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Master Baiter Joined: 23 Sep 2008 Posts: 236

Did the lad find my email address?

About 5 days ago, I set up a specific AIM name for here, similar to my forum name. 4 days ago, according to AOL, I received a scam email. I've never used this email anywhere else, I've never signed guestbooks with it, the only place that is was was here in my profile.

Quote:

by mailgate.internet.lu (Postfix) with SMTP id 0AC874CC245;
Sat, 28 Mar 2009 12:41:18 +0100 (CET)
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 2009 12:39:55 +0100
Received: from 41.207.221.140 by 195.218.0.91 INC_SMTP_SERVER 2.48; Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
From: [email protected]
Reply-To: [email protected]
X-Mailer: INCSMTP 2.48
Message-Id: 977386239-446445553-877923700@INC_SMTP_SERVER
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: [email protected]
Subject: From Adriane Niamke
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-AOL-IP: 195.218.0.131

Dearest one

I am writing to seek your partnership in the investment of my inheritance fund USD$17.5M from my late father who died mysteriously last year.
It was very evident that he was poisoned to death. In my culture, when a man dies, if he does not have a male child, the
brothers shares his property leaving both the wife and the daughters empty handed including the house they live in. This is
the exact case with me as I am the only
daughter of my father. I lost my mother when I was barely a year old and my father refused to re-marry another wife because
he felt solely responsible for my mother's death. This is so because he concentrated much on his businesses that he rarely
pays attention to domestic affairs. He
was always travelling taking care of his businesses that he did not notice when my mother took ill. He thought it was a minor
illness and was ignorant of this. My mother on her own resorted to self-medication.
It was not until the illness degenerated that my father took my mother to hospital where she was diagnosed to find out that
hypatitis had eaten deep into her blood stream. She didn't last long before she died. This happened when I was barely a year
old. Based on this, my father could not forgive himself easily because of it and said he was responsible for her death as he
could have saved her if only he had paid attention to the things at home rather than concentrating much on his businesses.

Despite all entreaties by friends and relatives, he refused to remarry but ensured that I had everything that I wanted. It
was as a result of this that he made me the next of kin to his fund deposit with the bank and stated that in the event of any
eventuality, I should have a direct
access to the fund only when I am 26 years of age otherwise, I should have a guardian/partner intercede on my behalf for the
release of the funds to me. Unfortunately, he died late last year and I am 22 years currently. This is why I have contacted
you to serve as a guardian to me and as my foreign partner for the investment of the fund overseas.
My uncles does not know about the fund because they had already taken my father's houses and other properties because I am a
girl and they said I do not have rights for any property. They have requested to have my father's bank papers but I simply
told them that I do not know where he kept them.
The younger brother took the house in the village while the houses in the town were sold out they shared the proceed they
got from the sale. Right now, I am in a hotel and do sincerely want to travel out of my country. This can only happen when I
have secured the release and transfer of the funds in the bank. This why it is important that we have a plan on the type of
lucrative business that we can invest the funds on.

I had at various times had discussions with the director of international remittance unit of the bank where my father
deposited the funds and I was assured that once, I have someone who would be willing to receive the funds on my behalf, they
shall commence all proceedings to effect the release and transfer of the funds into the person's designated account. Now,
that you have signified your interest to partner with me, it would only be very necessary if you contact the bank and request
for the release and transfer of my inheritance fund into your nominated account for the purpose of investment and to further
have me come over to your country to continue with my studies.

As soon as i receive your urgent reply indicating your intrest to sucessfuly transfer the money to your account i shall give
you more information concerening the transfer.
Waiting for your quick reply.

Yours sincerely

Miss Adriane Niamke

I am totally bemused by this. Anyone got any answers for me?

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:16 pm

I had the same thing happen to me. An email addy that I use only for my member name at this forum and for my sockpuppet over at LiveJournal got a scam email as one of the only emails it has ever gotten. I was amused by it also, and cpoypasted it into my fake gmail and responded to it. Might as well use it to my advantage if they are going to come to me, right? Laughing

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:17 pm

Hmmmmm.... your aol address is visible from the AIM link here (hover over the AIM icon and it can be seen). perhaps a lad is harvesting emails from here? either a very dimwitted lad, or a very clever one....

