Re: Strange E-Mail WAS: Re: Has Anyone Heard of This?

On Thursday, April 1, 2004, at 12:03 PM, Carsten Becker @ work wrote:

> Some days ago, I got an email from Thomas R. Wier (trwier@uchicago.edu was
> in the "name" field), it was also a bit strange. However, the title was
> "Re:
> Here" and the content was just "Read this!". A .PIF file was attached (I
> forgot its name). Because PIF's are executables, I did *NOT* download the
> attachment and immediately deleted that suspicious file.
Quite right too. I've recently received two similar mails supposedly from
Messrs Cowan and Elzinga with such attachments. I've also received a
message saying that I mail sent (with, of course, a suspicious attachment)
  to Philip Jonsson couldn't be delivered. The strange thing is that I sent
no such email in te first place!

There seems to be a spate of these fraudulent emails at the moment. My
account at work is targeted even more for some reason. The more recent
ones have messages with the PIF file saying that it has been scanned and
is free of any virus. If you believe that, you will readily believe the
moon is made of cheese.

The other ploy I've seen in the past two weeks are messages supposedly
from my ISP both at home & at work saying that certain mails couldn't be
delivered and if I want to see them I should go to the inbox - in the case
of Freeuk, the address was: freeuk.com/inbox/ray.brown/read.php? followed
by a sessionid.

I contacted freeuk and they were a little surprise because they had sent
no such email to me!

It's also fairly apparent that some mails have gone out at as though
coming from me. If anyone on this list has received any, I'm sorry - but I
simply didn't send the thing.

There's so much spamming going on the moment that the best policy is to
trash anything one is not sure about.

As for David's mail that began this thread............
On Thursday, April 1, 2004, at 06:13 PM, David Peterson wrote:

> Andreas wrote:
>
> <<April 1st?>>
>
> Man, on the very first response!  Yes, you got me: April Fools.  There
> was no such e-mail.  However, I'm glad to see that I got Joe and Adam
> even after Andreas's response.
You got me also on your first mail - but it wasn't till the evening of the
1st that I read all the mails in this thread.

[snip]

> By the by, though, I never thought of this point (Adam again):
>
> <<Well, I can think of one possibility.  Identity theft.
> I those PDF forms, they probably ask for your SSN and
> other personal information perhaps including your bank
> account number for electronic transfer of funds?
> Those two bits of info could be used to drain you dry.>>
>
> Good point.  Usually when someone's not asking for money, or aren't a
> part of a religion, I forget that there can still be other means of
> entrapment.
Oh no - the common method of entrapment in the Cyberworld seems to be to
_offer_ you money (invariably a very large amount) - but there's always a
little admin problem & they need to know exactly what Adam was saying.
Three times recently I've that I've won a fortune in some 'Euro lottery'
but, of course, there's a slight admin problem  :)  The strange thing is
that a quick Google search revealed that at least one other person has
received the same mail with exactly the 8same* winning number!!!

Indeed the reason I was initially fooled is that your 'pseudo-scam' had
very many of the familiar marks of actual scams.

  And of course I suspect many of us are only too familiar - and weary -
with the numerous variants of the "Nigerian" fraud (actually my first
claimed to come from an employee of a respected South African bank), the
more recent ones coming from "good, Christian God-fearing" people in the
far east who through misfortune, not of their making, need to deposit
their wealth abroad & would I mind allowing the transfer to my bank
account for which, of course, I'll be amply rewarded. I know what the
reward will be - being drained dry. I assume their goodness and
Christianity is also scam and that the god they fear is Mammon.

> Also, sorry to hear about those viruses.  I remember not long ago one of
> my e-mail addresses was used to send a virus.  I wasn't happy about that.
Nor am I - I strongly suspect some (hopefully not on this list) have
received such emails purporting to come from my work account.

A curse on all scammers & spammers!

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
===============================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

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