undergroundsea
Posts: 2400
Joined: 6/27/2004 From: Austin, TX Status: offline
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I don't know if it is the same person but I received an email from a woman in California asking me to check out her profile and that I might like to serve her. I took a look at her profile and intuitively felt she was a scammer. I went ahead and probed further. I hit reply and a message history appeared--it turned out she had emailed me the same line a couple of months ago and I had not responded. My intuition felt confirmed. I played along and asked her what type of relationship she envisioned given that I lived in Texas, and what in my profile caught her eye. She asked to move the conversation to yahoo messenger. Yup, scammer. I told her I did not have messenger installed on this computer but could see that she was online and that I could send a CM chat. She did not respond to the CM chat. I expect the reason is because it would be easier to report the scam since there would be comments asking to buy a membership or the like. By now I was determined to investigate ;-) I had some recollection that yahoo messenger could be launched in a browser window and did that. In messenger she said that I had to prove myself. I played along and asked her what I could do to prove I was sincere. She sent me a link to an adults hook-up website and to create a profile. Instead of clicking on the link (which I expect carried a referral code), I typed in the web address. It asked to create a profile for free (much like alt). I also typed the web adress of this site into google and found several complaints about scams by that site (including unauthorized debits from bank account). When I told her that the profile was created, she asked me to come into a video chatroom. I told her that the site was asking me to purchase a membership--when she first mentioned the site, I asked her if it was one of those sites that require you to purchase a membership, to which she said no. She said to purchase the trial membership and cancel it within 24 hours--the website said nothing about the ability to cancel. When I told her that I could not find the cancellation policy, she said that I could see it once I entered the chatroom ;-) They will say whatever they have to say to get the membership purchased. All along she kept checking on progress every so often to see whether I had created the profile and whether I had purchased the membership. Then I said I didn't click on the link she had sent and instead just typed in the web address of the home page of the site (which did not have the referral code that would credit her) and asked if that mattered. Of course, she said that it was important to use the link she gave. I told her I would have to start from scratch ;-) She said that she was going to log off messenger and would be waiting for me in the chatroom. I expect that had I told her I had purchased the trial membership, she would have disappeared. So that's how that scam works. Cheers, Sea
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