Author Topic: SpammerScammer (Read 29,655 times)

Tinman57 · « **Reply #25 on:** September 18, 2012, 11:49 PM »

Most all ISP's provide configurable anti-spam tools. If you haven't "tweaked" it, then it's still set at the ISP default settings, which is normally pretty strict. You can also add addresses to a white list within these configurations.

40hz · « **Reply #26 on:** September 19, 2012, 12:43 AM »

Quote from: Tinman57 on September 18, 2012, 11:45 PM

Quote from: kyrathaba on September 18, 2012, 12:00 AM
Speaking of spam, anyone had trouble with spam text-messages being sent to your cell #? If so, were you able to make it stop and how?

It's illegal for marketers to contact mobile phones. You can file a complaint here:
http://www.fcc.gov/complaints

That's USA only last I heard.

kyrathaba · « **Reply #27 on:** September 19, 2012, 01:37 AM »

These aggravating text-messages all come from the same number, 323-284-2743. They all start with "Alert:" and then there follows some brief message...

... "Luke B. requested Nintendo 64 w/ games & accessories near Kansas City, MO."

or

..."Lucas requested Junk Car near Lawrence, KS."

and the text-messages each end with "Can you help?"

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #28 on:** September 19, 2012, 10:14 PM »

Update: Still no activity and/or top-level blocked, from that site to my test email, so I rate it as a dud.

Tinman57 · « **Reply #29 on:** September 20, 2012, 12:39 AM »

Quote from: 40hz on September 19, 2012, 12:43 AM

Quote from: Tinman57 on September 18, 2012, 11:45 PM
Quote from: kyrathaba on September 18, 2012, 12:00 AM
Speaking of spam, anyone had trouble with spam text-messages being sent to your cell #? If so, were you able to make it stop and how?

It's illegal for marketers to contact mobile phones. You can file a complaint here:
http://www.fcc.gov/complaints

That's USA only last I heard.

I don't know about other countries, the fcc.gov address is for the USA obviously.

Webpirate · « **Reply #30 on:** September 23, 2012, 04:29 AM »

The service is not really setup for spammers. As the name says its a scammer spammer setup for the Nigerian scammers with scams like send your drivers license and $235 to Abdulscamner@live.com to have your $25 million dollars sent by ATM card. While some of the scammerspammer emails end up in the trash can a scammer afford to not check everyone, even the ones in the spam box? That's 3000 - 5000 emails to sort through in the hopes that one person sent his personal information. As I said before its not ment for emails like "check out our new Viagra" or "Canadian pharmacy"....

Also: I have to verify and approve every email address submitted because people were abusing the system, but I also increased the number of emails sent and change ipaddresses every 3 days

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #31 on:** September 23, 2012, 05:13 AM »

Quote from: Webpirate on September 23, 2012, 04:29 AM

The service is not really setup for spammers. As the name says its a scammer spammer setup for the Nigerian scammers with scams like send your drivers license and $235 to Abdulscamner@live.com to have your $25 million dollars sent by ATM card. While some of the scammerspammer emails end up in the trash can a scammer afford to not check everyone, even the ones in the spam box? That's 3000 - 5000 emails to sort through in the hopes that one person sent his personal information. As I said before its not meant for emails like "check out our new Viagra" or "Canadian pharmacy"....

Also: I have to verify and approve every email address submitted because people were abusing the system, but I also increased the number of emails sent and change ipaddresses every 3 days

Are you the operator of this? I was curious and submitted one of my own emails as a test (generic yahoo account) and nothing resulted from it. Aka therefore a scammer with a yahoo account presumably wouldn't see anything either.

Webpirate · « **Reply #32 on:** September 23, 2012, 05:42 AM »

Try is now with subject test123 and I will approve it

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #33 on:** September 23, 2012, 08:54 AM »

Quote from: Webpirate on September 23, 2012, 05:42 AM

Try is now with subject test123 and I will approve it

Okay, I resent my test. But only run it for a minute or two and turn it off again. All I wanted to see was the concept. I still need that email for other obscure uses. : )

SeraphimLabs · « **Reply #34 on:** September 23, 2012, 02:32 PM »

Quote from: Webpirate on September 23, 2012, 04:29 AM

The service is not really setup for spammers. As the name says its a scammer spammer setup for the Nigerian scammers with scams like send your drivers license and $235 to Abdulscamner@live.com to have your $25 million dollars sent by ATM card. While some of the scammerspammer emails end up in the trash can a scammer afford to not check everyone, even the ones in the spam box? That's 3000 - 5000 emails to sort through in the hopes that one person sent his personal information. As I said before its not ment for emails like "check out our new Viagra" or "Canadian pharmacy"....

