On-line Scam!

[Casey Feedwater]

For whatever this info is worth...

Last week I received an "official notice" from Earthlink that my account information was no longer current and that I needed to click on the link to update my account. The notice was sent as an html document with Earthlink's corporate logo and content "style."

I was immediately suspicious and did not click on the link for the following reasons: I just updated my account info last May and knew there couldn't be anything "out of date." Also, the content had several misspellings and a couple of punctuation errors. Finally, there was an attachment to the email which turned out to be a .gif of Earthlink's corporate logo. So I immediately contacted Earthlink's Customer Service people, explained/described what I had received, and asked them to confirm or deny it had come from them. The answer was that it is in fact a scam to extract credit card and banking info. It's been going on for several weeks, and Earthlink is working with authorities to catch the ID thieves.

Then yesterday I got a similar "notice" again, but this time it was supposedly from eBay. Had all of the official eBay logos and artwork. But this time, the message said that their account people noticed "strange activity" related to my account and traced it to ISP # "such and so." They suspected that my account had been hacked and was being used in a fraudulent manner. Please click on the link, etc.

There was just one problem: I don't have an account with eBay and never have. I have never registered to buy or sell anything there. So, I knew this one was a fraud also. When I contacted eBay yesterday afternoon, they confirmed it was a scam and asked me to forward to them the email I received.
Oh, another clue that it was fraudulent: more misspellings and grammar/punctuation errors in the text.

So, like I said at the top... for whatever this info is worth. "They" have tried twice within the space of a week to gain access to my credit card and banking info. The emails are very realistic in appearance and are probably fooling a whole lot of innocent and unsuspecting people. Be forewarned!

 

[jim currie]

Casey
got one for ebay some scame if anyone gets them just foward to spoof@ebay.com . rember if you have a ebay account they will not ask you for account information in a e-mail.

 

[jon-monon]

I knew the e-bay scam was going around for some time. No ISP, web site, etc., should ask you for any passwords, acount info., etc. over e-mail. Also, it is never safe to send any sensitive information over e-mail, unless you encrypt it, which most of us don't even know how to do. e-mail is unsecure, and easy for bad guys to capture enroute, and they do. Even if you initiate it, don't e-mail it, unless you want it out. If the site you deal with wants you to e-mail orders in, don't do it, at least not the credit card number.

On-line ordering is probably as safe as scaning your credit card at Walmart, as long at the page is encrypted. This should happen automatically, and you should get (on most browsers) an image of a closed padlock at the bottom rght of your window. Most internet stolen credit card numbers were not entered with a browser; they were entered at the store or by phone.

 

[ezdays]

This scam is not only prevelent on the web, but by phone as well. A phone call from you "credit card" company or your "bank" asks you to verify you account number by reading it to them over the phone. Well, if all these people have "bad" or "outdated" information, ask them to read it to you.

No company will ask you to "verify" your information in this manner unless they are out to get you account information.

One other thing, your mail is not safe from these scammers either. Here in the Phoenix metro area we have one of the highest incidents of mail theft in the U.S. All to get your credit card and banking data.

Don

 

[Vic]

'Nutter One

Got this one from supposedly from AOL this AM complete with all of the AOL logos and such. "Thank you for being such a great subscriber. You have won $1,000 in our Customer Appreciation Drawing. Please click on the the link below to claim your prize. Thank you and congratulations!"

BS I've never used AOL services nor have I ever had an AOL account. Its been reported to my provider who in turn has reported it to AOL....but nothing will ever happen.

 

[N Gauger]

"Let the buyer Beware"

The "Scammers & Spammers & Hackers" all are just as smart as all of us are.

jon is right

"No ISP, web site, etc., should ask you for any passwords, acount info., etc. over e-mail. Also, it is never safe to send any sensitive information over e-mail, unless you encrypt it, which most of us don't even know how to do. e-mail is unsecure"

.....and Yes - I had My Credit Card taken a few years back!

Let me tell you - It only took Once ($370.00) for me to learn. It was harder to get my own account info, than it was for the idiot (being nice here) to steal the info in the first place.

Never give any personal info, Passwords, or account info to anyone - unless you initiated the call. Never over the net unless you see that the "Padlock" on your browser is locked (closed)

Did you know that you can click on that locked padlock & it will give you the certificatee info? If the date is "old" then DO NOT use the site!!!!!! It means they did not pay the bill to keep the security turned on.

If you want to try it - use my site....

Click here - then when the page loads - click on padlock

 

[zeeglen]

Just got a scam mail tonight from

chukwunna@tiscali.co.uk

claiming to be an Africa banker (with a UK email?) and needing to find someone to take 30 million dollars off his hands. If not, the money will "be donated to
the trust fund for arms and ammunition to further
enhance the course of War in Africa and the World in
General."

Just send your bank account info so they can deposit it...

Do some people really fall for these?

