#ill update with links to support palestinians as I find them

[natalia-lafourcade]

Everyone please keep Palestinians living in the Gaza strip in your thoughts. They have nowhere to go and Israeili PM Netanhayu has threatened to bombard them.

#ill update with links to support palestinians as I find them #i dont even know what to do right now #palestine

[dykesbat]

hi. writing here because of your privacy settings, sorry.

from what i’ve seen you’re doing supporting for fundraisers, and i wanted to ask for your help.

i’ve had a person submit an ask to me saying they’re from gaza and need donations. i’ve never had experience with anything like this, but i’m trying to ask questions. they don’t share much info about themselves. their link leads to a something something linktree where you can donate with paypal. they sent me a photo per request, upon looking it up in google it leads to a gofundme https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-the-aqlain-family-evacuate-gaza?modal=donations&tab=all

can’t open it because of the country i live in, but the date is set to 16 feb. the name there doesn’t match name in their link, or the name they’ve sent me per my request.

:•( i’m getting a fishy vibe, but i’m worried it could be a person new to tumblr or eng speaking social media in general.

hi! sorry for responding so late. you did everything correctly and those are all definitely signs of it being a scam. i just talked w a friend about this (ill copy and paste my tips below).

i completely understand the worry. many of these red flags aren't outright indicators that every single blog that fits them is a scam, but the combination of things is what really makes the case. it's unfortunate but, a big red flag generally is if a new blog sends you an ask about donations. it's a common scam tactic from before this nakba. the scammers are just exploiting palestinians' genocide instead of the other issues they typically exploit.

obviously not all of these tips are absolute indicators of a scam and some are already things youve considered! but my general tips:

1. is the blog just new? if the icon is of a real person, is it their image? (you can reverse google image search! w mobile you'll have to save the image first and find a site for it. i typically use labnol but i can help you find alternatives if youd like!) are the posts they're reblogging related to the things that you post? (consider: how did they find you) are the posts they're reblogging coming from an actual dashboard rather than the recommendation page? (indicates that they're reblogging popular posts without any rhyme or reason to look like a real blog) is their first post a donation post and was it just made? (dates the blog. you can look in their archives to see the date of their earliest post)

2. where are they linking to? im not sure if your device has an option to preview a link url before sending you to the page but if it does, i would use that here just to be safe. do the names of the accounts match? (note that in this case, of course, many fundraisers are being raised by people outside of palestine. but if the blog claims to be the account owner, do their names seem to match? if theres a description, do the names match the ones the blog gives?) does it lead to a paypal instead of a gofundme? heavily stressing that this obv doesnt mean every request from someone using paypal is a scam, esp w the way gfm has been screwing over some palestinians, BUT paypal is often what scammers would use. gofundme is generally reliable and every fundraiser is donation protected, meaning its possible to get a refund from gofundme in the rare case that the fundraiser is a scam.

3. verifying gfm's can be a lot harder bc my go to options aren't always available. generally what i do is to look at through the organizer's updates, the fundraiser's description <- which obv you should always do anyways, and the fundraisers photos to see if theres anymore information about social media accounts related to the fundraiser. sometimes people will link twitter profiles, sometimes people will link instagram profiles. its just the same process of scrolling back as far as you can and seeing if you can identify the same face(s) from before more people started exploiting these traumas to scam others, seeing when the profile was made, checking if the images are truly from the profile's owners and not stolen, etc.

the biggest indicators imo are the stolen photos since the originals almost always link back to a name that doesn't match the blog.

#asks #hope you're having a lovely day please lmk if theres any other way i can help!