FYI all,
I just received this e-mail with someone attempting a fraud scheme. For those who don't know how this works, when you reply to the e-mail, you get a request for your bank account info to make the deposit of this money, from there your personal info is stolen from you.

e-mail headers
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Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 14:58:04 GMT
Message-Id: <200307251458.h6PEw4WT030023@xxx.com>
To:
Subject: ORPHANAGE CALL
From: "tomtomyaro @ The Elsmar Cove Forums" <xxxx@yahoo.com>
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Actual Message

This is a message from tomtomyaro. The The Elsmar Cove Forums owner does not accept any responsibility for the contents of this e-mail, however the sender does not have access to your actual e-mail address through the forums or in sending you this message - your actual e-mail address is hidden.

To stop any further messages, Disable (turn off) your e-mail option in your User Control Panel (UserCP) Options.

http://Elsmar.com/Forums/profile.php?do=editoptions

To e-mail tomtomyaro, you can use the online form:
http://Elsmar.com/Forums/sendmessage.php

This is the message to you from tomtomyaro:

Attn:
TEL.225-07-98-64-21
Sir,

Good a thing to write you. I have a proposal for
you-this however is not mandatory nor will I in
any manner compel you to honour against your will.

Your profile pushed me to send you this mail,I am Silvia J.Martins ,21years old and the only daughter of my late parents Mr.and Mrs.Martins. My father was a highly reputable busnness magnet-(a cocoa merchant)who operated in the capital of Ivory coast during his days.

It is sad to say that he passed away mysteriously in France during one of his business trips abroad year 12th.Febuary 2000.Though his sudden death was linked or rather suspected to have been masterminded by an uncle of his who travelled
with him at that time.But God knows the truth!

My mother died when I was just 4 years old and my brother (GEORGE)2yrs ,and since then my father took us so special. Before his death on Febuary 12, 2000 he called the secretary who accompanied him to the hospital and told him that he has the sum of twen

ty two million,seven hundred thousand United State Dollars.(USD$22.700,000) left in one of the leading security company here in Abidjan Ivory Coast West Africa.

He further told him that he deposited the money in my name AND my brother ,and finally issued a written instruction to his lawyer whom he said is in possession of all the necessary but legal documents to this fund and the security company .

I am just 21 years old and a university undergraduate and really don't know what to do.Now I want an account overseas where I can transfer this funds. This is because I have suffered a lot of set backs as a result of incessant political crisis here in ivory coast.

The death of my father actually brought sorrow to my life.

Sir,I am in a sincere desire of your humble assistance in this regards.Your suggestions and ideas will be highly regarded.

Now permit me to ask these few questions:-
2. Can I completely trust you?
3. What percentage of the total amount in question will
be good for you after the money is in your account?

Please,Consider this and get back to me as soon as possible. Through my private email box bellow for security reasons: ppm_slv@yahoo.com

Thank you so much.My sincere regards,

Silvia .JOICE MARTINS

I've received similar emails many times. I've never seen them do it through forum email before though. :mad: Hopefully we're all smart enough to not fall for this.

Marc should have ip address info for the user "tomtomyaro" who sent it. Does it do any good to send it to authorities?

I've received similar emails many times. I've never seen them do it through forum email before though. :mad: Hopefully we're all smart enough to not fall for this.

Marc should have ip address info for the user "tomtomyaro" who sent it. Does it do any good to send it to authorities?
I just checked and this person registered today. I just put the account into 'Banned'.

The IP address is: 213.136.97.109
France Telecom FTRSI/DPI (OPENTRANSIT-DOM)
246, rue de Bercy
Paris Cedex 12 75584
FR

Domain Name: OPENTRANSIT.NET

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
admin (AO946-ORG) admin@OPENTRANSIT.NET
admin opentransit
France Telecom Long Distance
246 rue de bercy
Paris
FRA
999 999 9999 fax: 999 999 9999

Record expires on 18-May-2004.
Record created on 19-Sep-2002.
Database last updated on 25-Jul-2003 12:12:03 EDT.

Domain servers in listed order:

BOW.RAIN.FR 194.51.3.49
DNS.OPENTRANSIT.NET 193.251.151.59
PROOF.RAIN.FR 194.51.3.65
VENUS.OPENTRANSIT.NET 193.251.151.57

Naw. Reporting it is a useless exercise. It comes down to report it to who and on what charge?

