Hi!

It could be useful for us, Internet dwellers, to have a look at other's experiences when it comes to various scams in the web. I know there are too many, but it could help us to know about some of them. Post your own! Try to be concise so it can be read quickly (whenever possible)

Here is mine:

You post an ad offering one flute on sale or looking for something you want. Then you receive a mail from someone saying he/she is interesting in buying your flute. Doesn't matter if you are not selling buy buying, you receive the same message.

If you accept, you receive a bank cheque in payment and you have the goods duly ready for shipment to the buyer. Only that the cheque is for a higher amount than the buying price, so you are kindly requested to send the difference back to the buyer.

After a while, the cheque is refused by your bank (even if it was initially accepted) and you are left without beloved flute and without the money you returned.

Sounds strange? It is not, it is a frequent scam or hopefully, a failed attempt of scam.


Yours.....:



<Added>

OOPS!
buy buying = but buying

Without beloved flute = without your beloved flute

Dear Jose Luis and group.

It has been my observation that scammers work under the concept that the buyer is willing to give up money to them if the "deal" seems to be extraordinarily exceptional.

this can include things like:
money exchange scams as already described or
the selling of something where the price is "too good to be true". and the scam may range from devising some way to get the money without delivering the product purchased all the way to delivering an inferior to useless product that seems to be an exceptional deal for the buyer.

As one example where one could actually argue if it is a scam or not, there are some rather poor quality flutes being sold on the US market and the price is rather cheap and attractive. Parents jump at the chance to buy them in good faith because they want their children to experience the joys of music. And as our economy isn't so good, they are always trying to find the best deals. So, they make the deal and they may receive a "flute". The transaction is complete but after this is when the problems begin. The flute looks great but the materials and design are inferior and they find that the flutes literally can't be fixed. So the parents end up having to buy another flute and may actually try selling the cheaper one to someone else. The actual unfortunate victim in this mess is the children who become discouraged because their equipment is not working.

What the parents don't quite understand about the price of flutes relative to inflation is that these cheap flutes are being sold at times for a price that is cheaper than a decent flute when they were school kids and the inflation factor has caused the price of decent flutes to almost double in those two decades.
The best advice I can give is.. buyer beware!
~bilbo
N.E. Ohio

Another scam from my own experience:

I buy a Nintendo game. I need it in German, because it is for a German child. I look for a German vendor, in Berlin, who offers the game new, with its name in German (Platin)... and also in English (Platinum). Like this: Platin-Platinum. Not too much suspicious.

When the game arrives, it is the English only version, with a big sign saying "only for sale in USA and Latin america". I complained to the vendor and to Paypal, but I could never return the game to the vendor or recover my money from Paypal.

as a private teacher, I occasionally get an email from someone moving to new york who wants to study with me, they ask my price and I answer with an outrageous fee and they answer with an agreement, then they offer to pay for one years lessons in advance with a "cashiers" check for 52 lessons..

sound to good to be true? of course it is, but for a young teacher starting out, it looks good...so buyer beware..

Bilbo, have you gotten those?

Hi Patrick,
I have not had one of those. I've only had some minor issues. Bad checks or students who simply never have shown up as scheduled, disappear without calling and the like.

Those scam calls may be because of some online music teacher registration? Patrick?

~bilbo
N.E. Ohio

There are "criminal" robots "reading" the web sites, searching for Email addresses of people offering things to sell, or looking for things to buy (typically for us: usedflutes.com).

I believe these robots can parse the ad to a certain extent, searching for the object in question, say "flute".

When these robots detect a candidate, they send an automated message to the poster, such as "I am interested in your flute etc."

For the time being, it seems that these robots cannot identify potential "Buyers" from "Sellers" and the message they generate can be wrong (i.e. attempting to buy something you are not selling, but you are looking for). This happened to me on my recent ad in usedflutes.com, they wanted to "buy my flute" but in fact, I was looking for an used HJ.

If the candidate replies, then the business is taken personally by the robot owner and the attempt to scam begins, as described on my post 1 on this thread.

I do not know how this works in the case of services; if someone approached P. with the argument he/she was moving to NY, this shows a knowledge of the case that is deeper than what the present simple robots could achieve, so I believe this is a human scammer that skips the robotic message and deals with these special cases directly.

