Spammers must think we are as stupid as they are!

[n4gix 4,968]

At least I do know how to spell "Comcast"...

Quote

Dear Valid User,

 

Your 28 incoming Mail Were Placed On Pending Status Due To Our Last Recent Update To Our Terms .. In order To Receive The Messages  ...

 

Update Here To  Login And Wait For A Response..

 

THANK YOU 

Corncast..

 

[beechcaptain 118]

Amazing lack of grammar and spelling competency.  These days, it is usually quite easy to spot spam content with very minimal effort.

Solidifies my thoughts that it is time to go off grid and get back to the basics.

[charliearon 3,079]

Can I have your credit card info, please Bill?  SSN, driver's licence number and date of birth?

[Bob Scott 7,776]

With service like that, I think I'd downgrade my rating of Corncast to just two cobs...

[johnbow72 2,722]

Corncast.. that must be where the infamous "Corn Pop" works now . 🧒😃

 

 

 

[Freo 83]

I wonder if they have any idea just how corny that whole message sounds !

[pete_auau 1,174]

Banks  should  have  a system that   anything  over  a  certain  amount  cant  be  transferred with out approval

[jcomm 6,068]

E-Mail is one of the most used sources of Spam / Phishing, and although we have made campains and often instruct our users on how to deal with suspicious messages, some forms of attack are really sophisticated...

I recall the Emotet attacks back in 2020. The messages received by various users contained not only meaningful subjects, but the bodies of the messages were actually composed out of actual messages those users had exchanged in the past with some of their usual interlocutors 😕 In between the lines there were links that were easy to fool even some of the more careful users.

Recently we had a campaign of phone calls from "MS Support", offering support... asking for personal and / or institutional data, etc....

Sometimes it really get's tricky, and this is just what we see... Just imagine what we don't ....

 

Edited October 9, 2021 by jcomm

[stans 725]

My mom fell for the "MicroSoft has detected malware on your computer" scam.  She lost an undisclosed amount of money paying a "MicroSoft Support" dude to unlock her computer.

I fell for the scam that claimed Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows from MicroSoft.  Windows 11 is here, don't I feel like the fool.

Edited October 9, 2021 by stans

[jcomm 6,068]

29 minutes ago, stans said:

I fell for the scam that claimed Windows 10 would be the last version of Windows from MicroSoft.  Windows 11 is here, don't I feel like the fool.

🤣🤣

[W2DR 1,866]

Corncast indeed....  72 HOURS W NO SLEEP VLOG - CornCast - YouTube  .

[Murmur 3,977]

17 hours ago, n4gix said:

At least I do know how to spell "Comcast"...

Despite common misconception, spammers are actually quite smart, because there is indeed a very rational reason for them to write "dumb" emails. From the book "Think Like a Freak" (in this case they talk about the Nigerian fraud, but it's applicable to all online scams):

"If the scammers are so dumb and their letters so obviously a scam, how could they be successful? [...]

[The Internet] makes it easy to obtain a huge batch of e-mail addresses and instantaneously send out millions of bait letters. So the cost of contacting potential victims is incredibly low. But converting a potential victim into a real one will require a good deal of time and effort—typically a long series of e-mails, perhaps some phone calls, and ultimately the bank paperwork. Let’s say for every 10,000 scam e-mails you send, 100 people take the initial bait and write back. The 9,900 who trashed your e-mail haven’t cost you anything. But now you start to invest significantly in those 100 potential victims. For every one of them who wises up or gets scared off or simply loses interest, your profit margin decreases. How many of these 100 will end up actually paying you? Let’s say one of them goes all the way. The other 99 are, in the parlance of statistics, false positives. [...]

So how can a Nigerian scammer minimize his false positives? Herley used his mathematical and computing skills to model this question. Along the way, he identified the most valuable characteristic in a potential victim: gullibility. After all, who else but a supremely gullible person would send thousands of dollars to a faraway stranger based on a kooky letter about some misbegotten fortune? How can a Nigerian scammer tell, just by looking at thousands of e-mail addresses, who is gullible and who is not? He can’t. Gullibility is in this case an unobservable trait. But, Herley realized, the scammer can invite the gullible people to reveal themselves. How? By sending out such a ridiculous letter—including prominent mentions of Nigeria—that only a gullible person would take it seriously. Anyone with an ounce of sense or experience would immediately trash an e-mail like this. “The scammer wants to find the guy who hasn’t heard of it,” Herley says. “Anybody who doesn’t fall off their chair laughing is exactly who he wants to talk to.” [...]

Those who are fooled for a while but then figure it out, or who balk at the last hurdle, are precisely the expensive false positives that the scammer must deter.” If your first instinct was to think that Nigerian scammers are stupid, perhaps you have been convinced, as Cormac Herley was, that this is exactly the kind of stupid we should all aspire to be. Their ridiculous e-mails are in fact quite brilliant at getting the scammers’ massive garden to weed itself"

 

[overspeed3 410]

 

 Apparently, there are still legions of victims out there - who are not necessary stupid, but are very gullible.  The core of the scam is that people think they will get a bargain, or else something for nothing, i.e free coupons, free lunch, vacations, etc.    Proof is, scammers are still making a really good living via scams and ID theft - and they employ untold hundreds of people around the globe to do their bidding in return for a small daily wage.  It does not seem to matter how many scam horrors stories there are, or anecdotes they hear about  - victims just do not believe they will be taken in...  

My advice:

1) If you get a call that sounds a little dicey, ALWAYS get a name and a phone number, and request to call them back!                      2) If someone claims they are from the "government", ask for their name and badge # and, perhaps see my #1 advice.

   But be warned -sometimes scammers spoof telephone numbers to appear to be from a government agency, or legit business - so verify that number from another source...                    

          

 

 

                       

 

 

 

 

[stans 725]

It was about an hour after posting here that I received a text message.  The message was from a bank claiming they had detected suspicious activity in my account and my account was now limited, go to the link provided to confirm.  Odd, I don't have an account with that particular bank, so I went to that bank's website.  On their main page is a warning about emails and texts purporting to be from them and to not call any phone number or go to any website contained in the message.

[W2DR 1,866]

I see this bank stuff all the time. Both myself and my wife get similar e-mails all the time from three banks we've never done business with. A new one came a few days ago though. My Amazon account has been locked. Just after I ordered a $3127 Apple computer. All I need to do to fix it though is give them my Amazon log-on and Prime account information and they will promptly reverse the charges. What great service.