The other day, my girlfriend received the following bullying letter from the address [email protected]. First of all, since you happen to be reading this, there is a great chance you've received the same and may be worried.Calm down. This is a 100% scam. That's crystal clear from the fourth-from-the-end paragraph. If they had some recording in reality, especially since … [Read more...]
DVLA “vehicle is no longer taxed” Phishing Scam Email
My girlfriend today received an email allegedly coming from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) of the United Kingdom. It was titled "something went wrong" and prompted to tax some untaxed vehicle.The sender's email ([email protected]), as well as the letter's general awful grammar and shabby composition, would have betrayed that it was a phishing scam if that … [Read more...]
A Scam from Benin – Scam Prank for a Good Laugh
Few things I find as amusing as a good scam baiting operation. The other day, I ran into one of the stupidest scams ever, but which turned out to be one of my funniest correspondences with scammers as well. I won't go into details about the scam itself in this introduction, as it hardly made any sense at all, but I will embed below the entire dialogue I exchanged with that … [Read more...]
WeTransfer Scam: most subtle phishing attempt ever
In all my time examining online scams and teasing their perpetrators, never have I before run across a so sophisticated phishing attempt like this WeTransfer scam I am about to describe in this article. In fact, this scamming attack was so subtle and personalized that, to this day, I maintain a trace of doubt, however slight, with regard to whether it indeed was a fraud. That's … [Read more...]
Watch out for this Netflix Scam Email
It seems like scammers have siginificantly scaled up their phishing attempts through the 2020 COVID pandemic. Besides other popular services and websites they have been striving to hijack with fake emails, I recently ran into one allegedly coming from Netflix. The cheesy email, bearing Netflix's logo, claimed that my subscription is about to expire due to a missing payment, and … [Read more...]
m͏a͏i͏l@͏u͏p͏d͏a͏t͏e.͏a͏m͏a͏z͏o͏n.͏c͏o͏m – Beware of fake Amazon Email Scam
The other day I received a "notice alert" from an email address allegedly related to amazon.com. The notification informed me of my Amazon account being blocked due to suspicious log-ins and requested me to take action in order to unblock it. It was sent from the email address m͏a͏i͏l@͏u͏p͏d͏a͏t͏e.͏a͏m͏a͏z͏o͏n.͏c͏o͏m with the additional address … [Read more...]
[email protected]: A Sophisticated PayPal Scam
The other day, April 2020, my girlfriend received an email from the address [email protected]. It read as follows:Your PayPal Account in Under Review. After a recent review of your account activity. we've determined you are in violation of PayPal's Acceptable Use Policy. Your account has been limited until we hear from you. While your account is limited, some options in … [Read more...]
The Airbnb Vip Telegram Scam
Being an Airbnb host, I already have to deal with quite a load of work: bookings, inquiries, questions, complaints, messages of all sorts, repairs, improvements, whatnot... That makes it especially frustrating to also have to deal with those stupid Russian scammers who recently found their way into the Airbnb platform. It was about a month ago when I first got contacted by … [Read more...]
How a Fake Buyer attempted to Scam me when Selling an Item Online
No-one doubts the convenience that online marketplaces offer us when we want to get rid of our old stuff. This convenience, however, comes with a downside. The scam artist's profession is arguably one of the oldest professions. The Internet, just as it has opened up a whole new vast marketplace for us legitimate sellers and buyers, it also has created a new field of action for … [Read more...]
Fractal Mandala Money Circle: the new-age-hippies Pyramid Scheme Scam
I recently happened to hear about a pretty interesting Pyramid Scheme scamming operation which is dubbed the ‘Fractal Mandala’ and targets members of the - if I may call it so - over-spiritual new-age-hippie community. It is a professional scamming operation that, of what I understood, must have made quite some serious money for its contrivers. I decided to write this report as … [Read more...]