Boards›Player Behavior

Can we do more to raise awareness about these "Free skins" scams?

Hammermancer·10/25/2016, 5:22:20 PM·7 votes·3,616 views

Riot, There is an epidemic of account stealing in this game. Whilst it has not tricked me I maintain a large friends list and on a daily occurrence run into at least one PM of "Free skins! FREE RP! GO TO THIS WEBSITE AND PUT IN YOUR PASSWORD TO YOUR ACCOUNT!!!!"

Clearly people are falling for this, it disgusts me that there isn't more of an effort to spread awareness that riot games will never PM you with special deals, nor will any website ever be linked outside of the main screens of the client. I'm not saying people are particularly intelligent who fall for this, but I'm not going to pretend like naivety deserves punishment. Clearly a little education could be used and some information campaigns could be very useful. Something on the load screen like Blizzard does.. maybe a tips on the start of the game, a warning message in grey font whenever ".com" or ".net" or anything similar, including with spaces, is detected by a macro chat read engine?

it's kind of unheard of in the Multiplayer gaming community to not have awareness campaigns for this sort of thing. from MMOs to team shoots and hack and slash games there are almost universally "Hey guys be really cautious about putting your account info anywhere" posts that you'll see at least once a gaming session, without being interrupting or invasive.

16 Comments

Riotcluvie10/25/2016, 9:11:29 PM4 votes

Hey OP,

We do post things occasionally to try and raise awareness, especially for people that may be new to League or that don't check boards. Here's a cute campaign that was run by the EU team a few months ago: http://euw.leagueoflegends.com/en/page/account-security-education that I believe may have come from the BR region originally (don't quote me on that, I can't remember >_< !! ) We also have Knowledge Base articles that have a ton of tips as well.

There are warnings for clicking on links in the client too (before opening the browser).

It's good feedback to know that the cadence of these warnings may be less than ideal and that the penetration of the message does not seem to be reaching enough people. I'll see what else we can do to try and increase awareness elsewhere. Thank you!

LadyRenly10/25/2016, 9:51:27 PM3 votes

Honestly, how do people fall for this? You can't moderate people being naive. No amount of "never give out your password" will stop people from...giving out their passwords.

Awkward Couch10/25/2016, 5:30:33 PM2 votes

http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/miscellaneous/d2zcIkfI-psa-scams-making-the-rounds-again

This is stickied to the top of the boards page. I believe there was also a Reddit post about it.

Charles Sweeney10/25/2016, 9:05:37 PM1 votes

If you give your account to some random website you deserve to have your account taken for your own stupidity

Raxistaicho10/25/2016, 9:52:19 PM1 votes

[{quoted}](name=T3H UB3RN07,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=NAxOZMXQ,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-10-25T17:22:20.093+0000)

Riot, There is an epidemic of account stealing in this game. Whilst it has not tricked me I maintain a large friends list and on a daily occurrence run into at least one PM of "Free skins! FREE RP! GO TO THIS WEBSITE AND PUT IN YOUR PASSWORD TO YOUR ACCOUNT!!!!"

Frankly, if people are stupid enough to fall for this, then there's no helping them.

Primaquarius10/25/2016, 5:25:13 PM1 votes

TLDR: Free Materials are not a thing unless Riot Games specifically promotes one, such as the recent Riot Kayle skin

Krigjer10/26/2016, 3:34:18 AM1 votes

I'd love the option to report someone that messages me (a friend of my account) with an obvious phishing attempt. The report does nothing but prompts a password change the next time they log in.

ShinkoMinori10/25/2016, 5:34:43 PM1 votes

If someone is stupid enough to fall for those I say they are stupid enough to be allowed to use the internet

elduris10/25/2016, 6:23:01 PM1 votes

Sadly, this is one of the things that technologically illiterate people will always fall for. They don't know to look at the URL (sometimes not even what a URL is) or that Riot would never ask for their password. Help & Support usually has posts up for people that have questions about these things, but some don't even think twice about it. Honestly, I'd be for some kind of standardized class on safe browsing habits for everyone. Not only with League, people fall for way worse scams all the time. Ineffective passwords, risky browsing habits, and carelessness lead to identity theft and it's a huge problem on the Internet. Knowledge is power!