SENDING VIDEO FEED INSTEAD OF LIVE CAM

This is the most popular trick among scammers - and most guys won't even notice it isn't live. Guys can easily get a camshow themselves, record it and play it as a live show and charge for it. The cheapest scammers just download some crap free porn they try to sell as a camshow. The easiest way to see if a show is live is to do a live check during the show, for example ask the girl to perform a certain act, such as blow you a kiss.

The live check method naturally has to happen during the show, which means that if you catch a scammer this way, you've already paid and lost your money. If this happens on a camsite, you can exit her room and complain to the site, and if you're lucky they will catch her sending a video and you'll get a refund. If you're not lucky, she will pass their test and continue playing videos and you won't get your money back. So on camsites, do the check at the beginning if you're suspicious. Bear in mind that some sites allow group sessions, and she might be talking/performing to someone else at that moment. A scammer that doesn't work on a camsite might think they are safe scamming people by sending videos, but there is always a way to get back at them, and maybe even get your money back. First of all, try to find the company's website that you paid on. Even the smallest companies should have a phone number you can call or an e-mail address listed on their site, for dispute situations and fraud reporting. Scammers also love taking payments through PayPal, and this is why most people get conned - they think they finally found a camgirl that still takes PayPal! There is a reason no-one in the adult field should touch PayPal though, they don't allow adult transactions. And why is that? Yup, you guessed it - because of the high fraud rate ;-) So if you've paid by PayPal and got scammed, report their account, hope PayPal won't also lock your account and learn from your mistake! "But how can I avoid this type of scammers?" you might ask. Well, there is the obvious way, which is to get a preview: a short wave on cam, nothing explicit, just to show you she's genuine and live. You do want to ask her to do the live check in a preview too, because some scammers have thought ahead and recorded some fake preview clips too. They usually include the usual wave and maybe some typing, so you want to ask her to do something unusual for your live check, such as giving you the finger, touching her nose or something like that.

Not all independent camgirls are happy to do a preview though, and that doesn't automatically mean they are scammers. Some guys use the "I need a preview to check if you're live" line to get a glimpse of the girl for free, and have no intentions of booking the girl. Girls get fed up of these timewasters and they can't tell if a guy is serious or not, so they refuse to give previews at all. So don't abuse the preview, and don't ask for explicit things if you get one, that will only get you blocked, and ruin it for the rest of us!

Of course the live check only applies to independent camgirls, on a camsite you normally get a chance to chat for free before you go for the private pay-per-minute cam.

  TAKING MONEY AND DISAPPEARING

This is something you can't miss - you pay and the camgirl disappears. At first you might think she's just having technical problems, lost her internet connection, got a sudden call from her mom. Minutes pass... and you start realising she's not coming back online, and you've just been conned. If you remember what payment company you used to pay her contact them to ask for a refund, like I described above, or if they refuse to co-operate, in these cases banks usually allow you to do a chargeback to get your money back. First wait and make sure the girl wasn't just having problems though, because they are quite common when you have to deal with messenger software and possibly an unreliable interenet connection.

Try messaging her, e-mailing her, ask her friends/other people if they've seen her if you can, and go back to the chat room, site or wherever you met her, as if her messenger is playing up, she might have gone back to see if she can find you. Do what you can, and if you have no luck, wait for a couple of hours. If she doesn't turn up, you can turn to her payment company or your bank. This type of scammers are complete amateurs and their "career" usually don't last very long. They may return to the same place with a different nickname or an e-mail address, and steal new pictures from the internet for their profiles. And the reason they do, is that every time there are a couple of new/drunk guys who will go for their scam, even though someone might try to warn them.

