OT Nigerian scams

Dave Smith said:

Good news. I just read that there has been a major bust of
the infamous Nigerian email scammers. Spanish police
arrested 31O people, mostly Nigerians. That should drop my
incoming mail significantly. I am amazed that they managed
to scam 20,000 people in one year.

I wonder if the late Pope's "widow" was among them.

--
Dan Goodman
Journal http://www.livejournal.com/users/dsgood/
Clutterers Anonymous unofficial community
http://www.livejournal.com/community/clutterers_anon/
Decluttering http://decluttering.blogspot.com
Predictions and Politics http://dsgood.blogspot.com
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.

"Dave Smith" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Good news. I just read that there has been a major bust of
the infamous Nigerian email scammers. Spanish police
arrested 31O people, mostly Nigerians. That should drop my
incoming mail significantly. I am amazed that they managed
to scam 20,000 people in one year.

This site http://www.419eater.com/ is put together by a guy who engages
these thieves in email dialogues, and sometimes even gets them to send HIM
money. Some fun reading.

--
TigBits
(o)Y(o)

TigBits said:

"Dave Smith" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Good news. I just read that there has been a major bust of
the infamous Nigerian email scammers. Spanish police
arrested 31O people, mostly Nigerians. That should drop my
incoming mail significantly. I am amazed that they managed
to scam 20,000 people in one year.

This site http://www.419eater.com/ is put together by a guy who engages
these thieves in email dialogues, and sometimes even gets them to send HIM
money. Some fun reading.

--
TigBits
(o)Y(o)

One variation that my son got was "we'll buy your [name the item you
have up for auction] and we'll hand-deliver a cashier's check made out
to you for x dollars more than the selling price, and all you have to
do is give us back the difference. We can't get the check cashed
ourselves because [fill in lame excuse]." LOL. I'm amazed at the
people who get sucked in by this - some Minnesota couple, I think, lost
$7,200.

My son told them that if the check was still good after 21 days, he'd
do it. He didn't hear back from them.

Another spoof e-mail that has been bugging the heck out of me is
allegedly from Ebay, saying I sold a Pep Boys $500 gift card and now
the buyer didn't get the card, so they have reported me for fraud.
Another LOL. I'm not an Ebay seller; never have been. I've reported
it to Ebay, but I continue to get 2 or 3 of these messages every day.

N.

I hope they did not mistakenly arrest the guy who is going to forward
$120,000,000 to my bank account to hold for his uncle. I will get 10
percent of that.

To prove that I am honest and that I would give them all their money,
he requested and I sent $25,000 of my own money up front. That was
three weeks ago. He is supposed to send it back once he visually sees
the bank check. I guess their mail is slower than ours.

Man, I can't want till I get my millions!!

😉
Mark
Click here eveyday to feed a rescued animal:

http://www.theanimalrescuesite.com/

Quoted message said:

TigBits said:

"Dave Smith" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Good news. I just read that there has been a major bust of
the infamous Nigerian email scammers. Spanish police
arrested 31O people, mostly Nigerians. That should drop my
incoming mail significantly. I am amazed that they managed
to scam 20,000 people in one year.

This site http://www.419eater.com/ is put together by a guy who
engages these thieves in email dialogues, and sometimes even gets
them to send HIM money. Some fun reading.

--
TigBits
(o)Y(o)

One variation that my son got was "we'll buy your [name the item you
have up for auction] and we'll hand-deliver a cashier's check made out
to you for x dollars more than the selling price, and all you have to
do is give us back the difference. We can't get the check cashed
ourselves because [fill in lame excuse]." LOL. I'm amazed at the
people who get sucked in by this - some Minnesota couple, I think,
lost $7,200.

My son told them that if the check was still good after 21 days, he'd
do it. He didn't hear back from them.

