Phishing

[jreist]

There has been several messages recently from user selling Perscription drugs and promoting Pornogtraphy.  This is called Phishing and is an attempt to steal persons identities. DO NOT Cick on the links. Administrator please delete any users that post these messages as well as their messages.

This has nothing to do with TAX SALES

Phishing

(fish´ing) (n.) The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information. For example, 2003 saw the proliferation of a phishing scam in which users received e-mails supposedly from eBay claiming that the user’s account was about to be suspended unless he clicked on the provided link and updated the credit card information that the genuine eBay already had. Because it is relatively simple to make a Web site look like a legitimate organizations site by mimicking the HTML code, the scam counted on people being tricked into thinking they were actually being contacted by eBay and were subsequently going to eBay’s site to update their account information. By spamming large groups of people, the “phisher” counted on the e-mail being read by a percentage of people who actually had listed credit card numbers with eBay legitimately.

Phishing, also referred to as brand spoofing or carding, is a variation on “fishing,” the idea being that bait is thrown out with the hopes that while most will ignore the bait, some will be tempted into biting

[Rob]

Please not one click on those ads.  Those users, the email addresses and the IP addresses they visit the site from are banned.  That won't stop them from making new accounts.  I've thought about manually verifying users but that is not the solution.  I may need to code the forums in a way to prevent live links but that is unfair to all other users.

For now don't click on them, don't reply to a thread they post in (it bumps them and gives them an extra link on the main page). 

[Rob]

Oh and I don't delete the user because then the ban gets erased, the same IP chain and email can be used.  There are 8 ban people in the user list currently.  One of them is a partial ban, banning a certain user from changing there footer.

[Frank]

Thanks for the info. guys,  -- I prefer FISHING myself.

People need this type of advice to be on their toes and not get sucked-in.  The internet can be a scary place, and so can the mailbox at your home.  Many elderly folks get preyed on by mail which purports to have them placed on a winners list, and for a mere fee of $xx they can progress up the ladder - once they respond to one, they are inundated by the same kind of mail, it is a very sick world that we live in. 

[jreist]

  I've thought about manually verifying users but that is not the solution. 

I am on other Forums in which they use manual Verification and it seems to work.  The group that I have joined require me to send an emial to the owner telling them what my interests where and why I wanted to join.  The people who do this type of Phishing don't want to spend the time sending emails, they choose groups that they can automatically join.  If someone does get through and are band they won't bother taking the time to send an email to rejoin. 

Several years ago newsgroups where and this is where these guys where because they had 10s of thousands of groups that they could post messages to with a click of a button. Most ISP have dropped Newsgroups for security reasons or people lost interests because all the messages where SPAM.

[jreist]

When I log on to this Forum I go to User Online and to see who is Online and what are they looking at. I have noticed that some are looking at User Profiles.  All a person needs to do is go through the profiles click on the email addresses and added them to there SPAM mailing list

Then I realized that I have my email address in my Profile and immediately went to my profile and clicked "Hide Email address". This may be why I have to delete so many messages every time I check my mail.

I would recommend users Hide their email address in their profile. If you want to send an email you can click the Personal Message (Online) button below the users name.

[Rob]

I'd say most of those searches are from google and yahoo and other search engines.  What this type of scam involves is posting links on forums in order to get higher rankings in the search engines.