 

[ezdays]

They are know as "Nigerian Letters" because before email became the scammers venue of choice, they were actually mailed from Nigeria. I used to collect the ones that were sent to me and could have wallpapered one wall of my office with them. I was offered varying percentages of varying amounts, but none less than 10,000,000 and upwards. I could have been richer than Bill Gates had I cashed them all in.

And yes, there have been people that have lost big time, including going to Nigeria and not coming back. the motivation here is greed and getting something for nothing.

Don

 

[Vic]

Nigerian Gets Scammed Back

Read this

http://spl.haxial.net/nigerian-fraud/

 

[ezdays]

Re: Nigerian Gets Scammed Back

Originally posted by Vic
Read this

http://spl.haxial.net/nigerian-fraud/

Wow, that guy spent a lot of time to try to con the cons. I had been tempted myself to string one of these guys along, but as you can see, it takes a lot of time. I'm just surprised that they only tried to extort $500, but I guess that would be just the beginning. Geeze, they had tens of millions of dollars in a suitcase and they try to hit this guy up for $500.

Any letter or email that starts off, "dear sir or madam" and continues with "your name was given to me in confidence" and ends with, "please send me your name and bank account number" should be a clue as to what's going on.

Don

 

[RailRon]

What baffles me ist the fact, that there must be LOTS of websurfers who are hooked by this sort of bull$...

Obviously there are many cons who have some success with their letters. Otherwise, if nobody would respond to such crap, those sort of e-mails would have disappeared a long time ago.

But just as obviously there are many receivers who fall for that stuff. Either they are flattered to belong to the 'chosen ones', or they are greedy like mad, or they are outright bloody stupid.

A little less criminal, but annoying are a series of heartbreaking letters (mostly from Russian 'students'), demanding only a few $, because the little sister has a terrible heart condition and needs immediate surgery, etc etc. Of course, this is nothing else than modern, electronic beggary. But this sort of fraud seems to be on the upswing, as I get more and more such mails. Do you know this in the USA/Canada, too? Or is it concentrated on Europe?

Ron

 

[zeeglen]

Originally posted by RailRon
... or they are outright bloody stupid.
as I get more and more such mails.
Ron

Probably the 'outright bloody stupid' applies. Send out 100,000 emails and some sucker will respond.

More and more junk mails all the time - the last 2 weeks have been getting many emails on the enhancement of male function and anatomy. Would like to jokingly respond 'not necessary', but fear that doing so will result in many more junk emails. Obviously some 'work at home' sleazebag has been selling 'get rich quick with your computer' scams.

We now have a 'do not call' list that has taken care of the verbal telephone spam. Prior to that my favourite method was to be so ornery (and downright profane) that the 'do not call' was voluntary on the part of the callers (they did not dare call me again). Almost got me fired once when applied the same technique to an email from a genuine supplier that i thought was spam.... But it worked for a while.

I'd like to see some software guru come up with an anti-spam utility - freeze writes to the hard drive to prevent planting of cookies and whatever; send 100,000 responses to the scammer with individual email fake ID's. That would stop spam dead in a effective way that no legal process ever could.

 

[RailRon]

There is one very important rule playing this game:

Never, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER give any answer to spam mail.

Also, NEVER hit the link at the bottom 'I don't want any more messages from you' (or something like that).

If you do that, you are telling the spammer that yours is an active e-mail address. So he'll know that someone is getting his stuff. And then you'll be flooded with more and more and more and MORE SPAM...

I know it's hard NOT to react when you boil with anger after getting 50 e-mails per day and deleting 45 of them. But when you respond, next day you'll have 200+ e-mails!

Of course the same holds true when you get e-mails like Casey told us at the start of this thread! If someone wants critical data from you - just play 'dead man', NEVER respond.

Ron

 

[ezdays]

Ron,

Good advice. There are statistics, and I'm not sure of the numbers, but let's say that for every 100,000 scam emails sent, a miniscule .1% respond and of that, only 1% of those actually take the bait (.001% of those contacted). That's one person for every 100,000 emails, or 100 for every 10,000,000 sent which on the net is not a big number and only takes a few minutes. The scammer now has 100 credit card or other account numbers that they can milk for thousands of dollars each. Not a bad days work. And for the most part, they will never be caught. The same goes for the Nigeria letter and other scams. They could never do that volume of business if they had to dial that many phone numbers, or send out that much snail mail.

They need to structure the internet so that no one can hide behind a phony email address, then maybe they can hold these people accountable. In the meantime, like you say, don't share anything with these people and don't respond either.

Don

 

[60103]

I'll pass on a couple of comments that appeared in our newspapers recently.
One man set up an e-mail account for his daughter and within 15 minutes she had an offer to enlarge a piece of her anatony that she didn't possess.
Another kept track of some of the offers and calculated that if he's responded to all of them he'd now have a member over 15 feet long.
I put in an anti-spam program. It's amazing how many spelling variations there are on the V drug. And I see that they are now putting in random characters with foreign accents (mostly umlauts).