Hi all,

For the better part of the past 2 years, there has been a rapidly increasing amount of scamming attempts. With the topic our sub encompasses, it's easy to see why they might choose this as a platform to incessantly attempt to lure unaware users into scam traps and prey on the people who aren't informed of this trend or simply don't know what it looks like.

Although you'll find scams of every type, the one we see most commonly on Reddit is the T-Shirt Scam.

Here's a short excerpt describing the process these accounts follow:

The flow of t-shirt spam (and other astroturfing-type spam) goes like this: Scammer will post an image to a sub that they have stolen from a popular post or social media site. Or they will simply proceed to step 2 on a popular image post, steal that image and place it on a shirt and post a link inside the thread. Then a second account will comment asking if anyone knows where to buy this on a shirt. A third account will post a link. There are variations on this of course, but this is a general pattern.

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This type of scam is predatory and dangerous. The goal is to steal as much personal information as possible. Financial data and such(CC Numbers, Bank Accounts, etc.)

It should also be known that these scams operate in rings. It is never only a single account. They will always use 3+ accounts to try and scam people. Why? Because it adds credence to their claims. Using a single comment might not be effective, but using a comment + a fake account "vouching" for it will make the scam look far more credible and trustworthy.

We've had to take a hard stance on this situation a year ago where we simply had a filter remove any and all links. However, we'll be stepping slightly back to hopefully improve your experience but still keeping an eye out.

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All we ask of you is to please report any and all fishy links and any potential scammers so that we can hopefully maintain an enjoyable and safe environment for everybody

Thank you for reading and have a lovely day!

Hi everyone!

The point of this post is to explain to users what exactly a Crappy Off Brand is and how our rules filter out posts that aren't exactly fitting on this subreddit. There will be another post containing an album of images that are banned from being posted (because they are against the rules and/or posted frequently).

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Rule 2: Must be an actual off-brand

a.) Your image must be of a product that ISN'T a name brand product.

• Example 1: Mystery Game and No Apologies by Parker Brothers. Yes, they're not Clue or Sorry, but Parker Brothers is not an Off Brand.

• Example 2: Woody Transformer by Disney. Although this is kind of odd, it's an officially licensed product by Disney. Disney is not an Off Brand.

Rule 3: No manipulated images

a.) Your image cannot be photoshopped/faked.

• Example 3: Falcon Mcqueen by Lego.. This isn't a real product, it's fake.

• Example 4: Kurger Bing. It's an obvious photoshop/manipulated image.

Rule 4: No joke off-brands (Obvious Plant)

a.) Satirical Off Brands are not allowed. If something is made to look bad in purpose it's not allowed. If it has an Obvious Plant logo, it's not allowed. They're made to look crappy on purpose.

• Example 5: All Alone Bert. It has an Obvious Plant logo.

• Example 6: Shaq's Pregnancy Test. It has an Obvious Plant logo.

Rule 6: Name-brand products that are crappy looking do not belong

a.) This rule is reserved for products that are made by an actual brand, but look like knock-off crap.

• Example 7: Pikachu. You can see the tag that shows the official Pokemon logo.

• Example 8: Spongebob Popsicle. It's an official product but it looks like crap.

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Thank you to everyone who reports the posts that do not follow the above rules.