Stormbringer's Thunder

Sometimes, I feel that I'm remiss if I don't occasionally remind people to never give out personal information! Most of my readers are not only tasteful, but highly intelligent. (Then there are the atheopaths — go ahead and take advantage of the special offer in the next paragraph.) Ignore any e-mail that wants personal information or a "click here", especially if the requested information was (a) in your spam folder, (b) not from anyone you know, (c) sounds too good to be true. Still, a reminder now and then helps, yes? morgueFile/mconnors Aside from the bad grammar from someone who does not speaks good engrish, the scam looks a bit more convincing than others. By the way, f or the atheopaths who are upset that they missed out on my Wingless Chicken Bones franchise offers, take a break from your ongoing pointless mission to demonize people . Here's another great deal for you!  Please pay attention, the font and color changes are to offset my wording ...

Taking time out of my bus y schedule before Question Evolution Day . Do I really need to lecture you on the dangers of even responding to one of these, let alone, giving personal information? Good, I didn't think I did. But I couldn't help but high light some indicators that this is garbage. Just another public service from Stormbringer Productions. Corporate Finance <office@ibex-bank-management.com> t o undisclosed recipients Attn: Sir/Madam You have been issued payment notice of Ten Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars ($10.5M). The Zenith Bank will Programmed your fund($10.5M)into an ATM CARD, Powered By Master-Card/Visa card. The debit card can be used on any ATM machine/P.O.S (POINT OF SALES) all over the world, or you can go to your bank to off-load the funds. You are advised to re-confirm to us the below information or call me immediately on +234-802-213-2112 (1) Your Full-Name: (2) Your Physical address not PO...

And now for something completely different. Spammer listing: Another public service from Stormbringer Productions™. It's the evening before Thanksgiving in America. After all the turkey and things, perhaps the processed pork product that the unpleasantness in your e-mail is named after might sound like a nice change. If you want to get involved in fighting spam, there are two heavy-hitters. The first one I use extensively, it's " Knujon " ("No Junk" spelled backwards). Just register with them and then forward your e-mail. Read the details at the site. The second is more involved, but it is another aggressive, reputable opponent in the war on spam: Spamcop . I do not use it yet, but here's the link. Since Yahoo! AOL and other providers do not seem overly concerned with the spam that their customers receive, I take the extra step and report it, even though it's in my spam folder. When certain domains are reported enough times, they get blacklis...

Buona sera.  I received an e-mail from my old pal Joshua James. And then he sent me "2nd Attempt" e-mail. It certainly is nice that he's persistent. He probably knows me and I rudely forgot about him, because he actually addressed me by name on one of my accounts where I conduct legitimate business. Let's see... what are the problem areas? Trust has to be earned.  I learned from some of my associates this valuable lesson, that you don't give away too much trust too soon or you could end up taking a dirt nap, capice?  Trust your instinct a little, but give trust slowly. This cafone  hasn't done anything to earn my trust, since I never heard of the guy before. The only  thing going for it is that my name is there, but he could have bought it from another of my business contacts or subscriptions. Hotmail flagged it.  Sure, I get stuff flagged all the time. That's why I check the spam filter. I'm a member.  Of what? I didn't join anything. C...

Buona sera. Time for some thunder from Stormbringer! Yours truly performs a public service on occasion. Well, on many occasions. Anyway, I like to show scams and spam. Although most of my readers are perceptive, I still want to warn the general populace. Those that do not need to be warned can share my contempt for this loser. Scammers deserve to be exposed, capice? Nicky forwarded this e-mail that he received. We both wonder, how low can people go? -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Top Priority Mail; Read and Reply Date: Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:23:52 -0800 From: Rob Bingham <jbloom713@aol.com> Reply-To: <cpt.rob@blumail.org> Due to security reasons I have attached a business proposal that will yield huge benefits. Read the attached instruction and reply. letter from Bin.rob.html ...

Buona sera. Here's another public service from Stormbringer Productions. My burn phone received a text message from someone I do not know. I don't like that. It's a burn phone, for crying out loud, and I don't want  many people to have the number, capice?  Besides, this kind is a pay-per-minute thing. So, what to my wondering eyes did appear? A miniature message from 1-702-683-4036: "Today we can let you borrow 1000.00! Its easy and takes 5 minutes to get approved by a licensed lender-www.[fuggedaboudit].com." I got Hal the Hacker involved, and he saw that it came from a wireless caller in or near Las Vegas. (Also called "Lost Wages", and that's exactly what this jerk is trying to do to my wages.) As near as we can figure it, this bunch of spammers grab several burn phones, spam out text messages to send you to their Website. No need for them to worry about getting their accounts deleted, because their dirty work is done and they just move on ...

