Agent Insights Ep 34: What counts as a scam?

Hello everyone. Flint here, to talk about what counts as a scam.

I often see people who call things scams that we don't really consider to be scams. Things like claiming it's your birthday, advertising for mailtimes, etc. are some of these things. Today, I thought I'd make a list of things that make a scam a scam.

Deceptive

A scam must be deceptive. There must be lying, misleading, or taking advantage of someone's lack of knowledge in order for a scam to be a scam. In most scams, they promise something in return for your things, but never give it. Or they say if you don't do something, they'll harm you, when they really can't. Or they pretend to be someone they're not. Either way, some deception must be involved. 

Someone who just says "give me your spikes", takes the spikes, and leaves wasn't scamming anyone. He just left with the spikes, he never promised anything in return. If you want to give away your spikes to someone for nothing in return, then regret it, that's not a scam.

Intent counts here too. Someone making bad trades with newer jammers who don't know any better is still scamming, even if he knows that his items aren't worth anything, since the other person didn't know.

Theft

A scam must involve something being taken from you. Whether it's items, currency, your password, etc. doesn't matter, so long as something was taken.

If an event was deceptive, but nothing was taken from anyone at any point, it's not a scam. Trolling, joking, and the like are not scams. They're annoying, but there's no harm done.

If there is no deception and/or theft, it's not a scam. There are, however, some tricky cases that are still scam-ish, but aren't really scams. These include:

- Lying about what they wanted free items for, but with no pretense of giving anything in return. We do not consider these scams, or not 'full' scams anyways. It's impossible to verify if these claims are true or not, and you already knew you'd be giving away your items for free. You were never forced/coerced into giving them away, and there's no expectation of you giving them valuable items. (Examples: birthday claims, mailtime advertisements, "I'm poor give me stuff"s, etc.)

- Hacking/harassment/legit threats and the like. People who harass you until you give them stuff aren't scamming you, but they're still breaking rules and being mean. We consider them in the same category of behavior standards.

- People pretending to be famous jammers are still considered scammers, since it's easy to verify that they aren't famous, and pretending to be a famous jammer comes with the expectation of giving valuable items

We still post about threats/harassment/hacking, but we will not post about birthday-claim type stuff, nor will we post about trades you regret. Bottom line is, a scam must be someone deceiving you into giving up your items. 

That's all. Goodbye!