Wow, I announced in yesterday’s blog that registration was open for our Ohio Gypsy Gathering Rally, and e-mails starting pouring in! We must be doing something right, because we already have both returning vendors and attendees registering already.
If you are a member of the Escapees internet forum and find an e-mail in your in box saying you have a new private message, delete it. Just about anybody who is registered with the forum got the same e-mail, and it’s spam that will take you to a Russian teen sex website.
Don’t blame the Escapees. They are victims too. The sleazebag who launched the e-mails registered with the Escapees forum, jumped through all of the hoops necessary to get an account, and then sent out his garbage.
Someone asked me why a person would go to all of that trouble, and the answer is, obviously, money. You say that you’d never subscribe to a pornographic website? The creeps doing this don’t care if you do or don’t. They make money either way.
Just as we have Google ads on our websites and the blog, and we make a small commission every time a reader clicks on one of those ad links, these guys have set up a code that shows the clicks they set up are coming from them, not a legitimate website. So when you click on their “private message” link, you are really clicking on a link to a website that pays them a commission for every visitor. They can make a lot of money very fast doing this, and as soon as one victimized website discovers their intrusion and blocks them, they move on to the next one.
This was a real problem a few years ago, and several good websites eventually shut down because they grew tired of constantly fighting this kind of trash.
How can you protect yourself from scams like this? It’s simple, but you have to be alert all of the time. Don’t click on links sent to you in any unsolicited e-mail. In the case of one like this, go to the actual website (Escapees, in this case) and check your messages there.
Also, read the URL address where an e-mail comes from. Is it something you recognize? Read carefully, is it similar, but not exact? When in doubt, don’t click.
A good virus program and a spam filter, such as AVG and Ad Aware can catch a lot of what comes to your inbox. Run them religiously. But remember, there are all kinds of jerks out there creating malicious crap to send out, and as soon as the good guys find a way to stop one, fifty more come up with something new to make internet users’ lives miserable. It’s just one of the woes of life in our high tech world.
Thought For The Day – The person who goes the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare; the “sure thing” boat never gets far from shore.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Good post Nick! Just like in automobile safety, the most important factor is an alert, careful driver. A good way to learn to spot valid/invalid website addresses is by playing ‘Anti-Phishing Phil’ see http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/antiphishing_phil/new/index.html
I got the message from Escapees but I went to their website to check it out and they had already dealt with it and had deleted the message. So (sigh) I missed out on the porn website. It’s not a new thing though.
The Ponzi scheme, a pre-technology rip-off scheme, actually was around long before Mr. Ponzi. According to Wikipedia, it was mentioned in an 1857 book by Dickens. It is just proof that there have always been bad guys and they have always been looking to separate you and me from our money. And, yes, I do love AVG!