recovery and reassurance

[nanaki626]

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

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.

[nanaki626]

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...

[JediKnight08]

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.

[SlapHappy]

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.

[jack123]

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.

[SlapHappy]

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.

[Wayne]

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?

[jack123]

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!