The DNS Route to Scam Protection Online.

When you type in ‘www.scammingsite.com’ on your browser, a lookup is performed to translate the domain name into a unique address (IP Address) that all networked computers understand and which contains the path to the right server.


Your ISP will have given you two longish ‘numbers-separated-by-dots’ (eg. 207.44.123.28) to type in to your Network Settings. These are the Domain Name Servers (DNS) that your computer will use whenever you ask to go to a domain name.

Right? Well, never mind, just trust me on this one.

Wouldn’t it be great if, when you did the lookup/translate part, the result was filtered for Scams/Profanity/Pornography/Crime/Violence etc etc?

Well, by changing the DNS servers you use, you can have this great feature - for free, I may ad - and you (and your children/employees) can surf a little easier. No software to download, no subscriptions, no spam - it couldn’t be easier. Free, simple to do, free, great protection …. what more can I say other than if you don’t believe me, Click this button to find out why you need to change your DNS servers NOW!

(or, you can just change your DNS servers to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 and get on with your life)

BTW, the same people who run OpenDNS.com also run an Anti-Phishing site called, amusingly, PhishTank

According to a report issued by the FBI in April (View report in full HERE), internet crimes decreased slightly in 2007 but still resulted in millions more dollars being lost to fraud.

Internet crime complaints are primarily submitted to IC3 online at www.ic3.gov, although people without Internet access can submit information via telephone (or, presumbly, snail-mail!). After a complaint is filed with IC3, the information is reviewed, categorized, and referred to the appropriate law enforcement or regulatory agency.

From January 1, 2007 to December 31, 2007, there were 206,884 complaints filed online with IC3. This is a 0.3% decrease compared to 2006 when 207,492 complaints were received

Electronic mail (e-mail) (73.6%) and web pages (32.7%) were the two primary mechanisms by which the fraudulent contact took place.

Recent high activity scams commonly reported to the IC3 in 2007 were those involving pets, checks, spam, and online dating sites, all of which have proven effective as criminal devices in the hands of fraudsters.

Internet auction fraud and the nondelivery of goods purchased on the Internet accounted for almost 60 percent of the complaints that were received by the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.

Interesting, albeit depressing reading - shows that the public are becoming more aware of internet fraud, but that there are still plenty of suckers out there, still waiting for the box of gold from mrs Abacha!

This spoof scam has been around for a while, but it bears repeating. Obviously done by soemone with a high geek factor AND a GSOH!

I think I’ll do one in the style of ‘His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman)’

Dear Beloved,

I am Danladi Majah , The only Son of late Counsellor Gríma Grimbeth Majah of the Kingdom of Rohan.

My father was Chief Counsellor [equivalent to Prime Minister] to late lamented king Théoden of Rohan. In his position my father altogether legally and correctly acquired significant assets throughout Rohan in order to protect the Kingdom from enemy forces within and without. In the course of lamentable events succeeding, my father was illegally deprived of office and expelled from the Kingdom.

Before this he had with foresight already entirely legally deposited gold worth US$4.5m with one of the Africa leading Banks in Cote d´Ivoire of which I will let you know if you identify your interest . While in exile in the north he was assaulted and murdered by a band of northern Orcs. My family was obliged to seek refuge in northern Dunland among some of our sympathisers.

My father left to me all documents necessary the retrievement aforesaid from the Bank. However, in the current political circumstances my solicitor believes it unwise for me to attempt to make the trip from Dunland to Cote d´ivoire, and has recommended that I seek a trustworthy foreign business partner to tranferred this amount into your account.

This appears to be the best option as we are unable to open an account in Dunland. Therefore I am seeking your trustworthy assistance and cooperation.

You will provide information about your account that will enable a deposit to be made in your name. I will contact the Bank and inform them that the money is to be placed into your account. Upon completion of the transaction your share of the proceeds will be 15%.

If the transaction goes well I will also look forward to maintaining you as a profitable business partner for future ventures. Therefore I will need your phone and fax numbers to enable me send them to the bank immediately as well as the account number of which this fund will be transfer into.

It goes without saying that I can expect your complete cooperation in keeping this matter confidential prefatory to completion as I awaits your urgent response.

Best regards,
Master Danladi Majah

It’s my third iteration on the same basic principle: take a carefully filtered and enhanced archive of 150,000 email messages and then sort, categorize and analyze them, then put them in a defanged, indexable/searchable list format so that people can browse them.

The first was a program I wrote in perl back in 2004, it was a POP sucker that connected to the mailbox, attempted to extract message parts and rewrite them as a html page. While successful, I was never happy at my efforts to disentangle nested messages and alternate body parts - this meant that a lot of emails showed up with lots of Base64 and other garbage. (eg. ScamDB_S_74.php)

The next try I had was to use a mail archive indexer program called ‘Hypermail‘. This was mostly successful at splitting messages into component parts but was still not quite flexible enough for my needs and the indexes were way too long. (eg. HYPMAIL/date.php)

So this spring, I am trying a whole new system that I rewrote in PHP, my code of choice for the decade. I am still mailbox based, mainly so that I can prune spam that has sneaked through my filters, but that may change soon.

