Well, your financial health anyway. I don’t want to be the town crier here, but recently I’ve been seeing a rise in my own inbox on the number of spam emails from overseas sources that want to make me money. How I wish that were true!
Common sense should prevail here, but you know they wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t work for them, so what can we do? Write about it and try to warn others not to fall into their trap.
Here is the email I received:
Sometimes these emails come off so perfect that I take a second look at them sometimes. But in the end, if something is too good to be true, it probably is.
What to look for
- Who’s it from? Do I know this person? Have I asked to be emailed by this person and perhaps forgot? The one striking problem I see here is that my email address doesn’t show in the header at all! Why? Well, Mr. Song Lile here has provided my email address into the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field so I won’t see it. My email address is there, but I guarantee you I’m not the only recipient in the BCC field. Why would they only send it to me….that would never happen. They are sending this to many, many people around the world looking for bites. That’s why they call it “phishing”.
- Make me money? There’s someone out there that wants to help me make money? Well, how rich and thoughtful! No…no one out there wants to see you succeed and make money other than your friends and family and perhaps some non-profits. Everyone else wants the money for themselves. Sad, but very, very true fact of life. I don’t want to be negative here, but I really can’t think of any other way to put it.
- My, what a large sum you have there! If you are like me, I’ve never seen a dollar amount that high in any of my personal, or business emails where it deals with money. Perhaps you might be one of the accountants for Boeing or and see those size numbers, but not in your personal email account. It just smells bad at this point.
- Who in the world is SomeLargeNumber@Orange.Net – You’ll see in the above image that the sender is from the Orange.net domain. Taking a visit to www.orange.net reveals that it resolves to a UK shopping and news site of some kind. If Mr. Song Lile actually worked for the Hang Seng Bank like he states, then wouldn’t they also have email servers too? I think a bank can afford a proper email server…
- He want’s more info from me? If this guy was legit, would he really be asking for my information? If it were me, I would be looking for people I know….not some random stranger on the net to help me out.
Hopefully this reaches the right people and saves them from potential financial ruin. I believe these things work off unsuspecting victims who are asked to deposit checks into their personal bank accounts, and then immediately withdraw the money. Once the cash is in hand, you are asked to send the money, keep a little for yourself and await the next check to do the same thing.
The problem is that the check will bounce, but since you have already withdrawn the cash, you are now liable for the money. A great scheme for them to get their money perhaps, but you will end up with the shortest straw in the end. Don’t fall victim to this!
More Resources
There are a number of sites on the net that speak to this and other scams. One of the best I’ve found is Snopes.com. From there you can search for the scam or rumor to find what the general consensus is on it. This one appears to be related to the Nigerian Scam.
Be safe! Be smart! Question everything!
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The old gray matter was working today and I actually found the site with the free IP DB, as mentioned prior I have found it to be pretty accurate for a freebie, I think it is update about every month.!
http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/node/view/6
You will have to convert the visitors detected Short IP to a long IP to query the DB
Do a search for “convert Short IP to Long IP ” on google and you should find examples in whatever scripting language your site uses, if needed.
From a VB point off view you would do the following:
splitIP = split(IP, “.” ,3)
calculateLongIP = splitIP(0)*(256*256*256) + splitIP(1) * (256*256) + splitIP(2) * (256) + splitIP(3)
Enjoy..!
Thanks Pete.
On a more serious note, I noticed Rose had mentioned she was having issues with Nigerian Spammers joining her site and spamming her users.
For $50 a year I would recommend buying this IP->Country database from IP2Location ( http:/www.ip2location.com ) it is fairly easy to integrate with some custom code in your preexisting applications, and will reduce the spammers.
I do recall finding a free database out there, that I found fairly accurate, if I come across it again I’ll post a link.!
For what it is worth, here is my 2 cents which will probably be seen as politically incorrect (Yawn) or maybe heartless.!
If the nanny state had been dissolved with a strong acid (Pretty Colors) year ago and social Darwinism had been allowed to run it’s natural course, these people would never have made it onto the internet to become cash cows for the scammers.
Surely, cases like these only highlite why fast-food coffee cups now carry warnings telling you their contents may burn if spilt, or why the education is worse now than 20 years ago, and it has never been funded so well.
No-one is to blame for anything including their own stupidity, just ask Boxer and Feinstein or any of their philosophical clones.
We live in a society that warrants warnings to be printed on Halloween costumes reminding the kids & parents that the Superman costume will not help the kid fly if they jump out the 2nd floor window.
Well, I need to cut this short, Jerry Springer is about to start.!
Try administrating a website where you have these Nigerian spammers joining and spamming your members list.
@Demeur – Now that’s funny, and a great angle to play on these guys! I just feel sorry for those that actually think they are helping someone, only to get screwed in the end. No pun intended. Really.
I have to laugh. There’s a guy out here in cyberspace who actually goes after these thieves. He answers their emails with a request. He tells the crook that he’s a member of a very strict religion and that in order for him to send any money overseas that the emailer must first join his church. Here’s the great part. In order to join the church the emailer must first send a photo of himself with a special church symbol painted on his chest along with a $50 registration fee. I couldn’t believe it but the guy actually suckered a bunch of these idiots into his trap. He gives the $50 to charity and posts the pictures on his website after notifying the Nigerian police.
I received another today, same form, but this one asked for a bit more information near the end. This second one also asks that I keep this on the down-low, confidential even.
Oops! Perhaps I should reply back with a link to this post…
I actually got a check once from one of these peeps!! They apparently had gotten my info from carrerbuilder.com and emailed me about it, which I didn’t know til AFTER the fact cause I never check that email addy.
Anyways, this one day in the mail I get this random check for $3k, from some lady in AZ. I figure, can’t be a real check. I go the bank it’s issued thru….yep it’s REAL. Even asked me if I want to cash it. I could’ve had three grand cold hard cash right there. BUT I knew it wasn’t my money, so I tracked down the lady in AZ, and I guess her bank account had gotten hacked and there had been quite a few checks like that sent out, and she’d lost a ton of money. And it was under investigation. Apparently the peeps running it were in Russian…good luck catching them. Poor lady :/
I out of long standing habit do NOT open mail from addresses I do not recognize, and also out of habit, here on the aol system, I identify the mail as being unsolicited spam, and it goes away—–it doesn’t really go away right away, only disappears from my in box and gets xferred to my spam folder——which I review about once a week, andmake sure I havn’t mis-identified any mail—and then with one click I can delete the whole folder’s contents—and life goes on.