Improper offers, scams, phishing on CF?

[ValiantV]

Couple of days ago I received a private message on CF. (What? We have private messages here?!) It just asked "How are you doing?") or the like.

I checked the profile - and it looks spanking new and has zero posts.

Anybody else getting such stuff here?

[belizesailor]

Me too. Same message. Reported it.

[Pete7]

Rest assured the individual is now paying for his crime spending some time in the dungeons before being sentenced to hung, drawn and quartered, 17th Century style. The sentence for a spamming on CF being decided prior to any trial, indeed North Korea probably has a more liberal justice system.

He won't be back.

[hellosailor]

Ah, guys?

You might want to check the user control panel and really READ all the options. There are a couple to allow private messaging from everyone, versus admins, versus people you've already flagged as contacts/friends.

No perfect solutions, but an awful lot of options scattered around in there.

[belizesailor]

Its the only SPAM PM Ive ever gotten on CF so not a big deal really...aparently the barbaric punishment system has a deterent effect.

[Eagleray]

Hi All,
The other day we were trying to find spares for our hatches as a couple need either the seals or the lens replacing. We were looking at this site Sale of spare parts for boat - International Boat Spares which had the parts required but when you look at their contact details they say their address is France but their phone number is for Mauritius. Has anyone used them for parts?

[Sailorman Ed]

In 2016 I ordered some Griot handles from them ( great price) , parts received as ordered, came by French mail, quite quickly. No issues.
Ed

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Pete7

Rest assured the individual is now paying for his crime spending some time in the dungeons before being sentenced to hung, drawn and quartered, 17th Century style. The sentence for a spamming on CF being decided prior to any trial, indeed North Korea probably has a more liberal justice system.

He won't be back.

You’re being way too kind

I feel left out — I didn’t get a "How are you doing?” PM, but I did come across a clear spam posting which I reported. I never report normal users for anything, but I have no qualms at all about reporting spammers.

[hzcruiser]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

You’re being way too kind

I feel left out — I didn’t get a "How are you doing?” PM, but I did come across a clear spam posting which I reported. I never report normal users for anything, but I have no qualms at all about reporting spammers.

I can forward you mine if you want?

[a64pilot]

You guys might be surprised at how much spam is intercepted, deleted etc before you see it.
I know I was.

[CaptTom]

I'm not surprised. Back when the internet was young, and before the for-profit Ancestry.com bought up every genealogy-related property on the web, I set up a genealogical query system for a (gasp) volunteer-based network of sites. It's been out there ever since, never getting the traffic the for-profit sites do, but doing the job for the few remaining non-profit sites.

Sometime in the past couple of years, it started getting a barrage of spam. I had to dig up the ancient code and add some checks for common spam words, along with a Captcha challenge on data entry. Seems to have worked fairly well so far, but I don't think it'll be long before the spam houses figure out a way around that.

I played around with setting up a few WordPress blogs, and even with anti-spam extensions, those seem to be real spam magnets. I guess bloggers are considered pretty gullible.

Beyond the direct scams to the operators and users, spammers use forums and blogs to get their links Googled, improving the rankings of their own web sites.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by a64pilot

You guys might be surprised at how much spam is intercepted, deleted etc before you see it.
I know I was.

How much is manually spotted A64? I know you guys & gals work way too hard.

[a64pilot]

It seems sporadic.
Apparently skimmed credit card numbers, cell phones etc are the rage, and lately newer high end Japanese motorcycles at very good prices. Think you would get one

[Meacenas]

I just ran across this trick; I had to fill out a set of forms of a local branch of government (permits for building) so I googled it. The usual list of website choices popped up and I chose what I thought was the legitimate website for the branch. It looked very right. It had a welcome screen and a list of choices which I chose from. The next page asked for my name, (filled out) the next page asked for a phone number( filled that too) and the next page asked for an e-mail address to send official mail so I filled that out. Keep in mind, this all looked exactly as an official website would look. The next page had a link to a 'official' set of rules that would help me fill the rest of the forms out. I clicked it and was directed to ...a Chinese site selling clothing. Uh oh. So, I looked again at the address in the bar and saw that the wording for the address was correct, except for a '1' placed after the name and before the dot com. Two days later, my inbox was buried in junk mail addressed to me with my real name. Its obvious now, that the site was designed expressly to fool people into giving up information and that information is sold to whoever wants it. That was a month ago and I still get one or two pieces of junk mail every day. Thank gawd for spam filters. Still waiting for a phone call, but mercifully...none.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by Meacenas

I just ran across this trick; I had to fill out a set of forms of a local branch of government (permits for building) ...correct, except for a '1' placed after the name and before the dot com.

There was an early give away!


If it's any "branch of government" website and it ends in ".com" - it's 99.9% likely to be bogus. And I'd guess it probably didn't didn't start with "https://" either.



Always be suspicious and check the above before providing any information on a website.