Do not match your DBG user name with your Protonmail!

[Gracie5]

Many members with Protonmail have been receiving scam emails claiming to be from vendors here.

The vendor name is spelled slightly different.

This is very important OPSEC to save your Protonmail from being hacked:
DO NOT use your DBG user name in your email!

If you are doing so, you need to either change your user name or your email.

 

[Admin]

It has come to my attention scammers are contacting members off their username here and just adding email domains. (Like Proton, gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc)

The scammers are using email addresses IDENTICAL to the real vendor's email but by 1 letter off,
mimicking other letters, using capital i's to look like small L's, etc. You need to triple check the email and at times it isn't even visible to the eye. You need to copy/paste it in txt file and search the correct email and compare with the scammers. You can also do this in most browsers (ctrl + F = search function)
The emails look alike, but upon further inspection ARE NOT.

@LW815 found a site that makes it easier to double check that the address you’re communicating with and the address posted here are the same - www.diffchecker.com - so even those that have trouble figuring out how to search a site/text document/note can easily check even the most deceitful scam addresses.

I urge all members that have the same DBG username/email to change their email address right away.
Your username at DBG and email address should not be alike at all.

The scammers see you commenting here on a vendor's thread and then take your DBG screen name and add all the email domains they can think off (Proton, gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc) and hope one works.

Below are some posts from @F33n, @Mammasboi123 and @LW815 that I put together and are solid to share. Thanks for looking out gents!

Just for safety reasons you should always keep your screen names and email names and everything separate in general.

This is how they have been operating, every member that posted they have received the scam email/been scammed has the same username here and email address, so watch out!

Be wary if a vendor emails you first!
If it’s in the same email chain I would delete it all. Make a new email address, and make sure you copy-paste the address from the first post of a vendor's thread before proceeding.

Repeated reports of users that have the same DBG username as their email address are getting scam emails, targeting specific user/author combinations because they’re actively monitoring threads.

The only way to minimize them guessing your email address is to make sure that it is COMPLETELY different from your DBG username. This should really be standard practice across all applications/sites.

You can update the email associated with you DBG account through the settings. So I would recommend anyone that has the same username and email address go create a new email now, and update it in settings. CLICK YOUR USERNAME ON TOP AND THEN ACCOUNT DETAILS.



Also new members that are joining and have the same username and email will be automatically rejected.
An email will be sent to the registered email of your DBG account explaining why.