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What Kind Of Spam Is This?


csouter

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Hi, everyone!

The following is the source text of a spam I received at my ISP InBox overnight. For obvious reasons, any "To:" email addresses have been munged.

<SNIPPED OUT. SEE MY NEXT POST FOR TRACKING URL.>

What do you think this is? 419? Phishing? Some other kind of scam?

Opinions would be appreciated.

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Opinions would be appreciated.

First opinion ... posting of an entire spam in here is not appreciated.

The fact that I've received thousands of these myself and seen nothing worth replying to, only complaint fodder leaves me asking why you'd thing I'd want to read a copy you received and offer an opionin beyond the ovbious .... unsolicited, nebulous, absolutly no specifics, an address in a 'far off land' from some one 'interested in you' .... and all "we" want you to do is "handle our money" ...???? .... geeze ....

You've been around long enough to know about Tracking URLs.

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First opinion ... posting of an entire spam in here is not appreciated.

You've been around long enough to know about Tracking URLs.

Oops, sorry! I completely forgot! :blush:

Here's the Tracking URL:

http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z1235081612z0...86aa939e7ccd73z

If you want to delete the quoted spam (all the red text) from my OP, please go ahead, if that's possible.

<Insert Grovelling Apology Here>

Edit: On second thoughts, I deleted it myself just now, to save you the trouble. :-)

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Hi, everyone!

The following is the source text of a spam I received at my ISP InBox overnight. For obvious reasons, any "To:" email addresses have been munged.

<SNIPPED OUT. SEE MY NEXT POST FOR TRACKING URL.>

What do you think this is? 419? Phishing? Some other kind of scam?

Opinions would be appreciated.

Possibly an identity theft thing, doesn't seem to leave much opening for a good hook for an advance fee (419-type) scam - but "they" are infinitely inventive. One thing is certain, it ain't legitimate. Someone would surely stand to earn AUD3,000 - the timeframe being one question and the recipient another - but at least on the second you can be sure it wouldn't be you. Anyway, Centrelink are reading this and would take away your pension if you started working again :D . And take away your goldcard.

[Wazoo's post and mine "at the same time" - his appreciation is of course for your efforts in cleaning up you initial post.]

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Current terse mode in the house warming up a bit ....

Took over an hour to get out of the house earlier today, a couple of inches of ice built up on the outside of the "opens to the outside" front door. Chain-saw party at work handling the 'massive tree limbs fallen to the ground' exercise going on outside. Power outages pretty much continuous as yet another tree branch/limb falls onto/though yet another power line somewhere else. It took me four tries to actuallly make that previous post. Not a good day here at present. Thanks for doing the hard work.

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[snip]

Here's the Tracking URL:

http://www.spamcop.net/sc?id=z1235081612z0...86aa939e7ccd73z

[snip]

They transfer money into your bank account, or send you a check of say 2000 dollars. You transfer that money out, minus a commission of say 10%, 2000 - 200 = 1800. Usually they ask you to use Western Union or something like that.

Then after a couple of weeks, the bank calls you that the check was false, and that the bank will have to debit your account for those 2000 dollars.

Now it is your job to get the 1800 dollars from those criminals, who in the mean time will have dissappeared into thin air ;)

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They transfer money into your bank account, or send you a check of say 2000 dollars. You transfer that money out, minus a commission of say 10%, 2000 - 200 = 1800. Usually they ask you to use Western Union or something like that.

Then after a couple of weeks, the bank calls you that the check was false, and that the bank will have to debit your account for those 2000 dollars.

Now it is your job to get the 1800 dollars from those criminals, who in the mean time will have dissappeared into thin air ;)

Geez, they're inventive. What makes them think that I'll give my bank details to complete strangers? Plus, even if I were dumb enough to do that, why wouldn't I just keep the $3000.00? I could either (1) withdraw it immediately it turned up and then close the account; or (2) wait for it to clear (if that's necessary for a bank-to-bank transfer, which I don't think it is) and then just withdraw it and close the account. If they really were outside my home country, it would be pretty hard for them to find me.

I don't think they could possibly be silly enough to send me a real (paper) cheque, which is traceable, and worthless until cleared. Even if I were to deposit it immediately, I couldn't do anything with it for anything up to two weeks, especially if it had been drawn on an overseas bank.

The whole idea looks pretty stupid.

Thanks for the ideas, anyway. I'm actually starting to lean towards Farelf's suggestion that it's probably an attempt at ID theft.

Wazoo, I understand you've seen these before, but I've never seen one framed just like this before.

Thanks to everybody, and sorry again to Wazoo for the inconvenience caused by my earlier SNAFU.

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... but I see TV news reports every other week about someone falling for the "get rich quick" schemes. You would think people would learn by now.
Yep, people who should never get taken in somehow do - state government Treasurers, millionaires, some very unlikely "marks". Just goes to remind that everyone has buttons that can be pushed, the con man's job is to find them. And the internet makes it easier for him (cheaper, safer, faster, further-ranging). Some of the links at Links to confidence tricks information sites might be of interest. I haven't looked at any of this stuff for a while as it scares and depresses me and that raises a demarkation issue - those functions, in accordance with custom and tradition, are allocated to someone else :D.
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Hi, everyone!

I have now received a suggestion that it's a kind of money-laundering scheme. I have also posted this message in the Kill Spammers Forum and one of the members there has replied that many of these schemes are hosted on domains registered by hkdnr.hk in Hong Kong. If you're interested, you can read the full thread here.

Any more info will be posted here. At the time of posting this, the scammers' website is still up and running. It was very slow a few hours ago, but it's operating normally now.

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