Another spoof e-mail that has been bugging the heck out of me is
allegedly from Ebay, saying I sold a Pep Boys $500 gift card and now
the buyer didn't get the card, so they have reported me for fraud.
Another LOL. I'm not an Ebay seller; never have been. I've reported
it to Ebay, but I continue to get 2 or 3 of these messages every day.

N.

Yeah, I love it when I get "Your eBay Account Will be Suspended!" emails. I
don't have an account with eBay. Sure, I've bought stuff from folks on eBay
and even sold a couple of things. I mail them a check and wait for the
merchandise. I don't have an "account" with eBay. And I'm sure not stupid
enough to give someone who sends me an email my bank information or a credit
card number. Makes me wonder about those people who *are* that stupid.
Maybe they deserve to get ripped off.

Jill

On Thu, 21 Jul 2005 15:41:42 GMT, "TigBits" <[email hidden]>

Quoted message said:

"Dave Smith" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Good news. I just read that there has been a major bust of
the infamous Nigerian email scammers. Spanish police
arrested 31O people, mostly Nigerians. That should drop my
incoming mail significantly. I am amazed that they managed
to scam 20,000 people in one year.

Ok folks a free tip here and you don't even have to send money first.
Never ever ever respond to those and other money scam emails. What
happens when you respond (no matter how mad you get at them) is you
confirm that the email spider has found a live inbox and your email
address will be spred to all the maggots pushing these criminal acts.

Quoted message said:

TigBits said:

"Dave Smith" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Good news. I just read that there has been a major bust of
the infamous Nigerian email scammers. Spanish police
arrested 31O people, mostly Nigerians. That should drop my
incoming mail significantly. I am amazed that they managed
to scam 20,000 people in one year.

This site http://www.419eater.com/ is put together by a guy who engages
these thieves in email dialogues, and sometimes even gets them to send HIM
money. Some fun reading.

--
TigBits
(o)Y(o)

One variation that my son got was "we'll buy your [name the item you
have up for auction] and we'll hand-deliver a cashier's check made out
to you for x dollars more than the selling price, and all you have to
do is give us back the difference. We can't get the check cashed
ourselves because [fill in lame excuse]." LOL. I'm amazed at the
people who get sucked in by this - some Minnesota couple, I think, lost
$7,200.

My son told them that if the check was still good after 21 days, he'd
do it. He didn't hear back from them.

Another spoof e-mail that has been bugging the heck out of me is
allegedly from Ebay, saying I sold a Pep Boys $500 gift card and now
the buyer didn't get the card, so they have reported me for fraud.
Another LOL. I'm not an Ebay seller; never have been. I've reported
it to Ebay, but I continue to get 2 or 3 of these messages every day.

How about Phishing? I've gotten phishing schemes supposedly from EBay
saying they need to update my information. Yeah, right - I've got a
bridge to sell on EBay too.

sf
who can't get off EBay's legitimate mailing list, so I'm just sending
it all directly to the trash now

Dave Smith said:

Good news. I just read that there has been a major bust of
the infamous Nigerian email scammers. Spanish police
arrested 31O people, mostly Nigerians. That should drop my
incoming mail significantly. I am amazed that they managed
to scam 20,000 people in one year.

There's one born every minute. Now if they would
disable the Paypal and Ebay email scams, that would
halve my email. (

"Final notice, your account is about to be canceled."

Ummm, I've never HAD an account....

gloria p

Puester said:

There's one born every minute. Now if they would
disable the Paypal and Ebay email scams, that would
halve my email. (

"Final notice, your account is about to be canceled."

Ummm, I've never HAD an account....

