• Our new ticketing site is now live! Using either this or the original site (both powered by TrainSplit) helps support the running of the forum with every ticket purchase! Find out more and ask any questions/give us feedback in this thread!

Watch out, watch out...There's a scammer about!

Status
Not open for further replies.

Broken Viking

On Moderation
Joined
23 Oct 2006
Messages
1,666
Location
some place west of France
Hail All! <D
Just thought that I'd post the following couple of pages scanned from the current Ryanair in-flight mag. The pages in question bear an "invitation" posted by a so-called European Lottery Guild, encouraging people to participate in the Spanish El Gordo lottery in December. The pages in question (About 300-400Kb each) are linked below...
​
Now I don't know much about the El Gordo lottery admittedly, but am I right in thinking that only bona-fide Spanish nationals are allowed to play the game? :razz:
(If nothing else; The fact that the credit card section of the form requests the card's CVV number - Something never needed by genuine companies when receiving orders by mail - Raises an immediate red-flag in my mind. :))

Interesting to note that - Though the draw is not open to residents of the Netherlands for reasons not stated - The form return and "business" addresses are both P.O. boxes in Amsterdam. Now if participation is supposedly "illegal" in the Netherlands, how and why would they be based there for any reason except as a way of trying to avoid subpoenas issued against them by the Dutch courts? :lol::razz:;)

The only thing I'd like to know though - Given that the host magazine is published by a reputable company (Ink publishing) - How the hades did such a scam invitation manage to work it's way past the editor's watchful eye and wind up in an otherwise good and more-or-less honest magazine? :shock::roll::?:

Has anyone else here come across such blatant scams recently (Or maybe have examples of interesting ones that they might post?) and are they as obvious as I'm inclined to believe? <D
>> Death <<
 
Sponsor Post - registered members do not see these adverts; click here to register, or click here to log in
R

RailUK Forums

mrcheek

Established Member
Joined
11 Sep 2007
Messages
1,607
as viewers of Only Fools and Horses will testify, ANYONE can play the Spanish lottery. but you have to be over 18!!
 

Coxster

Established Member
Joined
9 Jun 2005
Messages
9,243
I won the Austrian lottery the other day and never bought a ticket! :p
 

me123

Established Member
Joined
9 Jul 2007
Messages
8,510
I'm actually quite sad :cry: This is the first month I haven't won £50,000 from the Reader's Digest!
 

me123

Established Member
Joined
9 Jul 2007
Messages
8,510
Do you know what's even sadder; I had predicted that you would do that ;)
 

Broken Viking

On Moderation
Joined
23 Oct 2006
Messages
1,666
Location
some place west of France
Here's an interesting one that I just found in my e-mail inbox... :shock::razz:<D
E-mail received at about 01:04 this morning: said:
To: "Death" <disguised@mail.local>
From: "RailUK Moderation Team" <gd2ygrbf7gx83gh874f@10minutemail.com>
Mailed by: 10minutemail.com
Subject: RailUK moderation team - New vacancy!
Date: 15th November 2008CE at 22:45 (GMT +0)


Dear Death,
Here at RailUK, we have recently been evaluating the capabilities of our existing board moderation team. As you are no doubt aware - Being a regular user of RailUK yourself - RailUK has thousands of new posts made upon it every day, and the number of posts made daily by users increases on a continual basis.

After some careful consideration as to the requirements for moderating such a busy and popular forum like RailUK - And noting your regular and frequent usage of the board - We have chosen to invite you to join our board moderating team, and assist in the day-to-day running of the RailUK forums.

If you would like to accept this invitation to join the RailUK moderation team, please confirm receipt and acceptance of this invitation by clicking the following link and logging in with your RailUK username and password: http://www.railforums.co.uk/index.php?do=accept&cat=moderatorship

Many thanks for your attention, and we look forward to welcoming you to the RailUK moderation team soon!

Kindest regards,
RailUK Moderation Team
[Death's footnote: 10minutemail.com is a host that provides disposable e-mail addresses - Normally used for sending spam, phishing e-mail (Like the above example), and verifying signups for faux accounts.]

Now...See the link in that e-mail? Hold thy mouse pointer over the link (Don't click! :)) and note the URL that comes up in thy browser's status bar. Not exactly what ye might expect, is it? :shock::razz:;)

Of course, this e-mail is actually a complete load of tripe and wasn't sent to me by anyone (I just bashed it out as an example)...But I've seen similar stuff like this being sent to users of other boards in the past, and they've actually fallen for it! :shock::lol:<D

So beware...Phishing techniques aren't only used for stealing PayPal logons and credit-card numbers... :shock:;)<D
>> Death <<

Note to Admin: This is designed to warn against scam/spoof e-mails that try to steal forum users account names and passwords, several of which I've encountered in the past. (Please forgive the RailUK invite spoofing here. 8)) The I.P. address in the link above deliberateley points to an impossible address to prevent any kind of accidents happening. <D
 

mrcheek

Established Member
Joined
11 Sep 2007
Messages
1,607
so. two "scams". one of which you actually made up, and the other of which you were actually wrong about......
 

Broken Viking

On Moderation
Joined
23 Oct 2006
Messages
1,666
Location
some place west of France
Nice hint, Death ;)
That wasn't supposed to be a hint at all...It was intended as a topical example. :)
Given how little time I have to myself nowadays - And the work I have to do on the Official BAL-SAGOTH forum as the sole moderator there - Since when would I have the spare time to be a part of RailUK's moderation team as well? :shock::lol::razz:

so. two "scams". one of which you actually made up, and the other of which you were actually wrong about......
The e-mail above was intended as an example of several that I've seen in the past. There are several obvious reasons as to why I'd rather generate an example e-mail insted of dumping an original such e-mail in here. :)

As for the El Gordo business: I'll admit that I was wrong in thinking that the lottery was only open to Spanish residents, but the advert in my OP is still a scam. According to Wikipedia, complete tickets sell for about €200,- a piece, thus individual Decimas (1/10th of a complete ticket) are €20,- a piece. :)
In the above advert, they're asking a whopping €80,- per Decima, €800,- per complete ticket, and they're even trying to sell half-Decimas (A unit of ticket that don't actually exist! :shock:) at €40,- a pop! :shock::roll:<(

Now after seeing how the Spanish Yule lottery ("El Gordo" isn't the name of the game, it's the name of the top jackpot) payoff scales work, I'm thinking that I might have a bash at playing it with a few cunningly selected Decimas...But I certainly won't be buying my tickets via the European Money Laundering Guild! <(

Indeed...It'd be far cheaper for me to fly over to Spain for a week on a first-class BA seat and buy my tickets in person at lottery retailers there, then it'd cost when buying them through a lot of these rip-off merchants... :roll::lol:<D
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Top