Category: Spam

The Most Common Spam Messages

Brooklands Radio gets several hundred spam and scam messages per week and below are the most common in one month:

  1. People selling drones. Scammers seem to love claiming to sell these. Most have no products – they just take your money.
  2. People selling electric scooters and electric bikes – some are genuine sellers looking for gullible clients who wont realise they can buy the same products much more cheaply elsewhere.
  3. The ‘Married Women – have an Affair’ scam which is actually targeted at men.
  4. Dating sites – also targeted at men.
  5. Website builders, SEO offerings, social media management etc. – It seems that half the population of India want to offer website based services online such as website design, SEO services, social media management etc. Probably many are genuine idiots thinking they can get rich from these schemes and likely have little idea of what they are doing. The rest are scammers who believe they can con people confused by technology.
  6. Music submissions. It makes sense for aspiring artists and publicity companies to send demos to radio stations. But like most local radio stations, Brooklands Radio is only interested in budding artists who are local – rather than on the other side of the planet as so many seem to be.
  7. Phishing emails – trying to get your private information or login/password
  8. Malware messages – an attachment of some kind that is loaded with malware if the recipient is dumb enough to open it
  9. Pathetic stories of magic answers to diabetes or massive weight loss with no effort etc. – the scammers aim is just to get you to click a link to watch a video and they are paid for each of those clicks.
  10. Shed building. For some reason there are still lots of these emails offering free plans for building sheds. Who cares?

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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Time-Wasters Update

Yet another phishing email trying to get the radio station login and password. This one claims to be from Brooklands Radio Portal System and says our password has expired and needs to renewed by clicking on the link. But the email is from ki550354122321 which is not the radio station. Never click on such links.

For a while there were numerous HSBC phishing emails every day claiming that our account was going to be suspended unless we clicked a link to confirm it. Now they’ve changed to be the same emails but for TSB bank instead.  A pathetic scam.

Yippee I’ve won a £500 Ryanair voucher. On further reading it appears that I am one of three people of which one is guaranteed to have won the voucher. The email names the other two people which would be breaking data protection rules of course. But there is no voucher – it’s just a phishing message. If I click the link to accept then it asks for personal information – name, date of birth, address contact numbers etc. – all stuff the scammer can sell to other criminals. I wont be clicking any links.

Important – Your Account is Temporarily Under Review”. That’s an email from ‘Santander’ but is an obvious scam message as the sender is actually approvedoilservicesbranch.com which is clearly not Santander bank. The message tells me to click the link to have my account released. No thanks as it doesn’t exist.

‘Mrs Mavis’ wants to donate millions of dollars to 5 randomly chosen people. It specifies a donation code – as if it meant something.  With only 5 donations to give you don’t really need an eight digit donation code. Stupid scammer. The surname of Mrs Mavis is wanczyk and the sending email address is rack.bg so you can guess what was on that scammer’s mind.

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Spamnesty Sharon

Spamnesty at https://spa.mnesty.com/ is a website for creating automated responses to scam and spam messages.

Below is a summary of one such thread of messages generated by spamnesty and the scammer’s replies.

The original scam message is a typical 419 scam – the sender offers the contents of a bank account belonging to someone known to the recipient and there is an odd story about why the recipient is the only who can get the money before the bank shuts down the account. That message is in German.

Spamnesty replies with a computer generated random response

‘Hello,
I talked to my colleagues about this but they seemed to have some apprehensions; namely, they’re worried that the offer isn’t fleshed out enough. Would you be able to go into more detail about exactly how this would be structured?’

As that reply is in English, the scammer switches to English as well.

‘aloha

what is your age?

Where do U now?

I need to consummate talks

I am alone chief 31 y.o. Lady born in Russia’

A strange response by the scammer who seems to have moved onto a romance scam instead of the 419 scam.

Scamnesty replies

‘Hello,
We need more details from you. My colleagues are worried that the offer isn’t fleshed out enough. Could you explain more about exactly how this would be structured?’

Next the scammer switches back to pages of details about the supposed fortune left in a bank account and offers to split the fortune 50:50.

Scamnesty sends a reply

‘Hi, Great, thanks. Could we have a short call to discuss the specifics? What are your contact details? Also, what is your pricing model like?’

