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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."
Why not mug elderly women on the streets too, it is all dollars, after all!
I know that's kind of a rhetorical question, but it's because it's very, very easy to detach yourself from the victim of your crime if you never even have to look them in the eye while you rob them.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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
Now if we could only manage to register the infinite remaining possible Gustav domains (ex: gustav-donations.org), we should be all set.
Ultimately, it's not so much about scammers' methods but rather the fact that people give money to questionable organizations. Every time I've donated money, I've always done it through well known organizations.
Full Tilt
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.
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.
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