SCAM ALERT!

Thread Starter

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,853
Over many months - possibly a couple years now, I've been getting email from strange addresses. iMac mail, I don't know about other mail programs, you can click on a drop-down arrow adjacent to the senders name. When the message is legitimate it matches the sender, or in some way is reasonably close. Sorry, I can't give an example at present. But many source email addresses come back as some massively gibberish names, which are obviously scam sources. I ALWAYS check the source before I open an email. For many months now I've been getting messages that appear to come from MY OWN Email address. It's obvious that address has made its way to the dark web. Today I got one FROM NO SOURCE AT ALL. Obviously I didn't try to open it. It had many links to many things that I simply refused to open. No telling WHAT I might open myself up to.

One thing I've been doing is compiling all these scam emails in preparation to send them to the FBI or some other scam busting government site (to be decided later). When I tried to move this newest email to my scams folder my computer locked up. I couldn't even shut it down. I had to unplug the computer in order to regain control. Then upon again attempting to move it - the computer locked up again. Once again I had to unplug my computer. I could not force quit mail and couldn't open anything else. So once again I regained control of my computer. This time I ONLY deleted it. Then I went to my deleted folder and emptied everything I had deleted, including the offending email.

BEWARE OF ALL INCOMING MESSAGES. ALWAYS CHECK THE SOURCE ADDRESS. If you recognize it or it looks legitimate - proceed at your own discretion. If it looks strange or you're in any way concerned about the source - if it's not a necessary message just do yourself a huge favor and delete it. No questions asked.

I'm creating this post so you can put your experiences here as well. We all can learn from the experiences of each other.

Peace bro's and sis's.
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,846
We've been getting more emails with gibberish for from addresses. I examine the source of any suspicious emails. For the ones that appear to be SPAM, I mark them as SPAM on the email server and they use those reports to start automatic filtering. They sometimes flag prolific senders as SPAM and I'm generally okay with that. I used to get a lot of email from the company that sold X-10 products and some coin auction site. I don't miss them.

You can forward messages to the FTC, but I never felt like that resulted in any action.

Whenever I receive spoof emails for a company, I contact the company. They usually have an address you can forward the message to (which may also be a risk).
 

Thread Starter

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,853
I've used "Rules" in my email server. If a known address or partial address is recognized it is automatically deleted. Not even sent to Junk, completely deleted. The problem is that if I get an address that resembles: @hxoyvuna and I set that in the rules as a recognizable source the next time they send me a message that resembles: @axoyvuna, it is not recognized and it ends up in my junk folder. OR on my regular folder. They change their source address all the time and there's no way to get ahead of that. I've even deleted stuff that comes from ".abc" or anything else that is not a legitimate address. But they can change those up as well.
I traditionally look at the email country of origin, often indicates immediately a reason to deep six it. ;)
Max.
I examine the source of any suspicious emails.
Everyone should examine source addresses before they open or click on anything. Boy I miss the days of wanting to call a friend and having to go inside the house and pick up a device that has a speaker and a microphone in a single handle, with a curly coil wire that connects to this big heavy thing with bells inside it and a "DIAL" on the front of it. Back then you had to REMEMBER your friends phone numbers. Today if I were out and had an issue and needed to contact a friend for assistance and my cell phone was dead - I'd be out of luck. I barely remember MY number and even worse, hardly at all remember my wife's number. Beyond that I don't know a single number at all. Except 911. Everyone else is in my contact list and all I have to do is speak "Hey Siri", wait for the beep, then say "Dial Dale". Dale's phone would ring and I could speak to him or leave a message.

Anyway, I opened this thread so that others who may not be aware of these sorts of issues could become more aware of them.
 

djsfantasi

Joined Apr 11, 2010
9,156
These type of spam usually comes in waves. Every so often, I go on a campaign. I check the from address... I forward all suspicious emails to spam@ftc.gov and abuse@<domain name>. I don’t open the email. My client let’s me right click on the message to forward. I used to delete the message, but now I mark it as junk.

After a week or two, the junk starts to disappear.
 