Unless P. did receive the robotic message before the human-generated message and either answered it or did not pay attention to it, but the scammer had anyway already taken due note of the candidate existence.

yes, Bilbo, I am signed up with a few of those, perhaps that's where they get my info, or my website

This is another serious threat.

Not a direct scam, but it opens a back-door to the computers that have downloaded fake antiviruses. If you have downloaded any of this, you will need a special tool as they cannot be uninstalled by conventional means.
Reuters informs that about 43,000,000 computers have been infected by this new plague, just in USA alone. Worldwide the problem must be huge.
A partial list of fake or false antiviruses/antispyware is below:

Personal Antivirus
Anti-Virus-1
Spyware Guard 2008
System Guard 2009
Antivirus 2009
System Security
Antivirus 2010
Antivirus Pro 2009
Antivirus 360
MS Antispyware 2009

Update from a personal experience:

A close friend of mine got his Email identity (username + password) stolen by a hacker. Not sure, but it was a case of phishing or perhaps bruteforce break of the yahoo site.

The same day all his friends, family and acquaintances received a message, supposedly from his part, claiming he was stuck in a foreign city without money and unable to pay for the hotel. The reason provided was he had lost his wallet. The hacker asked for a substantial amount of money on loan, to help him out (about 1,200$).

I also received it but I suspected immediately and phoned his wife.

The scam was discovered quickly but a member of his family had already taken the money from the bank and was ready to send it to the scammer. It was a very close escape.

Lessons to learn:

- Nobody is immune to well made phishing techniques.
- Even if you were, identities are stolen, sometimes by the tens of thousands, through strong attacks to popular servers as Yahoo, Google and others.

For these reasons, I think it would be safer:

- Do not store old mail messages on those servers, as these messages could eventually provide a hacker with valuable information about your friends and family. Configure the server to automatically delete all messages once downloaded. Keep them on your PC, if you want or need to, but not on the server.

- Never use the address books of those sites, for the same reason above

- Never repeat your passwords for different services (for example for Email and for bank accounts), because if you are cloned and a hacker gets one of your passwords, you risk your whole (virtual) life. Virtual yes, but all your money and putthe money of your relatives and friends on high risk, too.

- If you can, (though this is difficult), avoid hosting your Email on servers that provide Webmail service (or disable this service if possible), as a hacker can send messages easily from that service if he/she obtains your identity.

- And be lucky, Internet is getting increasingly hostile and a cave of techno-criminals.

Update: another personal experience.

I copy below the second message received from a scammer (I had replied to his first message saying that I was interested). Beware of his trick!: (spelling is his own)

"Hello,

I am Delighted to read from you , and also i really appeciate
the fact that you have decided to sell the item to me , Anyway I think
i am okay with all the detailed of the item, and i am willing to
purchase it from you . Well today I have just contacted an Asscoaite
of mine in the state who is owing the sum of {10,000} to issue a
chaiser check payable at an bank in the state , You will receive the
payment from my associate which over the cost of the purchase and the
Shipping cost .

Immediately you have receive payment kindly deposit the payment at
your bank and give me the clearance date so that i can perpare my
reputable shipping company toward the clearance date and the shipping
date. Immediately you have confirm the cleareance date from yout bank.
kindly deduct the cost of the item and send the balance to my shipping
company who will take care of the shipping. as i have inform the
shipping company about our tranaction and will be siging the shipping
consignment with them soon. Also i want you to consider this
transaction seal by me bcos i am a serious buyer , for this fact i
have decided you deduct an extra 100$ from my balance only if you can
remove the advert from the website as i don't want anyone to contact
you about it and consider me the prefect buyer.

I have spoke to my associate and he is willing to get this
transaction done as he requested for this following information which
he need to get your payment ready and send it to you immediately. So
get back this below information .

Full name.
Address
Zipcode
State
Country
Phone

Once i get this details i will forward them to my associate and your
payment will be ready immediately also i shall inform you when the
payment will get to you . immediately you receive the payment kindly
advice me immediately.
Thanks for the mail
Regard

If you have to ask yourself if it's a scam, it's a scam. Simple as that.