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."

Comments

I'm sure their motives are pure...

[bigtallmofo]

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.