The scammer seems to be confused again and sends another strange romance message with excerpts in French this time

‘Bonzur My:-) Let’s smooth small talk!
could we speak?
Where do You stay now?’

Another reply from Scamnesty and the scammer changes to German, then Russian and then Ukrainian and changes tack to offering website design services.

All very confusing, but it was Scamnesty that wasted the scammers time and the scammer got nothing from the exchanges.

Well done Spamnesty

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

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Spam Email Statistics

Around 30 billion emails are sent each day and about half of those are spam in some form.

It is estimated that spam costs businesses many billions of dollars every year in time wasted, security systems, overloaded email boxes and more.

This waste is likely to keep rising as more and more spam is sent and more time is wasted.

About 80% of all spam in North America and Europe is sent by the same roughly 100 spam gangs.

The 100 most active spam operations comprise of around 200-300 individuals who are responsible for the bulk of all spam emails sent around the world. Spamhaus’ Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) documents the names, aliases, and other details of the operations run by these so-called “spam gangs.”

Phishing Targets

Apple IDs are the most popular target of phishing emails, then Microsoft Outlook, Google, Paypal, LinkedIn and many others.

The most common type of phishing scam is the fake invoice and the message tells you to click a link to retrieve some necessary document. That link takes you to a fake web page asking for login details.

Also commonly used are fake orders, payments, problems that must be rectified, special offers and many more.

Always beware of any message that could be a phishing attempt and never click on a link in an unsolicited email

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Stupidest Spam of the Week German Spam

You have probably had spam messages claiming to be from the company “1 and 1” asking for your login and password, or telling you must confirm your email details or you need to change your payment method etc.

If you’re a website owner then you probably have heard of 1 and 1 as a web site hosting business, but otherwise it’s likely to be unknown.

These phishing emails are very common.

The latest one is in German which means the scammer is very lazy – sending German messages to a .co.uk address is pretty dumb.

The German text is then hidden under pictures with English text on top. The pictures are about confirming your email address and there are dozens of links in the mail which point to www. rockersandmore .com which is obviously not the 1 and 1 company.

There is a section copied from genuine 1 and 1 emails, including a photo of the CEO.

Then some more German text followed by a picture of a picturesque German village then the message turns into a travel advert with lots of pictures and text about holiday homes available.

Perhaps the scammer also rents out holiday homes or maybe it’s just random content to fool the anti-spam filters at the email providers.

Ridiculous.

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Disposable Email Addresses

Using disposable email addresses can be a good way to deal with people who send you lots of spam emails.

You create a new disposable email address each time you need to sign up for some online service or to download a document etc. – any time where you don’t really want to use that service more than a few times or suspect they may sell your email address to spammers.

Any messages sent to the disposable email address will be automatically forwarded to your proper email address. The big advantage is that if that service starts sending you unwanted spam messages then you simply delete the disposable address.

Yahoo

With Yahoo you can create endless disposable address based on your real address, but hiding it.

e.g. if my email address is fred.flintstone @yahoo.com then I can choose to create, for example

fredff900golfclub @yahoo.com and fredff900subscriptions @yahoo.com and fredff900sales @yahoo.com and so on without limit.

Other Email Service Providers

Guerrilla Mail  (https://www.guerrillamail.com/)

They say “Avoid spam and stay safe – use a disposable email address! So far we’ve processed 12,634,091,283 emails keeping your real inbox safe and clean (59400 emails going in / hour)”.

It is a well used service and protects a lot email users against spam and it’s free.

 

TrashMail (https://www.trash-mail.com/)

  • Disposable email service with all conventional mailbox functions!
  • NEW: Write email, forward and reply to any address!
  • SECURE: All data is encrypted with SSL!
  • FREE: All features still stay completely free!

Trashmail is a good free service.

Burner Mail (https://burnermail.io/)

Shield yourself with Burner Mail

“By using burner email addresses, you will never have to give out your personal email ever again. Instead, Burner Mail generates a unique and anonymous email for every service you sign up with, making it really hard for companies and advertisers to track you online.”

These and other similar services can be useful in the fight against spam emails. Keep your mailbox clear of unwanted messages.

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