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Scammers Riding the Gustav Wave
ruphus13 sends in a sad tale of online scammers hoping to reap rewards from the misery in Gustav's wake. They have been busy registering likely-sounding domains and setting up phishing attacks and other ruses. While not all the domains were malicious in intent, several of them were listed on eBay for sale. Donors beware. From the article: "Nearly 100 domains related to Hurricane Gustav have been registered in the past 48 hours, security experts said Sunday, some of which may be used by bogus charity and relief scams after the storm strikes the US Gulf Coast. According to television station KTAL in Shreveport, LA, the office of Louisiana's Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has warned residents of Gustav phishing attacks already in progress ... numerous domains containing the word 'gustav,' 'charity,' 'hurricane,' and 'relief' had been recently registered."
This preying on other people's tragedy is despicable. Why not mug elderly women on the streets too, it is all dollars, after all!
http://gustavrelief.com/ seems to be one of the good guys, forwarding to the Red Cross.
Just look at this guy:
http://www.computerworld.com/comments/comment/view/9113918/250642
Hi,
I registered the following domains:
gustavcharities.org
gustavcharities.com
gustavcharity.org
gustavcharity.com
gustavdonation.com
gustavdonation.org
gustavdonations.org
gustavfund.org
gustavrelieffund.com
I registered these domains (proactively) to keep them OUT of the scammer's hands.
So, he registers domains like Microsoft registers "defensive" patents. With no motive of profit and solely for the public good. Now if we could only manage to register the infinite remaining possible Gustav domains (ex: gustav-donations.org), we should be all set.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Why not mug elderly women on the streets too
Why not combine them? Mug elderly women who are victims of Hurricane Gustav! They're more likely to be carrying a larger percentage of their worldly possessions as they flee.
I'm a big tall mofo.
The TFA does not mention any sites that are being used for phishing. Instead it talks about how phishing sites were set up in the wake of Katrina, and that the sites being registered now may be destined for phishing. Talk about FUD.
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and that scamming the Feds should be an offense punishable with LONG prison terms.
The opportunity-cost benefit analysis (C-B A) has to changed from the current
"low cost, low risk but profitable" C-B A into a
"low-cost but high risk, profitable" C-B A.
That will immediately provide jobs for people in the civil service who will have nothing better to do than to seek out and destroy spammers.
That should in turn shake out anybody who isn't a real criminal while making sure that any scam/spam you do get is punishable. (Spam is a lot less attractive is its going to net the spammer 15 to 20 years in some hell-hole prison, say Guantanamo?)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Are you having problems finding good gustav scam domains? Try taking a page out of the web 2.0 book. Here are a few to get you started:
yougustav.com
mygustav.com
gustavr.com
Replying to myself. Even the summary that kdawson quotes uses the word may. Apparently reading comprehension is not required at /.
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If new domains cost $100 each, there would be a deterrent for people to just go out and register a few dozen. Renewals could then be even cheaper than now. But I guess the registrars are making good money with all those bogus crap domains, so they have no incentive to turn this off. The domain system is seriously broken (including that idiotic "domain tasting").
EagerEyes.org: Visualization and Visual Communication
Actually, I think it's good for news organizations to report proactively instead of waiting for what they know is going to happen and then just interviewing a bunch of victims. Getting information out there now may prevent some scams from working.
Anyway, I would think twice about sending money to a charity with a site on Road Runner:
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/stats/hosters
I agree that news organisations should report things as being likely (Ie look out for those nasty scammers that may come out of the woodwork) . But my point is that the story received a beat-up/FUD makeover between being posted on computerworld and posted here
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If something significant happens - be it an event selling out, a disaster, etc.. there is always someone exploiting it. It's part of the concept of capitalism and it shouldn't be at all surprising.
(Kind of like when you follow a kdawson article link and it turns out it's another weak piece full of vague opinions, by "experts").
