/her to a level sufficient to do any real damage to the bank.

 

Not sure if CS can or will do anything... but I do wish you luck, and hope you get something back. Technically, the player in question (while dishonest) didn't do anything to break the game... rather used social engineering to dupe your officers. You'd have a better shot if he somehow got around the bank requirements (i.e. hacked).

 

But thank you for the heads up.

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It seems in this current, modern age of Legacy Storage, there is little need for alts to have Guild Vault access (or rank, really). But, yeah, it's a messed up situation if things happened as the OP described. It's a different sort of messed up situation if it happened some other way. Still, the moral of the story is to obey Rule 1 of Guild administration:

 

"Err on the side of keeping what's ours."

 

"What's ours" includes more than just vault swag and credits. We err on the side of keeping our members happy (fun is the point of the game, after all). We err on the side of keeping our reputation (months to build up; one whiney, disruptive Guild member to destroy). And, of course, we err on the side of keeping our vault swag and credits.

 

We don't have any specific rule on how to confirm identity, but we require it be confirmed. Voice chat, logging in the main to ask for an invite for an alt, secret code-word ("The raven flies at midnight" is taken ... don't use it). At the end of the day, however, the member inviting the "alt" is responsible for whatever that "alt" does.

 

Also, we limit alts' rank. We also limit who can withdraw credits or stuff from the Guild Vault. In fact, we have an official Guild Rank called "Officer's Alt" ... not quite all the powers of an Officer, but more than a plebe. And, of course, all I ever condone is the initial Guild invite. If the "alt's" player is truly an Officer (or GM), then he/she can promote their own alt.

Edited by Thoronmir
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