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:49 pm

Same thing happened to me when I setup my YIM for Eater.

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:04 pm

Rover is branching out...

Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 8:11 pm

I've had this happen on forums elsewhere, and I think I came to the same conclusion (IM address being harvested from public profile).

Course, it could also be that you're not the first owner of that email address, so it could have existed on someone's list already?

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 14

Do admin here use some protectoin against scraping bots?

I sugest http://www.bad-behavior.ioerror.us/
work fine on all my sites
just 2c

Master Baiter Joined: 23 Sep 2008 Posts: 236

It must be someone harvesting addresses. The same thing happened to me with an email set up specifically for roleplaying.

But you'd think that anyone harvesting emails from a scambaiting site, for the intention of scamming, must really be as thick as two short planks.

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:49 am

^or an organised party of fifth columnists Shocked

nah

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 14

Or keeping scumbaiters bussy, with few lads, and making real business away from our eyes?

Why everyone thinks that lads are so extreme stupid?

As I read more and more Safaris and other funny staff, just starting to ask myself "is this for real" sounds to good to be true. And we all know when something is to good to be true, its not...
I'm really sceptical that someone go for 20 days safari. They are keeping us bussy, some kind of lad syndicate, just pass us to lad in another country (or some kind of IP spuffing) because we only have IP for proof...
Maybe they to have their "joker" teams?

It is no rocket science to setup proxy server in those internet caffes? Is it?
Maybe they have proxy servers for "proof of concept"?
I'm just thinking laud.

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 12:47 pm

One of my baiting addresses was spammed within minutes of being created.
I seem to have invented one already on spammers' lists. Spam must have been bouncing until then.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 20 Aug 2008 Posts: 9

kingofserbia wrote:

Or keeping scumbaiters bussy, with few lads, and making real business away from our eyes?

If there were only a few lads, and they were better organized, I could see that being possible. But if you look at the catcher accounts, the sheer amount of scam mails that go out every day, and the various methods they use, indicates to me that it is unlikely.

I have been baiting from the same email account for 6 months now, if they were organized they would just ignore me, but they don't. I can't imagine that these 5 scammers I am working at the moment are all just sending me forms and constant reminders and requests for payments and verifying fake MTCNs just to keep ME busy.

Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 9:56 pm

Thinking about lads forming "joker" teams and setting up proxy servers in internet cafes for "proof of concept" reminded me of Mrs Tweedy in Chicken Run.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 30 Mar 2009 Posts: 14

Tigbitties wrote:

Thinking about lads forming "joker" teams and setting up proxy servers in internet cafes for "proof of concept" reminded me of Mrs Tweedy in Chicken Run.

Been long time since this movie, so maybe I forgott.

But, did they ?
As I think to remember...
They was oranised, they have plot and scheme...?

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 3:12 am

First post. I was inspired to sign-up from reading the epic Adamu thread. Within 24 hours of creating this new ID on Hotmail, I got my first scammer email. I deleted it, amused that the email-id lottery I'd "won", predated me creating the id!

Beyond that, they're woefully uninformed about Canadian lotteries - like that was a surprize to anyone.

I've since received a couple more scamming emails, one slightly different from the one I deleted and one completely different.

I too suspected right away that this site's new members might be getting harvested. I changed my email for this forum to an older one I've had for a long time. It **has not** itself received any scammer emails.

Interesting.

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 3:38 am

I've never received a 419 email at the address I used to sign up for this site.

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 6:26 am

Sorry to go off topic but was "chicken run" animated by the same guy that did "wallace and gromit" toons? or is it that it is a brit thing? I love wallace and gromit... hmmm.. a Feathers McGraw avitar is due....

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 6:47 am

Dorothy wrote:

I've never received a 419 email at the address I used to sign up for this site.

Neither have I. And the email addy I use for Eater is only used for Eater and one other site.

I do show my Skype and YIM IDs in my siggy. And nothing odd ever from them either.