Also: I have to verify and approve every email address submitted because people were abusing the system, but I also increased the number of emails sent and change ipaddresses every 3 days

I am surprised your datacenter allows this. Getting IPs isn't cheap, and getting them blacklisted leaves them unavailable for other clients to use.

Good to know though that there is some manual intervention to prevent abuse. Because I could see trolls blasting the emails of people they don't like with this thing, and other phenomena.

Webpirate · « **Reply #35 on:** September 23, 2012, 03:00 PM »

Due to spyware and virii ip addresses are blacklisted on a day by day basis..meaning that if an ip if found to be sending lots if spam the ip will be blacklisted, but once with "infection" or spam is stopped the IP address will be automatically removed from the blacklist after a few days of non spamming..

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #36 on:** September 23, 2012, 04:27 PM »

Okay, that test came through, so your service makes a little more sense, though Seraphim is right that it's double edged.

It looked to me that unless I am a special case, it's the same 3 line phrase with a random 2 word leader grafted onto the front. Yahoo let about 10 of them through and the other 1800 landed in the Spam folder, so I'm not sure that helps your cause either, because 1800 of those already pre-sorted into the spam folder would leave the one real one in the spammer's inbox.

Okay, so I understand now, you can shut it off when you see this note.

f0dder · « **Reply #37 on:** September 23, 2012, 05:56 PM »

I think this service is a bad idea.

Even with the manual target check, it's open for abuse... and it will likely get the IPs you're sending from blacklisted. And I kinda doubt it will do much to combat spammers. Scambaiting (419eater.com style) is a much better idea - to seriously waste the scammers' time doing silly stuff.

Webpirate · « **Reply #38 on:** September 23, 2012, 06:37 PM »

The idea is that even with most of the emails from my service ending up in the spam box can a scammer really afford to delete all of them without checking them? Is there a chance that one of the ones in the spam box is real? And I do believe that the scammers would probably tell the spam filter to allow those emails with that subject line and/or part of it into the inbox... Example: if subject line is LIKE (scam subject) then allow it into the inbox.

The problem with baiting is that is assumes that everyone is hip to the scammers. Some people are plain old dumb to email scams and fall for them..ask my aunt she ALMOST fell for one...which is why I believe it is better for the scammer to abandon the email address and have to start from scratch, this way if there is a potential victim's email in the mailbox it will most likely get lost in tr shuffle.

But here is a better idea: we can do both...those who have time to sit around baiting the scammers can do that and this who just want to annoy the scammers can use my service...after all its free....I pay for everything myself...

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #39 on:** September 23, 2012, 06:46 PM »

Yes, the scammer can afford to ignore the spam-caught ones, because "throwing the email away" is just ad bad. So all he has to do is look at the ones that didn't get spam tossed. I'm presuming the email filters would see the one "bait" mail come through looking way different and let it live.

But not counting that the scammers seem to be pretty dumb, if they had any brains they'd do a word search on their email and they could for example see that "all 1842 of the mails have the phrase "shit out of luck" in them, therefore they can't be bait."

P.S. Did you turn off the engine on my account yet? : )

f0dder · « **Reply #40 on:** September 23, 2012, 07:11 PM »

Quote from: Webpirate on September 23, 2012, 06:37 PM

The problem with baiting is that is assumes that everyone is hip to the scammers. Some people are plain old dumb to email scams and fall for them..ask my aunt she ALMOST fell for one...which is why I believe it is better for the scammer to abandon the email address and have to start from scratch, this way if there is a potential victim's email in the mailbox it will most likely get lost in tr shuffle.

Tossing an email address and grabbing a new one takes a couple of minutes. The stuff scambaiters do can keep scammers occupied for a lot longer.

