419 scams

[flagginator]

419 scams = Nigerian email Chain Letter scams, and so forth.

I have to report them separately to:

419.fcd [at] usss.treas.gov (munged)

My suggestion:

Have a CHECKBOX on the parsing results page for "This is a 419 spam scam".

That way I can submit from Spamcop interface.

Thank you for your consideration.

[dra007]

..on the same vein is their any good reporting agency for Phishers?

[Wazoo]

419 scams = Nigerian email Chain Letter scams, and so forth.

I have to report them separately to:

419.fcd [at] usss.treas.gov (munged)

Why in the world are you munging data in this particular submittal? If you want these folks to actually move forward with any investigation, providing "tampered" evidence isn't in the plan.

My suggestion:

Have a CHECKBOX on the parsing results page for "This is a 419 spam scam".

That way I can submit from Spamcop interface.

This is oneof the paid account "features" .. in that you can add some addresses that will show up at every parse. (Yes, I know that this entry section is limited, but have to point to abuse by past SpamCop reporters that caused this limited space)

You mention that you use e-mail for submittals ... why not simply add the 419 complaint address as a CC: to your SpamCop submittal?

[Wazoo]

..on the same vein is their any good reporting agency for Phishers?

16458[/snapback]

Try the FAQ .. Marjolein's Ban spam page has verified addresses for a lot of these. The problem here is that most Federal involvement only comes in "after" someone has lost (enough) money in the scam (or there are collectively enough people scammed to meet various thresholds, like the amount of money ..) Then one runs into the idiocy of some of the institutions involved ... some of these spams have been around for so long, the company doesn't want to hear about it anymore .. other companies have web page designers that don't have a clue, such that filling out a silly web-form is a nightmare .. another recently had instructions on a web page on how to submit one of these via e-mail, but it turns out that following those instructions results in that e-mail being rejected because it looked like spam ....

[dra007]

Thank you Wazoo, as a rule I e-mail a copy to the bank/business in the phisher, except for my own bank I have never had a reply or confirmation some action was taken..

Some of these phishers are really poorly designed, looking like badly scanned or photocopied notes...I don't know how anyone would fall for them... others are very clever, like pop up windows looking very authentic... in any event they all seem to phish for information no one in their right mind would give away... I just feel sorry for the poor gullible people who fall for such scams..

[turetzsr]

419 scams = Nigerian email Chain Letter scams, and so forth.

I have to report them separately to:

419.fcd [at] usss.treas.gov (munged)

My suggestion:

Have a CHECKBOX on the parsing results page for "This is a 419 spam scam".

That way I can submit from Spamcop interface.

Thank you for your consideration.

16453[/snapback]

<snip>

This is oneof the paid account "features" .. in that you can add some addresses that will show up at every parse. (Yes, I know that this entry section is limited, but have to point to abuse by past SpamCop reporters that caused this limited space)

<snip>

16463[/snapback]

...To paraphrase a commerical, "it's not just for paid accounts any more." <g>

[ankman]

Why in the world are you munging data in this particular submittal? If you want these folks to actually move forward with any investigation, providing "tampered" evidence isn't in the plan.

This is oneof the paid account "features" .. in that you can add some addresses that will show up at every parse. (Yes, I know that this entry section is limited, but have to point to abuse by past SpamCop reporters that caused this limited space)

You mention that you use e-mail for submittals ... why not simply add the 419 complaint address as a CC: to your SpamCop submittal?

Oh, another old article I reply to, couldn't find a newer.

I propose to extract 419 addresses from spam and offer to send complaints to the post admins of the abused servers, usually Yahoo, Gmail, Myway and so on.

This should be easy to achieve. Parse the body first for and email address. If that fails, parse the header's Reply-To:, if this fails the From: is likely to be the scammer's dropbox. Then create a complaint page where the user MUST check the boxes which are the likely 419 addresses.

Also finding out if it is 419 spam should be not too hard.

[Farelf]

...I propose to extract 419 addresses from spam and offer to send complaints to the post admins of the abused servers, usually Yahoo, Gmail, Myway and so on. ...

Darn, the little buggers must be prescient ankman. Just now I have been seeing a rash of the things where the scam is all contained in a Word/rtf file attachment. Still, if you forced a significant number to escalate to such measures it would be worthwhile. They (419-ers) don't seem to be very good at innovation, they might make some mistakes along the way (like leaving "fingerprints") if they try it.

[Wazoo]

I propose to extract 419 addresses from spam and offer to send complaints to the post admins of the abused servers, usually Yahoo, Gmail, Myway and so on.

This should be easy to achieve. Parse the body first for and email address. If that fails, parse the header's Reply-To:, if this fails the From: is likely to be the scammer's dropbox. Then create a complaint page where the user MUST check the boxes which are the likely 419 addresses.

Sure, everyone would be happy ... that was until the spammer decided to simply fortge the data within the headers, add in links and references within the body ... oh wait, they've been doing this for years .... hint, that's why the Parsing & Reporting system "stopped" reporting e-mail addresses.

Sure, it's easy for "you" to 'see' an ovbious e-mail address ... not so easy to program a stupid computer to not make a mistake.

Also finding out if it is 419 spam should be not too hard.

Please take a look at the graphic / link provided at the top right of this very page. Note those lottle lines with numbers showing .. Max spam: 32.4 spams a second ... and that's just parsing and generating reports for the users to 'validate and send' .... now you'd like to also write another little program that's going to try to actually read the spam and decide on just what 'type' of spam it is?

Have you the money needed for all that additional hardware / processing power?

Are you that fantatstic at programming, again to pull off all that evaluating content (toss in the 'in any language') and again without making a mistake?

And as shown over these past years, that the actual likelyhood of the folks receiving that complaint actually get off their behind and really do something about it .. can you actually justify all that money, time, and effort? Again, the majority of this crap these days comes from the computers owned by just plain old people, not ISPs, not Corporations, just the typical Ma & Pa with the 2.5 kids .....