Re: [T3] Buyer scams?

[Jim Adney <jadney@vwtype3.org>]

On 3 Aug 2007 at 20:43, james.candace wrote:

> The only place I've placed an ad in connection for my t3 is Trademe, our local
> buy and sell web site, like ebay, just a whole lot smaller. And that was looking
> for info, for any local parts.Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming the list, it's
> just that Trademe dosn't display email addresses, unless you actualy buy an
> item, and my email address was displayed here once when I replied to a thread,
> so I thought that maybe, Mr Mike Luke was jumping into the threads to see who
> his next possible victim could be.

Your email address is many places that you're not aware of, since it goes out 
in every header of every email you send out. I suspect that there are ways for 
the spammers to pick those up, even when they are not displayed. The harvesting 
of these addresses is completely automated, much like the search bots that 
Google uses to find key words for it's search engine.

There probably is no Mr. Mike Luke. It's just a pseudonym, and you're not the 
only one he approached. The only way this scam works is to harvest as many 
email addresses as possible and send messages like this to all of them. If one 
or two succom to the scam, that's a successful day for the scammer. They are 
quite willing to play against long odds, simply because the cost of sending 
email is so small.

In addition, one of the newer spam tools are programs, much like a virus, which 
will enter an unprotected computer and start sending out spam from that 
computer. In essence, that computer has been drafted into the service of the 
spammer. This increases the number of computers that are working for the 
spammer at no cost to the spammer. Such a program will also add all the email 
addresses on that computer to the spam address list.

So Jens is right. There's no way to hope to keep off the spam lists. You just 
have to learn how to delete or ignore them. Common sense, like that which 
caused you to be suspicious, is your best protection.

-- 
Jim Adney
jadney@vwtype3.org
Madison, WI USA

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