Agent Insights Ep 06: How to Spot a Scammer

Hey all, Blue and Dew here with today's agent insights! So, today, we will be going over how to spot a scammer!

Some of the easiest ways are to check if the scammer is a new jammer, how many achievements they have, how many pets and how many items. For example, an account that has very few achievements and is advertising for a trust giveaway with spikes or headdresses could be an alt of a scammer.

Another way to tell is if they say their main has been suspended and they are on a spare, and that they had many rares/spikes/longs etc etc. Sometimes, they may ask others to gift them such rares because they were suspended. However, we cannot be sure if it is true that their main was suspended. To be safe, unless you are willing to risk losing your item forever, don't gift them it.

Also, do recall that any form of trust trading is considered by AJHQ to be scamming. Therefore, anyone who trust trades can be considered to be a scammer. However, not everyone trust trades with bad intent, though many of them do.

Additionally, many giveaways may not be giveaways at all! Though some are genuine giveaways, others could involve trading for a rare item. Giveaways are named as such because the receipent doesn't have to give anything back in return. For non-members, they can trade a common item. Therefore, giveaways that involve trading rares is highly likely to be a scam.

Finally, there is the "Gift me it's my birthday". Now, this is up to you to decide. It could be genuine, it may not be. Just remember that if you gift them, you may not get your item back.

That's all from us now. Until next time!

-Blue and Dew

Random Saturday Ep 15: Trophies

Hello everyone! Today, I will be writing about trophies in AJ.

Trophies are items you can earn in-game from quizzes in the Temple of Zios. They look like golden trophy-cups with a blue image of the animal you earned the trophy from above it. The animal/the trophy has blue light radiating out from it. There are many different kinds of trophies, for many of the animals in AJ.

Trophies can be earned by completing quizzes in the back of the animal books in Temple of Zios. The quizzes are the about the animal, and contain trivia that can be found in the books. Once you have finished a quiz with all 5 questions correct, a gift icon appears in the bottom-right, and if you click it, you can claim the trophy.

Not all animals have trophies that can be earned, and you can only earn a trophy once per account. It is possible to create collections of trophies.

That’s it for this week’s Random Saturday. Bye!

Agent Insights Ep 05: Pro-Scam Platforms

Hello, Flint here, and today I’ll be talking about pro-scam platforms.

Pro-scam platforms are sites, blogs, YouTube channels, or other such things that advocate scamming. If you look for them, you can find many. Generally, they will consist of videos of people scamming, tips on how to scam, posts which list the haul from their latest scam, and posts complaining about scam-catchers.

In the past, there have been posts made elsewhere about such groups, usually after a member of such a group has sought out an agent from a scam-catching agency to attack or annoy them.

It would seem like such groups are large threats, since they provide a place for scammers to organize, share tips, and promote their viewpoint. However, I don’t think they are. One big reason is that most of them are inactive. If you search up “Animal Jam Scamming Tips” or similar, most of the sites you find haven’t been posted on or updated in over a year. Most of these sites are also very small, as even the top search results have few, if any, comments and views. Most of them also have few posts.

I’d assume there are more hidden scammer gatherings in places, but these places are likely to be small, hard to find, and heavily moderated to prevent people coming in and whistle-blowing. Said groups are also not likely to have much of an impact, because they are small and hard to find.

This is not to say that I think you should ignore said sites. Some of them do have people they influence, and some might be bigger than they look. But, they aren’t very important, generally speaking. So rest easy, knowing that large conglomerates of scammers won’t be taking over AJ.

Random Saturday Ep 14: Super Sapphire Potions

Hello everyone! I'm here again with another Random Saturday. Today, I'm gonna be talking about the Super Sapphire Potions from AJPW.

So what are the Super Sapphire Potions? The Super Sapphire Potion gives the user, and everyone around them, 3 Sapphires! For those of you new to AJPW, Sapphires are premium currency in the game. They can be used to buy dens, clothing items, animals, and make masterpieces.

Obtaining a Super Sapphire Potion is not simple, though. One Super Sapphire Potion costs a whopping 3,500 phantom tokens from the phantom dimension. To earn phantom tokens, you need to defeat phantoms. To defeat phantoms, you need paintseeds. Oh boy.

Alternatively, you can battle your way to Mount Shiveer, and give the Giant Phantom in the Arctic Wolf Cave a paintseed. If you're very, very,  very lucky, he will give you a Super Sapphire Potion.

Now, once you've gotten your Super Sapphire Potion, you can use it. It is found under the "Potions" tab in the "Change your Look" option. The other options there are Outfits, Change Animal and Edit your Look. You should see your Super Sapphire Potion in the Potions tab. Once you activate it, 3 Sapphires will be dropped at the area you're in. That means, anyone in that area, including yourself, can claim those 3 Sapphires.

Well, that's all from me now. Stay tuned for your next episode of Random Saturdays!

-Dew

Monthly Update - January

Hey all! Jade here, with the update post for the month of January. 

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A few new policies were implemented this month. First, agents must now warn the others at least one day before their assigned post day if they cannot make the post. Otherwise, they will receive a warning. Second, we have created an agent leave form to be filled out in order to receive a long leave period. 

We hit our 100th post this month! The post was a Random Saturday written by our newest Gamma, Blue. You can find it here!

Recently, Flint was demoted to the position of Delta. We feel that this position will fit their preferred posting type and schedule better. As of now, we have no Alphas or acting Alphas. We will let you all know if that changes!

Finally, we are planning to hold an agent recruiting day soon. On that note, please remember that we are accepting applications for new agents-- you can join here!

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Thanks for reading! We look forward to a fantastic February with you all.

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

Random Saturday Ep 13: Mind Blowing Update

Hey all, Blue here with the 100th Post! Woo!! So, today I'm going to be talking about Animal Jam's claim of a "mind blowing update" coming up, that they mentioned in their live stream about a week ago.

So, as most of you will know, Animal Jam has been called dying for a while. One of the reasons this is happening because of the low quality of the recent updates, with no new dens or proper animals besides re patterned ones like the falcon and deer.

 

However, AJHQ acknowledged that their updates hadn't been the best in 2018, but they said 2019 will be full of surprises. there are many guesses as to what new features AJHQ might add, and here are some of my favorites.

1. Pet adventures! This is one I heard of on Shopking's video, and I honestly thing it would be quite cool to play as your pet in an exclusive adventure.

2. The ostrich! Animal Jam showed it before as a possible chance, so why don't they release it now?

3. Trade features! These are some I came up with myself. what if you could find someones user and send them a trade even if they are offline, and then they can check a trading center for their offers!

4. Pets should be able to be gifted! Like, who doesn't want that feature?

5. You can trade your animals, dens, gems and diamonds! That would be awesome! There would be so many more possibilities...

6. You can sort your buddies. Often you make a really good friend or play with people for an adventure, and you want to remember their user and not just as a random buddy. What if you could put them into a "good friends" group or a "great Adventurer" group? that would be so helpful!

And that's all for today's Random Saturday and 100th post! Blue, over and out.

Agent Insights Ep 03: Avoiding Hackers

Hey all, Jade here! In today's Agent Insights, I wanted to talk about a topic that's a little less known than how to avoid typical scammers- avoiding hackers!

True hackers are people who get into accounts that don't belong to them through a various number of methods. They may or may not delete or take items, but it is more common than not for them to mess around and sabotage your things. False hackers are people who threaten to hack in order to get rare items, but don't actually have the means to do it. False hacking is a less-known method of scamming.

This post is kind of long, so I'm putting the rest of it under the cut. Click read more to continue reading!