15 replies to this topic

[mandla]

I have always been savvy when it comes to random emails in my mail box from unknown persons especially ones the read something like

Toyota have been doing a promotion and your email was selected randomly as one of the 5 winners acros the planet. The random pick of your email means you have won a Toyota Landcruiser and 2,5 million British Pounds.

The funds will be couriered to you as sooon as you ring this number 0044xxxxxxxxxxxx to claim your prize.

Faithfully

Yung Chi Li

I always think yeah rite, why would toyota do that and even when out of curiousity I ring up to waste the Scammers time, I ususally get through to some Nigerian accented bloke claiming to be Mr Li. And cant even speak japanese. cause once I said Conishuwa probabaly I have spelt it wrong but thats basically how its pronounced and it means good morning in Japanese and to my Surprise Mr Yung Chi Li responded to me in English and asking me to speak in English please he also said he would rather do BUsiness in English than any other language because his Job description never forced him to stick to Japanese. Lol

Anyway they go to tell you on the phone that they can fedex the Money in CASH to you on receipt of a COURIER fee of 79 dollars and you recieve the money within 24hours. They give you a Name to use on WESTERN UNION or Moneygram and if you pay that you never hear from the scammers or recieve your prize money or get the courier fees back.

Anyway The kind of scams are obvious to you and I but apparently so many people across the worl fall for such scams. As stupid as that sounds I believe this scam is actually one of the most sucessfull scams being pulled off around the world. EVen Legitimate companies rake in hundreds of thousands using the same tactic.

In legitimate business they call them sweepstakes. You buy a magazine and there is a scratch card which has all these winning options get 3 of this win that get five of these win a million and just like clock work one set will always be a winner in every magazine. You always realise that its something amazing like 250 grand and then you have to ring a number to confirm the winning and of course give them your address so they can send the winnings or give them you bank account to deposit the winnings. All sounds cushty so far but when you see the telephone number its always a premium rate number which charges you 1,50 a minute and when you read the small print it tells you cost last about 15 minutes so basically you are setup from the moment you make the call. You will be placed on hold, or passed from one operator to another while you paying a premium rate number charge similar to calling a Sex line.

Another option which I have seen prevail in England is false advertising where you get a letter in the post probably shortly after applying for a loan from some bogus company on the internet. I dont really know how many companies are then sold on your loan application but a few days after you receive a letter. The letter is usually relevant about your loan application and it actually tells you that you have been granted the loan. All you need to do is ring up a certain number obviously a premium rate number and they will process your application as there are a few more security details they need from you to process the application in whole.

When you call the number they take their sweet time ensuring you are charged as much as they can for a lengthy call and eventlually they tell you that based on the information you provided, they will get you a loan from their sister company but there is a processing fee of 49,00 and they take this off a credit card. Normally you are suckered in by the prospect of getting a 20 000 loan for this little measley charge so you pay. In a few days you receive another letter from the sister company and they too want you to call and confirm using a premium rate number and the small print tells you the cost is 1.50 a minute calls last around 14 minutes so basically you paying another 20 on top of the 20 from last weeks call to their sister company and 49 for admin charges already you nearly at 100 pounds spending. If you foolishly apply for the loan you are charged a further processing fee of 49 again and if you complain are told that thats not a gurantee fee but a processing fee for the service its not a deposit to get the actually load but like a train ticket to get to the interview. It doesnt guarantee that you get the job and if you foolishly paid you are then processed and told unfortunately your credit score was too low and you cant get the loan but they will pass your details to their sister companies who may contact you if they will accept a lower credit score as each company rates the credit score differently. Sooner or later you you will get a letter from the so called sister company and the process begins all over again.

Now I am looking at both scams and asking my self do people really fall for these scams. Dont you hear stories around youo and read the papers to know thta these get rich schemes are just too good to be true. Do we throw caution to the wind when we hear that we have a chance to win shed loads of cash. What Happened to people knowing that if something sounds too good to be true - It probably isnt true.

warning BELLS Anyone.

Have you ever been caught in a scam what have you encountered and how did you hadle it.

[anwiii]

mandla, on Mar 19 2010, 06:39 AM, said:

What Happened to people knowing that if something sounds too good to be true - It probably isnt true.

how do you think the phrase originated? people get scammed and learn from the experience obviously. so knowing people are still getting scammed should not be too astonishing. most scams feed off peoples desperation. when you can make their desperation bigger than what they really know, then you got 'm. it's no mystery. i think most people get scammed at least once in their life and on different levels. i created a thread here about dish network being a scam because they allow their sales reps to lie just to get a commission. it's all over the place. sometimes it doesn't make people stupid or ignorant if they got scammed either. yea, some of the scams seem obvious....but i would also have to say, once in a while, something that looks too good to be true, is not a scam. i posted another thread in the freebies about certain companies like walmart who give away free samples. the next post was someone saying it was a scam. they can't believe in companies who give things away. so it can work both ways even though i posted something that was true, some people just didn't have it in them to believe in something as small as giving away free samples.

[sheepdog]

I really hate scammers. It's pretty pathetic when someone has to make a living by decieving and lying to other people and take advantage of others stupidity.

Then on the other hand, sometimes I feel like anybody that is stupid enough to think they won the lottery when they never even bought a ticket may deserve what they get.

It's a pretty tough call sometimes.

[nirvaman]

I have never been a vectim of scam my self , but i'm receiving constantly emails *Nigerian scammers* that tells shitt, But once i wanted to laugh on them , so i contacted them back and said that i'm willing to pay them 5000 $ on their bank account in the middle of nowhere , and they sent me about 10 emails , saying that they'll transfert money for me ...and so so , at the end i sent them BAD WORDS *coz i do know bad words and in different languages *.
I just wanted to say that scammers cant lie to brilliant or intelligent people , most of the time their victims are teenagers , or idiots or greeds
Internet is full of scammers , so you need to be smarter !

