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.

Comments

Earthlink users are getting similar spam

[Cujo]

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.

See for your selves

[littleRedFriend]

AOL Billing center sample page.

There are so many...

[MisanthropicProggram]

Let's see:

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.

it gets better

[monkeySauce]

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

*bzzzzt*

[devphil]

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...

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'...

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.

Re:Social Engineering

[techt]

No. The ones I've seen use this:
http://www.myrealbankname.com:whatever@real IPaddre ssindotlessformat/

The "www.myrealbankname.com:whatever" before the @ is not a URL, but a value sent to the real site which is denoted by the "realIPaddressindotlessformat".

For example, cut and paste this into your browser:

http://www.kuro5hin.org:section@1109654166/

The above URL doesn't take you to Kuro5hin, it takes you to the Slashdot main page.

Re:Social Engineering

[marnanel]

Opera warns you every time you try to access a site with a username in the URL - does Mozilla do this too?

No, it doesn't yet. I agree-- it should. Mozilla bug 122445 tracks this issue. I suggest voting for it.

(Copy and paste
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122445
into your browser to go there; Bugzilla doesn't allow links straight from slashdot.)