Scammers, just like in real life there are rogue people in SL too. Being scammed is one of the major griefs you can ever face as a hunter. Over the years there has been lots of scam victims in second life where the hunters (vampires and lycans) become the scapegoat.
How to indentify a possible scammer []
We are all humans of various different complex natures. But there are always certain signs when you are going to be scammed. Over the years many bloodlines players have agreed on the following signs of a scammer :
1) The person will urge you to quickly bite them and won't be much interested in knowing about your clan (the person of course does not have any actual interest in Bloodlines). New people have a lot of questions about things in SL and specially if you bring up the word "Soul". A scammer won't be interested in knowing about it, but will still solicit you to make them a vampire or lycan or even a human.
2) The person will know quite lot about how things work in second life, what viewers are there etc., even though the person is new in Second Life and be overly friendly with you and tell you a lot about themselves just within the first few minutes of meeting you.
EG : Hey I am from ____ . I want to be a lycan . Would you like to make me one ? Please ? Btw I love your profile pic and you have a lovely AO !
3) New Residents always lag in Second Life. No matter how fast their computer is or their network, SL pings vary from sim to sim, specially when they are new and downloading a lot of graphics at the default High settings with lower amount of cache set by default.
4) New Residents explore places a lot. They explore and mostly join lots of freebie groups and have picks to go back there. On the other hand, the people who are interested in scamming you won't bother to join groups for freebies and make picks or edit their profiles even because they will be using it for 1 time only.
5) A person who is not interested in living his Second life won't bother editing their appearance and such especially if they have been in Second life for more than 3 days. Second life has a huge fashion industry totally free of cost! Which newbie would not like to fulfill their dream of looking beautiful without having to spend a dime ?
How to avoid being scammed []
The following tips are how to avoid being scammed
1) Be social! Talk to people. Don't just simply come out of your retirement as a hunter and go hunting. Find a few people in your clan who have hunted withing the last 2-3 weeks and ask them about the latest update and the trend in hunting.
2) Always insist on gifting the hud rather than giving away the lovely 599L$ to some stranger you just met 10 minutes ago.
3) Talk to the victim about your clan, show them your clan land and talk a lot! Make sure you have known the person for at least an hour. You can take them a bit of freebie shopping too at good stores. Anyone would like to look good and be helped by the person who is taking away their soul. You can give the excuse that they should look nice for their ceremony and stuff. The choice is ultimately yours.
4) Join groups which regularly give you updates about miscreants. Make the royals in the clan give you update regularly of which clan member got scammed and where did they meet the person.
5) Avoid joining groups or people which insure you against loss of hud money and or refund of hud money on sucessful completion of investigations against a small fee time to time. (Bloodlines never supports any such groups).
6) Trust your gut.