Minimalist phishing scams
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[b]From:[/b] nicole-rhodes@sbcglobal.net
[b]Subject:[/b] Your email ID has won £1,000,000.00 in the Telecom Xmas Splash. Send
[b]Message:[/b]
Names.
Country..
Well, at least it's the most minimalist I've ever seen. Only because I've seen many like it I know I'm "supposed" to send my name, address, telephone, credit card number etc.
What next? Just a subject line that says "bend over" ? Or simply "etc. etc." ?
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I congratulate your email ÏD with winning 1 mil. Have you asked it what it's going to do with all that money? :)
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This raises an interesting theoretical question: how small can a scam email be and still be clearly recognizable as a scam?
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@C4I_Officer said:
Well, at least it's the most minimalist I've ever seen. Only because I've seen many like it I know I'm "supposed" to send my name, address, telephone, credit card number etc.
What next? Just a subject line that says "bend over" ? Or simply "etc. etc." ?
Reminds me of the mugger in LA Story. If anybody's seen that... the joke is that there are so many muggings in LA that the muggers just line up next to the ATM machine, and every person who takes cash out just hands all the cash directly to the mugger.
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@Someone You Know said:
This raises an interesting theoretical question: how small can a scam email be and still be clearly recognizable as a scam?
scam or spam? I'd recognize spam as soon as I saw the guid-for-an-email-address in the sender field. Scams require some sort of keyword like "inheritance", "$1,000,000", or vi4gr4
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@Someone You Know said:
This raises an interesting theoretical question: how small can a scam email be and still be clearly recognizable as a scam?
If an email scams in the woods where no one sees it, is it still a scam?
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@b-redeker said:
@Someone You Know said:
This raises an interesting theoretical question: how small can a scam email be and still be clearly recognizable as a scam?
If an email scams in the woods where no one sees it, is it still a scam?
Could God create a scam so good that even He would fall for it?
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@HighlyPaidContractor said:
@b-redeker said:
@Someone You Know said:
This raises an interesting theoretical question: how small can a scam email be and still be clearly recognizable as a scam?
If an email scams in the woods where no one sees it, is it still a scam?
Could God create a scam so good that even He would fall for it?
How much spam would a scam email spam if a spam email could spam a scam?
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@Someone You Know said:
This raises an interesting theoretical question: how small can a scam email be and still be clearly recognizable as a scam?
Great you just had to go and break the universe. Whats next? are you going to implement a grandfather's paradox?
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@Someone You Know said:
This raises an interesting theoretical question: how small can a scam email be and still be clearly recognizable as a scam?
It contains only a single link to something like http://www.paypal.com.kjfoianvfefijiofjef.info/ ?
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@MiffTheFox said:
@Someone You Know said:
This raises an interesting theoretical question: how small can a scam email be and still be clearly recognizable as a scam?
It contains only a single link to something like http://www.paypal.com.kjfoianvfefijiofjef.info/ ?
OK, I just transferred $100. Now what?
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Something about this thread makes me want to attempt scamming someone in haiku.
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@HighlyPaidContractor said:
Something about this thread makes me want to attempt scamming someone in haiku.
Nigeria's prince
His fortune could now be yours
Just give us five grand
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@b-redeker said:
@MiffTheFox said:
@Someone You Know said:
This raises an interesting theoretical question: how small can a scam email be and still be clearly recognizable as a scam?
It contains only a single link to something like http://www.paypal.com.kjfoianvfefijiofjef.info/ ?
OK, I just transferred $100. Now what?
... wow, you just made me want to try this. Any spammers in the audience?
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I once recieved the opposite of this. It was something about refinancing my mortgage, and the entire body of a Dickens novel. (A Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations, I forget which.)
It came in as a ticket to the IT helpdesk.
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@HighlyPaidContractor said:
I once recieved the opposite of this. It was something about refinancing my mortgage, and the entire body of a Dickens novel. (A Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations, I forget which.)
That's not uncommon. It's a counter-measure against bayesian filters—they just add heaps of legitimate-looking text so the scam/spam stuff gets lost in the noise for the filter. They even often sent a random block of text without any obvious spammy purpose except to poison the bayesian filters by having you feed some common text as spam, lowering the efficiency of the filter.
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@Bulb said:
That's not uncommon. It's a counter-measure against bayesian filters—they just add heaps of legitimate-looking text so the scam/spam stuff gets lost in the noise for the filter.
In precisely the same way as the comments on this site often run along the lines of "This text included to convince Akismet that I am not spamming."
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@Bulb said:
@HighlyPaidContractor said:
That's not uncommon. It's a counter-measure against bayesian filters—they just add heaps of legitimate-looking text so the scam/spam stuff gets lost in the noise for the filter. They even often sent a random block of text without any obvious spammy purpose except to poison the bayesian filters by having you feed some common text as spam, lowering the efficiency of the filter.I once recieved the opposite of this. It was something about refinancing my mortgage, and the entire body of a Dickens novel. (A Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations, I forget which.)
I had a series of spam last year which had two or three sentence clips that were talking about a family, vacations, photography, and so on... They all seemed to be the same style. So I google'd the text, and found some lady's blog - apparently the spammers grabbed the entire thing and were distributing it to hundreds of millions of people. Enough of them had been as curious as I was that she'd put a specific message to people who'd found her blog via the spams.
And on the other side of the coin, there are phishing spams that are so closely matched to the originals that they match down to the character - including the lines saying never to click on links and to type in the (correct) URL. Oops.
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@PeriSoft said:
And on the other side of the coin, there are phishing spams that are so closely matched to the originals that they match down to the character - including the lines saying never to click on links and to type in the (correct) URL. Oops.
I've been getting e-mails purportedly from Facebook that informed me I requested a password reset (or something similar). I don't have a Facebook account, but it took me a while to find out what the deal with mails was, because all the links pointed to the real facebook.com - turns out that the scammers copied the entire e-mail contents, and only changed the links in the HTML part of the message, while I normally only read the plain-text version (which kept the original links).
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Received this a few years ago. Thought it was a novel approach.
An international investment company is looking for communicative and skillful individuals to join the Receivables Team of our Finance & Infrastructure Group in the United States on part-time basis. This position involves monitoring and processing of our company's funds. Your duties will not involve any direct client interaction, and you will be reporting to the Receivables department manager in Russia. We are looking for numerate individuals who are also able to multi-task efficiently in a team. Relevant previous experience and/or education is a plus, but not a prerequisite. This position is part-time, home based, estimated average salary from $3,000.00 per month.
In order to qualify for the position, you must be a permanent US resident aged 21 and above and have a verifiable personal/business banking relationship with a US bank. Since most communication with the head office will be via email/fax/phone, you should have reliable access to these facilities and be reachable during regular business hours.To apply for this position or to request additional information on our company, please contact us at work.elbrus@gmail.com Please make sure to provide your contact phone number.
Please note that only applicants under serious consideration will be contacted
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@ender said:
I've been getting e-mails purportedly from Facebook that informed me I requested a password reset (or something similar). <snip>
I've been getting a lot of those lately for various online games (like WoW, LotRO etc.) that I never have played, even some that I never even heard of before that. I was wondering what those were about - I figured it might be some kind of account stealing scam/phishing attempt, but the included links looked legitimate so I had no idea how the scammers would expect to intercept the victim's credentials.
@Nexzus said:
Received this a few years ago. Thought it was a novel approach. <snip>
Sounds like credit card fraudsters looking for money laundering agents...
