Very informative. I wasn’t ware of art scams but it all makes sense. It feels like we need to be extremely vigilant with everything in today’s society.
These scams seem to become more common every year - I have caught 3 of these so far in my career. The most recent one was this January and it was a bit different. They asked me to speak at a corporate conference about my art, give a presentation on the work of my choosing - same pattern of validation and promise of $$s and then the follow up where they asked for my contact and mailing address. The email was from an email that was similar to a real business which gave it credibility, but the .com lead nowhere. When I asked for a call to discuss they claimed they were too busy.. And when I called them out they never responded again. Moral of the story is if it sounds too good to be true, it often is..
Etsy is rife with this scam, and they seem unable or unwilling to filter it at the messaging level, which seems as if it would be quite easy since all the come-ons have a similar approach. One of the first things the scammers often do is try to get you to communicate by a system (email or a messenger) that is external to the platform, usually with some flimsy excuse like "I'm heading to work and cannot access Etsy from there..." etc. Another red flag is when they ask questions about things that should already be obvious (ex. "what's the price for this artwork?" as a response to a listing that displays a clear price). Obviously they are simply using a generic message template.
I've also seen the scam attempted on Cara, a very good new social network for visual artists. I've had many nice interactions there but it was disgusting to see all the bots commenting and messaging on artworks within days of the platform launch, trying to pull this exact scam on fresh unsuspecting hopeful artists. I spent quite a bit of time blocking and reporting the users posting those comments and appending my own responses to warn others who might stumble on them.
It can be upsetting to realize that all your hopes, dreams, efforts, intentions, and interactions are seen by some of the worst humanity has to offer as mere opportunities to con and exploit you.
Very informative. I wasn’t ware of art scams but it all makes sense. It feels like we need to be extremely vigilant with everything in today’s society.
These scams seem to become more common every year - I have caught 3 of these so far in my career. The most recent one was this January and it was a bit different. They asked me to speak at a corporate conference about my art, give a presentation on the work of my choosing - same pattern of validation and promise of $$s and then the follow up where they asked for my contact and mailing address. The email was from an email that was similar to a real business which gave it credibility, but the .com lead nowhere. When I asked for a call to discuss they claimed they were too busy.. And when I called them out they never responded again. Moral of the story is if it sounds too good to be true, it often is..
Etsy is rife with this scam, and they seem unable or unwilling to filter it at the messaging level, which seems as if it would be quite easy since all the come-ons have a similar approach. One of the first things the scammers often do is try to get you to communicate by a system (email or a messenger) that is external to the platform, usually with some flimsy excuse like "I'm heading to work and cannot access Etsy from there..." etc. Another red flag is when they ask questions about things that should already be obvious (ex. "what's the price for this artwork?" as a response to a listing that displays a clear price). Obviously they are simply using a generic message template.
I've also seen the scam attempted on Cara, a very good new social network for visual artists. I've had many nice interactions there but it was disgusting to see all the bots commenting and messaging on artworks within days of the platform launch, trying to pull this exact scam on fresh unsuspecting hopeful artists. I spent quite a bit of time blocking and reporting the users posting those comments and appending my own responses to warn others who might stumble on them.
It can be upsetting to realize that all your hopes, dreams, efforts, intentions, and interactions are seen by some of the worst humanity has to offer as mere opportunities to con and exploit you.