Lo_volt

Joined Apr 3, 2014
316
Several years ago, when I had a Verizon account, someone had mistakenly put my email address on their account. I would get late notices, excess bandwidth usage and other notifications and information about their account. It was rather strange. Even weirder was that there was another email address either in the cc slot or in the message body, I don't recall which. That was weird as well, as I wasn't aware that one could have multiple email addresses for the billing account with Verizon. I could have emailed that person and told them to fix their Verizon account, but I wasn't sure that this wasn't an elaborate phishing scheme. I called Verizon and they said the emails were legit, but they couldn't take my email address off of the account per my instructions as I wasn't the owner of the account. I couldn't even mark the messages as spam because I actually wanted to receive email from Verizon as I still had my own account with them. As it was only a few messages per month, I ignored them and eventually they went away. Either the phisher gave up or the Verizon customer realized she had the wrong email attached to her account.
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Nothing really new except the methods, your McFee Virus Protection has Expired, You have won a $100 (insert company) Gift Card, you have a virus call Microsoft Support, etc. Sometimes even from me or to 20c3z97d038l, etc. My eMail provider has a spam filter and I submit several new ones every day for blocking. I guess the Nairobi Prince finally got someone to help him get his money since I haven't heard from him in a while now.
 

Thread Starter

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,853
I used to get calls from people claiming to be from Microsoft. When they would tell me my computer has a virus I'd ask which one? Which IP address? They just hang up. One day one of them from middle eastern Asia, with their distinct accent called and mimicking that accent I said "(their god) is going to punish them for scamming people." The guy on the other end didn't know what to say. Silent for a few seconds, then hung up. Another called and again I mimicked the accent and said "HEY! Cousin F••••k (not the F word); How the heck are you doing?" He got mad and said "I'm doing GOOD Mother F••ker." Then hung up. Still another called claiming to be from the United States Treasury. Same accent. So I said "Funny, you don't sound like an American." He stuttered for a moment then said "I'm from Canada." So I asked in a stark voice "What do you want?" He said "I want money." To which I said "Well, you ain't gettin' any!" Then he hung up.

I have had fun with some of them. This guy (video) had even more fun.
 

sagor

Joined Mar 10, 2019
903
Remember that having "preview" is technically reading the email and any malware embedded in it will get triggered with a preview. Always disable any form of preview in all email packages that you have...
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
If you run Widows 10 be very careful about random url's or files from emails or any source.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...ts-your-hard-drive-on-seeing-this-files-icon/
In August 2020, October 2020, and finally this week, infosec researcher Jonas L drew attention to an NTFS vulnerability impacting Windows 10 that has not been fixed.

When exploited, this vulnerability can be triggered by a single-line command to instantly corrupt an NTFS-formatted hard drive, with Windows prompting the user to restart their computer to repair the corrupted disk records.
 

SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Look at the From address. If you don't recognize it... It's real obvious most of the time since it's NOT McAfee sending it.
 

Reloadron

Joined Jan 15, 2015
7,501
The delete key is your key to happiness. Surprisingly I don't get all that much spam. Obviously when there are a few words of text telling me Click Here it's apparent click here is not a good idea. If I don't know the sender I just delete the stuff and every now and then clean my deleted email folder. Anyway soon I'll have someone to do all of that for me. Seems someone who knew me in of all places Nigeria passed away leaving me a fortune. I sent the $5,000 USD, some sort of tax, and expect a check for my $5,000,000 USD any day now. Good thing I opened that email huh?

Really, there is no free anything, including energy.

Ron
 

Thread Starter

Tonyr1084

Joined Sep 24, 2015
7,853
Actually there ARE "Free" stuff. I have a neighbor who is always giving me free advice.

My father taught me that if I want what another man has I should take his advice. If he's dumb and dirt poor and that's what I want to be then I should take his advice.

I sold my drums because of Tinnitus. The kid I sold them to I gave him some advice. I told him that if he takes my advice he'll never thank me. But if he doesn't, he will wish he did. I told him to protect his hearing. That's why I was selling (sold) my drums.
 
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