Slashdot Mirror
Scamming Spammer Hooks the Wrong Person
CrypticSpawn writes "Read on SecurityFocus, a 55 year old woman spammed an FBI computer crime agent. She got caught mailing off a credit card scam to AOL users." Her scam targeted AOL users with messages saying their credit cards were refused during the last billing cycle, and linked to a false billing center page which demanded private information.
Really... We have just charged your credit card for 19.95... if you want to cancel the transaction, enter your card number, full name, and expiry date below...
With the same logic, phone someone up, and tell them that if they don't want to be 0wN3d, they should disable their firewall, and tell you their IP address...
The darwin award exists for those who kill them selves in stupid ways... we need to invent an award for idiots that fall for obvious scams like this.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I suspect that a vast majority of spams hit a large number of law enforcement inboxes - it isn't like spammers are selectively making hand-crafted to lists. Of the spams I get (of which there has been a marked increase in the past month), a good percentage are illegal or gray-legal pennystock pump and dumps, PayPal imitators attempting to get your information, or our good Nigerian friends looking for some assistance in rescuing their money.
I can't be the only one that finds it disturbing that the FBI uses AOL.
An electronic trail of stolen AOL accounts and free Web pages led agents to raid the homes of a professional spammer and a credit card thief, both of whom snitched on Carr, naming her as the ringleader of the operation
She isn't the only one going down. But, sadly, there are still many more to go...
Remember: If you buy anything from spammers, you have a small penis.
Uh oh, looks like Phish has made the headlines AGAIN. Ah well.
--matt
a 55 year old woman spammed an FBI computer crime agent. She got caught mailing off a credit card scam to AOL users.
What this story teaches us:
- Little middle-aged (well, quite ripe already) ladies are not to be trusted
- AOL users are idiots, since they are prime targets of even little middle-aged lady spamsters
- FBI agents too open AOL accounts, which is worrying in a sense
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
only in America could someone be stupid enough to do this
:)
luckily i blocked 99.9% of spammers pathetic attempts by blocking the $ and cent sign, voila no spam, no false positives, no frauds , no americans
The maximum penalty seems rather meager. She can't exactly argue self-defense, lack of understanding, or accidental-negligence. This is a case of deliberate fraud, a case in which she obviously knew that what she was doing was both immoral and illegal. In my opinion, they should kill her. Really. It's people like her that really make this world suck more than it has to.
No wonder I get so many email offers for Viagra and low-cost prescription drugs!
nt
I've had about 2 e-mails a day of this ilk with respect to my Earthlink account for at least 3 months. A similar scam is in work with respect to Paypal. You don't need to be a total dunce to fall for this, either. Just naive and not savvy with raw e-mail source.
Helium balloons want to be free.
The article makes it sound like she wouldn't have got caught if an FBI agent hadn't been a recepient of the email. I hope this isn't the case and that the FBI is taking a more pro-active attack on this kind of thing than what the article seems to say.
/nelson muntz voice
I mean really how stupid can you be to actually "phish" for credit card numbers now, that's so 1997. She should have become involved in a much safer fraud, like identity theft, penny stock pump and dump, or creating a company...sending a donation to the Bush election fund...getting 8 billion dollar contract for rebuilding iraq. Come on people, use your head!
--
Power to the Peaceful
... sounds like she got off a lot easier than those caught sharing music via p2p programs. Either the FBI should hire the MPAA or anyone swapping music online should start credit card fraud, it sounds like the lesser offense.
FLR
Take that grandma
AOL Billing center sample page.
IANAL, but imagine a beowulf cluster of in Soviet Russia all your belong are base to us welcoming the new SCO overlords.
Danger Will Robinson, Danger! Rant Ahead!
Read on SecurityFocus, a 55 year old woman spammed an FBI computer crime agent.
Great. So what about:
...? It seems like every day I'm reading about how some guy got screwed over and the FBI/SP/Local cops just didn't give a shit enough to do anything about it, whether it was technology related or otherwise, because it wasn't sexy enough. Crime is crime is crime.
Case and point, you can pretty much scam anyone outside of your state and get away with it because interstate fraud laws have a $5,000 'ground floor'. That single law is probably the most responsible for the prolific fraud we've ever seen, virtual or otherwise. I could loose $4900 tomorrow and the FBI won't do jack shit. Some FBI nerd gets a scam email any moron would know not to answer, and they call out the swat teams. Faaaaantastic.
