Just had three pms too. Didn’t respond. But I also don’t know if I get the scam (and I’m not even close to an ‘old guy’ as mentioned above). So this phishes for emails, but to what end?
There are a number of levels of the scam that are possible, and of course getting you to send money is just the most complicated one - call it the Occean’s 11 senario. If there was a real attempt to do this you would have gotten follow up of some kind I’m sure - this time around at least.
Far more likely this was not an actual person at all but a bot. It is less “sexy” but just just having a live email address is something to sell to others for phishing attempts later. The AI required to do this is, unfortunately, child’s play these days. Looks for a type of phrase and context indicating “looking for item X” and echos right back at you the item you are looking for. This one didn’t even rotate the names - this Mark guy sounds like he has a lot of nice stuff. :roll:
Such automated attempts to get snippets of info, if this is what it was, are analogous to the spam robocalls I’m sure most people have gotten that hang up as soon as you answer - their only purpose is to determine that a phone number has a live person on the other end and record that info to use or sell at a later date. In this case they learned a certain active email address is associated with a specific social media account (yes, the item you reference in your email will tag that correlation), one willing to consider purchase via email transactions, maybe fishing gear is a useful thing they might use in the future, and not to put too fine a point on it (and to paraphrase the American Express commercials) - ”one that is just the right kind of sucker ... priceless!” :chuckle:
There are of course many other explanations between the Oceans 11 and that lowest level one. It is a constant arms race, and keeping up with what is possible and how it works is the best first defense. So for example when someone you don’t know tries to get you to email to another person you don’t know, even if he is not a Nigerian prince, in the future maybe consider first having a quick exchange over PMs. A simple “Thanks. Who are you and where did you hear about this?” Should be enough to weed these out ... for now. Or maybe you can send them an “I am not a robot” photo and ask them to find all the crosswalks. I don’t know what it says about me but I always have trouble with those.
It’s worth pointing out that if you have not gotten with the 21st century as far as passwords go, now might be the time. In additional to phishing attacks - where they attempt to fool you into giving them more info like passwords by having SOME info about you, people who fell for the one above now potentially have their SP account names, depending on how their email is set up their actual names, and email addresses in the hands of this scammer. This might be all they need, should they desire, to start direct attacks on your passwords. Remember many sites use email addresses AS the account name. Woe be ye if you reused that password - or an anagram or simple variation of any of that information - somewhere important! Just saying.
If you haven’t already done so an excellent all around lifestyle type solution is to get a password manager. This will allow you to use hard randomized passwords of many characters, and different pws for ALL your online accounts. Something to think about.
I have a friend, who coincidentally is also a longtime SP member, that has a ridiculously long spreadsheet doc with all this info including loads of his business and professional stuff. The doc itself is none too secure, and in the super simple scenario Mike described above is the total security nightmare case! But it is also highly inconvenient. I made the switch somewhat begrudgingly 5 or 6 years ago and now I don’t know how I would live without it.
A possible place to start if you are curious is here:
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Spey Pages
877.1K posts
23.9K members
Since 2000
A forum community dedicated to Spey casting, fishing, flies, and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about trails, licenses, fishing, game laws, styles, reviews, optics, accessories, classifieds, and more!