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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."
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, 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
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.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
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
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
Uh.. why not just give directly to the Red Cross, then? It's not like they don't have a website.
It has the advantage that if so many people send money for the storm that they have way more money than they know what to do with, the remainder can go for preparing for the next disaster.*
*Please don't stipulate that they can't do this. The cryogenic blood storage facilities they wanted to build with the surplus 9/11 money would have been extremely useful for future disasters, especially considering the razor thin surplus of blood and it's short viability with current storage techniques. But because of the shortsighted specificity of a huge number of people's altruism, that money was instead used to make a few financially well off people who suffered a tragic loss even more financially well off.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
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