I record my sleeptalking
Check out the whois information for gustavrelief.com, registered to S H Berkowitz, Light Church in Albany, OR, and then compare it to the whois information for unsafesex.com, a porn site. Look up the domain of Berkowitz's listed email address, klickerz.com, or do a google search for S H Berkowitz "Light Church" to see other domains registered in his name.
Then use curl to get the source of the page at the gustavrelief.com web site without the redirect to the Red Cross site and figure out what the javascript is doing before you get redirected.
Actually I don't know what it is doing, but that on unload event function is certainly trying to do more than I like for a random website, and it certainly doesn't look like a charity website.
I am so tired of people always screaming for long prison terms. The priorities people have make me sad. It used to be that murder and rape were considered the worst crimes yet your bound to get less time for these than many of the new crimes that we invent. When you can take a life and get less time than for taking their money the society you live in has a serious problem.
funny how many of the people who will complain about computer crime are all for having the government take stuff from other people.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
With all the Federal money they'll get to help recover I think those folks will be just fine if I keep my money. I mean, they had a warning.
Blar.
I'm pretty stressed at the moment so I've been looking for good news. I found something that cheered my heart in the oddest place - Walmart. There are lots of good reasons to hate on Walmart but when I joined the early-morning throngs last Saturday on one last trip to Walmart for supplies in case the storm headed our way, I saw something that made me oddly and disproportianately happy.
My local Walmart had moved a bunch of carts right to the front of the store loaded with flashlights. With a hurricane coming, you can get USD$5 for *any* piece-o-crap flashlight. These were just very basic 2 D-cell plastic lights and as I approached them, I wondered just how overpriced they would be, especially since they included batteries.
They were 50 cents. Two for a buck.
OK, it's not much, but it brought a smile to my face. This morning, I think I'd rather dwell on things like that instead of marveling, again, at how my greedy and dishonest fellow humans are finding yet more ways to pervert a wonderful communications channel into a gauntlet of scammers.
As lame as it is, you gotta give the writer points for the so-terrible-it's-almost-actually-funny pun in the heading for this item.
My father and grandfather were career military and despised the Red Cross. And I can't say I'm too thrilled with them myself. When my grandfather was in Korea, they showed up with donuts and coffee for the soldiers--or rather they showed up SELLING donuts and coffee to soldiers (no money, no coffee G.I.!). They were also supposed to provide "family services" to G.I.'s and their families when I was a kid (they were supposed to do things like help contact G.I.'s in the field when there was a family emergency). But, in the experience of my father and other soldiers, they refused to do anything of the sort (if you called them, they would just give you the runaround). "We help the soldiers" looked great on their fundraising posters, but in practice they either did nothing or charged for what they did do (my grandfather called them a "vending contractor without a contract").
Combine that with the fact that they deliberately obscure the fact they they charge hospitals at the full market rate for their donated blood (most people think their donated blood is just given free to hospitals, that's why they donate to the Red Cross rather than directly) and you can see why I'm VERY wary of recommending that people give to the Red Cross for anything. I personally think they're little more than a government-sanctioned charity scam.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I chose to live in a flood plain! WAH!
Blar.
Only if the victim can't / won't reproduce afterwards. I know it is cynical but the idea of natural selection is to deselect the unfit before reproduction.
Martin
... but how do I know it's not a very cunning scammer with a very well done mock side?
Even when you make a donation to a "proper" fund, is it a scam? I know a guy who used to organise some "charity" work in the city. He told me if you place the people in the right spots you can make a mint. I said to him, so... do people have to donate money, can't they donate other things too, like food etc? He just laughed.
So, in these turbulent times, how to spot a fake charity? For the cause of Gustav, one that doesn't accept food or clothing and only money. Tell them 'flat out saving myself buddy'.
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
If you want something that will really warm your heart you should have seen how cute those little foreign kids were in their mud huts with their coke-bottle shoes as they made those flashlights by candlelight!
It was adorable!!!
nice post Ben - that has made me happy too!
OK, so the damn things probably only cost them 30 cents, but as you say, your story brought a smile to my face too. Good post.