Funny thing about that. I have been getting mail Paypal <?> and
eBay <?> for many months, all threatening to cancel the accounts
that I never had. I have also had email from my bank asking me to
update my personal information. I even had one from the Ontario
Ministry of Transportation telling me that if I didn't update my
personal information my drivers licence would be cancelled.
Having worked for that ministry for 28 years I know there is no
way they would conduct business by way of email, and I knew who
to forward the email to for investigation :-)

Sadly, there are too many people out there who do not realize
that the internet is not secure enough for banks and government
to use for personal information. Nor do they realize that offers
that are too good to be true are frauds.

jmcquown said:

Yeah, I love it when I get "Your eBay Account Will be Suspended!" emails. I
don't have an account with eBay. Sure, I've bought stuff from folks on eBay
and even sold a couple of things. I mail them a check and wait for the
merchandise. I don't have an "account" with eBay. And I'm sure not stupid
enough to give someone who sends me an email my bank information or a credit
card number. Makes me wonder about those people who *are* that stupid.
Maybe they deserve to get ripped off.

I don't think they're stupid, just naive. Those emails look
legitimate so if people are not familiar with the process, they could
be suckered in. I've even gotten a legitimate looking phishing letter
that looked like it came from my own bank... the thing is, I've never
given any bank an email address.

You can protect yourself with due diligence from phishing, but what's
really scary to me are the trojans that hijack your computer and take
it to a look alike site when you type in a legitimate url, like your
bank.

PROTECT yourselves everyone! Update your current software
definations. If you don't have any or don't have enough...

find what's lurking with a free online scan for viruses, worms and
Trojans http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/

(free) adware/malware protection
AdAware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/

(free) AntiVirus
AVG http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1/lng/us/tpl/v5
Avast! http://www.avast.com/eng/down_home.html

(free) Personal Firewall
ZoneAlarm http://www.zonelabs.com/ http://tinyurl.com/38ptm

Of course, the first line of defense is to install a Hosts file and
manager (free):
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

sf said:

jmcquown said:

Yeah, I love it when I get "Your eBay Account Will be Suspended!" emails. I
don't have an account with eBay. Sure, I've bought stuff from folks on eBay
and even sold a couple of things. I mail them a check and wait for the
merchandise. I don't have an "account" with eBay. And I'm sure not stupid
enough to give someone who sends me an email my bank information or a credit
card number. Makes me wonder about those people who *are* that stupid.
Maybe they deserve to get ripped off.

I don't think they're stupid, just naive.

It seems that one of the qualities that makes people susceptible to scams is their
own greed. It's been a long time since I bothered to read any of those Nigerian
scam emails but the deal seemed to be that someone of some importance, or the
family of some person who have been jailed, murdered or plain died, has a sizeable
fortune that they cannot access or cannot get out of the country. Right from the
start it is obvious that they are conspiring to do something illegal. How stupid
can a person be to trust a complete stranger who has contacted them out of the blue
and invited them to cooperate in an illegal scheme. And how stupid can people be
to buy into the scheme when there are three or four more similar proposals coming
via email every day?

Quoted message said:

Those emails look
legitimate so if people are not familiar with the process, they could
be suckered in. I've even gotten a legitimate looking phishing letter
that looked like it came from my own bank... the thing is, I've never
given any bank an email address.

You can protect yourself with due diligence from phishing, but what's
really scary to me are the trojans that hijack your computer and take
it to a look alike site when you type in a legitimate url, like your
bank.

PROTECT yourselves everyone! Update your current software
definations. If you don't have any or don't have enough...

I am all for draconian measures to deal with these sorts of criminals. When the
authorities have the evidence to nail someone with internet fraud they have records
of the emails that have been sent out. They can estimate (or guesstimate) the
cost of the damage done and assume that every computer contacted could have been
affected, and then levy that cost times the number of emails sent and assess it as
the penalty for the fraud.... plus jail time. That will make some of those twits
sit up and take notice.

"Dave Smith" <[email hidden]> wrote

Quoted message said:

Sadly, there are too many people out there who do not realize
that the internet is not secure enough for banks and government
to use for personal information. Nor do they realize that offers
that are too good to be true are frauds.

