Category: Scams

  • Indebted for driving on toll road #000729155 – SCAM – HOAX

    My friend Chris sends me scams every now and then, I think like myself he has had his email address a long time so gets things on a daily basis. He sent the Outstanding Invoice Scam a few weeks ago, and sent this the other day as he felt it was a pretty clever approach that could trick a fair few people if they were new to the web and email.

    From: "E-ZPass Manager" <joel.crabtree@vir010101.sh.it.net> Date: 13 Apr 2015 04:58 Subject: Indebted for driving on toll road #000729155 To: <XXX@btinternet.com> Cc: Dear X, You have not paid for driving on a toll road. Please, do not forget to service your debt. The invoice is attached to this email. Sincerely, Joel Crabtree, E-ZPass Support.

    So their approach this time is to claim the user has unpaid fines from driving on a toll road. Straight away this is a more believable approach than random unpaid invoices etc.

    The email itself is fairly poorly written, which would make me personally question its legitimacy, but then its written a lot better than some scams I see so it could fool someone!

    It was sent from a very obscure email address: joel.crabtree@vir010101.sh.it.net and although this email address corresponds to the name of the person that has apparently sent this, the domain name part is random, and should raise alarm bells straight away. My friend also confirmed the reply address was the same as the sender – sometimes they differ you see.

    And the attachment of the email is a zip file – word of warning, if you are not expecting the email and it has a ZIP file or DOC file attachment, it will 9.9 times out of 10 be a scam/virus/hoax and you should forward it to scams@0lly.uk and then delete it immediately.

    Stay safe peeps!

    Thanks for the submission, Chris!

    You can send in scams via our online form, or by forwarding them to scams@0lly.uk and i’ll rip them apart and publish info so anyone reading can learn and hopefully stay virus-free!

  • Thaddeus Mcconnell – My resume | SCAM – VIRUS | Clever!

    Another Word document attachment virus, but this one with a different approach from the recent invoice/financially orientated ones.

    It looks very much like a fairly normal email, the email address even matches the persons name;

    ThaddeusMcconnell@businessemail.co.uk

    Although its obviously from a free email provider so that wouldn’t be too hard to set up. The content of the email is fairly normal too.

    Hi, My name is Thaddeus Mcconnell Please find my resume in the attachment. Thank you, Thaddeus

    Gmail’s spam filters kicked in straight away with this one, I think because the file attachment is a zip file that it must have triggered the spam filters to scan it earlier than if it was just a Word document or something.

    Thaddeus Mcconnell - my resume.zip

    I did wonder if this was actually a genuine request and the chap just happened to have a virus himself and sent it unwittingly, but there is something about it that just makes me think its an intentional scam. I think its the “Business” email – it just sets alarm bells off for me.

    Anyway, real or not, Gmail did the work and marked this as a Virus.

    Delete and move on people.

  • Debit Note [40822] information attached to this email | SCAM – VIRUS – DODGY EMAIL

    These seem to be flooding in recently, not sure how or why i’ve started to get so many – maybe some of my scam-baiting has got me on some “To scam” lists 🙂 It’s also worrying that many of them are not being blocked by Google and they are actually ending up in my Gmail inbox.

    Anyway, the format of this recent batch has been similar, some kind of financial related email that will almost always entice you to open the attachment. Please don’t, especially in Microsoft Word as Word documents can contain macros, and macros are basically mini executable scripts that can do or get other things to do nasty stuff to your computer.

    This one was from Terri Tyler <Sean.33@sec-pc.skbroadband>

    Attachment filename: 39533803.doc

    terri_tyler

    Gmail creates a thumb of the document if it can, and you can actually see this one is full of crap – looks like code but i’ve not opened it as the macros are usually behind passwords and I haven’t got time to decrypt them so it would be pointless.

    Dont open any attachment from any person that you don’t know or that you cannot confirm is a genuine person/organisation.

    No genuine company would send an invoice or “Debit note” in a blank email from a mismatched name & email.

    Mark the email as Spam so your email provider’s spam filters can learn and block the email from reaching other people.

  • Invoice ID:48cac1753 in attachment | SCAM – VIRUS

    Seem to be getting a lot of these recently – they are slipping through the Gmail spam filters and Gmail doesn’t instantly pick up they are dodgy. After a while it marks the attachment as a virus but not straight away.

    If you’re ever unsure what to do or if things like this are real, then try and attempt to open it in Google Docs – dont download it and open it in Word.

    laurel_barry

    Email from Laurel Barry – Porfirio.51@ususmal.net

    If you receive something in your inbox and are not sure about it, send it to me and I will be happy to take a look and advise you from there 🙂