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Benefit from our years of experience with scammers.
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Re: recovery and reassurance

Tue Dec 24, 2019 6:43 am

SlapHappy wrote:Well they certainly won't be sending you any letters in the mail. If you deactivated all your social media and changed your phone number, I'd relax. Enjoy all your Christmas Holidays. :)


Changing my phone number did not occur to me. Of course I am on a family plan and not the main person on the account, that could be an awkward conversation with my mom :shock:

Eh, pretty sure I am due for an upgrade at this point, can probably get a new number and new phone at the same time, two birds, one stone.

Re: recovery and reassurance

Wed Dec 25, 2019 7:06 am

Sorry for the double post, but forgot to ask above, and I am still a bit freaking out by this, anyone have a rough idea of how long before a scammer tends to move on? Been close to a week for me now and I am trying to keep calm about this, but every once in awhile the anxiety and fear comes roaring back. It has led to some rough nights sleep wise...

Re: recovery and reassurance

Wed Dec 25, 2019 8:37 am

I'm a recent victim. I started receiving harassment yesterday afternoon. This has been the most resourceful and useful website. It's truly given me the strength and confidence to fight back using the steps I was given. I was extremely depressed and petrified with fear yesterday. Was in a constant state of anxiety. I haven't gotten much sleep the past two nights but with the help and selfless effort of the people who run this site, I feel like I can take my power back and begin the road to recovery as a survivor and not a victim. The fear has slowly began to dissipate. Thank you so much to all who have expended the effort to help others like me. You're truly the light of hope in the dark.

Re: recovery and reassurance

Wed Dec 25, 2019 4:08 pm

nanaki626,

As you read in the steps, keep everything closed for at least a month, but they tend to move to the next victim faster than that. A month gives them time to totally forget about you.

JediKnight08,

Cut off all avenues to contact you, this includes phone calls. Change your number.

Re: recovery and reassurance

Sat Dec 28, 2019 5:35 pm

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=72647

The same person in the link attached above tried to scam me too around the same time as the original post...almost been a year. I had followed all the steps suggested by scam survivors and discontinued all the chat with them. Mine happened via facebook messenger. Since it has been a year's time, I have done away with all the texts, etc. But I was surprised to see that this was up here when I was recently just casually looking if these scams still work after so much reporting going on. I also had the fear that they would come back with the classic "underage sexting scam"(even though there was no mention of age anywhere) but nothing of that sort actually happened. been more than a year now for me..it was tough to recover from a blunder like this. but the best thing I did was inform friends and close family immediately. They laughed it off and gave good advice to avoid all these things

But, huge thanks to the scam survivor team for doing an amazing job helping people out. How do you guys take in people for volunteering? It is a great way to do some really important social service.

Re: recovery and reassurance

Sat Dec 28, 2019 5:47 pm

How do you guys take in people for volunteering?

It's a huge commitment to do this job. I've been at it for almost 13 years. We cannot mess with blackmail scammers, but only post reports that others give here. We don't do this for money, either. I've made zero dollars since I started.
You want to volunteer, post scammers that you come across in your email and on social media, and encourage others to do the same. That will help a lot. :)

Re: recovery and reassurance

Sun Dec 29, 2019 12:37 am

SlapHappy wrote:You want to volunteer, post scammers that you come across in your email and on social media, and encourage others to do the same. That will help a lot. :)


This is actually how most of us started, and if you look through our posts you'll see we still do this every day. Post any scam emails you receive, learn about how the scams work, talk to others about it and see if it hasn't driven you mad a couple of months down the line. Here's the reality - we're never going to be able to stop the scammers, but we can raise awareness on scams and fight them that way. It can be hard, grinding and thankless at the best of times, but knowing you're doing your part to help people makes it worthwhile. Still interested?

Re: recovery and reassurance

Sun Dec 29, 2019 9:55 am

Still interested?


looks like a tough job which is better left to experienced guys like yourself. i guess the best common people like us can do is to report whenever we come across anything. thanks again! :D

Re: recovery and reassurance

Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:13 pm

It is the second day without contact... However I realized they tried to get in touch with my husband on FB . He never accepts unknown friends so he blocked them, this happened still on Saturday night when I interrupted the communication... now all my social are deactivated and I have not received any other wzup messages... still I would like to cry for hours , every time I hear the phone bzzzzz I am terrified... thank you for all the kind words I found here I hope it will get better day after day... now I imagine it is all too fresh

Re: recovery and reassurance

Mon Feb 10, 2020 10:20 pm

If he calls you, you need to change your phone number. Period. You have to make sure he cannot contact you anywhere. Deactivate or delete all your social profiles.
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