I'm not saying you have to be drunk or naive to get scammed, because it's very easy for a guy to pretend to be a girl on the internet. But the truth is, that most guys could have avoided it by being more careful and cautious. Stick with the girls you've tried and who were genuine, and if you are tempted to try a new girl, ask other people on the site/in the chat room, someone should be able to tell you if she has ripped someone off. The word spreads fast in camgirl communities, guys talk to other guys, but most of all they talk to the camgirls they get shows from, and everyone knows how much girls like gossip ;-) Obviously you are less likely to get blatantly ripped off like this on a camsite, as the girls need to go through a verification process and they get monitored, but this problem isn't that bad among independent cammers either, it's just the occasional teenage kid fucking around, rather than a semi-pro scamming business. Not that knowing that will make you feel any better if you happen to get tricked, but I'm just saying that you don't have to become overly worried or paranoid, as long as you're careful.

  FALSE ADVERTISING

This is quite harmless compared to the scams above, but it's rather common and can be very annoying. Let's assume you're looking for a girl that is willing to perform a certain fetish for you; role play, specific clothing... anything. You make sure she can do it before you pay her and everything seems to be groovy, but the reality can be far from what you expected to see. Her school uniform is just a normal skirt and a shirt, or she has no idea how to give you be a dominatrix, or how to do a foot fetish show, even though she told you she's an expert. On some camsites it's quite commmon that girls say they speak english (or another language) when in reality they only know a couple of words. If you're the type that likes to chat, make sure you check their language skills before you enter pay chat, and if there is no free chat option, you should be safe choosing a girl whose profile says they only speak one language (= your language). Some foreign girls speak excellent English, but some who don't can often be tempted to add English if they know most guys on the site are English speaking. Another trick that some independent camgirls use is advertising their camshows as private and one-to-one, but in reality they try to collect as many guys to watch the show at the same time. This is fine if all of the guys know about it and agree, but often the girl lets all the guys think they are getting a private show when in fact there could be five other guys thinking the same. Also if someone has just booked them and right before the show a new guy asks if she's free for a show, they tell the new guy they can pay less and watch the show they do for the first guy. If a girl offers you this, beware, as she will do the same trick to you some day, if she gets a chance.

There are ways to check if your private show is really private. If the girl has multiple guys watching, she can't type or do anything unusual in the show without being exposed. So ask her a question, or ask her to do something out of ordinary, such as hold up two fingers for 10 seconds. If she sees her monitor but won't reply, she might be tricking you. Also when sending your webcam to multiple people, the framerate is usually very slow. Unfortunately you can't do much once you've been tricked with false advertising, except not to book that girl again. If you saw her profile on a camgirl listing site/directory, you can always complain to the site, and of course, leave feedback if possible. You might not get your money back if she gave you the show, but at least you can warn others about her.

  CUTTING YOU OFF

This is much like false advertising, not the worst scam, but still bloody annoying. Girls rarely do this on purpose, but it doesn't make it any more justified. A girl can get an important phone call, surprise visitors, or maybe their baby woke up, but the decent thing to do is to tell you that they'll be back, to save you from worrying and waiting. If this happens often, they shouldn't be offering shows at all!

When the girl comes back, you can ask her to give you a few extra minutes for the interruption, and most will be OK about it. If the interruption took so long that you lost your "appetite", and she isn't willing to make it up for you, her attitude needs working on and it's fair to leave her bad feedback, if possible.

  CREDIT CARD HARVESTING

Harvesting credit card information is rare in the webcam scene, but it happens. However, it's fairly easy to see the warning signs in these cases. First make sure the final payment page is on the payment company's server.

For example, if you are paying via CCBill, you should see https://bill.ccbill.com in the url field, that tells you your card details are in safe hands. If you're paying via Epoch/Paycom, you should be able to see that the url starts with https://wnu.com/. The url field should be yellow, and the url should start with a "https" instead of the usual "http". This indicates a secure connection that means no-one can get a hold of your details from outside.

If you are unsure about a website, you can always contact the payment company through their website to make sure a particular site is safe. Don't follow the links on the suspicious site though, but rather google the company name to be sure to get on the right website.

  HAVE YOUR SAY

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