You know the story about the boy who cried wolf. Let me tell you a variation.
I got what seemed to be a frantic call for help in my guestbook from a girl who said she needed help getting her account back. She said she had been hacked. I put advice on my guestbook, and then put more info in a discussion at my club, advice4newbies where I can write longer (1000 characters vrs. 250) entries to help her.
Then I went to her suite and posted more advice.
I thought it was kinda strange she was saying she was hacked but she seemed to be in control of her account. I checked her bazaar. There was nothing of value being sold. I started to get suspicious. I checked her suite. She had a scuba and the enchanted wedding dress displayed in one room. In another room she had a DKNY sequin tank and Hotbuys displayed. something was fishy. She was leaving guestbook comments in my guestbook and her own guestbook as herself. I asked her if this was the account that was being hacked and she said yes.
I went to her closet room. When Debbiecat4 was being hacked there was a stack of worthless stuff that the hacker bought for $60 SD each, mostly stardesign stuff. And ugly stuff too. That is the way hackers get your stardollars, each purchase transfers stardollars into another account. A hacker might move the money many times in order to confuse Stardoll and cover her tracks. This was not happening. In her closet room there were only recent purchases from the plaza! So nobody was emptying her account of money.
Besides her saying she was being hacked, there was not evidence of it. I was pretty annoyed that she wasted my time. I should have been doing other things, but I stayed online trying to help. To get a better read on the kind of person she was, I read some of the pages of her guestbook. I skipped back over a dozen pages and then started.
Seems like she would say she wanted to sell something valuable like rares, hot buys or DKNY and make people try to be nice to her, and then she would decide not to sell. Not a nice pattern. But it fits with what she did today.
IMHO she is not nice. She seems to enjoy playing with people. I blocked her. But I think this was another new kind of scam. She scammed me out of my precious time.
The lesson I learned is that there are many kinds of liars on Stardoll. Scammers are the liars who tell lies in order to steal. But what do we call the liars who want attention?
One girl told me it was her birthday and I bought her a gift. I found out later that she lied.
A woman told me she was a widow and I felt so bad for her I bought her a nice gift. And added her to my friends list. Once I started visiting her guestbook regularly I noticed that she was telling other stories, stories that didn't make sense. I figured out she was a kid, lying to get people to be nice to her. I was nice to her for a while, but not anymore.
It is very hard to tell who is lying nowadays. Be very careful. We are surrounded by liars. Try to listen carefully to what people say and what they do. When you pay attention, your gut will tell you if someone is lying.
If someone offers to do something really nice for you but needs your password or you to change your email to do it, they are lying. Learn to say, "Thanks, but no thanks."
I am going to keep working on my lie detecting skills. I suggest you do the same. Trust your gut.