It's like the local cops who don't give a shit if your laptop, your radio, etc were stolen and hundreds of dollars in damage done to your car. But, mind you, they've got all day to sit out on 'speed patrol'...
Please help metamoderate.
Actually what it teaches us is
- Criminals don't wear stripes and sound like Cagney
- For any scam the best approach is to target the largest user group... more people means more idiots
- The FBI staff use personal email
This is exactly what you should expect, the FBI aren't a mixed race of mutant beings, and large crimes can be commited by pretty much anyone.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I once received an email with a link that said that I needed to "update" my eBay account with a new: credit card #, my SSN, DOB. The funny thing is I never had an eBay account - ever.
I was at a hotel in Houston one time and I wanted to use my calling card to call home. After following the directions listed on the phone a few times, i was redirected to some telco that I've never heard of, and someone came on the phone, asked for the number I was calling and my calling card number. He then asked for my PIN. I said no way. He then told me that he couldn't make the call. I hung up.
Later, at the airport, my card worked perfectly. I wish I got the name of the telco that was blocking access to my long distance company so I could have filed some sort of complaint with the FTC.
Is it common practice for hotels to block access to your long distance provider so that you have to use their company for help that they charge you for?
I've gotten so paranoid, I've repeatedly hung up on legitimate calls. It's unfortunate, but this shit is hurting legitimate businesses and making it harder for us consumers to know if we're being taken or not.
There is no spoon or sig.
I received an email that was purportedly from Citibank, saying that I had received a money transfer. It was slick. The scammer had gone to a great deal of trouble to make it look like a real email from Citibank. The associated web site also looked real.
What tipped me off? The email asked for too much information, the scammer was being greedy. Examining the HTML source of the email revealed that the web site was in the wrong domain for Citibank.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
It's not fundamentally different from any punishment - once you lock someone up for a period of time there is no way for that person to ever get that time back - even if they are innocent and later released and exonerated. They'll never get those years back, and that's just as irreversible as a death penalty. Likewise someone caned in Singapore - they can never be un-caned.
Wanna bet?
Read this. Be sure to read all the way to the end for fairly positive proof that the guilty party was, indeed, a woman. In fact, it was a woman-owned, woman-run, all-female spam gang.
Regards,
Anne
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
this is half troll half funny.
The 22 year old guy she was working with thought he was breaking the law with a 20-something hottie instead of this 55 year old overweight felon from Akron. He must feel pretty stupid about now.
this story has more detail
If it hadn't been received by an agent, there would be nothing that an average citizen could do to the scammer. It is only because the scam target was an employee of the federal government that they were even able to make a case against that woman.
The worst that anyone could do is to report them under state's anti-spam laws and get them fined them a couple of hundred $$ - which never gets collected because they never show up in court and it would cost more to collect than it's worth.
Gee.. thanks American legal system!
The FBI clearly knows this kind of thing is going on, but they can't be bothered to do their job and protect US citizens (to be fair, they are too busy snooping on us and reading our private communications). Heck, you could have reported stuff like this and there would have been no follow-up at all. They only bother to go after someone like this when they piss them off and send the spam to an FBI agent.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
She appeared in federal court in Virginia but she is from Akron, Ohio so you're linking to someone else's contact info.
I've found a nice article about spam methods. Actually, this grandma could be the attacker described in it.
I don't get it. Is this all it takes to get spammers busted? Can I just forward the scams and spams I get to this guy and have all these people caught? Why did this only become an issue when it was a personal attack on someone in a position of power to do something about it. What about the rest of us, how can we fight back? And more importantly why isn't the FBI doing more to attack spammers other than when they're personally feeling the heat?
ôó
Absolutely nothing! Maybe they have an account to monitor what happens on AOL.
/.ers freak out when they hear AOL.
I don't know why
Your information conflicts with the dogma I have assimilated by reading slashdot. Your moderate response, in place of a knee-jerk over-reaction, has left me, angry, frustrated and impotent. FBI empolyes are evil, fly black helicopters powered by Microsoft and MSN, and are not to be treated with the even temperment I would expect of someone who didn't know me. As such, I must say you flamebait is not welcome, and will not be tolerated.
