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Growing Art Scams
3 months ago
General
The amount of art-scams that have been flowing my way lately is starting to get really irritating and honestly for folks new to commissioning might even be a trap. I've discussed it with a few friends now and they've been getting similar messages. It feels like casual scams have really been hitting the furry fandom now. Might even been furry 'phishing scams' at this point. So I'm going to put this out both as warning.
I will NOT reply to messages like:
"Hi am new artist to the fandom. Your OC is really hawt. Id like to draw them. Lets work out a commission so I can draw them."
"Hello I'd love to work do work with you and your OC"
"Hello I need emergency commissions I will do your OC"
"Your OC is very hot. I really like how they look and all the adventures they are in."
"Wow, your so creative, and your character is very pretty. I'm an artist and I'd love to work with you."
It's easy to investigate a page that sends you a message like this. Don't be star struck that someone wants to draw you or says they really like your "OC". Most of the time the scammers just send copy paste messages. The better ones might ACTUALLY know your OC's name or take the time to look at it.
Red Flags:
No mutuals depending on what social platform they message from.
No price sheet for you to look at.
Next to no examples of their work. (Or extremely minimally few)
Non-specific message that you could copy paste to anyone and it would still work. (Referring to your character as OC, or, That last art piece was very good!) Even compliments that again could be copy pasted to anyone.
No feed-back, comments, or followers.
The better ones will try to bait and switch. They will speak as if they are drawing your OC for free, practice, or fun.. Then when everything is arranged and ready suddenly bring up you paying them. AGAIN with no price sheet or any way for you reference their rates.
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TLDR been getting a vastly increasing number of messages like this on FA, and on Bluesky. I wasn't born yesterday and I've been commissioning for nearly 15 years now. Please be mindful of the messages you get on those platforms or seemingly unknown individuals claiming to be artists who want to draw you and seek you out. Your likely to either get scammed, get nothing, get something terrible, or have someone try to pass off AI art to you. Take some time investigate their page.
I will NOT reply to messages like:
"Hi am new artist to the fandom. Your OC is really hawt. Id like to draw them. Lets work out a commission so I can draw them."
"Hello I'd love to work do work with you and your OC"
"Hello I need emergency commissions I will do your OC"
"Your OC is very hot. I really like how they look and all the adventures they are in."
"Wow, your so creative, and your character is very pretty. I'm an artist and I'd love to work with you."
It's easy to investigate a page that sends you a message like this. Don't be star struck that someone wants to draw you or says they really like your "OC". Most of the time the scammers just send copy paste messages. The better ones might ACTUALLY know your OC's name or take the time to look at it.
Red Flags:
No mutuals depending on what social platform they message from.
No price sheet for you to look at.
Next to no examples of their work. (Or extremely minimally few)
Non-specific message that you could copy paste to anyone and it would still work. (Referring to your character as OC, or, That last art piece was very good!) Even compliments that again could be copy pasted to anyone.
No feed-back, comments, or followers.
The better ones will try to bait and switch. They will speak as if they are drawing your OC for free, practice, or fun.. Then when everything is arranged and ready suddenly bring up you paying them. AGAIN with no price sheet or any way for you reference their rates.
--
TLDR been getting a vastly increasing number of messages like this on FA, and on Bluesky. I wasn't born yesterday and I've been commissioning for nearly 15 years now. Please be mindful of the messages you get on those platforms or seemingly unknown individuals claiming to be artists who want to draw you and seek you out. Your likely to either get scammed, get nothing, get something terrible, or have someone try to pass off AI art to you. Take some time investigate their page.
For my two cents, I have been hit several times with scam art offers. Some of them have been on Discord. When I inspect the stranger's Discord profile, it shows 1 mutual server showing an artist's Discord server I'm in, or a mutual server being the FurAffinity Discord server.
For me, the basic red flag is that, in general, artists on the internet are simply in very high demand. They have limited slots and limited time. They don't need to go out and ask to draw characters. A lot will just post that they are open and get business EZ PZ.
In addition, from a cynical point of view, there are people who may sing your praises when they have never met you and known you, and that can be a red flag, too. Most people desire praise and attention, and that can make them vulnerable.
