Technical chatter

You may find this interesting – but probably you won’t, so don’t click on … 

Yesterday I received an e-mail from Bravo.   Well, it (apparently) came from his real e-mail address and it called me Bearsy, so it must have been OK, mustn’t it?   No, it wasn’t!   The short text wasn’t his style, no way!

I was about to trash it when I noticed that the link it contained (they always include a link, these spoofs, that’s what they’re for) was a t.co shortened link.   They only come from Twitter and they’re spruiked as being validated against a ‘safe list’, so I threw caution to the winds and clicked thereon.

The page that opened was a reasonably subtle con trick.   It was (apparently) a BBC News page, Business section, featuring an article by some American female CEO doing a hard sell on one of these “earn $3,000 a day by working at home” scams – and believe me, they are scams, every one of them.   But if the BBC was hosting the article, it must be kosher – they would never allow a scam to be published under their august name, would they?   No, they wouldn’t.

But although all the other “frames” on the page (sorry to get technical) were genuine BBC content, the page itself and the article came from a server calling itself http://www.bbc11.co.uk.  Close, and many people might not notice the “11” buried in a url that also includes /news/business –article-reference-number like all the genuine pages from the BBC.   Nice try, but no cigar.

Mind you, when you start to read an article headlined “How a single mother from Brisbane unlocked a gold mine … “ only to read an opening line that introduces “Katherine Baker of Union City, California … “ even the most naive and geographically challenged senior might suspect that something is not quite right.

The spoofers and scammers keep trying, though.   Sigh. 😦

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Author: Bearsy

A Queensland Bear with attitude

16 thoughts on “Technical chatter”

  1. I really am feeling a little left out down here, I*’m neither receiving these spoofs nor has anybody reported receiving one from me.

    I do understand that we are normally 4 or 5 (10, 15, 20 ??) years behind the rest of the world with a lot of this techo stuff, ah well, there’s always next year!
    🙂

  2. Soutie: Haven’t received one, either. I do get a number of offers for “male enhancement”, however. I’ve even received a few asking me if I was content with the size of my breasts. Those are the most amusing.

  3. Hello christopher

    Talking about amusing, have you noticed that my above comment hasn’t appeared in the sidebar?

    As I hit ‘post comment’ I had a ‘ server maintenance’ error pop up. Quite appropriate that it happened on a post tagged Techo stuff”
    😉

  6. WordPress seems to be having problems, I thought it was my ISP, but if you’re seeing it too, it must be WordPress. Stand by for crash! 😦

  10. Hi Bearsy, for what it is worth, I have several spoof emails coming, apparently, from various Chariot Members, and one that came from a chap I only know from MyT. However, what slightly bothers me is that some of the emails I received from Charioteers, contained my private personal email address. As far as I know, the only person who has that is Boadicea. All others should only have access to my ‘Sipu’ email account.

  11. Please, sir, I couldn’t get into wordpress/the chariot at all for about half an hour this morning. Was it ‘down’ or wha’?

  13. Well it certainly isn’t me Sipu – and your real ‘e-mail’ address is locked so firmly away in my archived Outlook files that even I would be hard pressed to find it!

  14. Sorry, Boadicea I did not mean to imply anything deliberate on your part, or anybody else for that matter other than the scammer.

  15. I have had the very same one Bearsy. Sent to me by an ex army buddy. I guess his account has been hacked? My own account has hacked as well and several on this site have been sent crap. A real pain! 😦

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