Dead on the money. gustavrelief.com is a TRACKER. It pulls up the red cross website in a full frame and tracks in the main.
When you unload their page, it'll attempt a popup back to their site with (?p=2<m=x) appended. Using lynx, it looks like this is a bunch of ads with links, but I can't tell what's behind those links (I click on them and nothing appears to happen inside lynx).
The
I encourage everyone to search for "gustav domain" on eBay and report it as fraudulent via eBay.
Maybe that will get their attention.
Though technically, since some of these are not asking for money in the name of Gustav, eBay may not find them technically at fault. So, this becomes then a moral issue for eBay.
For example, in the sale of Nazi Germany items, they were pulled down, due to the morality concerned.
After reading the title, I imagined the scammers literally surfing on the stormy waves. Most of us could tolerate their deaths, I guess.
...speculators to bid up prices based on threats of an oil shortage because of hurricanes hitting the gulf. That is a bigger scam and threat to the public and potential money ripoff than these phishing sites, IMO. The law needs to be changed, you buy oil, fine and dandy, go right ahead, then you should be *required* to take physical delivery of it and then do something with it. Same with the other commodities.
What COULD be done about the scams? Imagine these headlines on /.
New law requires government approval to register URL
Yeah, that'd go over well.
Proposed law states the government can take any URL legaly from a person at will
Imagine what that thread would look like...
Or maybe if it wasn't the government...
Domain service begins taking back URLs to anything it finds offensive
Maybe with a link to some sad story of how a website got taken down in error.
It's either let someone take controll, or let the scammers have control.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Someone explain to me why I should spend my money on problems outside my house/family that will certainly never benefit me or my family when my government refuses to lead the charge?
Without intending to be a troll -- honestly I'm not. This thread seemed to be on topic enough to throw out an unpopular (seemingly) opinion which agrees with the OP.
- Why do I care about oppression in other parts of the world? Doesn't change the price of milk for my kids.
- Why do I need to support other people make life decisions that I do not agree with? Choose to live in a sea level area that can be prone to flooding... get what you deserve or move.
- Why do I care if Mother Nature doesn't like trailer parks if I don't live in one? We all have learned that TPs in tornado/hurricane paths are really bad ideas.
- Why do I need to support cancer research (pick a flavor), Alzheimer's research, or AIDS research if I will never benefit from that investment? Let's face it, I'm a miserable prick, and probably won't care after I'm gone.
- Why should I care if family X migrated (or is illegally in) to the US and hasn't learned the language or gotten a job to support themselves? That plan seems a little light in the 'thinking through' department.
- Why should I care about the homeless, the starved, the drug addicts, and the alcoholics? Giving/supporting them only makes me an enabler, and I won't get to claim them as a dependent -- although that's exactly what they become, dependent.
Bottom line is that all of those questions are exactly what charities ask for all day long. It is not my job to provide for the world, and I despise the fact that my government feels it should waste my tax dollars providing for the unprivileged around the globe, and can't manage to take care of business at home first. If the money the US spent around the globe with no hope of ROI were spent in the US, many of the issues mentioned above would certainly be more manageable than they are now.
There are lots of good reasons to hate on Walmart ... They were 50 cents. Two for a buck.
Hrm, seems you've found them to be behaving ethically. Wal*Mart was also the only company with the logistics to get relief supplies in after Katrina (the Southern Baptists being the other bright spot). And they're associated with small business growth.
AFAICT, the good reasons to hate on Wal*Mart are if you're in direct competition with them or are a union organizer. It's true that they source to China for goods, but that's only because our Government has made our goods uncompetitive. If US goods are cheaper they source here.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I ran some of these through our SiteTruth system to get legitimacy ratings. None of them rate very high.
Thus far, I'm not seeing major scams; just aggressive marketing by existing charities.
(SiteTruth is really the wrong tool for this job, because it's focused on business legitimacy, for which we have databases.)
It would be enough if they did not have enough resources left so they won't find a mate anymore.
