Hey everyone!
Last night, someone scraped the content of our vendor FAQ and application pages and created a scam application on JotForm. The vendor call was posted to a group on Facebook.
Both JotForm and the Facebook group’s administrators were fantastic in removing the form and post as soon as they were alerted to it, but if you came across a vendor call post on the Facebook group Vendor Search Ontario – this was not us, and please do not send these jerks any money. And if you see a post offering spots at any Toronto Dark Arts Market event that was not made by the TDAM account, or that takes you anywhere other than to our official website, that is not us.
To reiterate, because they can be faked so easily, we never use third-party forms such as Google forms or JotForm to solicit vendors. While we post calls for vendors on various Facebook groups, we do not communicate with potential vendors about applications on any form of social media, including direct messaging. We will only accept applications via our website, and we will only communicate with vendors via our official email address. This is for your safety and security, as there are clearly many assholes out there interested in parting unsuspecting artists with their money.
If you come across any of these fake accounts claiming to be TDAM, or vendor calls that do not lead to our official website, please contact us and let us know so we can work to have them shut down.
And please do your research and be careful about who you are giving your money to. These scammers are getting more sophisticated and greedy (they copied our logo, rewrote the descriptions with ChatGPT, scraped the web site contents – and rewrote the application form to raise the table fees), and they don’t care that market vendors are small, independent businesses, struggling to get by.
We are doing everything we can on our end to stop this from happening, but dealing with scammers is like a game of whack-a-mole – no matter how many you bash, there’s more popping up everywhere. Stay safe out there.