I feel badly for the growing number of elderly people who
believe those 'you have won a prize' just send us $500 via
Fedex or some such, then oh, we need more for blah blah.
Then they finally write to troubleshooter in the paper to see
how they can get their money back because they're starting
to think it's a fraud. Inevitably they are living having to mouth
on social security. When younger people fall for these scams,
I have less sympathy because it's just stupid.

nancy

Dave Smith <[email hidden]> wrote in
news:[email hidden]:

Quoted message said:

And how stupid can people be
to buy into the scheme when there are three or four more similar
proposals coming via email every day?

In OE, to make things safer:

OPTIONS dialog box:

Security tab: Check "Do not allow attachments to be saved..." This will
stop virus attachments from getting onto your computer. If you receive
email attachments from reliable sources you'll have to uncheck this
option, open those emails, then re-check the option.

Receipts tab: Check "Never send a read receipt." A receipt is sent back
to the email address that sent an email to you, if unchecked. Another
simple but rude intrusion. Also, never ask for receipts yourself!

VIEW --> Layout Dialog Box:

Uncheck the "Show preview pane." Double-click the emails you want to
read instead. This is optional. I just don't like to see junk emails,
beyond the subject line.

TOOLS --> Message Rules --> Mail

Create message rules. Here's my main rule:

1. Select the conditions for your rule:
[x] When the From line contains: people

2. Select the actions for your rule:
[x] Delete from server

3. Rule Description.
Here's where I enter offending email addresses.

4. Name of Rule:
BozoGoHome

Strategy of the message rule is simple but due diligence is required to
build a serious spam filter.

When I see a bogus email from [email hidden], I grab the "From:"
info. Since the xwsj@ part can be auto-junk, I don't include that part
and in Step 3, I paste in @spamtoxic and click Add.

What is the effect of this? Any mail from any sender at @spamtoxic.com,
@spamtoxic.net, @spamtoxic.biz, etc., will be deleted from my mailserver
and I'll never know about it.

I've built this rule to contain easily over 200 email addresses in this
fashion and only see a handful of junk emails a day.

You can create other rules that look for words in subject lines like
"$", "Debt", "Credit" etc., to nail down others.

Today there are emails that mix dictionary words in the subject lines
that make absolutely no sense. You have to keep banging those email
addresses into the BozoGoHome rule.

Once you create the rule, you can add values to it from the main Message
rule dialog box by clicking in the Edit field to bring up the editor.

HTH,

Andy

Dave Smith said:

sf said:

jmcquown said:

Yeah, I love it when I get "Your eBay Account Will be Suspended!"
emails. I don't have an account with eBay. Sure, I've bought
stuff from folks on eBay and even sold a couple of things. I mail
them a check and wait for the merchandise. I don't have an
"account" with eBay. And I'm sure not stupid enough to give
someone who sends me an email my bank information or a credit card
number. Makes me wonder about those people who *are* that stupid.
Maybe they deserve to get ripped off.

I don't think they're stupid, just naive.

It seems that one of the qualities that makes people susceptible to
scams is their own greed.

Yup yup!

It's been a long time since I bothered to

Quoted message said:

read any of those Nigerian scam emails but the deal seemed to be that
someone of some importance, or the family of some person who have
been jailed, murdered or plain died, has a sizeable fortune that they
cannot access or cannot get out of the country. Right from the start
it is obvious that they are conspiring to do something illegal. How
stupid can a person be to trust a complete stranger who has contacted
them out of the blue and invited them to cooperate in an illegal
scheme. And how stupid can people be to buy into the scheme when
there are three or four more similar proposals coming via email every
day?

Agreed. You'd have to be a total jackass to fall for something like this.

Jill

Andy said:

Security tab: Check "Do not allow attachments to be saved..." This will
stop virus attachments from getting onto your computer. If you receive
email attachments from reliable sources you'll have to uncheck this
option, open those emails, then re-check the option.

