Boards›Player Behavior

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

Hammermancer··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

Riotcluvie4 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!

LadyRenly3 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 Couch2 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.

Hammermancer1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Awkward Couch,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=NAxOZMXQ,comment-id=0001,timestamp=2016-10-25T17:30:33.980+0000)

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.

Yes but i dont feel there is enough in game to spread awareness, I'm not saying it should be pervasive to matches or written out on a sign on the ri-

Hold it that would be hilarious

can we have a picket sign where a rock is on the game that's like "YO DONT GIVE OUT YOUR INFO BRO"

No i'm kidding, but really there's not enough in the client, unfortunately some people really just dont see the forums or the posts.

Awkward Couch1 votes

[{quoted}](name=T3H UB3RN07,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=NAxOZMXQ,comment-id=00010000,timestamp=2016-10-25T17:54:47.766+0000)

Yes but i dont feel there is enough in game to spread awareness, I'm not saying it should be pervasive to matches or written out on a sign on the ri-

Hold it that would be hilarious

can we have a picket sign where a rock is on the game that's like "YO DONT GIVE OUT YOUR INFO BRO"

No i'm kidding, but really there's not enough in the client, unfortunately some people really just dont see the forums or the posts.

What you might be looking for is a warning when you come in (think the warning you see when you log into pokemon go). But even then I think people would just ignore them.

Hammermancer1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Awkward Couch,realm=NA,application-id=ZGEFLEUQ,discussion-id=NAxOZMXQ,comment-id=000100000000,timestamp=2016-10-25T18:57:16.863+0000)

What you might be looking for is a warning when you come in (think the warning you see when you log into pokemon go). But even then I think people would just ignore them.

I still think that if a msg on the load and login screen would really be enough to save one or two accounts, then that's enough reason to put up a msg, people are losing accounts often worth hundreds in RP value, my account is cheap because this game is free XD but seriously we all have a friend that has hundreds worth of skins, maybe thousands, plus the fact that IP has a direct correlation to RP in terms of buying champs.

now if account recovery was a sensible process, in which Riot policy didn't directly refuse to veto bans caused by hackers (When they track IPs) i wouldnt really care, but someone steals an account and either sells it or uses it and gets banned. the guy who owned the account is unable to get it back, because it got banned, and riot will seldom reverse a ban,

Primaquarius1 votes

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

ShinkoMinori1 votes

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

Hammermancer1 votes

{quoted}

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

Dude, everyone starts somewhere, there are a lot of kids with their daddy's credit card on here. Whether or not daddy knows about that is another issue. People aren't stupid for not knowing things. they're vulnerable for not knowing things.

That's why after seeing you don't know that fact i'm not assuming that you're a moron and just assuming that you have been misguided and need some wisdom

ShinkoMinori1 votes

I would never allow my kid to have my credit card, if I do then I would assume the consequences of giving my finances to a child that has never earn a penny.

elduris1 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!

Charles Sweeney1 votes

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

Raxistaicho1 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 &quot;Free skins! FREE RP! GO TO THIS WEBSITE AND PUT IN YOUR PASSWORD TO YOUR ACCOUNT!!!!&quot;

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

Hammermancer1 votes

{quoted}

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

Or maybe they're just kids as i've stated earlier, maybe they're new to online multiplayer games where this type of stuff actually happens (Noone gonna try to phish your fallout cd-key)

so like I said, if there is even a few people who just dont know any better that learn from a message then that's worth it. I don't understand why you would even be against putting a passive and non intrusive warning somewhere on a load screen or login screen. It does not hinder a single person that isn't an account phisher...

Krigjer1 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.

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