Buon giorno. I want to give a "heads up" to people who have Websites and Weblogs. Actually, there is something useful for anyone who likes to click on links they find on other people's sites.  I am probably one of the last to learn this, but perhaps this article will help someone anyway. Have you noticed an increase of visits to your Weblog in your "stats"? No, not the site counter stuff, those are somewhat reliable. I mean the strange sites, often ending in .ru, that "gave" you hundreds or thousands of referrals. I thought I had some foreigners really digging my stuff until I clicked on a few and found out that they were junk; there is no way a Russian "hot chicks" site is linking to my articles on Conservativism,  Biblical Archaeology, the follies of Atheism, screen capture tools, Firefox or whatever I'm doing. No way! It was disappointing to learn that those are not real referrals, but also explains why my site counter and s...

The same thing I've told you about before . They want to settle an estate in the UK, but do not even put my name in the e-mail. The headers indicate "Yahoo" for the mailer, not what is written in the letter. Nothing wrong with Yahoo Mail, but established legal firms do not use free Web mail services. For people who are not regular readers, this is a scam. If you get a letter like this, delete it. What is funny is at the very end, they have the "misuse of this letter may be illegal" tag line, when the entire thing that was sent to me is illegal. Ha!   I put in extra line breaks to make the letter fit: From: Mrs Kathy McGowan AGGS Consultants Service Ltd. This is a confidential message from AGGS Consultants: private consulting firm in London,  United Kingdom. I have been directed to contact you with regards to ongoing investigations involving a  deceased client of Royal Bank of Scotland. The client, who shared the same last name with you,  died intestate so...

This just in. Yes, you must think I'm stupid. Probably because some people fall for this kind of crap. This has been reported, but I'm going to show the world the kind of thing that they can get in their Inbox. My readers are bright and will not fall for it. Perhaps someone less skilled in the Internet will need and heed the warning from this spammer scammer. By the way, the domains are "HK (Hong Kong), but the headers show China. Admittedly, they can all be faked. Trust no one like this. Here is the letter: Attn! I am writing you again because I presume our first correspondence was not successful. I have a mutual business project to transfer huge amount of money from my bank here to you based on a properly planned out strategy. This fund is deposit by Mr. Irshad Ahmad, Pakistani who died under some incomprehensible circumstances in Afghanistan. I will appreciate if you consider this project objective without any bias or stereotypes. Once we have successfully c...

Addendum: When I wrote this, I thought I was being original with the title. It turns out that the name is in use commercially. Oops! One real company has a product to filter your spam, and uses the "Spam-O-Matic" name . To be clear, I wrote about a product that contributes to the spam problem and is totally different . Sorry for any confusion.  Buon giorno . For years, I've been telling people in person, through e-mail and in my Weblog that they should "clean up" e-mail messages before they forward them. Not only as a courtesy to their readers (we often have to scroll though a load of crap before we finally find the message two thirds of the way down), but to cut down on spamming. "How do personal messages forwarded with e-mails add to spamming, Cowboy Bob?" I knew you couldn't resist asking. Here's a letter that I got from a company, asking me to review a spammer's tool: Dear Bob, May I ask you to write a review for Jet...

Buona sera. I've been showing you scams and such to give you a warning, and to expose the losers that are doing it. Now I've decided to show you what a real one looks like. Naturally, I'll delete all of the pertinent information. My changes will be in red, the rest will be what the company sent me. In this case, I got an e-mail from one of those that gets impersonated quite a bit, eBay. Remember, this is a real letter. Hello **My Name** ( Valid account name ),------------------------------------------------------------------------------------eBay sent this message to **My Name** ( Valid account name ). Your registered name is included to show this message originated from eBay. Learn more: http://pages.ebay.com/help/confidence/name-userid-emails.html ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This is a courtesy reminder that the following credit/debit card on file for your eBay account will soon e...

Here's the latest scam to hit one of my Inboxes. Note that this lying weasel does not even use an established domain, but is using Netscape.net (which was taken over by AOL several years ago!) and also aim.com. AIM is AOL Instant Messenger's free e-mail service. At the bottom, it looks like the e-mail came from a German site because of the advertising tag line. The headers do not support this. I wonder why spammers and scammers like "three"? Three millions pounds, three million dollars... Once again, I will remind you to never send personal information to strangers, never reply to these things at all (your e-mail address is not validated to them and you'll get even more), if it looks to good to be true, you know that's the case. And I hope you can see through the fake religiousness of this. Mrs Rosemary Everson Email:roseverson@netscape.net Dear Beloved, My name is Rosemary Everson,i am a dying woman who has decided to donate What i have to you. I am 5...

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised anymore. After all, I've been around for quite a few years and seen many things. But I'm going to be a rat and squeak loudly. This one is something. The sender claims to be "Benny Crocker" . False sense of security, huh? The nice lady image in your mind of someone that helps you with good food and feeds you brownies or something. The other part is a dead giveaway, however. The headers say more about the sender: Received: from mail.haosen.com.cn (unknown [59.46.168.60]). "CN" is "China". ChiComs are trying to trick me? The boys in the crew are laughing almost as hard as I am. The loser's subject line is, "List of small companies in the USA". And the rest is: "many different fields such as company income, email, number of employees and more There are 17 million total records and 2 million emails Reduced to only: $299 - from today until this Friday Email us at: Jerome@BestAccurateReliable.com ...