You've got your heart in the right place, but you're approaching the problem in a wrong way - and I'm still afraid it'll do more harm than good.

Tinman57 · « **Reply #41 on:** September 23, 2012, 11:50 PM »

Quote from: f0dder on September 23, 2012, 07:11 PM

Tossing an email address and grabbing a new one takes a couple of minutes. The stuff scambaiters do can keep scammers occupied for a lot longer.

You've got your heart in the right place, but you're approaching the problem in a wrong way - and I'm still afraid it'll do more harm than good.

A scammer tossing an email address and getting a new one means that all the possible "hits" to that scam will be lost and he has to start all over again from scratch. That's why they hang on to the email addresses as long as possible until someone shuts them down.

Webpirate · « **Reply #42 on:** September 23, 2012, 11:53 PM »

Tinman you are exactly right....that's the goal of my site...

Tinman57 · « **Reply #43 on:** September 24, 2012, 10:59 PM »

Quote from: Webpirate on September 23, 2012, 11:53 PM

Tinman you are exactly right....that's the goal of my site...

Which is exactly why I posted about this site on this forum. Now if we can just get some people to understand that it has nothing to do with spam. lol

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #44 on:** September 25, 2012, 04:57 PM »

Quote from: Webpirate on September 23, 2012, 04:29 AM

That's 3000 - 5000 emails to sort through in the hopes that one person sent his personal information.

The bogus email volume should be smaller/a believable size, and should contain auto-generated bogus personal information, which should make it a complete waste of time for the scammer. Especially if the Fuzz are alerted to watch for the personal info they're about to try using...

Tinman57 · « **Reply #45 on:** September 25, 2012, 11:40 PM »

Quote from: Stoic Joker on September 25, 2012, 04:57 PM

Quote from: Webpirate on September 23, 2012, 04:29 AM
That's 3000 - 5000 emails to sort through in the hopes that one person sent his personal information.

The bogus email volume should be smaller/a believable size, and should contain auto-generated bogus personal information, which should make it a complete waste of time for the scammer. Especially if the Fuzz are alerted to watch for the personal info they're about to try using...

A smaller volume of bogus emails would defeat the purpose, which is to overwhelm the scammer and force him to give up on that particular scam and start all over with a new return email address.

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #46 on:** September 26, 2012, 12:21 PM »

Quote from: Tinman57 on September 25, 2012, 11:40 PM

Quote from: Stoic Joker on September 25, 2012, 04:57 PM
Quote from: Webpirate on September 23, 2012, 04:29 AM
That's 3000 - 5000 emails to sort through in the hopes that one person sent his personal information.

The bogus email volume should be smaller/a believable size, and should contain auto-generated bogus personal information, which should make it a complete waste of time for the scammer. Especially if the Fuzz are alerted to watch for the personal info they're about to try using...

A smaller volume of bogus emails would defeat the purpose, which is to overwhelm the scammer and force him to give up on that particular scam and start all over with a new return email address.

With a large volume of misc. mail, they know they're being attacked. But with a small volume of valid looking garbage data they're being toyed with in a cat and mouse fashion. Think about it. Their 'product' is bulk quantities of stolen identities. If their 'product' can be tainted...so will their reputation be. Making them a paria to their buyers.

It's like giving them a full clip of blank ammo in the middle of a fire fight.

Webpirate · « **Reply #47 on:** September 26, 2012, 03:39 PM »

If you have free long distance call [REDACTED] and fill up the mailbox. It is a scammer phone number. Don't forget to block your caller id. The goal is to fill up the mail box so no real victims get through

f0dder · « **Reply #48 on:** September 26, 2012, 04:09 PM »

Quote from: Webpirate on September 26, 2012, 03:39 PM

If you have free long distance call redacted and fill up the mailbox. It is a scammer phone number. Don't forget to block your caller id. The goal is to fill up the mail box so no real victims get through

So now DoCo is a DDOS service?

mouser · « **Reply #49 on:** September 26, 2012, 04:13 PM »

As much as it might be justified to call and harass spammers into stopping, and as evil as spammers are, we can't be posting people's phone numbers or emails on this forum, sorry.