Thread: Latest scam if your selling stuff on gumtree

Yes. I think it started out particularly with cars, but it looks like they have extended their repertoire.

Be wary.

Regards
Paul

A few years ago I had a similar scammer; same “l work FIFO & don’t have my bank or CC details with me but want to pay via Paypal”. Looked legit at the time and I passed on my Paypal account details. No money was deposited but he kept telling me it had been put in. “Perhaps you need to check your junk mail box in case your mail server incorrectly put it there”. Well I’ll be blowed, there it was! The message clearly explained that $xxxxx had been deposited, but due to some security checks I would need first send a Western Union money order of $xxx to a specific person. In shanghai.

The email was very professionally made with all the correct formatting and even included genuine hyperlinks to Paypal T&C’s etc. Only three things were wrong:
The URL had one different letter than the genuine site
I was addressed as my email monicker
The fact that it was sent to my Email address in the first place.....

Although my ebay and paypal accounts are in my name; the emails are sent to my partner. That means that any correspondence to me has to be fake, and any that my beloved receives in her name are similarly fake.

A few months later I was targeted again; same MO.

What I learned from those experiences and also what I can see in the original post is that they target you via your personal email, so ALWAYS USE THE SITE MESSAGING SYSTEM AND NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. I have a 2nd email address that I use for sites that flat out insist I must provide them with one; that one is crammed full of messages from dating sites, hotel chains and pharmaceutical companies offering products that can increase both length and girth.

I reported on a scam threatening to cut off our phone line a week or so back and thought I had seen the end of it but Mrs P. reported that she has answered three more calls that were the same but they appear to have stopped now. The calls even came up with a real phone number on the caller ID so be aware.

Originally Posted by Chris Parks

I reported on a scam threatening to cut off our phone line a week or so back and thought I had seen the end of it but Mrs P. reported that she has answered three more calls that were the same but they appear to have stopped now. The calls even came up with a real phone number on the caller ID so be aware.

Beware of anybody called "Nicole." (My apologies to anybody called Nicole.)

Regards
Paul

Wait till you start getting scam emails with "Your account has been hacked! You need to unlock." in the subject!


The person spoofs the email domain to look like it was sent from your own account (very easy to verify though), claiming they have hacked your PC/laptop and have all your passwords, banking details, and more importantly video of you doing indiscrete things while looking at p**n on websites!


They then demand you send around $700USD in bitcoin to a wallet, although if they had your passwords and bank details like they claim they would have already done it themselves!


I receive stacks of these (go figure!) and out of curiosity I looked up a few of the bitcoin wallet accounts they provided, and between 3 accounts they'd had around 40 or so deposits totalling about $50,000USD in about a 6 week period.


So several dozen people were guilty and/or scared enough to take it seriously and actually made substantial payments!


So in essence, always tape over cameras, and if it's from the internet, it may not be entirely reliable! ;-)


cheers, Ian

Gumtree is 100% - show up with cash and it's yours. No holding, no additional photos, no email conversations with someones son/daughter/mother/father/brother/whoever because the person who wants the item is FIFO/out of the country for another week/on holidays and can't be reached/whatever.
I got some of those "you've been hacked" emails last week. Just blacklisted the domain and haven't had any since. Any website that insists I enter an email address just gets a click on the little cross in the top right hand corner. Plenty of other websites to buy stuff from or get info from.

I put my old table up for sale on Gumtree, and an oxygen thief tried to con me by sending him the saw at my expense and he would pay me once he got it, never asked the condition of the saw or any info whatsoever. I ended up selling it for a little less and on time payments to someone who came and paid cash. So beware !

I have to say I am a little surprised at how easily these people if you can call them that, can gain access to your email address in the first place. To explain this I should explain that i get these at work where we have a competent IT department that has, if we can believe them, a highly efficient filtering system.I accept that the spammers can easily breach my domestic account, but at work we change passwords frequently with a minimum of fifteen characters which for all practical purposes should be impregnable. They still get through.

Just don't open anything suspicious or too good to be true. Remember if it sounds too good to be true it probably is too good to be true. Naturally anybody offering up, for example, the likes of eighty four handsaws would immediately sound alarm bells.

Roll up roll up free vintage handsaws



Regards
Paul

They haven't actually gained access to anything, they simply forge the email addresses to make it look like it came from your personal email account. If you have a look at the headers though you can see the entire path as it hits SMTP relays, and it also can't hide in the headers what the real email addresses used are.

Trivial if you know where to look, my point was the staggering amount of money they raked in from scared people, for the 13yo scriptkiddy sending these emails it's at least a USD $450M/year racket!

And for as good as any IT dept is, all it takes is a single person in any organisation to inadvertently click the one wrong link, and the sites hit by ransomware so fast it's staggering, game over. Seen that happen many times over the last several years!

cheers, Ian

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

I have to say I am a little surprised at how easily these people if you can call them that, can gain access to your email address in the first place. To explain this I should explain that i get these at work where we have a competent IT department that has, if we can believe them, a highly efficient filtering system.I accept that the spammers can easily breach my domestic account, but at work we change passwords frequently with a minimum of fifteen characters which for all practical purposes should be impregnable. They still get through.

Just don't open anything suspicious or too good to be true. Remember if it sounds too good to be true it probably is too good to be true. Naturally anybody offering up, for example, the likes of eighty four handsaws would immediately sound alarm bells.

Roll up roll up free vintage handsaws



Regards
Paul

Sounds very suss if you ask me

Cheers Matt
But your honour in my defence,I was left unattended [emoji45]

5 years ago I tried to sell a car on GT. I live in Melbourne Vic. The car was 24 years old with out air conditioning.
In minutes had an offer to buy the car for a person in the Northern Territory. Did the alarm bells ring. Never did get a second email though.

For those that are not familiar with Australia, the Northern Territory is over 2000 km away and the temperature is regularly in the 30's C. So why would you want a car without air conditioning?

I never get scam emails but I think it must be because I run my email through Bigpond and then Gmail and the combination of filters must knock them out. I was looking for solar a few years ago and get a few of them into Gmail spam and a few from China trying to flog the latest and greatest VFD but beyond that very little. I did get one a few years ago telling me to contact my bank for some reason but it was the wrong bank so pretty obvious.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Beware of anybody called "Nicole." (My apologies to anybody called Nicole.)

I hope you're not referring to Nicole from the Australian Broadband Network? Lovely girl, rings me up to 8 times a day, my wife is getting suspicious.
Surely these mobs are contravening numerous telecommunication laws. How does one get a member or minister to take some action?

Originally Posted by burraboy

How does one get a member or minister to take some action?

Generally just pointing their snouts to a trough full of money or some overseas "seminars" in resort locations should do it! )