This is how the Scamdex Engine works:

1. Scam Emails arrive in the honeypot mailbox.
2. Using Thunderbird with various Add-ons, I partially manually sort the scam emails into a holding mailstore and throw away the junk.
3. A program runs nightly which:
   1. Analyses emails in the holding mailstore into one of 5 categories (419/AFF, Auctions, Jobs, Phishing, Lottery).
   2. Adds some extra Headers to the email.
   3. Moves it to the correct mailbox archive location.
   4. Runs MHONARC to create the indexed archive and html-ized emails.
   5. post-processes the MHonarc-ized pages to add a php index include file, update the (MySQL) database and  distribute the keywords  and scoring to  META and the nice little  graph widget.
   6. 
   7. err… that’s it!
      

It’s not pretty or fast but it works, and I can understand it. It’s easy to fix and add to. It’s annoying having to run the process every night from scratch but until I work out how to use the MHONARC system to add/delete emails from the archive, it’s all I can do. Any suggestions about how I can do this better, let me hear them!

(send to scamblog(a)o7e.net)

LifeLock, a provider of identity theft prevention services, has developed the nation’s first and only PROACTIVE identity theft solution designed to help PREVENT crimes before they occur. They back the service with a hefty $1 million guarantee.

The services they provide break down as:

1. They BLOCK your credit so only you can use it - They put alerts on your credit reports with all major credit bureaus. So, if anyone tries to do anything with your credit report, get new credit, change your address, expand credit lines, open a checking account, get insurance or utilities, and more, you will be called directly for approval first.
2. They back up their services a $1 million guarantee - If your identity is ever stolen, they will fix the problem and reimburse you up to $1,000,000 in financial losses.
3. Stop pre-approved credit offers, thus saving a few trees and helping to curb one of the most popular ID theft systems, getting a credit card from a trashed credit card offer - They say that they also reduce the amount of other junk mail to your home.
4. Ensure that things go smoothly when you apply for credit - they don’t give much detail on this point, but they also provide ‘free’ annual credit reports.
5. They even monitor your children’s identities.

LifeLock retails for $10 per month or $110 annually but you can get a 10% discount..$9/month or $99/annually if you signup from the Scamdex Site.

Scamdex approves of this product, especially in the case of elderly relatives, young adults and others at risk due to confusion or inexperience, both of which are the scammer’s stock in trade. If you’re worried about Granny wiring all her assets to a Nigerian Widow then I’d definitely take a look!

I give my cellphone number out to very few people. Friends, relatives, Scamdex-related business and the occasional on-line order, if they insist. So when I get a call, it’s normally someone I know personally or business. So I was surprised to get a call from an outfit called ‘Auction Profits LLC’ (http://www.auctionprofitsllc.com) , asking me if I want to make money with drop-shipping on eBay.

After listening to their inept spiel which seems to involve mentioning eBay and MONEY as often as possible, I asked them where they got my phone number and name. The claim was that I had placed an order with another company called ‘Online Supplier’ (http://www.onlinesupplier.com) . They knew my name, address and phone number and indicated that they had additional credit card information as well.

When I persisted, I was zapped to the supervisor who blustered about how I must have bought something from them before and, anyway, how about making some money on eBay?

He completely missed the point that I made that I run a website devoted to exposing scams (such as his) and he dropped my call. I got a weird ‘private’ call a few minutes later (2 minutes of static followed by a ’sorry wrong number’) which I strongly suspect was them.

(more…)

FAKE CHECK SCHEMES

American consumers are being defrauded by overseas scam artists. The latest complaints relate to counterfeit checks including cashier’s checks, checks that look like they’re drawn on business accounts, money orders, traveler’s checks and gift cheques.

A common theme exists in all of the scams: Just because a deposited check shows up as “funds available” in your account register, it doesn’t mean the check is good or has cleared. Federal law gives consumers the right to have quick access to the funds from deposited checks (usually within 1 to 5 days). However, it can take weeks for counterfeits to be discovered. The consumer is then responsible for ALL fees associated with the fake check. Also, no one who wants to GIVE you money should ask you TO SEND THEM money. For more information, visit fakechecks.org.

Soem fun videos showing how it works can be seen here: http://www.fakechecks.org/videos.html

SOUTH WINDSOR, Connecticut police today warned of a fraudulent checks scam in which residents have been receiving bogus checks from FedEx or U.P.S. The checks are made out to the resident, and a form letter instructs the recipient to contact the sender via e-mail for further instructions.

The scam works by having the unsuspecting recipient deposit the check in their checking account, and then transfer some or all of the money to the sender, police said. Banks later learn that the checks are fake. The victim loses the money they have transferred to the sender because the money that is wired can not be retrieved, police said.

Just another twist in the advance fee scam, using the postal mail, before reverting to email removes one level of obvious inauthenticity.

A Branford, New Haven, Conn. man is facing a long prison term after pleading guilty to bilking illegal immigrants out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fifty-six-year-old Ralph Cucciniello has been accused of taking $560,000 from about 60 immigrants in Greater New Haven, as well as the Boston and New York area.

The judge Thursday told Cucciniello if he comes up with $300,000 to pay back his victims he might consider a shorter prison sentence.

Prosecutors say Cucciniello claimed to be a lawyer at a legal clinic at the Yale Law School and charged immigrants $5,000 each to file papers that he said would lead to a Green Card and permanent residence status in the U.S.