New Spammer

[ihelpyou]

http://theportal.net/

Read the BS on that page. They think they are justifying their use of SPAM to send me and others email for 'their' clients. I'm sooo damn sick of spam. We must develop world-wide laws against this stuff. Do I look or act like the type of guy that wants to buy the domain.... ppcinc.net ?? That's what the latest spam email was selling me.

Losers and spammers are not wanted.

[Matt B]

Unbelievable.

Speaking of which, one of my clients just forwarded me a Top-Sites solicitation this morning. :mad:

One scam after another . . .

[ihelpyou]

Yes, topsites changed that email again. It's getting more serious sounding, etc. I'm very sure they are making a few bucks off of niave webmasters. I got another one yesterday.

Hard to believe Netscape/ODP cannot do something about it.

[chopsticks]

I hate spam myself, but I'd go absolutely insane if I let it bother me more than just the littlest bit. I'm always amazed at the amount of spam I get. (7+ years as a "webhead"; started making webpages back before Netscape's first beta! Only NCSA mosaic.... and the word 'eCommerce' hadn't been coined yet; we just called it 'selling $hit'). *heh*

My email address is at the bottom of a great many webpages, and has long ago been sold & resold to various CD compliations of 10 million address for $1.50.

I've found that utilizing spamcop.net PLUS yahoo!'s spam filtration offers me a "fairly" useful defense. (Sure, some comes through, but 70% is filtered).

***

Anyways, the SPAM that cracks me up the most is the solicitation for cash from some people claiming to be in NIGERIA. Please wire money to this account for such-n-such a political movement.

AMAZING!! But, what's really sad is that some poor suckers MUST be falling for it... or the avalance of SPAM wouldn't continue.

Ahhh. The joy of living in a world with soooo many simpletons.

(Simple people really do create problems for "the rest of us"; since many uneducated/uninitiated newbies on the web do actually get involved with businesses who contacted them through unsolicited mass mailings).

[ihelpyou]

Yes, those letters are annoying. Awhile ago they did arrest a few of those people. But they also said there are hundreds more where they came from. They obviously get the poor suckers falling for it otherwise they would not continue to take the risks involved with that type of fraud.

[scottiecl]

Yes, the Topsites letter seems very serious and reasonable at the same time. Only $5 for a "guaranteed listing".

I guarantee that it would take more money for them to eliminate the sites that don't pay up than $5. Are they really going to pick through the entire DMOZ dump and pick sites out? If so, then they wouldn't need the DMOZ dump at all.

[Blue]

Chopsticks,

In case you're interested, the FBI Internet Fraud Complaint Center (http://www1.ifccfbi.gov/index.asp) is trying to get a handle on the Nigerian letter. Here's a snippet from their 2001 statistics report:Internet auction fraud was by far the most reported offense, comprising 42.8% of referred complaints. Non-deliverable merchandise and payment account for 20.3% of complaints, and
Nigerian Letter fraud made up 15.5% of complaints. Credit/debit Card fraud and Confidence fraud (such as home improvement scams and multi-level marketing) round out the top five
categories of complaints referred to law enforcement during the year. Among those individuals who reported a dollar loss, the highest median dollar losses were found among Nigerian Letter
Scam ($5,575), Identity Theft ($3,000), and Investment fraud ($1,000) complainants.

[SusyQ]

Anyways, the SPAM that cracks me up the most is the solicitation for cash from some people claiming to be in NIGERIA. Please wire money to this account for such-n-such a political movement.

I not only received an email, but I also received a fax with a hand-written signature on it from these guys just this morning. Two different "Nigerian politicians"... pretty much the exact same letter. They are seeming to get more and more aggressive too. Maybe this means it's getting harder for some scammers and spammers to be making money... are people slowly waking up?

[chopsticks]

they screwed up by sending you a fax if you're in the USA.

(i didn't look at your profile before I hit reply... *d0h!* no i had to come back to edit it! i'm not sure, but i doubt that Canada has a similar consumer protection law in place... but maybe! I know Canada has strict regulations on police radar detectors... but I dunno about the fax-spam type regulation)

anyways, there isn't an anti-SPAM law. but there is an anti-FAX spam law. $50 per violation. (And, since they'll be sending out lots of faxes... that's lotsa money).

I'm not sure who to forward the fax-spam off to. (maybe the FCC?) but I do know it's illegal.... and unless they actually sent that fax via an international route (via satellite) the telephone records should be useful enough to initiate the trace.

[SusyQ]

faxing runs rampant in the States and Canada... which is why we get our faxes through our email. I would say that 90% of incoming faxes are ads. In Canada though it's pretty much legal, as long as you fax between 7am and 8pm (I think). *Sigh*... just another form of spam...