[mahesh2k]

I've covered some of the lessons i have got from online scamming. Lol. I don't want to repeat all over again for that, so maybe this thread will give you some good read for this topic. Thing is that these days we just carried away with few things in life and make mistake and get scammed. so have to be patient and strict while dealing with people. typical nigerian ways of scamming, or russian ways of yahoo/msn lottery are quite old and people and mail program do block them instantly so scammers are finding more ways to scam.

Also be aware of WSO and digital point forums scams, some warrior forum members often charge 67$ or sofor some instructional manual or material which is usually free for all on internet. also there are some short tricks sold for price of about 37$or higher. avoid those type of products and save yourself from scam.

[mandla]

wow I didnt realise that there was also a variation of the scan aka Russian ways of Yahoo how do those work?

Then you mentioned the WSO and digital ones. I havent come across those but would love to get a heads up just in case they catch me off guard.

You ever get like totally random mails from so called russian girls who claim they found your details on eharmony and stuff. cause I just got one from a girl in Russia who said she got my profile on e Harmony and to my surprise I have never every subscribed on eharmony. I eveen went onto eharmony to try and log in using the email she wrote me on to see if someoen else was using my email to signup to eharmony both the UK and American version resulted in a zero answer. I even tried going to the forgot password page and asking it to send the password retrieval to my email and lo and behold it said something like that email is not registered.

This makes me wonder where she even got my email address from. Are these the scammers from Russia then?
Do they rope you in by pretending to want marriage and love and a future with you then ask you to send money for a ticket which they will have inflated and money for visa's etc and even to the extent of coming to UK and getting married to get papers before they dump you for a better life or what.

Wow I cant believe that the world has become so coniving and greedy lol. What happeened to people just wanting pen pals as they used to be called in the eighties and ninties. I remeber a time you would get pen pals and just write to each other and get to be friends ith someoen across the globe and with no evil intensions or thoughts of conning each other or using each other. But now you cant trust even the best of people if you meet them on line. So what are digital point Forum scams. So I can be weary of those to

[Бојан]

Big lol for this topic but sadly that's true. Most of the people are scamming the good people... Most of the scammers are sending fake email on email addresses, so watch out!

[mahesh2k]

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wow I didnt realise that there was also a variation of the scan aka Russian ways of Yahoo how do those work?

yes there is if you join twitter or any social network. there are different types of spammers. everyday some weight loss trainer from russia or india, US, canada joins me on twitter and send me loads of ads on @replies.

Quote

Then you mentioned the WSO and digital ones. I havent come across those but would love to get a heads up just in case they catch me off guard.

Yes warrior forum is having load of scammers. they're selling some WSO for training like using wordpress, google analytics and google adwords for about 97$. some 10 page ebook reports that are just blog entries are sold for 7$. and there are no secrets in them but just word salad so be careful. and about digital point buyers, bl***y s***rs.. asking for 1.5$ for article of about 1000 words. wtf... the more you dig into those cheap black hat buyers more you'll be disappointed.

[mandla]

hahah

one thing I would never do is buy so called ebooks. Thanks for the headsup though.

Yeah I think I have seen the scam you refer to here. Theres the Facebook one where they hijack your account and use it to send this spam with links eg http://somestuff/12345 I hate people who do that imaging login in to facebook and you find an email box with say 20 new ltters and they are from your friends you get excited open them only to find its a so called link to youtube yet on clicking it you are redirected to some stupid viral video.

Are there really people who spend their time tryna corrupt our lives with something so anoying or are these virals and spams just somethign they make by mistake and then find laughter in forwading to others. Cause Surely you wouldnt spend a whole day coding a virus or spam program would you? I guess they would judging from whats available on the net these days.

then theres the mst annoying ones which promise secrets to weight loss or mothers secret teeth whitening secret, I bet anything that on i just a load of bollocks too. I have seen a lot of that ad and have been tempted to buy it just to see what the fuss is all about but at the same time I dont wanna be a statistic o be counted as one of the success stories by the scammers. I do think about buying it but realise that the scammers have actually won if i do buy because their subtle tricks of spamming me so much i get curious and make excuses as to why i justify buying a scam product and the bottom line still remains - i been scammed if I buy the so called ebook. So I will be steering clear of that offer hehehe

[mahesh2k]

After lurking on some of the black hat forums i learned that these spammers and scammer use pre-made templates for scamming people. they just change format and attacks. Other than that they use bot software to get into social networks and be a friend to scam people. Using pics on facebooks/flickr they try to portray a good female or male profile. if there is any sober or hot girl pic is there on social network these guys pic it up and use it to attract people.

In case of virus and psyware/DDOS attacks, they're commercialized now. Once in thousand single hacker comes in who is real else all those viruses are commercial and not from people who are destructive.

And about ebooks, some so-called gursus and bloggers who want to earn from mailing list and blog membership program are asking people to buy their eboook. It's not easy to see through them cause some of the times they're loyal and good reputable bloggers, but in some cases there are just ripper ebook creators. more than 90% of such so-callled gurus prefer black hat ways of earning money by ducking people. For example, check this review for twitter vending, the person who is selling this is misguiding people for 19-25$ price. It simply not worth it in my opinion.

But there are some good products as well like keyword academy, pro blogger book, zen habits book. But that is rare in comparison to the rippers out there. it's just that we consumers are into trial and error which is sad thing in my opinion.