A scam we could fall for

[Pa Snip]

Recently there has been mention on here of seeds, plants or other items being ordered and sent to us from abroad.
I accept that the level of coincidence of it happening might be low but I go on premise that forewarned is forearmed.

The link leads to a police action fraud notice about a scam mail that is allegedly from royal mail about packages being seized by HMRC

http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/news/a ... ails-jan16

[dan3008]

I got one of these last week... I knew it was off for 2 reasons,
1-i wasn't expecting a parcel from anywhere let alone abroad
2-how would royal mail have my email address?

[Pa Snip]

2-how would royal mail have my email address?

Which is one of the points the police poster makes.
However these people work on the panic principle, see email, panic, open attachment,
realisation comes too late

Bingo another success for them

[peter]

Don't get me started, I work in IT Security!

The one I have to bite my tongue on is the Facebook messages from friends "Sorry about the odd emails, my accounts been hacked, I've changed my password so it should stop now.".
No it has not been hacked, some one has spoofed your email address.

I construct an email and change the From bits to look like someone else's account and send it to a whole bunch of people. I got the details of a bunch of genuine email accounts off somewhere else, perhaps they were in context e.g. off an email, a Facebook account, or an address book.

Personally every day I get spam that "comes from" my own email account.

[Pa Snip]

Don't get me started, I work in IT Security!

Personally every day I get spam that "comes from" my own email account.

Snap

[dan3008]

Don't get me started, I work in IT Security!

Before uni I did system admin work. Working in it security you have my deepest sympathy. We used to say 95% of security problems were pink ware issues the human factor

General errors even more so. To the point where we used to have the error "problem resides between chair and screen" and "time to call Dan, you broke it... Again"

Spam from my own email is ridiculous... Almost as bad as" credit card" statements for the card I don't have in a name that's not mine... I'm shocked how many spam bots think my name is Mr purple

[WestHamRon]

Don't get me started, I work in IT Security!

Before uni I did system admin work. Working in it security you have my deepest sympathy. We used to say 95% of security problems were pink ware issues the human factor

General errors even more so. To the point where we used to have the error "problem resides between chair and screen" and "time to call Dan, you broke it... Again"

Spam from my own email is ridiculous... Almost as bad as" credit card" statements for the card I don't have in a name that's not mine... I'm shocked how many spam bots think my name is Mr purple

Does the acronym PICNIC mean anything to you?
I have read it was used to describe these type of problems.

[peter]

Yes, I hear "problem between chair and keyboard" more often.

Personally "wetware issue" is best.

[Motherwoman]

I seem to get a lot of those ones where you're sent an email from someone on your contact list and it starts off with a greeting and then a link. I presume it's because they've been hacked.

Otherwise it's a lot of notifications of closed bank accounts that I don't have, loans I 'qualify' for, Russian ladies (!), and Wallmart vouchers.

[dan3008]

Does the acronym PICNIC mean anything to you?
I have read it was used to describe these type of problems.

Problem in chair, not in computer Yes, we used that one as well... If your ever on the phone to IT support, and they ask to put you on hold, its probably because they are either laughing so hard they are wetting themselves, or they are cursing because they dont know what to do..

wetware issue

Yep, thats a good one too...
the funny one is when you get an angry user on the phone because they got a "Fat 32 error" and they think their computer is calling them a fat 32 year old

Otherwise it's a lot of notifications of closed bank accounts that I don't have, loans I 'qualify' for, Russian ladies (!), and Wallmart vouchers.

I keep getting offers like that, usually for money back on my recent purchase at wallmart or homedepot... but I'm in the UK so dont shop at american stores ... lol

[Ricard with an H]

Some years ago I created private domains for more than one reason, one of those reasons was so we could change providers without having to move stuff from ne server to another. Another reason was we needed e-mail accounts that were more secure in that those accounts would only be used in professional ways. Banking, Tax, wages, contra-accounting, investment and very personal contacts.

The one account that is only involved in all those things has still been got-at.

We have accounts on standby that are used for the the odd transaction just to test if the problem is through the servers, this hasn't proved to be the case.

I have never been on any dodgy sites that I'm aware of yet Betty-The-Boobs is convinced I'm her man and the often avalanche of personal use stuff that gets into my inbox would be an embarresment if I didn't have a trusting partner. She also gets them and is hot-hot-hot on IT security.

[dan3008]

A surprisingly high number of spam email use an email auto generator that at arts at [email protected] and works it's way up. I actually wrote one to email every student and staff member at both my uni and the uni of while I was a student

[dan3008]

Obviously it runs quicker when you know the structure of the email addresses like I did

[Ricard with an H]

I just have to add this even though it hasn't proved to be a massive problem, everytime I ordered small type batteries from specialist online suppliers it increased my spam immediately even though I used different sites. Presumably the different sites were only different in their address because I tried three sources and always had the same result.

Batteries always were good value and quality and each time my spam increase was massive.

No joking, try it.

[Pa Snip]

Spam emails are a pain in the proverbial, but generally just a nuisance.

Scam emails are a blight, the perpetrators are wily and plausible. Sadly many get taken in and lose money.
Scam phone calls come under the same category

Of course those of you who reply to threads like this are the ones that are unlikely to ever be fooled.
I would lay money on the main victims being those who are not frequent users of their device.