Before av automatically scanned attachments and attachments were
automatically opened by our email clients (something you can turn
off), I kept my attachment file where I could get to it very easily
and scanned it for viruses before opening anything.

sf <[email hidden]> wrote in news:s540e1pr1fns9u2ula6p0qrqn3s4naonfu@
4ax.com:

Quoted message said:

Before av automatically scanned attachments and attachments were
automatically opened by our email clients (something you can turn
off), I kept my attachment file where I could get to it very easily
and scanned it for viruses before opening anything.

sf,

I don't run a live AV but I run Stinger every so often, use firefox
(zero cache) and spyware blaster. My newsreader (XNews) doesn't download
anything to disk and the box is spit-shiny clean of malware.

But you reminded me of a few more safeguards!

There's a freeware program called Eraser (for Win boxes) that securely
deletes private files. Comes in handy for sensitive data files. I did my
taxes on my laptop, printed the return, archived the data files to CD,
then Erased (x35) them, uninstalled the application and that was that.

One thing that OE (Outlook Express) does that is misleading is the
deleting of emails from within the application... files are deleted from
view within the emailer, but aren't deleted from your hard disk. Search
for a file by the name of "Deleted Items". It will be found in each user
directory a few levels deep. I delete this file once a week using
Eraser. A new Delete Items file is created automatically.

All the best,

Andy

Andy said:

firefox (zero cache)

I love it too!

Quoted message said:

and spyware blaster.

The difference is it's not AV, it's a restore program.

Andy said:

firefox (zero cache)

I'm gonna beat this horse 'til it's good and dead. LOL

Have you ever noticed that even though "clear cache" is usually the
answer to IE woes, you can't find how to "clear cache" under help in
IE? They tell you how to clear your channel bar (whatever that is),
clear History, but not how to clear cache. It's necessary, basic
information, yet nowhere to be found.

jmcquown said:

Quoted message said:

TigBits said:

"Dave Smith" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

>Good news. I just read that there has been a major bust of
>the infamous Nigerian email scammers. Spanish police
>arrested 31O people, mostly Nigerians. That should drop my
>incoming mail significantly. I am amazed that they managed
>to scam 20,000 people in one year.
>
>

This site http://www.419eater.com/ is put together by a guy who
engages these thieves in email dialogues, and sometimes even gets
them to send HIM money. Some fun reading.

--
TigBits
(o)Y(o)

One variation that my son got was "we'll buy your [name the item you
have up for auction] and we'll hand-deliver a cashier's check made out
to you for x dollars more than the selling price, and all you have to
do is give us back the difference. We can't get the check cashed
ourselves because [fill in lame excuse]." LOL. I'm amazed at the
people who get sucked in by this - some Minnesota couple, I think,
lost $7,200.

My son told them that if the check was still good after 21 days, he'd
do it. He didn't hear back from them.

Another spoof e-mail that has been bugging the heck out of me is
allegedly from Ebay, saying I sold a Pep Boys $500 gift card and now
the buyer didn't get the card, so they have reported me for fraud.
Another LOL. I'm not an Ebay seller; never have been. I've reported
it to Ebay, but I continue to get 2 or 3 of these messages every day.

N.

Yeah, I love it when I get "Your eBay Account Will be Suspended!" emails. I
don't have an account with eBay. Sure, I've bought stuff from folks on eBay
and even sold a couple of things. I mail them a check and wait for the
merchandise. I don't have an "account" with eBay. And I'm sure not stupid
enough to give someone who sends me an email my bank information or a credit
card number. Makes me wonder about those people who *are* that stupid.
Maybe they deserve to get ripped off.

Jill

It makes it really easy when you don't have the accounts in
question. :-) I will tell you something kind-of funny
though. I got some mail from a bank whose name I didn't
recognize and shoved it aside. May even have ripped up one
missive. Then I started getting some mysterious phone calls
and mysterious messages on my answering machine. Then the
caller mentioned a name I actually recognized from my
genealogy research. Turns out I actually am getting part of a
trust fund set up a long time ago. But I was soooo suspicious
that it was just a scam that I almost didn't answer at all....

--
Jean B.