How to Avoid Scams on Gaia Online

Gaia Online is one of the world's largest avatar based forums. With over five million accounts and counting, some users will try anything to get their hands on your hard earned gold and items. Here are some tips to avoid losing you Gold, Items, or even your account to a scammer.

Steps :

1) Never give out your password! This goes for everything that uses a password. Gaia administrators will never contact you asking for your password, typing your password anywhere but an offical Gaia Online password entry field will result in the password being accessible to unscrupulous users. Do not post it backwards, or in code either. People can figure that out.

2) Choose a complicated password. This also goes for most things. For example, hooray4dolphins is weaker than hooray4dolphins2329438. Also, keep your password different from your username. And never put the word "Password" in your password.

3) Read Gaia's TOS. It may be long, and lacking in plot development, but it helps a lot.

4) Check username colors. NPC's have red names, admins and developers have orange names, omnimods have green names, global mods have light blue names, dedicated mods have purple names, the people on your friends list have dark blue names, and helpers have no color in their names. Regular users lack color in their names as well.

5) Check the message you suspect of scamming. Is it:

• Written with bad grammar?
• Far fetched? (I.E. The "Ban fish" scam)
• Too good to be true? (I.e. a chance at a mod position on your first day, 10 halos, etc.)
• Sent by a user claiming to be Gaia staff?
• Asking for your password?
• Threatening you with a banning if you do not give your Password, or any of your gold/items.

 6) If you answered yes to any of these questions, it's most likely a scam. Each message has a report button next to it you can use to alert a mod. Click it, and explain your reasons for reporting. Do not respond to the message. Also, A new scam has arose where, in a Message or a forum post that asks you to vote for the in the arena, Vote for a friend, check out a thread, etc. And to the untrained eye it will look like a normal link such as http://www.gaiaonline.com/mygaia But in reality if you move your mouse over the link the address bar at the bottom will have a different URL, Taking you to a site which looks like the Gaia login screen, don't believe it, Always check the URL of the site, if it doesn't say http://www.gaiaonline.com/ then it's a fraud and putting in your password will allow them to hack your account, if you accidentally do enter your Username and password don't panic, quickly go to your account settings and change your password. (I recommend having a special password in a file on your computer that you can copy and paste to the form so it will be quick and strong. However, I wouldn't do this if you share your computer with other people, The may delete the file.)

Tips

• Always remember the only staff account that sends out account messages is "admin". Names like "Gaiaadmin" "Gayaadmin" "Adnim" or "Battle_arena_beta_test" are often used to scam people.
• Many scammers do not have a full grasp of the English language, which makes their scam attempts obvious.
• Most beta testing is done in house by admins, or by people who have donated to Gaia that month. If you are chosen to beta test, you will be alerted by admin.

Warnings

• Never give out your password, ever.
• Never buy gold from a gold selling site. Gaia offers Monthly collectibles and Gift credits on the site for money if you really must spend money on the site.
• Never even try to scam, you will be banned.
• Remember, it's just a game. Don't cheat at it.
• Never abuse the report system to report someone who you don't like. This wastes time and will get you into huge trouble.
• Real mod's names are colored.
• When using computers that offer to remember passwords, never tell it to remember the password if you aren't the only one using that computer. ie: Library computers, or an internet cafe.
• Don't do gold hacks, they ruin your computer and don't work.
• Don't accept friend invitations from random users. Be safe.