January 29, 2019

Agent Insights Ep 04: Flash Trading


What's up everyone! It's me again with another episode of Agent Insights. In this episode, I'll be talking about an older scamming method that was common in the older days of AJ, but not so much now. The name of this scam is "Flash Trading".

Long ago, Flash trading started out as a game where jammers traded their itens quickly without looking at what they were receiving. Well, if you factor out scamming and assume that everyone trades items of equal value, then it would make a good party game. That, I believe, was its original purpose

Back in the old days of AJ, the trading system was different. There was no "trade confirmation" screen - once the sender starts the trade, there is no turning back. As soon as the recipient got a trade request, they can either accept or reject the request. The sender can only cancel the request before the recipient hits accept. As soon as the recipient hits "accept", the trade is complete.

Scammers decided to use that party game to scam. They would pretend to flash trade like anyone else, but suddenly, and most likely, randomly, switch the good items they were trading with bad items. If the scammed do not realise that the scammer actually changed their item, then they would accept the scammer's bad item for a good item they had on trade.

Today, the trading system has been improved, but this doesn't fully stop the possibility of flash trading. Today, there is an extra step in the sender's part to confirm the trade after the recipient hits accept. If the sender is the one who sent bad stuff, then this doesn't fully block all flash trading. However, what it does is to give the recipient a little more time to react.

Avoiding flash trade scams is relatively simple. If you see people advertising for a flash trade, simply don't participate. Also, be sure to carefully look at the item that the sender wants to trade you. That would give you enough time to think if the trade is worth it.

That's all from me now, until next time.
-Dew

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