please be safe

comper__9

I thought I would share this with all the members here.
Although I have only had a handful of very small wins, I am very grateful to all who post solutions and competitions, and,, thought I would share this in the hope that it helps fellow members:)

Just before I go into this, I want to say that I consider myself quite tech savvy, but even found myself caught out by "most" of these.

I will list 5 examples of email spam/fake/phishinhg abuse, I have recently received.
I have a DEDICATED competition email, and, check the forums each day for competitions here.
I have removed my name / email just in case for security.

Almost all of these emails use the format :-
dear (your name)

The most worrying/upsetting thing for me, is that a few of them used relatives names when sending. I have suffered a tremendous loss recently with my Mother, so I know that these were fake, however it doesn't make it any less distressing.

Example 1: Letter of employment
https://imgur.com/a/xlLDCW2#HAXZ3nN
I have taken the time to do a domain name search, by viewing the email header and then doing a whois check, for registrar information.

These are the senders details:-
th_me@misty-macaque.com
MISTY-MACAQUE.COM
Name Server: NS1.MISTY-MACAQUE.COM
Name Server: NS2.MISTY-MACAQUE.COM
To report abuse
abuse@namesilo.com

Example 2
https://imgur.com/ZIJeHI2
Again, this is exactly the same person as example 1:-

Natalie.Brat@hmrc-invoice.co.uk
th_me@misty-macaque.com
MISTY-MACAQUE.COM
Name Server: NS1.MISTY-MACAQUE.COM
Name Server: NS2.MISTY-MACAQUE.COM
To report abuse
abuse@namesilo.com

Example 3
https://imgur.com/z8zRLWq
a supposed CNN article referred to me by my Mother

Senders details:-
vic@drab-dog.com
Domain Name: DRAB-DOG.COM
Name Server: NS1.DNSOWL.COM
Name Server: NS2.DNSOWL.COM
Name Server: NS3.DNSOWL.COM
Registry Domain ID: 2258871284_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
To report abuse
abuse@namesilo.com

Example 4
https://imgur.com/BuiT72n
This was another worrying one for me. They have a time and date of the flight and everything.
Given that I have entered competitions to win holidays, I was almost fooled by this.
However, a quick google search showed, that is a fraudulent company on a massive scale, taking people's money for flights that never materialise.

Senders details:-
l.me@deficiary.com
Domain Name: DEFICIARY.COM
Name Server: NS1.DEFICIARY.COM
Name Server: NS2.DEFICIARY.COM
To report abuse
abuse@namecheap.com

Example 5
https://imgur.com/6JWzOcX
One of the more "traditional" fake emails, this one was easy to spot.

senders details:-
mmm63333www@gmail.com
theaudience@2theaudience.com
Domain Name: 2THEAUDIENCE.COM
Name Server: NS1.FNC.LU
Name Server: NS2.FNC.LU
To report abuse
legal@eurodns.com

For what it's worth, what fooled me, was the fact that I saw what appeared to be genuine notifications from my email provider.
Had it not been for malwarebytes blocking insafe domain names, I would have clicked through, when clicking on these:-
https://imgur.com/ZsSdKbP
"Do you classify this MESSAGE as unwanted/spam?"

Now compare it to this, notice the difference?
https://imgur.com/g8ZHqVt
"Do you classify this EMAIL as unwanted/spam?"

This last part really got me thinking. Like I said, I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but when it comes to e-mail, dont trust ANYTHING.
That's my general rule.

I used to be with hotmail, and, last year, spent the best art of 6 hours each day, filtering and tracing spam. I successfully got a lot of domains shut down, as i bombarded the support department with spam email reports, including headers.
For a 1 month period, it was all quite on the western front, probably for a lot of other people too.

If you need help/advice on how to trace/ show headers, what to look for please reply here or PM me, I am happy to help.

I just thought I would post this in the hope that it helps people, as not all competions are created equal!:beer::beer:

comper__9

I am unsure why the picture uploads aren't showing correctly . I will try and reupload somewhere else if they don't appear soon, my apologies

*I have now uploaded them to a different image host, but they still weren't showing, so I have provided clicky links to the images. Please have a look as this will help inform people, thanks*

topaz13

I had one the other day, supposedly from my daughter, which I thought was odd, as she always messages me normally, so the alarm bells started ringing. This was confirmed by the fact that my 'daughter' referred to me by my first name and not Mum. A little bit of digging showed that it was a scam and was duly reported! T'is worrying where they are getting our family's names from, because it certainly isn't from my email address book. I don't keep any contacts at all.

mjm3346

Take care with what you enter and spam/dodgy e-mails should be few and far between* - I doubt I get that many in a year to my main comping e-mail address and although another that I use for sites I consider more dodgy gets several a month they are just both just comping e-mail addresses and as there is nothing "real" going them anything that pretends to be is spam.


(* you cannot avoid the ones that just get sent to random addresses but they are usually the easiest to spot are are not addressed by name)