I’ve been watching some You Tube lately as I’ve been doing some intense binding lately. There are some fascinating videos exposing scammers and spammers.

What’s the difference?

As I see it - the scammer is the one who actually simply steals your money and either gives you an inferior product or no product at all.

The scammer is out to steal your money. Nothing short of that.

Lately there have been plenty of these types of places stealing pictures of quilts and claiming that you can order a quilt for only $49.99 - these are gorgeous quilts which took hours and hours or even weeks of time to create.

You can’t seriously think you are going to get a quilt made just like this for the price of a few meals at Burger King, do you?

What you will get, if ANYTHING, is a piece of fleece with a printed design on it. You may get nothing at all but a charge to your credit card for the price of $49.99l.

If something is “too good to be true” - then it probably is. Here’s that website. Please do NOT buy anything from this site! But you can go and see what pictures they have stolen from thousands of artists the world over.

There are also scammers who call you and tell you your computer is infected with viruses, but that’s not really related to quilting. But if you want to watch some people catch those scammers - here’s a fun guy who has made it his quest to waste these scammers’ time.

This guy has a voice changer so he can sound like a gullible grandma to the scammers who are usually located in India, as far as I can tell. Please do not fall for someone on the phone telling you anything! You aren’t in trouble with the IRS, need a computer update, etc.

He and his buddies have even created a fake bank - look at it - but the funny thing is that the scammers who call him don’t even bother to read the bank they’ve created!

Please…do not believe “Microsoft” callers who tell you need an update and then insist that you pay them a huge fee - they accidentally refund you too much directly to your bank and need gift cards in return.

Back to sewing stuff….

The lady shown below found her own dress on a website similar to the one shown above relating to “quilt blankets” and ordered it.

The video shows what happened.

The spammer is the one who just advertises incessantly with out giving you any real information that will help you in your search for that information.

They are mostly trying to sell you something - or at minimum, get you to their website so that they can show you ads and get money from google ads.

When it comes to quilting - the spammer has a website that is mostly stolen content from other people.

Yes, they exist. These are often written in very poor English - a lot seem to be originating in Brazil - and I’ve seen them even take whole tutorials word, for word, from someone who actually wrote it - and put it into THEIR website - no they don’t LINK - they “take”.

The last one I followed I found the original writer of the post and shared the link with her. Hopefully she will get them to remove it.

There are Facebook pages and groups which are also full of these - They show things as if THEY made them with no remarks along with the picture that they didn’t make it, insinuating that, of course, they made that beautiful quilt, or scarf, or crocheted or knitted item. Naturally they didn’t. Later, they may link to the original creator, or not. Worse, they usually like to their website which has you follow a bunch of pages full of ads and various things in search of that free pattern that they promised.

Common websites, at least in the past that did this kind of things, have been ckcrafts, thequiltingland, and others which I’ve thankfully forgotten by now, etc They can be Facebook pages which then take you to such websites.

I’ve seen people on Facebook saying if you go there you will get a virus if you even look at their stuff.

However,

I’ve not experienced that. But usually the quilt pattern that you went to find isn’t really there— it’s pretty frustrating. Mostly the pictures are TAKEN from the original blogger and posted as if they were theirs and maybe, eventually you will find the pattern you were looking for.

Maybe you won’t, too.

Sometimes you find something quite different.

Spam was originally prevalent mostly via email.

Listen to this guy who is hilarious on YouTube- his Ted Talk will make you giggle for sure!

or by “click bait” - headlines so irresistible that you just want to follow that link.

Remember - most people aren’t out to entertain you just because.

They want SOMETHING out of it! Usually it’s money! I look at spammers as one step away from scamming.

In the email video referenced above by James Veitch, the spammer was also a scammer! He was first a spammer - relentlessly sending emails in hopes of taking money.

Just remember that!

Read everything with your “truth sensors” out! Don’t automatically believe it just because it’s on the internet - even with a great looking video or fantastic pictures!

The internet is a wonderful tool, that has changed most of our lives, but don’t allow yourself to be “taken”!

Anyway…have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Be sure to check out what my sis has for you in the store! My sis does her best to make sure you have the product you ordered! No scammer/spammer here!