dam with the quality off there english whee can narow it down two... well it could be anywon off us seebrease uzers aye now

edit, typo

What benefits do these guys get from saying this? Maybe bank details or something?

I could see why some scammers would be sellings stuff, then just not posting it when they received the money into a un-traceable bank account (if these are easy to obtain). But I don't see the point of these messages

don't know if its the same thing , but I've had several emails come straight into my seabreeze listed email address regarding my 2007 7m vegas listing.

Funny thing is my email address was not listed in the seabreeze advert! These emails also had a dodgy seabreeze logo attached to the top.

I did not respond to these enquieries! just thought it was one of my deranged mates trying to take the pizz. Think now, maybe not. Not sure how they were trying to scam me, but I rteckon the bank dtail thing was probably on the money.

Not sure if the scamwatch site covers it in the same amount of detail, but these emails have been rampant on trading-post style sites of late.

Basically it's another way of finding money mules for them to transfer cash which they have obtained/have access to from compromised bank accounts, either via phishing or keyloggers etc.

With the seabreeze/trading-post style ones, what they generally do is transfer MORE money into your account - usually with the excuse that it was an accident or a complex shipping arrangement where the bottom line is that you have to Western Union the excess money to another party.

Yes, you're laundering stolen money. No, you're not likely to be charged if you didn't know (you do it once).

General rule of thumb: if it involves Western Union, it's probably a scam.

Sk

EDIT: Beaten - Thomo, yeah thats one of them

what can they do with bank account details? they cant just take money out. and how do they launder money in if you dont go and pay the person they want the money to go to?

had a similar one,

A buyer approached me and asked for some photos, so I sent him some photos.

Then he came back saying 'it looks like an awesome kite' but he wanted cheaper, so I offered a cheaper price with 'cash on delivery (COD)' option by Australian post.

He replied he is happy with the price but the transaction method is strange and asked if the bank details can be provided adding he will make the payment over night.

I responded I would like to keep my bank account details to myself and still prefer COD option costing $15 more. Then I had no response after that.

Could have been a scam or just a coincidence the deal wasn't closed, but $15 differences makes me wonder... I may have saved my life time savings with 15 bucks.

It appears interstates transactions are largely depending on trust, which puts both party at risk. And I want to ask everyone who had traded through SB, what would be the safest way trading through online advertisement like SB?

I am not sure on this but:
Once you start emailing someone they will be able to get your IP address, which for most of us will be static since the advent of broadband and a permanent connection.
Once they have these details, it might be possible to work on getting into your PC, once in there they also might be able to snoop around looking for passwords etc.

If they can find the correct ones that match your bank account numbers which have previously given to them, it might be game up.

It might also be possible that they could email you an attachment which you unwittingly open because you think you know them, which maybe a key logger etc
There will still be a large % of us that aren't up to date with your Anti virus

KiteClone said...

It appears interstates transactions are largely depending on trust, which puts both party at risk. And I want to ask everyone who had traded through SB, what would be the safest way trading through online advertisement like SB?

I think that more people should get onto Paypal - then there are no bank account details involved. You don't need a credit card anymore to use Paypal, it direct debits your bank account.

fattso said...

don't know if its the same thing , but I've had several emails come straight into my seabreeze listed email address regarding my 2007 7m vegas listing.

Funny thing is my email address was not listed in the seabreeze advert! These emails also had a dodgy seabreeze logo attached to the top.

I did not respond to these enquieries! just thought it was one of my deranged mates trying to take the pizz. Think now, maybe not. Not sure how they were trying to scam me, but I rteckon the bank dtail thing was probably on the money.

We have a system where people can send you an enquiry email without registering on seabreeze.com.au .. makes it easy for people to enquire about your gear. The page has systems to prevent automated bots using it to spam everybody, & your email is never revealed (until you reply, of course)

Our system logs show that the scammer actually sat at his keyboard and manually sent email enquiries to people over a period of 4 hours.

Skinner said...

tmiddled said...

The whole laundering money thing doesn't seem to make sense with kites to me though.

Skinner - you are basically saying that these people want to get rid of their dirty money quick so they will exchange it for goods (kites in this case) that they can then sell for clean money further down the track.

Actually no, they couldn't care less about the kites! Can you imagine it???!
It's the excess which they pay (which they then ask you to Western Union back) or the amount they have you "pay the freight company" which they are interested in (usually in the region of $1000+). Sounds implausible to us to pay that kind of money on freight, but it happens all the time, and there are a lot of gullible people out there. It's been really big lately on the trading-post style websites for dogs and similar items. People in Nigeria and Russia have been buying chihuahua's and the like then paying tripple for postage to wherever they're from... No kidding

Most compromised bank accounts have between 2000 & 3500 removed from them at a time, and it's the difference between the cost of your kite and the "postage" which they are interested in (they will have an excuse ready why you have to Western Union it to the freight company). They are always coming up with new (and increasingly plausible ways) to find mules to receive the stolen money, and they just consider this a "business expense".