Just my two cents! :)
since HD images are sometimes used as a form of ownership legitimacy, though that practice is a bit on the older side, I always worry about attempted character theft situations. But maybe I'm overthinking on that one.
"Hello I'd love to work do work with you and your OC"
"Hello I need emergency commissions I will do your OC"
"Your OC is very hot. I really like how they look and all the adventures they are in."
"Wow, your so creative, and your character is very pretty. I'm an artist and I'd love to work with you."
///////
Its amazing...Ive seen these EXACT messages over on DA
I ALMOST fell for the scam ONCE. After they started saying weird things, and they started giving excuses not to be able to show me art examples, and tried to hurry me to send money and download some BS...yeah I immediately saw through it all. So now, as annoying as it is, Im more amused by it it. Because I know the scam, I see it here (rarely) and all the time over on DA. So its not a surprise. If anything, Im waiting to see the next evolution to try and fool me, and its always easy to see through.
For me at least, because Ive been targeted MANY times.
I hope people are staying safe though, and thanks for the warning. ;3
I wonder if this was intended as a version of the scams aimed at people who has already fallen for one, like the fake hackers who will claim to recover your money.
Telegram really clued me in from step one as with the first message it showed their join date and where the phone number they registered with was located - Nigeria (not that there won't be any west African furries but this guy was claiming to be in and from Seattle)
Keep your wits about you folks.
I've seen attempts from all over, we as furries must just look like a good source of easy marks with big money :/ Journals like this one are necessity.
Still from what I've heard of from VRChat users they have it worse for scam attempts.
At this point I'm accepting new messages from strangers just to say "hi, no thank you, I don't want any art from you". When they ask "why do you think I want to offer any" I reply with "because the last 20 people messaging me out of the blue always say the same thing". They never reply after that xD
But yeah, it's hella irritating.
Guilt trip garbage
They kinda outright stopped for me because either I'm so small to noticed by anyone or outright unrecognizable to most.
My belief is unless I come to you or you're a commissioner yourself then it's a block cause at that point you're a bot and need to be purged from my DM's.
Works like a charm.
AI Art scams have become more and more common. Someone burning up a city grids worth of power just to generate some prompt 500 times over until they got a result that looks good. Sometimes it's not easy detecting AI art, because it's gotten too good. Its hit the point where you can have 1:1 realism and you can't even tell it's AI generated. I hate it, it makes it harder to determine the authenticity of something that could be Gen AI slop. It's just like that Reddit thing that just recently came out, not sure if you've heard or read about it, about some guy who claimed to be an app developer insider for fast food companies about the driver and service fees going straight to the companies and not the employees or drivers, and so that got exposed for being entirely fabricated with AI. You just can't trust anything after 2019 at this point because of the rate that AI is being pushed by these both billionaires and billionaire companies and tech bros who claim it to be the holy grail of getting things they want in mere minutes by typing some prompt, then you have video game companies using AI or trying to integrate AI things to their games, basically producing slop, not paying REAL artists that is carefully designed of what that person wants created. Not only can AI generate a carbon copy of someone else's work on some LLM model that didn't ask for permission from the original artists work, but they can also do audio and video too.
Worse though, the latest thing to happen to me, someone put one of my stories into an AI and generated a screenplay for it, then messaged me and said they'd want to draw it, or tried to before I cut them off. Now my OC is floating in some fucking shitty AI model somewhere because someone wanted to scam me. Fuck this shit.
I have been scammed by artists who clearly picked up too much work, though I suspect in one case they didn't have any intent of doing most of their owed work... thankfully it was never larger amounts of money. But I won't be guilted into commissioning randos again even if they do seem to have a legit presence on FA or similar.
Thanks for the heads up hun. Eyes peeled, mind aware.
I just block and keep it pushing. I stick to the few artists I know
For me that's insta block lol
Had a message once "So please hear me out for once" as greeting and their profile was like "Aspiring Artist" with lots of sparkles emotes lmao nice try scammer
Funnily enough, these never seems to figure out the specific "art" channels of these servers (if they exists), making them all the easier to spot. Nothing quite like posting your offer for commission in the general chat :)