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JoJohannsson -> RE: How do YOU find out your online aquaintance is not real (8/3/2010 12:40:38 AM)
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Thank you for this invaluable post!
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ORIGINAL: WyldHrt
Sigh, where to start...
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I'm assuming that they don't troll the message forums, so here are some of the telltale signs:
The good ones, and the bosses that run scammer gangs do, in fact peruse the message boards of sites they are 'working'. Most low level scammers know nothing at all about WIITWD, and out themselves early on. The better ones come to the forums to learn enough about it to sound credible, at least to someone who does not suspect that they are being 'worked'.
This is why I do not like to see lists like this (sorry, Steven) or information on email services that strip IPs posted on open forums. Not all scammers are stupid, and some will learn how to 'improve' their profiles and/or skills from posts such as these. Personally, I prefer to let the scammers keep making the mistakes that make them easy to spot.
Information on tracking IPs is valuable, although it can be misused. I will suggest that anyone concerned about being tracked by IP go here:
http://www.whatismyip.com
and click the IP address lookup tool on the left side of the page. Mine tracks to a town about 20 miles away. The biggest danger is to those who send emails from work, as most private internet access uses dynamic rather than static IP addresses. Companies, particularly large ones, tend to have a static IP address, meaning that the IP does not change and is often easily traced. Send an email using yahoo from your office at lunch, and the person you sent it to could know where you work in about 5 minutes if the company has a dedicated IP.
On photos, yes, they can be faked. I've seen both truly hilarious attempts, and ones that were so good it was almost impossible to tell. Keep in mind that scammers usually ask their victims for things like passport scans, driver's license scans, and yes, pictures of themselves, sometimes holding a paper with something written on it. This usually happens with 419 scams, as those victims are more willing to send such things.
All of these items are kept, shared (or sold) and used to convince other victims that the scammer is 'real'. I had one poor booger's passport scan sent to me by at least 5 different scammers, and I know of a cancer victim whose blog (photos included) detailing his battle was stolen and is still being used by scammers running 'dying of cancer' 419 scams, years after his death. I personally dealt with a love scam victim who was fooled by a driver's license scan and photos that turned out to belong to someone the scammer had victimized in a 419 the year before. All of this is why sending a photo of yourself holding a paper or any such thing to someone you aren't very sure of is a bad idea. I hope I don't even have to mention that sending a passport or driver's license scan to anyone over the internet is just nuts.
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Dragon, I agree, Collarme should charge $10 or $15 per month just to keep out a lot of the phoneys and tv's on the trol.
That way I wouldn't be getting 6-8 messages per week from "Ghana" from women wanting to "be your slave for life if you'll only send me $1,000 to relocate" and tv's who want me to tell them "what I'll do to them if they're naughty."
A monthly fee would keep out a lot of those assholes.
I've said this before and will say it again. The result of things like this is often that you wind up attracting better quality scammers. The more successful ones actually prefer pay sites, as many of the people on those sites believe that the fees keep the scammers out. It's often easier to hook a victim that thinks they are on a 'safe' site.
As for why the scammers don't mind spending the money for a pay site, they aren't using their money at all. The same gangs that run internet scams also run mass phishing operations, stealing credit card numbers and paypal account logins from anyone gullible enough to fall for it. Those credit cards and paypal accounts are used for many things, including memberships to dating sites. They are also used by love scammers to purchase things like small gifts and flowers, another common technique used to make a victim feel safe and convince them that the scammer is 'real'. If a pay site profile is shut down, the scammer is out nothing at all. As on a free site, they just make a new one.
In the end, the only thing that will keep you (general) from being scammed is you.
Internet scamming is a huge business that involves billions (yes, billions) of dollars per year. The way the money is moved around is often very sophisticated, and something I have written about here before. Some scams are easy to spot, while others are much more difficult.
A good love scammer will sometimes spend months cultivating a relationship with his (yes, scammers are overwhelmingly male) victim before going for the pay out. Others won't ever ask for money directly, preferring to either run a check scam or use their victims as mules for fake checks and stolen goods purchased with phished credit cards.
Anyone who thinks that scamming begins and ends with the guy pecking away at a keyboard in a Nigerian internet cafe is seriously mistaken. There are some excellent websites on the net that go into great detail about the extent of the problem, and how to spot some of the more sophisticated scams.
[/end Scammer 101]
Jo
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