I Was Scammed

So, how do I start this topic, on the 17th of July, 2022, only a few weeks ago I had most of my money stolen from me. There are many things that I felt, anger, frustration and shame. I had always thought of myself as an intelligent, well-versed person who had a great deal of knowledge surrounding security and the like. The truth is, no matter how well you are educated, and no matter how much you try to protect yourself, the right kind of person, with the right kind of tricks can better you. 

I guess this all started around six weeks previously. As is my daily routine I was streaming, naturally, and it is not uncommon to have new names in chat. Often, these names are fleeting, they may come by, chat, and leave, never to be seen again. But, sometimes they stick around. Over time, relationships are built, and these relationships can be as simple as passing acquaintances, or deep friendships can form. Much like in real life, there is no way to know which way it can go. No way to know if it will be nothing but a fleeting experience or a deep-rooted friendship. 

This new person in chat seemed nice, well-mannered, caring, thoughtful... Everything you want to have in a new viewer. They quite quickly found their place in the community, making friends with not only myself but also others in chat. They decided to join our discord server on the second or third day of being in chat. It isn't uncommon to have the same small group of people be on stream basically every day. Honestly, my discord community is quiet and they never really interacted on there. But, this isn't really anything out of the ordinary. 

Over the next few weeks, this person started to open up to me, both in the public chat and in private that they have struggled with their mental health for some time. This also isn't unusual for my streams, I offer a safe space for people to talk openly. I'm proud of the fact that people feel comfortable sharing in my chat. It is not uncommon to find that people who have previously, or continue to struggle with their mental health often want to help others in the same situation they find themselves in. I believed this was the case with the viewer in question. 

It wasn't long until this person was talking about an app that they were developing, apparently with an old college friend of theirs. The aim of the app was to make it easier for people to seek support in their local area when in a mental health crisis. The idea was sound, it would be a repository of hospitals, mental health clinics, helplines, etc. When you decided you were nearing or in a mental health crisis you could press an SOS button that would notify someone you named in the app and direct you to the resources that are available to you, at that time in that location. If I'm being honest I really like the sound of the app and who knows, maybe I will go on to actually produce something like that someday. 

It was not something small, said in passing, this person went into great detail to explain their app. I know everyone who has been scammed says it, but it all seemed so noble, so real. There was nothing that told me this was someone who had any malicious intent. Nothing that hinted to me what was going to happen. I would even go as far as to say that I enjoyed talking with this person. They were very charming, and very attentive, in many ways they were exactly what I needed, a friend. 

It was around the 5th week when this person started talking about needing to find people to help test the app before they go live. I was more than happy to offer to help beta test the app, if I was able to help others who struggle with mental health I am more than happy to try. Especially when it would take so little effort, but could help so many people. So, I downloaded the file from an email and installed it without thinking. The app seemed very rudimentary, basic in function, this is something that really should have concerned me but I just thought it was early in the design phase. 

What I didn't know at the time was this app was constantly running in the background, observing everything, my emails, messages, and probably even my pins and passwords. I have had many people ask me why didn't I have two-factor authentication, well I did, but when the authenticator is simply a text message, it's pretty easy for an app to access that. Now to this day there are things that I don't know, did they do it all on my device, or was there someone else who logged into my PayPal account on another device, maybe a computer or phone elsewhere? 

No matter the exact process used, the outcome was the same, the extraction of the majority of my money. I often get paid into my PayPal account for various things, such as my streaming income, sponsorships, etc. This means that as I was spending money from my bank account I was building up a substantial PayPal balance that I just never really paid attention to. I knew the money was there, and it was being left for future use in regard to content creation. 

Once I realised what happened the first thing I did was report it to PayPal, although I didn't notice right away. The transaction had been some days before. It was only when I tried to log into my PayPal account and noticed the password has been changed that my suspicion lead to me checking my PayPal balance. I noticed that I had lost the entirety of my balance, which was also the majority of the money that I had saved up over the last 14 months. 

So where do I stand right now? Well, the investigation is continuing by PayPal, but they have already said that the likelihood of me ever getting any money back was very low. Now, I'm not talking about this expecting any kind of financial support. There is no crowdfunding link, but I wanted to talk about it to help others escape my fate. Don't leave money in PayPal and don't download random apps outside of the Google play store. 

Thanks for reading, 

Spec.