Phishmael & Friends'Free coins!' 'Free skins!' 'Free gems!' If your child plays online games, they've probably seen offers like these. In this episode of Phishmael & Friends, Gary the pufferfish almost falls for two of the most common gaming scams.
Trick 1: the coin generator. A link in game chat leads to a website promising free in-game money, if you log in. There are no coins. The moment a password is typed, the scammer can take over the account, take the items, and lock the real owner out. Some fake 'generators' ask you to download a tool, which can contain malware.
Trick 2: the friendly stranger. A player is lovely to your child for days, then asks them to read out a code that just arrived on their phone. That code is a login key. Reading it out hands over the account.
Once an account is stolen, it's often used to message the owner's friends with the same trick, which is why one stolen account can spread quickly through a group of friends.
The rule from the episode: passwords and codes are like toothbrushes, so never share them. Real games don't give away free currency through random links. If someone offers free stuff for a login, report them, block them and tell a grown-up. And turning on two-step login means a stolen password alone isn't enough to get in.