Are lads now using Gmail to scam from?

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Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 12:41 am

OK, so I opened up a shiny new Gmail account to use as a catcher account and seeded some guestbooks. Within 24 hours I had 3 emails with just the sort of potential I need for a new modality I am working on.
Only one minor problem; all 3 of the email come from Gmail accounts. I don't like not knowing where my pets are, they really cannot be trusted.
Is this a new trend the lads are leaning toward or did I just get some bad luck?

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 12:51 am

If you're sure it's a scam it's not much of a problem more of an inconvenience..

There will be the usual tell tale signs if it's Nigeria. Business as usual is my guess.

I've had a couple myself. Damn Google for taking away the invite criteria.

One thing I thought of though is a few scammers have accused us of being 'gmail jokers' so a new modality could be to reply that you have heard there are a lot of scam artists using gmail so you can't deal with them unless they have a trusted Yahoo account. Rolling Eyes

i

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 1:44 am

I have one lad using gmail. I was talking to him for a week before I realized it. He's such a little bastard too...for some reason I think he might own the internet cafe. But I was surprised when I saw he was using gmail. He's in Benin according to him and the recipient info for WU.

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 1:56 am

Yup, all of the sudden i am also receiving Gmail emails. However doesnt the "phising email" option of Gmail make things better? One of us does it and whoever reads another email will be automatically warned "this email might not be of the person who it claims to be" by GMAIL.

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 1:57 am

Guys, I believe readnotify.com will solve that problem. Sign up for a free service for a couple weeks. I don't think that gmail gets past that. I tried it on myself one time, and I believe it gave my location. I hope I am not mistaken...

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 2:00 am

U mean there is a way for lads to figure out our location too?! Shocked

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 2:23 am

Yes, they can. I just checked...

Austell, Georgia, United States (81% likelihood)

Really close to where I am right now. So, that is the deal. You have the tools now to track your gmail lad. T

hey also have the ability to track you. The lesson? IP protection means nothing. If your mugu is smart enough to even know what an IP is, then he probably could be savvy enough to find something like readnotify. What does that mean? Nothing. So what if they can track your IP. Not the end of the world by any means. Sometimes I use an account that hids my IP, others I don't. I have done some pretty mean things to lads, but never once had a mugu track me down.

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 2:47 am

@Yakuza

Funny this topic has come up because I went through all these thoughts myself just a couple of days ago.

First of all you can relax about Gmail/Readnotify. Your IP is logged from an invisible remotely-hosted image linked from within the email, so if you use Gmail you won't get logged unless you choose to view images in the email, which is off by default. The image attachments are fine because they are contained within the email itself. On the flip side, Readnotify is unlikely to catch your lad's IP if he's using Gmail.

The other thing Readnotify does is send all kinds of MDNs and stuff by adding a bunch of headers, but they are hit and miss because it depends whether the mail reader at the other end honours any of those things, and they won't log any IP.

I ended up 'rolling my own' solution. I have a collection of remotely hosted images which I use for my innocent-looking email sigs, a unique one for each lad. When he opens the email it loads the image and the server logs all the info in the normal way - IP, timestamp etc. and it's completely transparent, unlike Readnotify which completely reformats the whole email and inserts all kinds of headers. On the face of it the email looks normal but under the skin it's a complete mess and even a cursory inspection will throw up red flags for your lad.

There is an excellent Firefox extension called Greasemonkey Multiple Signatures which lets me easily just click the lad's name to add his sig to the outgoing mail.

In conclusion, Readnotify is easy to use and does what it says on the tin, but you need to understand what's going on underneath. However, if you have a hosting account and a little technical knowledge I would recommend taking the time to set up something like I've done - I'll be happy to guide anyone through it, just pm me.

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 3:10 am

Hi. I'm new here, but this topic caught my attention.

Try www.ip-adress.com and see how close they come to your home. Should this be a cause for concern?

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 3:19 am

Quote:

On the flip side, Readnotify is unlikely to catch your lad's IP if he's using Gmail.

I have to disagree. It nailed my location and I am in some podunk town in GA right now. Seems more than chance. I am pretty sure it works quite well.

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 3:22 am

Do you load the images in your received emails though because that's what logs you. When I get an email which contains images, the message has a green border at the top with a link to load the images if I want to (which I never do).

EDIT: in Gmail go to Settings -> Contacts' pictures -> set it to 'Only show pictures that I've chosen for my contacts'

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 3:27 am

It's the ip question all over again Very Happy

I use gmail. Would I bait from a yahoo non- ip stripping account - yes.

99% of all Lads don't know an ip number exists and fewer know what it means. I did come across one who spotted I was baiting him twice by matching up the same ip numbers being used - a true computer guru, which was completely blown when he said he was going to do me harm in France - my baiting location, not my actual location. I let him bask in his own false aura of intellectual superiority as I laughed.

If I ever meet a Lad mutation who can use an ip locator I know it'll lead him to a place several hundred miles from where I live. Just because it is technically possible to find a way round some of the protection you use, doesn't make it unsafe to bait, or pointless to take those take those precautions.

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 3:45 am

Finbarr Saunders wrote:

Do you load the images in your received emails though because that's what logs you. When I get an email which contains images, the message has a green border at the top with a link to load the images if I want to (which I never do).

Mine are set as whatever the default is. I presume your mugu's account will be done the same. I woul never have thought to change that.

My point is, you CAN use readnotify to track your gmail mugu.

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 4:15 am

baitshack wrote:

Hi. I'm new here, but this topic caught my attention.

Try www.ip-adress.com and see how close they come to your home. Should this be a cause for concern?

YIKES! That nailed me down within a couple miles! Not that I'm too worried -- couple hundred thousand people in my city. It did show that my lad is in Nairobi, and tomorrow he's travelling to Accra, Ghana to meet me at the airport Laughing

, which is on the other side of Africa at least a couple hundred miles away, so if this works I might just qualify for my first safari!

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 9:30 am

baitshack wrote:

... see how close they come to your home.

Well they've missed me by about 14.5km [as the crow flies - much more if you take the designated roads]

Actually, when I zoom in on the map and Google Earth image, it places me in the middle of a Road with an abandoned Munitions Storage facility on one side and a High-security Prison on the other side.

Haha! Like to see them track me down. Razz

Baiting Guru Joined: 04 Jan 2006 Posts: 3193

As I said before ...
What readnotify reports: http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=835639#835639

and further down that topic, what the green banner looks like: http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=836629#836629

Not quite a Newb Joined: 31 Oct 2006 Posts: 63

I've had a few lads using gmail, one even talked to me threw google chat Smile

makes a change from yahoo IM

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 12:42 pm

I've probably run across 2 dozen or so lads using Gmail at least. A few of them got invites when that was done but now it's open to anyone Mad

and the lads have discovered it. I wish google had kept the invite.

Posted: Thu May 10, 2007 1:26 pm

If you really want to know where your lads are, just ask them where to send the WU transfer. Smile

Not quite a Newb Joined: 02 Jan 2006 Posts: 20

baitshack wrote:

Try www.ip-adress.com and see how close they come to your home. Should this be a cause for concern?

This one puts me two rather large states away from where I really am. It will only be a problem if you are sitting on top of your ISP's server and even then it will not be very precise. They would be better off looking up your ISP's address in the phone book.

Their Privacy Guard proxy is a very easy to setup and use affair though and works very well. Bit on the pricy side and a subscription though. It is worth a look.

419Eater is my life Joined: 23 Apr 2007 Posts: 377

Sidney wrote:

I don't like not knowing where my pets are, they really cannot be trusted.

So you trust them when you know where they are??

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