Best Scams: Tales from the Dark Side

[Ivan Seeking]

The Best Conspiracies
https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=56663

 

[dduardo]

Every morning there is a commericial on tv trying to sell miracle water in little vials. The televanglist says the water has cured people of cancer and other diseases. He even says that scientists can't explain how the water works. It just makes me smile knowing stupid people are actually buying the crap.

 

[Moonbear]

Every morning there is a commericial on tv trying to sell miracle water in little vials. The televanglist says the water has cured people of cancer and other diseases. He even says that scientists can't explain how the water works. It just makes me smile knowing stupid people are actually buying the crap.

That's what truly boggles my mind. Sure, there are con artists that run good scams, but most aren't that good, yet people are still stupid enough to fall for them. How can anyone fall for those Nigeria scam things? I get all sorts of phishing scam emails, at least a few a week. There's an ebay phishing scam going around too. I get at least two of those a week telling me my account is being used for fraudulent activity and I better go verify who I am to keep it open. Who thought up this scam? First, if ebay really thought an account was being used fraudulently, it would already be closed, they wouldn't be trying to keep it open. Second, if they hadn't closed it, I would want them to close it (the scam is written in a way that it says if you do nothing, your account will be permanently closed...so, um, okay, I'll do nothing then). The funniest part is I don't even have an ebay account.

 

[ShawnD]

Every morning there is a commericial on tv trying to sell miracle water in little vials. The televanglist says the water has cured people of cancer and other diseases. He even says that scientists can't explain how the water works. It just makes me smile knowing stupid people are actually buying the crap.

How is that one a scam? Popoff is giving those miracle spring water things away for free.

 

[BobG]

That's what truly boggles my mind. Sure, there are con artists that run good scams, but most aren't that good, yet people are still stupid enough to fall for them. How can anyone fall for those Nigeria scam things? I get all sorts of phishing scam emails, at least a few a week. There's an ebay phishing scam going around too. I get at least two of those a week telling me my account is being used for fraudulent activity and I better go verify who I am to keep it open. Who thought up this scam? First, if ebay really thought an account was being used fraudulently, it would already be closed, they wouldn't be trying to keep it open. Second, if they hadn't closed it, I would want them to close it (the scam is written in a way that it says if you do nothing, your account will be permanently closed...so, um, okay, I'll do nothing then). The funniest part is I don't even have an ebay account.

I've gotten those, too. If you click on the link in the E-Mail, you wind up at a site that looks like eBay... unless you look at address in your address bar (the typical address of the scam site starts with flowerkisses or something like that). If you enter in your account info, the folks running the scam site have your eBay login info and can buy things on your PayPal account.

Unfortunately for the person sending out the E-Mails, they don't know English grammer or how to spell. That kind of raises one's suspicion (unless, of course, the person receiving the E-Mail can't spell or write any better than the scammer).

Never use the links included in the E-Mails you might receive to access any of your accounts. You're better off going to the home page and winding your way through to find what you need. If you do use the links in an E-Mail, make sure you check the address to be sure you wound up where you expected.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

If you do use the links in an E-Mail, make sure you check the address to be sure you wound up where you expected.

That might not even be safe depending. There was a joke news article making the rounds not that long ago about the Canadian government arresting GWB jr. for war crimes when he got off a plane in Canada on a visit. It was mocked up to look like the CNN site and the URL was even for a cnn-world.com, so unless you knew that the real URL doesn't include the word world you may not have even caught it based off of that.

 

[Moonbear]

That might not even be safe depending. There was a joke news article making the rounds not that long ago about the Canadian government arresting GWB jr. for war crimes when he got off a plane in Canada on a visit. It was mocked up to look like the CNN site and the URL was even for a cnn-world.com, so unless you knew that the real URL doesn't include the word world you may not have even caught it based off of that.

Is it also true that newer versions of IE (or maye it's some other browser) allow character substitutions in the address that you wouldn't see? For example, using a different code for the letter b in an address that still looks like a b in the address bar, but it really a different web site. I thought I read something about that being a concern that unless you type the address by hand, you still might not be at the site you think you're at if you just click a link.

 

[Chronos]

I got the king of scams for you:

One time, our family business received a fax from a law office saying that someone had died and that, since no immediate relatives were around to collect the inheritance (something like a quarter of a billion dollars), their research indicated that our family was due the money. All we had to do was fly out to Nigeria ( ) and do up the paperwork. The letter explained the business interests of said deceased person were in Nigeria.

Anyway, I tossed it, figuring it was bogus (which it turned out to be).

We found out later that one person who'd received this fax actually flew over there to collect his money...and was promptly kidnapped and held for ransom! Apparently, these people were targetting US business owning families in the hope of luring in someone rich enough to pay a good ransom.

$$\infty$$

The Rev

Talk about stupid. It had to be inherited money cause nobody could possibly be that dumb without genetic assistance.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Is it also true that newer versions of IE (or maye it's some other browser) allow character substitutions in the address that you wouldn't see? For example, using a different code for the letter b in an address that still looks like a b in the address bar, but it really a different web site. I thought I read something about that being a concern that unless you type the address by hand, you still might not be at the site you think you're at if you just click a link.

I haven't heard of that myself. I don't think there would be a way to misrepresent a link in that fashion. At the same time with the way everyone seems to want to make all of their programs look pretty I could see where they might have made an adress bar where that could be possible.
I tried looking it up on google but haven't been able to figure out what to type in that will even get me to the subject of bad links.

 

[Moonbear]

I haven't heard of that myself. I don't think there would be a way to misrepresent a link in that fashion. At the same time with the way everyone seems to want to make all of their programs look pretty I could see where they might have made an adress bar where that could be possible.
I tried looking it up on google but haven't been able to figure out what to type in that will even get me to the subject of bad links.

Yeah, I don't really know if it's true; that's why I phrased it as a question. I thought I read it somewhere, but it could have just been someone talking who doesn't know what they're talking about. I have no idea how to verify it unless one of the more techie types around here knows more about this.

 

[JamesU]

Y am I the only one who's never been scammed?

The biggest "scam" that ever happened to me was at wal-mart. This cashier said that the price was $80. What she was too stupid to know was that there was the little screen that told you the price, it said $65! When we told her, she replied with a simple "oh". We left, and she went off to scam the next customer.