Re: Warning: Trolling for Dollars, Scammers hard at work

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Brian.Henderson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> >One of the ISPs (Earthlink?) tracked down and prosecuted a spammer
> in upstate New York, which was difficult but not impossible. So
> PayPal should have a good chance >of finding the spammer, I would
> conclude.
>
> didn't get too greedy (or too stupid) you could make a decent living
> that way. But now, with identity theft being such a growth industry,
> the cost/benefit has shifted and you really have to keep on your
> toes if you want to pursue that career. It's likely that this newer
> type of fraud has not yet become enough trouble to prompt PayPal (or
> eBay, or MicroSquish, etc.) to put much effort into chasing down the
> culprits. I think it's difficult for ordinary people to grasp how
> differently corporations interpret the concept of "doing the right
> thing". To them, "right" will always mean "efficient".

Now that this stuff has finally turned up on my doorstep, as it were,
I'm aware of it and am paying more attention. They "claim"
discontinued email addresses, like the not-in-use-for-some-time
"support@xxxxxxxx." An email sent to one of these will bounce back
to you within a day. The bogus, phantom sites the fraudsters set up
to vacuum personal info, like "ebay-billings.com," (the mentioned one
that came to me), will be up for no more than 24 - 48 hours, after
which they return a "Server Not Found" error. I tried to retrace
those steps, because I wanted to print out those forged forms with the
official logos etc., but I was about half a day late. Poof ! They'd
pulled a Brigadoon. (Except this town may not reappear again under
the exact same name or URL.) But I have a feeling we'll be seeing it
again, sooner rather than later, the way things have been going.

Jordan