Email Scams

[broken]

I am very reluctant to get anything from e-bay, as there are a lot of scammers out there. It's sad to think that a service that could be very useful has turned out to be something that people have to be quite wary of while using it.

BTW, Freddy, if you sill haven't got a Gmail account then PM me and I will send you one.

[Stuff2Do]

there probably them £30/minute phone numbers, they email people, you ring back, then they make money

[dude66]

the best about gmail is the spam gets sent to the spam folder

[cvrk3]

money does not come easy- do not fall pray to such letters!!

[Anonymous]

The so-called "419" scam (aka "Nigeria scam" or "West African" scam) is a type of fraud named after an article of the Nigerian legal code under which it is prosecuted.

Typically, victims of the scam fraud are promised a large sum of money sitting in a bank account or in a deposit box at a security company it is a fraud email.The storyline often involves a family member of a former member of government of an African country or a nigeria, a ministerial official, an orphan or widow of a rich businessman, etc. Variants of the plot involving the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, etc. are also known. In a new variant of the scheme a lottery win serves as bait.
The victims of fraud email are promised a fortune for providing a bank account to transfer the money to. Then - if they fall for the scam - they are made to part with thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars in "bribes" for local officials or other "fees" before the "partners" finally disappear without trace.

Spam emails for this type of fraud differ from "normal" spam in several ways:

• Most "normal" spam uses bogus sender addresses.For 419 spam existing mailboxes at legitimate mail providers are used for spam.When such mailboxes get cancelled for abuse, often similarly names mailboxes are created at the same provider. Most 419 scams originate from about a dozen freemailer domains (netscape.net, yahoo.com/yahoo.*, tiscali.co.uk, libero.it, telstra.com, bigpond.com, indiatimes.com, 123.com (Chile), zwallet.com, fsmail.net, hotmail.com, etc., see sender lists below). A small minority uses throw-away domains registered via Yahoo/Geocities as the sender instead of a freemailer service.

• Virtually no effort is made to hide the source of the spam of fraud email though technical means. These spammers rely on the lack of efforts by the respective providers to stop their abuse of the service. The spams often trace to servers based in African countries (Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, South Africa, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, etc.) and are often routed through Europe, Australia and South America. Some "419" mails originate from Europe, particularly from the Netherlands and France. This is untypical for common spams (Viagra, penis enlargement, etc.), which are often routed through China, South Korea, Brasil or Russia or are sent from hijacked servers (e.g. broadband hosts infected with stealthware) in the United States. The relative absence of common cloaking techniques on the sender side means that "419" spam can only be distinguished from legitimate email from Africa or Europe by analyzing the text of the message, looking for typical phrases and features.

• Often the "419" scammers include phone numbers in the fraud email, especially in fake lottery scams. Typically these phone numbers are in the Netherlands or in Nigeria. "419" scammers in the Netherlands tend to use mobile phones with prepaid phone cards. Country code 31 (0031 or +31) is the international country dialling code for the Netherlands. I believe that all Dutch area codes starting with the digit 6 are mobile phone numbers (e.g. 0031-630-835-750, +31-630-354-500). Nigerian "419"-numbers are both fixed line or mobile numbers (e.g. 234 8043281627, +234 1 4717291). The scammers there are part of or closely connected to the political and economical elite of the country. Country code 234 (00234 or +234) is the international country dialling code for Nigeria.




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[Eric]

Thanks for the info, drop-in!

[cvrk3]

any other scams that you have come across?

[darrenstraight]

I was checking my dads email address the other day, an account he doesn’t use anymore due to spam and there were like thousands of emails and some of them where just ridicules who on earth would fool for some of these scams I don’t know.

[Stuff2Do]

thanks for that, interesting, i am Naivve, but i still wont fall for that, i may go along with it for fun, but not actually fall for it

[Paul123]

If someone was really sincere and needed money like that, i guarentee they wouldn't go send bulk e-mails out. Geez, its just STUPID to take advantage of that lie, and try to profit from it like they are trying to do. Lemme tell ya, i'd love to reply with a virus attached that says "I'M NO SUCKER!" until the computer dies. I hope i get one of those sometime just so i can let them know how stupid they are.

Anyway, until next rave-
Paul