This is unfortunate. After Jim Wade's escapade I stopped accepting Yahoo and Hotmail registrations but several people wrote and I eased up. I'll probably end up banning new registrations from those e-mail accounts again.

This is, in part, why I enabled masking where people have to use a form and don't get your e-mail address directly from the forum. It stops e-mail BOTs from harvesting e-mail addresses (unless you put your e-mail address in a post somewhere) as well.

Naw. Reporting it is a useless exercise. It comes down to report it to who and on what charge?

This is unfortunate. After Jim Wade's escapade I stopped accepting Yahoo and Hotmail registrations but several people wrote and I eased up. I'll probably end up banning new registrations from those e-mail accounts again.

This is, in part, why I enabled masking where people have to use a form and don't get your e-mail address directly from the forum. It stops e-mail BOTs from harvesting e-mail addresses (unless you put your e-mail address in a post somewhere) as well.

I found the email "form" to be nice.
If you choose not to respond to someone they don't have your email.
End of story :p

I've received similar emails many times. I've never seen them do it through forum email before though. :mad: Hopefully we're all smart enough to not fall for this.


Yeah, I was really suprised by this. My main reason for posting it openly was for the internet newbies (I was one once) and people that may work from home/e-mail from home/kids spying in your e-mail/get rich thinking...LOL....with 3 out of 5 kids going on line on a regular basis, ya never know which one is gonna come across something like that....:vfunny:.

CarolX

It's surprising to me because something like this relies on bulk e-mail. For someone to register and start e-mailing people 1 by 1... I wouldn't have guessed it would even make sense.

Well Carol, your avatar does look kind of young and inexperienced...

Well Carol, your avatar does look kind of young and inexperienced...

Youl'd be surprised. We are StarTrek fans, and John will sit in front of the comp and watch the StarTrek screen saver for hours. He loves to sit on his sister's and brothers' lap and watch what they are doing. If we ain't carefull, he'll be spaming us in a few years :biglaugh:!


Marc,
It's surprising to me because something like this relies on bulk e-mail. For someone to register and start e-mailing people 1 by 1... I wouldn't have guessed it would even make sense.

Me, too. Has someone developed a new bot.....ggrrrrrrr!!!

Carol

Carol:

I got the same one, too, at about the same time you did. I decided to call Marc for the first time, out of my usual paranoia about something "big and bad" happening at the Cove.

Marc took it in stride, and has quickly taken corrective action. Again.

This is one time spam did pay off for me, though. Marc and I had a wonderful conversation (lots of politics, of course).

I wonder how many other Covers have been hit by the spamjerk today.

I don't know how many people use a hotmail account. I do for several reasons.

1. Reduction in spam. Most folks here at work use their regular (employer) e-mail account for everything and they get an average of 150 spams a day. I get MAYBE 10 per week on my "employer" addy, and none on my home account.

2. For some wierd reason (and this applies to alot of areas at my company), the owners get really freaky about anyone knowing about us (heave control issues here, I think). I can't even have sales reps come to see me...wierd, but oh well.

Anyhow...the reason for my ramble here...I am now getting these really wierd spams on my hotmail account. Oh, its for the usually stuff..like increase you reproductive organ size (HELLO...I don't have one of those attached to my body). The wierd thing about them is they aren't caught as spam, becuse they are adressed to myself and 3 or 4 other people with hotmail accounts.

Anyone else with a hotmail account seeing this?

Carol

I am now getting these really wierd spams on my hotmail account. Oh, its for the usually stuff..like increase you reproductive organ size (HELLO... I don't have one of those attached to my body). The wierd thing about them is they aren't caught as spam, becuse they are adressed to myself and 3 or 4 other people with hotmail accounts.

Anyone else with a hotmail account seeing this?

Carol

Do I ever... Yes, I've been using a very widely publicised Hotmail address for many years in order to keep the spammers away from my more private addies... I have set the junk mail filter to the highest level, and that keeps things very quiet. A while back I removed it for 24 hours just to see what happened.... Oh, yes: I recieved 204 spam mails in those 24 hours:eek:.

So: Use any and all filters available... :frust:

/Claes

Hi Claes,

These are e-mails that are getting through the filters. I, too, have my filters set pretty high. It is being done by only adressing to 3 to 4 people at a time.

