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Is this a scam??

3K views 22 replies 16 participants last post by  CSFT 
#1 ·
I had a couple want to by adds listed.
I was sent a private message that told me a guy had the items his name is mark
and they gave an email.

I sent an email then noticed the member had just joined today and had no other posts.

I think someone is now gonna sell my email info or what??

what is the point of this scam?

sorry it is not a scam just hard to believe the person knows someone who just happened to have both items I'm looking for?

Has this happened to anyone else?
 
#11 ·
I did my own investigating .... email was fishy, so was IP Addresses.
This was all on top of the posts made here.

Out of all the members that said they received PM's, only one member reported the scam.
If something seems to be "not the norm", please report it so the Moderators can investigate right away :)
The Moderators and Admins get a notification right away and things happen faster :)

The user has now been banned and the IP Addresses and email has been sent to the "Spammer List".

Bye-Bye Reese32 :razz::razz::razz:


Mike
 
#15 ·
The “just joined today” observation from the OP might be a giveaway that perhaps even PMs should have an entry threshold of some kind, just like for posting a classified. Just an idea.

Otherwise if it is a bot the exact same thing will happen again, and it will not even require much extra work on their end. Sounds like this one might have been relatively successful, so expect the basic phishing idea to get recycled.
 
#14 ·
I got one as well. Did he actually manually scan for all the WTB and then customized all those messages? Wow. that's a lot of work if so...otherwise the guy has some automated software to target and create emails
 
#17 ·
I guess there might be different levels of “protection”. I think a pretty low threshold (0 posts and “joined today” for PMs is probably too little :)) might be enough to foil most of the bots. But as far as “citizenship” and flesh and blood scammers you may be correct about that. I know the code for these forums is shared by a ton of other sites, with only superficial graphical differences, so this makes automated attacks using a particular strategy potentially pretty lucrative if they work.
 
#20 ·
I used to have exactly this idea. With the hubris of someone that works in Silicon Valley I assumed I would alway recognize the duckness of such attacks, in spite of the fact that the scammers are trying hard not to look like a duck. Over time I have come to realize this only means that I catch the ducks I recognize, and have no idea of the ducks I miss. *pats self on back* I have %100 success rate in recognizing what I recognize.

And then there are the ducks you recognize only 2 seconds after you hit the “send” button. :whoa:
 
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