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Online
Cell Phone Scams and Spam
by
Barry Nagassar
They're
out there. Individuals trying to make
a quick buck at your expense. You labour
hours on end to produce quality content
on your website only to get repetitive
requests for huge numbers of product or
promises for the greatest deals online.
As a webmaster for a cell phone and PDA
site, I've had my share of spam and scams
come through, mostly via email, some posted
on my forum. The purpose of this article
is to provide a few methods of detecting
spam and scams, and provide a few examples
as well. Take a look over and protect
yourself from online cellular fraud.
Anybody
catch the 60 minutes episode where Andy
Rooney teaches faithful viewers how to
detect junk mail? Junk email works in
much the same way. Items with subject
headings 'Great deal', or 'limited time
offer' usually can wait, and definitely
don't have great offers hidden inside.
Webmasters and consumers should have a
golden rule, if you don't know where an
offer came from (you don't know the sender)
then delete it. Plain and simple. Most
free email accounts, GMAIL, Hotmail, Yahoo!,
have good filters that label incoming
spam and scams as, well, spam. However,
the majority of webmasters do not use
free email accounts for the sake of professionalism.
To these individuals, a basic virus detector
usually includes email protection and
generally will detect possible spam items
before they hit your box. Having said
this, if you're doing link campaigns,
or joining forums, etc., in order to promote
your site, it may not be a bad idea to
enlist the free online email account and
prevent all the unwanted junk from hitting
your work emails.
It's
been my experience that some people out
there hand pick contact pages of potential
victims, and therefore the email may be
somewhat individualised to your site.
Your name, the site name, or similar content,
may be communicated within the email making
it appear somewhat legitimate. Be mindful
of your email accounts (contact pages)
that are exposed to the world wide web.
Some smart scammers have created bots
that will automatically harvest emails
that are sitting live on the web and input
them into a spam list. Remember this when
trying to determine whether something
from the web is legit.
If
an questionable email has contact information,
Google it. If it's a legitimate company
contacting you, they should have some
type of online presence. I've noticed
that the majority of spam and scams have
fake mail addresses, but no online address.
Furthermore, emails usually come from
online web accounts like Yahoo!. Not only
can you search contact information, you
can serach content as well. Chances are
a webmaster has posted the contents on
a forum somewhere wondering about its
legitimacy. I can't stress this enough,
take 4 seconds and doabout the email before
you consider replying.
With
these simple and quick tips you should
be able to identify the majority of scam
and spam emails. If in doubt, delete.
If something was important that you deleted,
or legitimate, the individual will likely
try to contact you again. With this in
mind, here are some examples of spam and
scam emails from the cellular and technology
industry, my comments are in brackets.
Subject:
WE HAVE LOTS OF GSM/NEXTEL MOBILE PHONES
AT VERY CHEAP PRICES'''''''' [The subject
always varies.]
PHONES
SELLERS INCORPORATED 12 Ademola drive,ikoyi
Lagos Nigeria [Many, many, many emails
have come with Nigeria as the purported
origin, doesn't mean it's from there,
but out of country addresses are always
suspect of being fraudulent.]
Dear
Sir/Ma,
LETTER
OF BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP We are mobile
phones wholesalers.We deals on all brands
and models of mobile phones such as Nokia,Motorola,Samsung
and many more at very cheap prices. We
are using this medium to look for buyers
of mobile phones.Do kindly reply back
if you are interested and as you do you
will be glad you do,thank's and God bless.
Fola
David President.
[A
variation of the above is instead of written
body content, they will actually send
a product list of the cell phones they
require asking for a dozen of each. Sounds
like great business!...Here's the next
one]
CONSOLIDATED
PHONES LIMITED 152, OZORUMBA MBADIWE STREET
OFF KINGSWAY ROAD. VICTORY ISLAND LAGOS,
[no record of this address] TEL: 0803-3870-694
FAX: 1- 817-0845, [not even a real number]
Email:consphones_ltd@seeqmail.com. [bad
domain] or consphone@galmail.co.za
Dear
sir,
COMMERCIAL
SALE OF BULK MOBILE PHONES
WE
ARE EXPORTERS AND IMPORTERS OF GSM, TDMA,
AND CDMA PHONES. [CDMA Phones do not run
the majority of African networks.] WE
ARE ONE OF THE LEADING COMPANIES IN NIGERIAN
COMMUNICATIONS SECTOR, AND WE GIVE OUT
OUR BEST IN SATISFYING OUR NUMEROUS CUSTORMERS.
WE SELL IN BULK AND AT A VERY CHEAP RATE.
WE
WILL LIKE TO USE THIS MEDIUM TO INTRODUCE
TO YOU OUR VARIOUS PHONE BRANDS AND ACCESSORIES
LISTED IN OUR PRICE LIST. THESE ITEMS
ARE READY FOR SALE AND THE PRICE LIST
IS AS GIVEN BELOW. WE WILL BE WAITING
AND READY TO ASSIST YOU IN ANY INFORMATION
REQUIRED BY YOU, AND ALSO, WE ARE READY
TO DO BUSINESS WITH ANY COMPANY, INDIVIDUALS
OR GROUP AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT FRAUDULENT.
[Of course you wouldn't.]
WE
WILL SEND OUR RANGE OF PRODUCTS AND PRICE
LIST ON DEMAND.
BEST
REGARD.
JULIAN
JONES (MISS) Email: jonesjulian2001@yahoo.com
[This email is different than the ones
atop] For: CONSOLIDATED PHONES LTD.
Owner
and operator of DiscussWireless,
an online cell phone forum that includes
consumer discussion on a wealth of topics
including service issues, manufacturing
news, tech releases, and fraud forums.
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Email Fraud