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NY Holds Spam Scam Contest
evilquaker writes "The state of New York's Consumer Protection Board is running a contest they call 'Spam and Bologna'. Their goal is to help educate the public, so fewer people will fall for Nigerian scams (and others) in the future. The contest is actually to find the most outrageous example of an email scam, and ends in one month. Yahoo! News provides some more information."
This is just total genius...
% 65 %6e%50%57@%6c%6c%61%6b%724%646%62%2e%64%61%2e%52%7 5/%3f%70%44%6b%59%67%69
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--- citi_bank_ wrote:
From citi_bank_ Sat Jan 31 02:19:56 2004
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 05:19:56 -0500
From: citi_bank_
To: Joskyn
Subject: citi_bank Email Veerification
Dear _citibank Mebmers,
This leter was sennt by_the Citi_Bank serevr to veerify your E-mail addres_. You must clomptee this psrecos by clicking on the link below and enntering in the litle winddow your Citbiank Debit_ full card nummber and PiN that you_use on_the Atm Machine. That is done for your pocetrtion -m- becourse some of_our memebrs no lengor have accses to their email addseesrs and we must verify it.
http://www.citibankonline.com:4%4e%50%74%708%4d
To veerify _your_ _email_ adress and access _your_ _citibank account, clic on_the link below_.
Thank you.
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You just can't make stuff up like that.
Oh, wait...
Here's a contest: how fast can the New York Consumer Protection Board's mail server be taken down? I figure if just 50 of us rewrite a few procmail rules, we're bound to win both contests. There's no limit on the number of entries.
Come on! This is New York! The Consumer Protection Board should be publicising links to 419eater.com. There's even a Scammer Baiting Hints and Tips page. If just a small percentage of the NYC population started trolling these scammers, the Nigerian crap would be over. Is anyone worried about being $rtbl'd by them?
If the scam email was sent from another network, I notify the owner of that network as well (except, as sometimes is the case, it's a Nigerian one...)
I doubt if this fact is related, but in the last two months, the amount of 419-scams I receive has dropped from more than one per day to about one per week.
I do agree with you that bad laws are made as well: poorly drafted laws that inadvertedly curtail our freedoms while trying to achieve something good. An example: a proposed law to outlawing spam would also make legitimate mailing lists illegal. Another one: a law against music piracy (to use the common term for it) might limit what we could legally do with music that we own, such as playing it on different equipment.
Making laws to govern the Internet can be a "dark, dangerous path" indeed, beset with legislators and lobbyists who have hidden intentions. One sometimes gets suspicious that there is nothing accidental about these laws accidentally limiting our freedom. But that doesn't mean that we should not have any laws at all on principle; it means that any and all laws should pass this criterium: A law should serve the stated purpose for which is was drafted, and nothing else. No "unintentional" side effects.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Since I just got this email yesterday, and it intrigued me, I'll post about it. I got an email yesterday (to my hotmail account that I never use) from someone saying they saw an ad on match.com and they were new to my town. They knew my town, and they were able to connect it to an address that I haven't used in years. freaky. The email says to call this obviously beautiful girl at a provided phone number, but the number has 8 digits. ain't gonna work. so you respond to the email and you get an autoresponse saying to sign up to friendlymatch.com to email her. At this point its pretty obvious its a scam, but I'm sure people still sign up and pay.
Check here for someone else's info on this scam. Finally a scammer who is as smart as the people he's trying to scam. I'd like to see this guy caught some day.
-Vic