Hmmm, I think I have that spam around here somewhere. Not my thing though...
total luck that an FBI person received it and actually did anything about it...
the community has been reporting tons of blatant phish scams over the last few years to ebay/paypal as well as the FBI, and neither entity ever did jack shite about it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
does it take for a spammer to mail the FBI direct before they take action? Surely they must be aware of the volume of scam emails we *all* get, and be taking action anyway?
Its like waiting for a police station to be burgled before the police take action..
Some of these frauds are pretty blatent (penis enlargement pills etc), you dont need to be sherlock holmes to track them..
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
I think everyone (not only "spammer") had such an "Oops" in her career. I remember when we counterattacked CIA agents scanning our network... I saw a host slowly and randomly syn/fin/null scanning (something like nmap --randomize_hosts -Tparanoid but with -sS, -sF and -sN changing randomly -- a custom patched nmap or something like that) our hosts, so I answered with directing a broadcast-magnified traffic to its class C (something like "smurf" but with custom tools using UDP and TCP as well as ICMP packets) to disable the offending host, having absolutely no idea that I saturated the backbone of ISP used by a CIA covert operation. Imagine my surprise when I saw agents knocking on my door... Fortunately after I described some of my techniques and explained to them that I am a security professional, not a cracker, they let me go but if I wasn't working for the government at that time I probably wouldn't write this now. I wonder what stories other slashdotters can tell about their biggest "Oops!"
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
"Her scam targeted AOL users" nuf said
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
You wanna know how gullable people are? As a joke last year, I coded a little password checking program, at my site. Users could check their password against a list of a million common English words, to see if their passwords were secure. There was a database with a million words in it, and each time someone put in their password, the site would tell them if it was in the list. It would also tell them that if they are stupid enough to give out the password to just anyone, then it's certainly not secure!
People would show up and type in something that looked like a real password, and then type in another password as a message to me -- along the lines of Fuck You on a Silver Platter, Asshole.
Hackinthebox.org posted the site and a pile of gullable flies* showed up to check their passwords. I'm guessing people from HiB would send the site to other unsuspecting people, as a joke. Thing is, eventually some pretty scared people were emailing me. I took it down after while. It was getting to be more annoying than fun.
There is always someone out there who is greedy or scared enough to be scammed online -- it's just sad when it happens to someone you know.
* flies: a fly is someone who gets stuck in the web, and a spider is someone who owns it.
Good work, inspector. None of us could have Googled up a bunch of unrelated people ourselves.
They help to get rid of the idiots that fall for that shit. Let them improve our spicies.
-Tim Louden
"Entering Fraudulent information is against the law. If done so on this form you are now hereby notified that AOL will persecute, fine, and charge anybody trying to commit fraud with our accounts.
persecute:
This lady should have been more original... she copied her scam straight of the net: Results on google
I would like to remind you that this foul and insane troll is just acting according to the rights he was given in the U.S. constitution.
I say that the amendments are really good regardless of what the government says.
And the amendments are:
Bill of Rights
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
I hear you on the FBI thing. But consider: somewhere a just-not-worth-the-taxpayer's-money line has to be drawn. The FBI is seriously understaffed. (Go figure. The technologically astute are too proud to work for a measly $35K FBI salary, investigating tech crimes. Nooooo, gotta be making glamourous six-digit salaries on high-visibility programming projects.) But anyhow, the reason I'm posting is...
Unless you live in Andy Griffith Town, the officers who sit on speed trap duty are not the same ones who investigate theft. Different division, different rules, different salaries, therefore a different allocation of officers/resources/time/budget.
A traffic cop "sitting all day" on watch costs less than an investigating agent spending even half a day looking for stolen laptops chock full o' pr0n. It's harder to hire investigative officers and detectives, it's more expensive to train them and pay them.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
That said, even FBI people get to go home sometimes [and contrary to
The lady should have modified the scam a little bit, because it looks like the original scam was against Sympatico users in Canada. That explains the SIN. More reading
me: I've received 3 scam e-mails today which are trying to get me to give up my credit card number. Do you have a special card number I can give them that will set off an alert when someone attempts to use it, so that you can apprehend these people?
CC Company: No, but that sounds like a great idea.
me: Yes. Now do something about it.
What do you think the odds are that the idea ever got past the person I talked to on the phone?
