Tales of Pirates

As with any popular game, IGG’s Tales of Pirates ( http://top.igg.com) has attracted its share of scammers. Even the most careful pirate can sometimes be fooled by a well-executed scam. The best way to avoid becoming a victim is to learn the common tricks scammers use. To help players, the ToP team would like to highlight one particularly popular method used recently.

Since many players just starting out look for powerful guilds to join, scammers often use this to their advantage. By closely mimicking the names of high-level, well-known members of such guilds, scammers can attempt to trick unsuspecting players into trusting them. They will use similar spellings or replace letters in a character’s name to pass themselves off as someone else. For instance, if a character has a capital letter “O” in their name, a scammer will use a zero in its place, giving them a name that is difficult to spot as a fake.

Once their doppelganger is in place, the scammer seeks out players with good items and gear who don’t belong to one of the better guilds. When they have identified a potential victim, they will send a private message inviting the player to join their guild, but only if they will first visit a URL set up to look like an IGG or TOP site. Once at the site, they are asked to enter their ToP account and password, which the scammers use to access the victim’s account and steal their in-game wealth and gear. “Phishing” scams such as this are avoidable if players use common sense and avoid visiting suspect URLs. Official IGG and ToP sites will include igg.com or top.igg.com at the root of the URL.

Some less subtle scammers will simply ask a potential victim to lend them a weapon before they invite them to the powerful guild “to prove you aren’t a scammer.” Again, players can protect themselves by exercising caution. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Players are advised to check the ToP forum regularly, particularly their server’s forum, where other players will often report attempted scams to the community. In the fight against scammers, knowledge is power.

Visit the forum at http://forum.top.igg.com to keep up with the latest scam warnings.