Billions of people turn to video games as an outlet or a form of entertainment. You might be stressed at work all day. But when you get home and play a few Fortnite matches, all that stress goes away. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing Dota2, Minecraft, CS: GO, GTA, Roblox, or Assassin’s Creed. You can be anything you want and do anything you want in the video game universe.

Apart from luring people from all ages and corners of the globe, games also attract hackers. They’re out to steal credit card information and use the digital world to steal real-world dollars.

Whenever an application has millions of users, hackers will swarm to it like flies. The more people there are, the more targets there are. They use the spray-and-pray method to spread a malicious link or a virus. Either way, it’s not good for gamers. You can fall into a scam at any time. But to avoid scams, you must understand them. Here are some of the most common ways gamers fall into scams.

Fake prizes, upgrades, power-ups, and cheats

Most gamers are familiar with the concept of grinding for a few hours to get a slightly cooler helmet than they had before. Maybe you get a boost in stats. Maybe it just looks cool. But grinding is an essential part of most games.

Well, some people don’t have the time and are willing to pay for an armor upgrade, a power-up, or even a cheat code. They just want to progress faster. Scammers look at these gamers as a golden goose. They’ll spam chats claiming to have upgrades, cheats, and power-ups for sale. A scammer will text you in your direct messages and try to sell what they have.

All you need to do is send them a dollar, and they’ll give you everything. The payment happens in crypto or a peer-to-peer system. As soon as you give them the money, they disappear. Poof.

In other situations, they’ll ask for your credit card information. Most people will notice this as an immediate scam. But kids won’t. They can take their parent’s cards and send sensitive info. That’s all the scammer needs.

There’s an easy way to maneuver peer-to-peer transactions – don’t make them. Armor upgrades, experience and gold boosts, weapon enhancements, cheat codes, and power-ups offered by random people online are scams. If those kinds of upgrades exist, and the game’s selling them directly, then buy them. Don’t trust other gamers. As a rule of thumb, never send money to people you don’t know online.

Malware

Digital piracy is an age-old problem. Why should you pay for a $60 game when you can get it for free from Piratebay or another torrent site? Well, the answer’s pretty simple. The torrent comes with malware as a bonus.

You might think that you’re screwing over the company that made the game by not paying for it. But hackers capitalize on your greed. They just need to make you think you’re downloading a legitimate game. Sure, you can play it, but the version you’re playing is infected with malware rampaging through your computer or phone.

The malware could be anything from a keylogger to a trojan to ransomware. Once you install it, say goodbye to your private info. Hackers will read your chats, have access to your accounts and devices, and find out all of your passwords. The next step is to use your credit card for online purchases or break into your bank account.

Instead of going for free games, expansions, and cracks, use Epic Games, Steam, or another gaming platform. Don’t download anything from unfamiliar sites. The files are probably filled with malware.

Phishing links

Unlike the previous scams, phishing is a beast of its own. It makes use of your emotions to force you to click on malicious links. Here’s an example.

You receive an email claiming somebody has logged into your Steam account and tried to make a purchase. If that isn’t you, click on a link and revoke their access.

Because you haven’t initiated a transaction, you immediately think somebody’s hacked your account and click on the link. The webpage looks similar to the original Steam one, and you enter your information. And that’s how the hacker steals everything from your password, Social Security Number, and credit card data.

This is just one example, and there are hundreds if not thousands of phishing versions.

Scammers will send you emails saying you’ve won massive prizes, and you need to verify your info to claim it. That’s bogus.

They will pretend to be your online friend and send you disguised malicious links, claiming they’ve won a reward or a free skin.

When it comes to phishing, you can’t rely only on an antivirus or a VPN for gaming. Instead, you need to use caution and treat every link as hazardous. Official gaming companies never ask for financial information in emails and chats. They only do so on designated checkout pages.

Customer support specialists will never ask for your personal information too. Always check the sender’s address to make sure it’s an official one before you reply or click.

Unlimited downloads

You chat with somebody in the lobby, and they present a simple offer. You can get unlimited downloads for games by paying fifty bucks. You’ve been talking to them for some time, and they’re legitimately playing all sorts of games through a file-sharing site.

As soon as you give them the money, they either disappear or they take $50 for giving you access to a pirated gaming website. That’s how you go back to the malware problem, which can infect your device.

There are people who spend their days talking to people like you, hoping that someone falls for their scam. Don’t send anyone money unless you know them in real life.

Stuffing

Your data might be on the dark web, and you don’t know about it. Hackers buy compromised data, and they try logging into sites like Epic Games, Steam, or Blizzard and check if they can get access to the account. These kinds of attacks rarely work. But rarely is good enough for them.

If you use the same password for every website and application, there’s a high chance you can get randomly hacked. Scammers will steal your credit card numbers or personal information.

The least they can do is steal all of your in-game items and send them to their own accounts. All of your gaming hours will go to waste. The worst they can do is use your credit card and make large purchases online. Be smarter than them. Change your passwords regularly, and don’t use the same one for everything..