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Parent has a nice sense of humor
Speaking as a white, university-educated, straight male, middle-classed westerner liberal, fuck you.
By providing no way to authenticate themselves in a secure manner and by contacting their customers asking for sensitive information. Happens to me all the time. I never got a scam attempt that was even remotely plausible.
On some occasions I have said I would call back so that I would be sure of their identity, and they get upset. (Yes, from a legitimate business calling for a legitimate reason).
Caveman eats poisen berries, caveman dies. Friends of said caveman discover berries were to blame for death, note that no one should ever eat the berries. Another caveman comes along, fails to read the large warning signs posted outside the forest. He eats the berries and dies. Original caveman's friends laugh. The End If you ask me, such obvious scams shouldn't be shut down. Instead they should be allowed to eliminate societies stupider members. -SniperBoB-
http://brandonbloom.name
A bit surprising that a 55-year-old woman knows how to use a computer.
So, the obvious question is: why can't they catch these people on-duty? Why does it take a spam email directly to an FBI agent to get action?
There's a serious disconnect in the priorities of law enforcement, but the correct response is far from clear.
Consider three cases - a single loss of $10k, a hundred people losing $1k, or 10,000 people losing $100.
There's no way the $100 loss would be investigated by any law enforcement agency, but it's the largest loss by far. Meanwhile the single loss of $10k is the smallest aggregate loss by far, but most people are going to really feel that loss while the $100 loss is usually (but not always) easily absorbed.
Does this mean that the $100 loss should get highest priority? I would say not... but then again a single complaint may be the tip of the iceberg on losses affecting many people.
There's no easy answer... but ignoring the cumulative loss or the coarsening effects on society on certain offenses (e.g., how my anger at clearly fradulent spam has colored my perception of ALL flyers, handbills, etc.) isn't the right answer either.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Why email millions of inteligent people, when all you need to do is to set up an "Free IQ" test, that delivers results via email...
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Nah...not death. But everyone she and her loser friends scammed should get a free punch on each of them. I'd knock a few teeth loose.
Blar.
And another thing...why is she only having to plead guilty to *conspiracy*? It's ridiculous!
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
the spam wasn't just sent to aol users, i got one of these and I've never owned an aol account.
You gotta love the fact she blatently had a field entitled "credit card limit". lol!
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
Eventually the scammers would figure out what numbers were red-flagged and not use them. All they would need is a CC account and they'd be right on top of the fake numbers just like every other customer.
I got a very official looking e-mail from "PayPal" asking for all my information. Then I noticed the URL and that my password wasn't getting asteriked and typed in "howwouldyouliketogotoprison" in the entry fields and hit submit. I also e-mailed PayPal and within minutes the site was gone. I doubt I was the first to report it.
Credit Card companies already have a solid way of dealing with crime. You watch your statement and if something is fishy you report it. What you have is a statement summary. The CC company has far more information at their disposal as companies that take cards have to submit lots of info to get an account.
The CC company can get just as much information a week or two after the fact as they can "during" the committing of the crime. It's not like they can call up the place that's taking the card and say "hold that customer." Especially since most CC fraud is committed through on-line shops.
Some moron years ago bought more e-mail space at Yahoo with my CC. I called up Yahoo and asked them to tell me if that purchase was applied to my account. No. And when was the last time I bought something on Yahoo for my account? "Over a year ago." And it was for hosting. I never had to pay a dime and the charges were reversed quickly. Since they bought themselves a personal account tracking down who did it would be trivial. And wouldn't even matter since it's non physical property. Yahoo just needed to cancel the account my CC was used on and everyone that matters is happy.
I learned at Mervyn's that major credit card companies tend to eat the cost of the fraud. The customer gets their money back and the store the fraud occured at gets their money. Which actually works out better since now the CC company is the only entity taking on the crook. Instead of (not) being sued a million times by all the victims, they're sued and jailed for one massive crime.
The employee probably thought it was a great idea, told his supervisor, and his supervisor walked him through their tried and true method and explained why your method was flawed.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
The "joe" comes from the name of the first well-known incident of this happening. His name was Joe, and he lost his website because his clueless ISP couldn't figure out that he wasn't responsible for the spam run.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
I swear, these peopel are the stupidest. I've never got a pump and dump spam, but we get them as faxes all the time. They, of course, have bogus removal information but one problem: We are the operators of the phone switch at the university. If we get annoyed by it, and I'm near that point, we can get the source numbers from the switch and go after these people. You can spoof out the fax source on the fax itself, but the switch always knows the real source number.