As long as you don't count NN as odd. Wink

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 7:11 am

^^^

[girly] kisses [/girly]

Quote:

As long as you don't count NN as odd

Oddly enough NN is very subjective in PM's.

Perchance it was my oddness that resulted in NN blocking my subsequent PM's?

Wink

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 11:01 am

Dorothy wrote:

I've never received a 419 email at the address I used to sign up for this site.

I wonder if it's something that's started recently.

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 1:51 pm

No one's mentioned the possibility that it was just a lucky hit generated by a spamming program. You can get spam programs that will generate "likely" email addresses for domains using dictionaries of words and names. It's based on the theory that if I try to blindly email

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

and so on, I'm probably going to hit a few real email addresses.

Spammers don't always harvest or buy your email address, either. Unless your email address is something that looks like your cat sat on the keyboard, the chances a spamming program could "guess" it are pretty good.

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 2:17 pm

mrsbean wrote:

Unless your email address is something that looks like your cat sat on the keyboard, the chances a spamming program could "guess" it are pretty good.

The hotmail email id created to open my id here is a mixed up variation on the "Ishkabibble" id I'd chosen (someone legitimately has [email protected] already).

The scammer email hit within hours of me creating the email id. Given I made a point of coming up with something uncommon it surprized me it got hit right away.

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 4:35 pm

I don't know that I would say it's uncommon.

In fact, I did a Google search for "I should worry" and the word "gimlet", trying to figure out where your icon came from.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22I+should+worry%22+gimlet&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Look at the second result.

It contains a reference to "Isch Ka Bibble", a Yiddish song title. Lots of hits for "ishkabibble". Given the level of spelling prowess on the net, I'm guessing any jumbled version might produce hits, too.

If it's a decent email generator, it would probably do what a lot of password generators do. Use not only dictionary words but also pronounceable syllables, and possibly use variations on known, harvested email addresses. I suspect some marketing lists get created this way. A hundred to two hundred bucks can buy a CD of emails and marketing info, so that's within the reach of lads.

I'm not saying it's impossible it got harvested from here, but the chances of it being a deliberate thing to waste baiter time are so small they're not worth worrying over. Even if the astronomical possibility were true, it's still a scammer (or scammer employee if you prefer) who is having to waste time and resources talking to you, a person who is never going to pay up or pay off. If baiting were simply resulting in "successful" scammers having to hire a bunch of low level minions to come over here and deliberately tie up baiter time, that would still be a win to my way of thinking.

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 6:12 pm

My avatar was set up when I created the Eater id, but visible only for the first time after I first posted here (see above), yesterday.

Edit: 12 hours ago or so /edit.

The email id was listed on this site for less than a day - between the time I created it and used the new Hotmail ID I'd made for it moments before that, and me logging back in here the next morning to change to a different email id for this Eater account - guessing as much that it had been harvested.

There wasn't sufficient time for variations, or anyone to even know the account existed, outside Hotmail, Eater, and myself. I've used it for nothing else since the day I created it.

Seems to me IDs are getting harvested. I'd create a second id on here to try that out all over again but I saw somewhere that additional ids are discouraged.

I used the image in the public domain, available on Wikipedia (here) as an interesting tie in to origin of the name.

Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything on this topic. I'm surprised where the fuss is focusing itself, instead of where I would have expected it to be.

Posted: Fri Apr 03, 2009 6:57 pm

Ishkabibble are trying to say, that the email address I have listed for my Eater account, that I used to sign up here and at SW, and nowhere else, and it not plainly listed for anyone to see or have access to (except Mods/Admins), is opened up to being harvested?

I am not arguing at all, I am just trying to understand where you believe someone got your email addy from if not by the examples noted by the lovely msbean.

Even if someone clicked on the the email button on my siggy, they wouldn't have access to my actual address. My understanding it is forwarded to me without the person sending it getting my actually addy.

I might have to play around with this and see. Very Happy

[girlykiss] Kate [girlykiss]

If NN doesn't appreciate your PM oddness, I am sure there are many mods that would. Wink

And I am sure a certain romance guru of woo.