BE SCAM AWARE! The breakdown of scams, scammers, rip-offs, and time wasters.

I have noticed many people get ripped off/scammed. The main 3 reasons I have noticed for this are 1:Trusting someone too much, 2:Being lied to/lack of knowledge, 3:Lack of Common sense. RULE OF THUMB: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably IS. (More details coming later)
It seems in this attempt I forgot about it, but www.guildwiki.org already has a list of scams.

One major thing to avoid is paying directly up front for a service or item. If it can't be put in a trade window, there is no guarantee that you will recive it after you pay for it. Running is a very popular service, so my reccomendation is that the payment should be broken up, and payed at points where it is least likely for either player to scam; I usually ask for pay at the last explorable area before the first stop, and other explorable areas/small stops in between. The runner is not as likely to scam, as most of the work has been done. If the people getting run scam, you can tell the rest of the paying group to meet up at the last stop you went to, leaving the AFK or scammer behind.

Also, about buying guilds: My best suggestion is to make your own guild, however, if you see one you want to buy, either pay once you are guild leader, or pay part as an officer and the rest once promoted to leader.

Selling an account in the form of E-mail/Password is almost ALWAYS a scam. At the main menu, you will notice a little "Reset Password" link. This makes a password and sends it to the email address of the account. If you buy an account, the original owner can go to the main menu and reset that password. Also, CD Keys are very risky, and are also mostly scams. Both players are open to scams. If the CD key is false or already used, the scammer has the money already. If you only pay AFTER you test the CD key, the seller might not get the money. MAJOR HINT: Go buy the game with real life cash.

Here are a couple time wasters and simple lies. Don't listen to people who say these because all they do is waste your time, almost every time.

SOMETIMES, the "First person to find me" thing is the truth. People are rich and bored. However, if you see someone offering something large for the first person to find them, these people are probably lying just to see people fall for it. Someone offering anything more than 1k is probably lying. These people will watch as people gather around him/her asking for stuff. Then they will do one or more of the following things: Tease everyone, laugh at everyone who gathered around him, say that he was just kidding, leave.

People who offer a reward for the first person to touch/open trade/catch that person are almost ALWAYS either secretly only count certain ways of doing so, or are just straight up lying. Either case, people will probably be complaining because they touched the target. The target usually does one or more of the following: Claiming he/she did not see it, that it never happened, that the person got CLOSE, that the person somehow cheated or didn't do it correctly, leave.

Drop Stealing, although it may not be a scam technically, can be as bad or worse than one. It is when a drop, that has been intended for someone, is picked up by someone else. There are 2 ways a drop can be cleared of it's assignment to a person: That person leaves, or 10 minutes pass after the item is dropped. The first one is just bad luck, but the second one can usually have a person causing it. Sometimes, the "drop burglar" (I came up with this term just now) will be lucky: the victim will forget on their own. However, a drop burglar may help in the person's forgetting process. They create a diversion, usually by aggroing a new mob. They might also insist that everyone wait until the fight is over to pick up the drops; they claim that picking up drops in a fight might impede their progress. After 10 minutes, or when the person leaves, the scavanger will go pick up the unclaimed drop(s). Another trick that people might try is using the mainained enchantment elite resurrection skill (forgot the name ATM) to resurrect the other player in 2 person farming. As soon as the other person (the one who got resurrected) gets a good drop, the burglar stops maintaining the enchantment, which instantly kills the other player. Then, either 10 minutes will pass or the person will leave, clearing the designation.

ALWAYS THOROUGHLY LOOK THROUGH TRADE CHAT BEFORE HITTING ACCEPT! When selling the item, if the price has been named, our brain expects to see the correct price; as soon as we see an amount, at first it looks normal. This "at first" is sometimes enough for some people to hit accept. Hover your mouse over items, read the words and numbers. Someone ALMOST sold me a 15v50 "super cheap" because he advertised it as 15^50. Again, if it sounds too good to be true, that is when you should slow down to consider the deal, as opposed to hurry up and grab a worthless item for a not-so-worthless price. Don't always trust people when they something; get another opinion. Just because they SAY an item is worth 50k, and that their price of 25k is super cheap, doesn't mean it's true. Some greens are only worth about 1k.

GuildWiki has a good article on this too.

Big one:
Watch the money amount in the trade window, a HUGE scam in ToA is a scammer offering more than trader value for Ecto or Shards and then giving you gp instead of plat for them. The ole "gp for plat" scam is the reason they updated the trade window to more accurately show the money. People STILL fall for it though because they dont look.