Since I'm such a honest looking person with a nice pleasant demeanor, I'm able to make a very good living as a wallet inspector.
Why not forward all the spam you get to the nearest politician that represents you, with the simple message:
"Could you please do something about this?"
Of course, this politician could try and stop you, but imagine the media attention this would get...
BTW after some rigorous pruning of unnecessary accounts and scrambling my email addresses on the internet, I'm down to 2 spams a week (which get caught by mail.app's excellent spam-filter).
I think, therefore I am...I think.
Discover, (for sure, I think the others do or did) offers a one time card, aimed at online purchases. You go to Discover, login to your account, and ask for a one time card, and they give you a number, linked to your account, but only good for one use (I've never done it, but you might be able to specify a credit limit too). If anyone at the company you order from steals your number it does them no good because the card number is cancled first.
Wouldn't be hard to go a step further and modify this so that you can get a random number which is linked directly to the fraud department, whoever uses it suddenly finds all the numbers used (including numbers from suckers who fell for the scam) are invalid. Needs some strong proof that it is fraud though. Otherwise someone will eventially try to discredit legitimate venders this way, wasting time... (Amazon is likely honest enough that you couldn't discredit them, but things of a tiny startup just trying to make a go of it)
I love how an FBI computer crime agent is using AOL.
Geez, talk about getting off light! The max they got is 5? You know that made me wish they are in CA cuz that would be 3 striks and they be in preson for ever!
You are right, it could've been a great news but, well, let's just say that none of us would've liked the newspapers to know about that incident. They spied on us without a warrant but not without a reason, if you follow my drift. Fortunately all of us agreed to just forget about the whole "cyber-battle," as they called my defensive DDoSing counter-attack and their own counter-counter-attack (quite harmless to my network, I might add -- except the "real world" part).
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
And by the same rights, we get to mock the troll mercilessly. I love free speech.
maybe they CAN enlarge my penis!
I'd rather have that than a box of tube sox and some boxer shorts.
gullible is spelled gullable.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
I once received one of those pay pal credit card scam SPAMs, and snooped around the server which hosted the credit card acceptor script. The script wasn't an index.* file, and directory listing was enabled, so I was able to see all the files on the account. There were only two, the script and the resulting credit card database.
There were easily 1,000 credit cards with full name and addresses and even social security #. Do not underestimate how gullible people on the internet can be.
I reported the site to the host, and not surprisingly it took about a week to get the thing offline.
I really do...
your page (http://phils.uj.edu.pl/) is down...
I just have to say that preying on the stupid just doesn't sound like that big of a crime to me. At worse you've deprived them of subscribing to the Weekly World News and giving their money to televangelists. Actually, considering how many people get to rip off these people while giving out tax deductions, I'm thinking we should have the entirety of regular spammers be punished by serving as human anti-spam bots for really slow mail servers.
-dameron
-dameron
"Carr's sentence will be determined by the amount of fraudulent charges racked up on the stolen credit card numbers -- with a maximum of five years. But the guidelines also dictate that each credit card be valued at a minimum of $500.00, a formula that helped boost Carr co-conspirator George R. Patterson's sentence to 37 months in prison, according to Patterson's attorney."
That's it? 37 months in prison for her cohort.
Yet the RIAA is trying to hit people for $150,000... and Ashcroft wants "hackers" sentenced as terrorists and put in jail for LIFE.
Want to stop identity theft? Jack up the jail term..big time. 3yrs in jail for stealing a ton of credit card numbers is pretty weak.
Congratulations! You just re-invented l0phtcrack, or any other number of brute-forcers.
While you might have the upper hand with a dictionary of actual passwords, you are skewed by the fact that only people stupid enough to enter it on an untrusted form are submitting them.
Or maybe you only care about idiot's accounts. They make easy prey.
Yup.
Darwin Awards: People who kill themselves
Dilbert Awards: People who support spam
sigh. Can I have some points for -trying- to be funny?
-Where there is blue screen, there is OWNAGE
Take a peek (not work safe).