This kind of thing is big business on the internet these days and there's a terrifying amount of malware out there at the moment stealing your passwords or turning your computer into a zombie box (where they can bounce off to hide their tracks while committing other types of fraud). No, not even Norton can save you.
Sounds like a good reason why we should spend less time on the net and more time on the water

Skinner is dead right, i got keylogged a couple of years back, as soon as i checked how much i got paid that week on internet banking and loged off they loged into my account transfered $2500 out of my account into some brisbane account then applylyed for a extra credit so they could empty more out. luckley i checked my accounts the next week, saw that something had happend and called the bank immediately. anyway after about 150 hours of paperwork, signing Declarations with a J.P, runing back and ford to the police trying to explane the story and what happend about 20 times over and talking with the federal police the bank reembursed my money into my account about a month later. i would advise every1 to stay away from internet banking bacause of keyloggers, i only knew something was wrong because i checked my accounts all the time and i have never spent $2500 on anything befor. imagen all the thousands of people that have had money taken out and dont even know it. all they need is your ip address.

snoidberg, were you at your own computer or on a public one when that happened?

Now I'm curious. I've been working in IT and security for a while and I'm really not sure how you guys are getting hit by keyloggers etc. A few years ago sure but not these days as long as you are keeping your windows upto date and using a little personal firewall. people can't just get your IP unless you actually do or unknowingly do something on your PC, this would be something like clicking on a link in an email or opening a sus attachment! but we all know not to do that right?

there is one very nice simple solution to a lot of these problems.

1. use the windows update and get your windows patched up
2. stop using internet explorer - its **. get firefox
3. ensure that IE is setup NOT to run activeX content etc by default
3. if you use outlook, DON'T use the auto preview pane, this will prevent you opening emails accidently and running dodgy code embedded in html emails
4. get something like zonealarm installed, its free.
5. face it, if you get an email in disjointed english, its probably suss why even bother with it.
6. stop surfing didgy p0rn sites, if irrelevant popup boxes come up when you go to a page that have buttons on them for 'ok' and 'cancel' best bet is to kill IE, don't think that a cancel button is actually cancel just coz it says so!

OR

buy a mac then most of these issues go away! (flame away windoze lovers)

ped

buckwheat said...

snoidberg, were you at your own computer or on a public one when that happened?

hey buckwheat, yeah i was at home i might of had a worm or trojan or somethin on my computer, probably from downloading porn let that be a lesson to us all. my antivirous was old school and i didn't have a firewall, i just didnt realise their was such a thing as keylogging. i trusted the banking website was safe and had things to block hackers and had never even heard of this happening b4.

peanuticus said...

Now I'm curious. I've been working in IT and security for a while and I'm really not sure how you guys are getting hit by keyloggers etc.

echostorm said...
5. When they then plead with you that they paid too much just play dumb, say that it was the correct amount and that the goods were sent, following this click block on there address details or if you were really tricky log out of your 'new' email account

6. Go buy a new kite with the money you have made from that nigerian leech and feel happy in the fact that you scammed the scammer.

@echostorm
Thats all well and good, but it's not the nigerian's money - it could be your account or snoidberg's account that has had the money transferred out of it. In any event the bank will come calling pretty shortly after with their hand out. Oh, and that small detail that knowledge = criminal intent.

@peanuticus
If only it was as simple as a firewall and windows updates.
I agree with not using IE - more than half of the malware out there is targetting IE only, however much of it springboards off javascript, and I'll bet all my kites that 99% of the people here roam around with JS switched on all the time - because a very high proportion of websites out there require it to work properly.

Now what happens is that the bad guys will do a MASSIVE distributed attack infecting ALOT of websites, or sometimes they may just hack a few high-traffic sites. The past couple of weeks, in a single attack, there was over half a million sites hacked and a redirector to a website in china which executes malicious code on your computer via javascript (similar to an iFrame hack). So that website you visit today, it could be an online shop you like, your antivirus vendor, favourite restaurant or uni -will infect your ass. Those are actual examples, too.

Even if it's only a 5% infection rate (an often quoted figure), multiply that by the number of visitors to half a million websites and you suddenly have a heap of infected people who, depending on the infection they get, may install a keylogger, make them an open proxy (someone got a six figure bill from Telstra for excess usage when they got their box owned), a spam relay, or participe in any number of other activities. Or, all of the above.

As I said before this is big business out there now and they adjust their malware every couple of days (some more than once a day) so that the antivirus vendors can't keep up.

You think Bill Gates and Norton will protect you? Think again.

Run away! Run away! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

Sk

echostorm said...

So are you saying that the Nigerian is better off keeping the money they have stolen? Is it wrong that they pay you for goods with an intent to steal the money back off you and you dont let them?

I personally wouldnt go down to that level, but do you think they are going to be giving that money back anytime soon!? They are the scum of the earth and an honest person getting money BACK off them is more then a worthy cause in my morality book.

Heh, no I meant either don't buy in to their bollocks scams/job-ads or if you do get the cash in your account, you call your bank. The alarm bell should go off when you hear the words Western Union. You taking the money and buying a kite with money you think is from fraud = no accident. In most cases it doesn't take the banks long to identify the money going out, but some are better than others.
Should take the bank about 15 mins to work out that it's the proceeds of fraud (probably take you longer to get put through to the right people).