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TeamDomPhx -> The Epidemic of Scams, Fakes & Time-Wasters (11/27/2013 6:54:08 PM)
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We've been on CM for nearly a year we have encountered an alarming volume of seemingly real people operating behind profiles that exist for some other nefarious intent.
The scams and email harvesters are kinda easy to spot, within a few days, they get desperate and start asking for money or an email address - uh, NO!
Slightly harder to vet are the identity thieves. While we want to assure a potential slave we are real (especially the females) this gets tricky when many females are almost anti-webcam, (without first a rather significant investment of time to "get to know each other").
This is where things have become downright disappointing... Seems the new threat isn't so much identity theft as much as it is people who are not what they say, and have become rather crafty at circumventing the "verification" for being real and serious to basically just get free cyber sex, kicks, and do nothing more that suck ones precious time thinking that something is being built toward a common end goal, when in reality, the user has no intention of taking it that far.
In one such case (granted it is extreme) the user managed to bilk us out of countless hours of our time over the course of 6 months and raised our hopes to such a degree that we were not "looking" as hard as we had when we first came onto CM.
The user claimed to not have a working webcam
Thus, in leu...
The user managed to complete a rather sophisticated series of photo-verifications. (including writing on herself with lipstick).
The user managed to call us, and speak to us in a female voice over our cell phone.
"SHE" also assured us that she kept needing a little more assurance from us before she would disclose any personal info - but she was close.
The user typically requested that we IM and we would speak through our mic, while she would type (again, no working mic).
Naturally, topics went from the basic interests and limits and boundaries to planning her relocation, and into detailed discussion about our expectations, her discipline and rewards for loyal service.
She would beg us for tasks and assignments and assured us with photographic evidence that she had complied with our demands.
Mind you - yes, we were a little skeptical, we never had her #, no text messages, but we heard her voice, saw the pics, and best of all, we fell for her little sob story - making some of these little "issues" not just plausible, but reasonable.
During a web chat play session on Yahoo last week at night time, we asked she take some photos of her new outfit.
We posed her, and made her take several photos - my wife was first to notice that there was light coming through a window off in the background. (and a clever crop would have covered it). But, some of the other photos got the window closer into the main area of the photo.
Yes, damn-it. there was DAY-LIGHT shining through the windows!
My wife and I took a small time out, gave her some tasks and we went on the hunt.
Sure enough, not all her pics, but many showed up littered across the internet. Some dating as far back as 2010!
We then dug up her emails, and got an IP address, which put her in Connecticut (NOT Texas as she claimed).
Long story short, we confronted the user about SOME of the pics (we held back the most damning evidence). They tried to continue the charade with excuses, and all kinds of BS.
So, we restarted our play session where she could here us on mic, and she would type responses.
We then dropped the bomb, but not only did we full-on accuse the scammer of being up to no-good, we assured them we had evidence of their location and their REAL identity and demanded the USER get on the phone as we demanded an apology - and if not, we lauded threats of real harm. (We'll stop there and leave the details to your imagination).
Bottom line...
Our 24 year old bi, female, full-time slave was actually a man in his late 30's with a wife and a daughter. He had no intention to steal our identity, money or anything else. But for him, it was an opportunity to live vicariously through a fantasy.
After giving him a good firm ass-reaming and a long lecture about his actions being a theft of our TIME we made some suggestions about how he could redirect his desires into a more "honest" representation. He cried and begged our forgiveness.
While this post is partially to vent, it is also to educate other CM users to be extra thorough and diligent in your screening & verification procedures. The user we encountered was educated by someone, somewhere on HOW to pull off this trickery, as we have in the last week exposed almost all of the females we were communicating with. Please be advised, the tricksters have become very clever - we have even encountered one who used choppy, poorly focused video, played in front of the cam. Again, the excuses seemed realistic, plausible and believable - until we saw a tip of a finger in the frame.
Perhaps the biggest piece of advice we can offer is to not let someone sell you a line of BS (even if it sounds reasonable) people worth meeting will, do, and can have the resources to better comply with more intense screening & verification BEFORE letting things get too far. Always keep in mind your downside risk is LOSS OF TIME. Anyone that refuses a web-cam verification is likely up to no good in the long run.
Two tools that were invaluable for us are knowing how to find IP addresses, using image search tools like google and tineye and lastly, capitalizing on a little ignorance on behalf of the user.
We realize and patiently tolerate that in this world, at first, it is best to error in favor of anonymity and discretion. However, again we must say that it is necessary to draw a line in the sand and force compliance or walk. Do not let these users steal your most precious commodity, your TIME!
Happy holidays.
Master A and Mistress K
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