That gem was found ON HER OWN computer by the guy who fought back against them before the FBI got involved.
Somewhere in the combination of a woman flashing and a pair of "Demotivational" posters in the background, there is a really funny joke.
Perhaps that was her recruitment technique... or a demotivator of a different sort.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Part of the problem is that the people who DO know about the workings of these sorts of things don't educate others on the matter.
My personal experience in trying to educate others is that nobody wants to listen to you. At best they say "tell me something I don't already know." At worst, "you paranoid freak!"
When life hands you lemons, grab the salt and pass the tequilla...
...that it doesn't 'remove them from the species' or whatever, it just makes them a bit poorer AND encourages these people to try it again.. maybe on you! and waste some of your time. bit like all this slashdot posting.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I think it just adds insult to injury in saying the woman was 55 I mean the police could say it was a man 19-27 but 55 P.S.(shut up) am i the only person who got an email for a guy asking how to steal a car.ithougt it was spam till nobody knew what i was talking about.
3y3 c4|\| |\|0t u|\|d3rs74nd j00
J'raxis, Anal Cocks, Fecal Troll Matter are all the same guy.
what about an old school "www." prefix, huh?
What is the real purpose of the FBI if it isn't to investigate crime?
Look, damnit, why is spam still a problem?
Regardless of whether spam itself is illegal, the products that I get spam about everyday are! Increase your penis size, reverse aging, etc, etc. These are plainly fraudulent claims and should fall under the "truth in advertising" laws that were passed many, many years ago.
The companies that hire spammers should be relatively easy to track down. Face it; they can't make money unless they make it fairly easy to contact them. They have to provide ways to collect the money of dupes and that leaves a trail. Once you have the company that collects the money, you have the company that paid for the spam and you then have the company (or individuals) that sent the spam because the spam has to be paid for and that leaves a trail.
This is a problem that doesn't take genius to solve! And it doesn't take one lone FBI agent receiving one spam-mail and then spending two years to build a case against them.
IE6 doesn't load the page at all. DNS error. I think IE stopped supporting base-10 IP addresses, probably to avoid scams like this.
Is there a LEGIT reason to ever use a base 10 IP address?
Two days ago I found a similar e-mail in my inbox which essentially followed the same lines, but was directed at Comcast users. It stated that there had been a problem with my billing credit card, which could be due to any of the following list of plausible-sounding issues, and directed me to click on a hyperlink to rectify the problem. As it happens, my Comcast account is provided by work as part of my on-call requirements, and they pay all the bills. The scary part is, even looking at the header, everything appeared to resolve to a Comcast address (I think it was comcast.biz), except for one little address which was a Qwest address.
Comcast already knows about it; you can see their (extremely not obvious) warning here.
...the security professional appears to be polish, thus not likely an American citizen.
i used to change nicks to "nickserv" on dalnet and other irc networks. people didn't get their password requests and yet msg'd me their passwords.. which is okay, but when i msg'd them fake server replies, even ones that looked like passwords, none of them got it! :)
and then they blocked these nicks, because of people like me ;) (for the record, i never used any of these passwords)
-= ailaG =-
Too bad. I've already said too much. Please stop asking.
You find my comments "pompous and boring" and yet you waste your precious time reading them and replying to them? Might I suggest you getting a life maybe? Or is that your hobby to answer "pompus and boring [comments]" asking people "why the hell are [they] bragging on slashdot" every time you find something especially boring? What an exciting hobby. I do really wish my life was so exciting.
Yes, I have bipolar disorder. Do you find it funny? Do you realize how much does it tell about your intelligence? It also somehow explains the rest of your comment.
But of course. Let me prove everyting I write on Slashdot, just like all of other fellow slashdotters do. Please give me a mailing address so I could send you video tapes and timestamped Snort logs proving that what I'm saying is true. I'm sorry I forgot to click this little "attach the evidence" button next to "submit" and "preview." Please take no offense but what are you nuts?!
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Disclaimer - a US intelligence agency made some ineffectual effort to depose the prime minister of my country in 1975 (he was going to go anyway, so all the US got out of it was bad press and an embarrasing court case), and I live in a country that is a very loyal ally of the USA.
any law enforcement officer that uses AOL, or MSN should be thrown in a cage with hanable lecter; or worse, a group of defense attornies. damn, holloween's over, forget the attornies.