email scam messages.

[LittleJess]

Guess what I got today......

I occasionally check my email which is private mind you, and behold, someone has sold off my email address and information to a third party, or was involved in a breech. which doesn't surprise me one bit xD.

I sometimes check my spam messages, just to see what it is.

Thankfully gmail filters spam, and does a good job at it, even warns you about the message, which is a plus.

Apparently Mrs. Angela not gonna say her last name, as it's probs stolen wants to give me $3,243,728.00 US Dollars ( Three Million, Two Hundred and Forty Three Thousand, Seven Hundred and Twenty Eight United States Dollars) lol...

Decided to bait her for some time, she vanished after I sent her id.exe, I think she realised what it was.

Not only did she want to steal my money, she wanted to steal my identity, although I'm not silly enough to fall for this, how do people fall for something so stupid? her English is terrible her fake ID was so bad, that infact the image she used was literally of a 70 year old lady AT A PARTY, names didn't match, best of all her licence never expires, and her age isn't even on it.

The ID she sent me, didn't contain any malware, but since these people are most likely of low intelligence, I doubt there gonna write any.

This is hilarious, have you guys come across such emails before?

Also my Facebook account seems to be getting hit by those same messages, updated my privacy settings just in case, every account that messages me sketchy stuff tend to originate from some place in Nigeria.

How low can these people go lol. I can somewhat understand why some people fall for these scams though.

 

[HoganBunny]

Guess what I got today......

I occasionally check my email which is private mind you, and behold, someone has sold off my email address and information to a third party, or was involved in a breech. which doesn't surprise me one bit xD.

I sometimes check my spam messages, just to see what it is.

Thankfully gmail filters spam, and does a good job at it, even warns you about the message, which is a plus.

Apparently Mrs. Angela not gonna say her last name, as it's probs stolen wants to give me $3,243,728.00 US Dollars ( Three Million, Two Hundred and Forty Three Thousand, Seven Hundred and Twenty Eight United States Dollars) lol...

Decided to bait her for some time, she vanished after I sent her id.exe, I think she realised what it was.

Not only did she want to steal my money, she wanted to steal my identity, although I'm not silly enough to fall for this, how do people fall for something so stupid? her English is terrible her fake ID was so bad, that infact the image she used was literally of a 70 year old lady AT A PARTY, names didn't match, best of all her licence never expires, and her age isn't even on it.

The ID she sent me, didn't contain any malware, but since these people are most likely of low intelligence, I doubt there gonna write any.

This is hilarious, have you guys come across such emails before?

Also my Facebook account seems to be getting hit by those same messages, updated my privacy settings just in case, every account that messages me sketchy stuff tend to originate from some place in Nigeria.

How low can these people go lol. I can somewhat understand why some people fall for these scams though.

Off the top of my head, I can't recall where I read or hear it, but I think the English is supposed to be that bad. That way, they filter out the non-gullible and get replies from the truly gullible.

As for the email, it's possible they're just emailing anything that is a valid email. There's tools for verifying if an email is real; a bot may just run through combinations of words until it comes up with a real email.

 

[ArchieRoni]

As for the email, it's possible they're just emailing anything that is a valid email. There's tools for verifying if an email is real; a bot may just run through combinations of words until it comes up with a real email.

Figuring out real email addresses is actually pretty sinister. I know a person who does that for a living for an advertising company, where it's just on the safe side of legal, but incredibly scummy. They do stuff like create programs to try and log into Facebook, since there's a different screen if the account doesn't exist vs. if the account exists but has the wrong password. Facebook itself doesn't work anymore because they put in features to prevent spamming their login screen (I think it autolocks if it receives more than X number of requests in a short timeframe), but there are many different websites, especially corporate ones, that don't have as good security and can therefore be exploited to generate lists of functional email addresses that can be used for spam purposes.

On top of that, many corporations used very standardized emails like first initial plus last name @ corporate server, so that if you can find an employee list at all, you can run guesses for everyone and all it takes is one dumb person to click something for it to be worthwhile, since the marignal cost of sending an email is effectively 0.

 

[Sheepies]

I've been getting a lot of these. But over the phone scams not email which is probably 100x more annoying.

No joke, someone with a thick indian accent called with an unknown number a few weeks ago saying he's from "internet repair" and has received reports of my computer not working properly and that he "would like to help." I thought that kind of stuff was just a joke but apparently not.

I also received unsolicited calls saying that the IRS is suing me and that I should call them back. Jesus they never stop.

It all started when I called one of my hospitals and mistyped 1 number connecting me to a line of "free" medical supplies and "special offers". Didn't answer any questions but just like that my number spread to all these scammers.

 

[LittleJess]

I've been getting a lot of these. But over the phone scams not email which is probably 100x more annoying.

No joke, someone with a thick indian accent called with an unknown number a few weeks ago saying he's from "internet repair" and has received reports of my computer not working properly and that he "would like to help." I thought that kind of stuff was just a joke but apparently not.

I also received unsolicited calls saying that the IRS is suing me and that I should call them back. Jesus they never stop.

It all started when I called one of my hospitals and mistyped 1 number connecting me to a line of "free" medical supplies and "special offers". Didn't answer any questions but just like that my number spread to all these scammers.

Yeah, usually I don't get scam emails, but since my email was leaked due to one of my hosting providers getting breached, I've had people target my steam and namecheap accounts lol, and many others. but they all failed at it.

I couldn't image a over the phone scam, but if I did I would be peed off xD

 

[HoganBunny]

Figuring out real email addresses is actually pretty sinister. I know a person who does that for a living for an advertising company, where it's just on the safe side of legal, but incredibly scummy. They do stuff like create programs to try and log into Facebook, since there's a different screen if the account doesn't exist vs. if the account exists but has the wrong password. Facebook itself doesn't work anymore because they put in features to prevent spamming their login screen (I think it autolocks if it receives more than X number of requests in a short timeframe), but there are many different websites, especially corporate ones, that don't have as good security and can therefore be exploited to generate lists of functional email addresses that can be used for spam purposes.

Oh certainly - There's plenty of sites that verify emails by sending requests to the mail server. The protocol used by emails (SMTP) has a way for verifying that an address is valid. I think mail servers can be configured to reject such requests, but most (especially the free ones like Gmail) don't reject them. Another case of how the Internet really wasn't set up with security in mind ...

Automating interactions with a web site is more tricky than just sending requests to a mail server, though. It can be a downright pain, especially if the site changes frequently. I'm kind of surprised that marketing companies would check emails using social media sites. I suppose checking it that way ensures they're reaching an email that someone is still using somewhat regularly.