204 spams in 24 hours...LOL, that's gotta hurt!

Carol

It's surprising to me because something like this relies on bulk e-mail. For someone to register and start e-mailing people 1 by 1... I wouldn't have guessed it would even make sense.

Did anyone see the spelling on the original message? That alone, would scare me. :vfunny: :smokin:

Looked like it was written by my daughter when she was in second grade.
:biglaugh:

CarolX

One thing I have noticed is if you pick a common name or word for your e-mail you will get more spam than random characters or an unusual name. I manage a website for a friend's restaurant. Within 24 hours of registering the domain and setting up a webmaster@ account, I was getting junkmail - even before a website was up. The hosting company has my "real" e-mail and only sends the occasional update message, so I don't think they were selling addresses. My primary personal account is tvehoski@, and I never get spam. I have registered tom2, tom999, etc. through the same service provider, never posted the account anywhere, and still get spam. I think the bots must try tom1, tom2, tom3, ...

I must have received 30 in the last week with the subject "Service interruption in 24 hours" or something similar to try to get you to read it. Very annoying.

I own 5 different domains that I get email from. I get about 500 emails a day! There may be one or two that are real emails. You can set your message rules to look for things and automatically send them to your deleted folder. I use certain words, like viagra, certain male or female body parts, won, free, and so on. Now I only have to look at about 250. Most are deleted without reading.

The interesting thing is that once, when I renewed my ASQ account, they mis-typed my email. Now, I get a lot of email (average about 5 a day) with the mis-type name (my email will accept any word before the @). Kinda makes me wonder.

I must have received 30 in the last week with the subject "Service interruption in 24 hours" or something similar to try to get you to read it. Very annoying.
Tom,

My ISP posted a message on their homepage about this. It is actually a non-destructive virus. One of those that just e-mails from your addy book, but a virus none the less.

Carol

I only looked at one which appeard harmless, but did get a dialog box (from outlook) last night asking if I really wanted to cancel a fax (which I never tried to send, phone line not even connected to the PC). A bit strange, but I did not find any unusual behavior. Perhaps it is time to check for virus signature updates and make sure zonealarm is configured properly.

Tom,

Here's a discription of the virus from my anitvirus protector.

http://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/virusencyclo/default5.asp?VName=WORM_MIMAIL.A

Lots of luck!

Carol

Hi Claes,

These are e-mails that are getting through the filters. I, too, have my filters set pretty high. It is being done by only adressing to 3 to 4 people at a time.

204 spams in 24 hours...LOL, that's gotta hurt!

Carol
Not really. First of all I'm more or less asking for it by making that addie public. Secondly, I just turned the filters back on and got back to the one or two spam mails sneaking through every day. What really makes me grumpy is having to use the filters at all. :mad:

Also, I never open spam. It goes straight to the big arcihive.... Well, where ever digital things go when you purge them. Too many spam mails contain viruses.:ca:

/Claes

I pay SpamCop US$30 a year to do all my mail screening. All e-mail is sent directly to my SpamCop account which checks it for viruses and against a number of 'BlackLists'. I also turn down all e-mail to qs9000.com - my first domain from years ago.

Each day I get a report from my server and over 100 e-mails to qs9000.com a day are refused. SpamCop usually traps about 200 to various addresses I have had / used.

I have one main, 'secret' account which SpamCop forwards all mail to. That ISP also has a spam trap and it works relatively well - but nowhere near as well as SpamCop.

I see a couple of SPAMs a day which 'sneak' through but it's not the problem it was.

You might have noticed I have changed almost all e-mail links on my site to my SpamCop.net account. The SpamCop in the name alone kills most new spammers so far as I can tell.

I do want to repeat that no bots can get your e-mail address here UNLESS you put your e-mail address in one or more post(s) - which many, many people have.

In addition, if YOU use the E-Mail form, YOUR e-mail address WILL be transmitted with the sent message!!!

If someone DOES use the e-mail form to contact you and you don't want to reveal your e-mail address but you want to respond, USE PRIVATE MESSAGING. Remember - If you reply using the e-mail form, it will send your e-mail address to the recipient.

That said, the safest way to communicate with other registered forum users if you're guarding your e-mail address is to use the forums Personal Messaging System.