POZ Community Forums
Main Forums => Living With HIV => Topic started by: bluelove on July 25, 2006, 12:31:28 pm
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The latest twist in the Nigerian 419 Scam is an email promising a cure for HIV/AIDS. Computer security experts say its purpose is to trick recipients into revealing personal data.
The emails, which originate from a Yahoo address, claim that the writer has stumbled across an herbal root that miraculously helps AIDS sufferers to recover. It claims that patients with AIDS are no longer HIV positive and asks for help in bringing this discovery to a mainstream market.
Once a recipient has been drawn in, follow up requests are made by the scammer for private information which may lead to requests for money, stolen identities and theft.
Experts at computer security firm SophosLabs say they stopped thousands of messages related to the 419 email scam. “419” relates to a section of the Nigerian penal code, where many of these scams originate.
Most 419 scams involve requests, allegedly by a member of a deposed royal family, to smuggle a fortune to safety in the United States
I know everyone here is is smart to the scams but l thought i would post this any how for the newbies.
Makes me sick what these scammers will stoop too.
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I personally am still waiting for my check for $4million! That poor man and his father are just trying to get all their money out of the country!
SERIOUSLY WHO FALLS FOR THIS!
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Regarding scams and spam, the return address (yahoo.com) you see is always a forgery. If you want to know the true source of email, you need to decipher the "received from" headers. Several of these will be forgeries as well, but there is a way to find out the source.
Set your email program to "show all headers" or whatever your program calls it. Once you see the headers, you can copy and paste them into a program which can report the IP address of the sender, as well and any third-party servers they used to bounce the message along.
A good program (beware of others with similar names -- some are actually spam email address harvesters in disguise) which as been around since 1998 and is well-regarded in the spam-fighting field, is spamcop.net. You can use it for free to decipher the headers and report the actual sender. Go to http://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml (http://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml), to sign up for the free reporting service.
Once you've joined, go to the site. Use the "report spam" button. paste the headers into the box, and click on report spam. This will send a message to abuse@nnnn.com (where nnnn = the domain of the spammer) as well as to other servers which have helped the spams (usually unknowingly) arrive in your inbox.
If you live in the U.S., you can also send the headers to spam@uce.gov. This is a database of spam for Federal Trade Commission.
Spammer and scammers stay in business because people give them money via purchases or falling for their scams. So never ever buy from a spammer. And report spams/scams to help block the IP addresses they use.
It's an ongoing battle, not unlike fighting an mutating virus, but it can be done!
A list of information sources about fighting spam is here:
http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/7.html (http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/7.html)
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Set your email program to "show all headers" or whatever your program calls it.
I don't know how to do this.
THANK YOU, BLUELOVE FOR THE "HEADS UP"
Peace,
Kelly
(http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/angels4kelly/th12.gif)
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Here you go, Angel Kelly: http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/19.html (http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/19.html) -- it shows you how to display the "source" or "show all headers" or whatever ::) your particular email program calls it.
Oh yeah, and there's an easier way too, than all this. You can simply forward the offensive email to the email address they give you when you register. Then when it's decoded, they'll automatically reply to you with a link, which you click on to report the mail.
I think this email method is the one to use, now that I think about it. Here's how: http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/166.html (http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/166.html)
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Well thank you very much, sfca415! I think that sounds like something useful and I will definitely take advantage of this information!
THANKS AGAIN!!
Peace,
Kelly
(http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g142/angels4kelly/GODBLESS.gif)
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Thanks Blulove for the heads up!