And I think here is where the human rance goes wrong and which might ultimately be our downfall: No matter how little resources you have you still find a mate.
In the normal course of natural selection your offspring would now starve... But it is somehow not the case with humans
Another unfortunate example of our broken domain system.
Walmart tends to behave ethically towards the public that walks in the door and gives them money. The company also tends to support community causes that get them some positive press.
However, Walmart tends to be severely unethical in the way they treat employees and suppliers. The off-the-clock work scandals and other forms of employee abuse are now so common that they no longer make the news. The place would be a hell of a lot better for the community, overall, if the employees were able to force some basic changes in benefits and work practices. Realistically, that means those employees need a union. Walmart might have to raise prices a half-percent but I think they'd survive. Instead, Walmart has adopted an anti-labor mindset that's just toxic; if you've ever worked in such a shop, you know what that means.
As for squeezing suppliers, Walmart is famous. Yes, they help grow some businesses. Getting your product on the shelves at Walmart is a certified big deal. But for every little guy for whom Walmart is their big break, there are scores of examples of small and midsize suppliers whose businesses are wrecked by dancing with the Walmart devil. Levis and Vlasic, for example, are still out there (in severely altered form) but it's highly unlikely you could find anyone who worked there "back in the day" who would consider their deals with Walmart to have ultimately been a good thing.
The place would be a hell of a lot better for the community, overall, if the employees were able to force some basic changes in benefits and work practices. Realistically, that means those employees need a union.
I wish people would just learn to stick up for themselves. We have such low unemployment in this country that it's really a good option to leave a bad job. I'd encourage anybody working in bad conditions to get out. Self-esteem is too scarce. That said, I'd wouldn't force somebody to leave a job they felt was sufficient on their own terms. Personally I couldn't take the mandatory cheeriness at Wal*Mart.
Walmart might have to raise prices a half-percent but I think they'd survive.
Agreed.
Instead, Walmart has adopted an anti-labor mindset that's just toxic; if you've ever worked in such a shop, you know what that means.
Yep, I quit that job and started my own company. :)
As for squeezing suppliers, Walmart is famous. Yes, they help grow some businesses. Getting your product on the shelves at Walmart is a certified big deal. But for every little guy for whom Walmart is their big break, there are scores of examples of small and midsize suppliers whose businesses are wrecked by dancing with the Walmart devil.
I've seen some documentaries on this. In each case where businesses did poorly by their Wal*Mart contracts they accepted what I would have considered to be a terrible deal. Losing on every sale but making it up on volume is a good way to go out of business. IMHO, Wal*Mart could get even better long-term cost savings by not playing this as a zero-sum game with those suppliers. But I can't blame them for getting a good short-term deal and losing out on that relationship any more than I can blame the producer for agreeing to unprofitable terms.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Generally, that's not what happens - suppliers don't, at least initially, agree to bad contracts. What happens is that Walmart negotiates good but tough contracts. Then, at renewal, they do the same for a bigger portion of the supplier's ability to produce. Eventually, they write a contract that is profitable for the supplier but sucks up so much of the suppliers capacity that the supplier essentially has just one customer - Walmart. They'll go out of business if they lose their Walmart contract.
Then...
At the next contract renewal, Walmart lays down terms that are untenable and doesn't budge. Look what happened to Levis. They produced more and cheaper and made money by selling to Walmart. Then, when they had become dependent on Walmart to stay in business, Walmart dropped the hammer on them, demanding prices so low that Levis was faced with just two choices - go completely out of business or go (essentially) completely out of business but save the company name by plastering it on cheaply made Chinese goods. They chose the latter. To the Americans (nearly all of them employed by Levis) who lost their jobs, the company might as well no longer exist. To those of us who remember the high-quality 501s of our youth, the company DOES no longer exist.
Walmart is evil and unethical in their basic business practices, only putting on a veneer of ethics when dealing with the only people who have power over them, the customers who bring dollars in the door. If, however, you're dependent on Walmart (as an employee or supplier), you have to accept that you're gonna get screwed eventually.