I received a fake YouTube sponsorship from “Duolingo”, here’s how I spotted it was not real 👇

The first weird thing is the email address. It’s from “Duolingo” but the address is dfr.m@sfr.fr. It’s not related to duolingo in any way and if you’re French you know: SFR is local internet provider, so it smells very fishy. The email is clean, and there’s an “—”. I suspect it’s written with ChatGPT.

After this first email, I was 75% sure it was a scam but I decided to answer to see what would happen next. My answer was basically “I’m interested, here’s my rate for a sponsored spot: XXXX€. What kind of sponsorship you’re looking for?”.

They didn’t acknowledge what I said at all and they sent this very well put together email with all the details. They offer 5000$ with 50% upon signing. This is way above what I’m asking. The fishy meter is hot but there’s more.

The last thing that really triggered my bullshit meter is the link to a file I should download and unzip with a password, with specific Winrar indications. This is an usual way of sharing a brief, which links to a Mega url. They insist on using Winrar and admin rights too.

Of course, throughout the email they also try to speed the process so you don’t think too much and don’t “miss the opportunity”. They ask to sponsor a video asap, even suggesting making an additional video “this week”. They end the email insisting the process will be quick.

I searched on the internet to see if other people were talking about such scams. While I didn’t find an exact replica, I’ve seen multiple comments from people receiving fishy emails from a supposedly Duolingo sponsorship.

Is there a reason to suggest using winrar to unzip the files? I think I remember windows default zip utility scans for malicious file,. Also, using admin rights would let the potential malicious executable access way more sensitive stuff. They’re probably trying to steal credentials?

I receive tons of similar emails for YT sponsorship, my games or even old apps I published on the play store. This one is pretty well put together. If anyone wants to look at the files, I can give you the link in DM. I don’t want to share malicious files publicly.

EDIT: Bog made a video about a similar scame. While it’s also for Duolingo, the process is slightly different but has the same idea.

Stay safe ✌

MrEliptik

Full-time indie game developer using Godot

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