Fake Pledges and Bots (Patreon)

Throughout this month I've been getting a staggering amount of pledges from users who all fit the same criteria -- no icon, a first and last name, and an email address of gibberish and numbers. Most of them have been $1, just enough to have access to my work, but a few have been higher. I was a little suspicious but really excited at how successful my Patreon was becoming.

Now that payment time has rolled around, every single one of their payments has been declined. I did some digging and found that other creators have had the same problem, which is bots pledging just enough to get at your work, and not paying. Apparently it's, of course, centered around art theft, and posting your private work to places that people can see it for free.

Apparently Patreon has very minimal security measures to keep bots away, not even having a captcha system (I haven't pledged to anyone so I don't know if this is true. Is it?). This seems like a major oversight on their part. This is well over $100 USD that I was counting on getting to pay for food and not leave me scrambling to get my commissions open again. ALAS. Resume the scrambling.

As you can guess, I'm thrilled about this. Any suspicious new patrons will be getting thoroughly checked out by me from now on, sent a message to confirm their not-bot-status, and blocked if need be. I will also be sending a message to Patreon to urge them to up the security, and I'd suggest that a lot of you guys do as well if you can, as they're not going to make any changes unless a big stink is raised.

Yeehaw.

Those of you whose payments have not gone through yet but I have had interactions with in the past to confirm you're human, don't worry. I know who you are, and you won't be blocked.