Above The Law
Thursday, January 19th, 2012
Here’s something we really don’t see every day….
We recently received an email claiming to be from the U.S Department of Justice Victim Notification System (VNS)
Subject: US Department of Justice Victim Notification System
From: Courtney Walker <fedemail@vns.usdoj.gov>
To: Business Representative <address>
Our typical “common sense” check for email Phishing Fraud starts with the obvious:
- Overly serious/threatening Subject line…. check!
- Human sender doesn’t match email address…. check!
- Impersonal and generic salutation… check!
The email itself open with:
DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL.
U.S. Department of Justice
Federal Bureau of Investigation
FBI – New York
26 Federal Plaza, 23rd Floor
New York, NY 10278
Phone: (212) 384-2564
Fax: (212) 384-4104
more »
Tags: botnet, DOJ, FBI, fraud, Government, humor, phishing, Privacy, scam, Security, spam, spoofing
Posted in Above The Law, Email Fraud, Message Control, Phishing Lessons | Comments Off
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011
Based on the volume of junk mail promoting Gevalia, there must be exceptional profit to be made in spamming the public pushing coffee club memberships.
We’re seeing Gevalia spam from throwaway domains such as:
“Gevalia Coffee” <bigflavor_@whibagroop.info>
“Gevalia Offer!” <Rich_Flavor_@zuniskalan.info>
“Gevalia Coffee” <gevaliacoffee@multteman.com>
“Gevalia Coffee” <Gevalia.cgcryz@qwertykeys.info>
gevalia <gevalia.qmocc@qubjao.doctorpicturesense.net>
And with subject lines like:
Special news for coffee lovers
Gevalia – Home is where it happens
Gevalia is giving away a coffeemaker and travel mug
`Gevalia `Coffee – `YOUR `EXCLUSIVE `GIFT `INSIDE !
gevalia stainless steel coffee collection, not available in stores
While many other domains and subject lines are used, what these emails have in common is that they display ads such as:
more »
Posted in Above The Law, Spam Tactics | Comments Off
Thursday, February 10th, 2011
Just in time for Valentines day, FTD Flowers confiscates Cupid’s arrows and instead arms him with endless waves of email Spam.
Mailboxes everywhere are seeing messages like:
Subject: Send FTD Valentine’s Day Flowers from $19.99
From: ”FTD Exclusive Offer” <info@dns0.ash-falken.de>
These messages typically use actual FTD Artwork, such as:
Click for Larger Image
more »
Tags: semi-legitimate marketing
Posted in Above The Law, Spam Tactics | Comments Off
Thursday, September 30th, 2010
The idea of perpetual motion has fascinated both scientists and con artists for centuries. So far the scientific community hasn’t been able to invalidate the Law of Conservation of Energy but, since laws are merely a suggestion to the scammerific community, breaking a few laws of physics here and there is no problem.
Not being physicists, our objections to the validity of the email below are based more on our knowledge of scams. That, and the belief that if something like this was really invented it would be impossible to keep secret. more »
Tags: scam, spam
Posted in Above The Law, Email Fraud, Spam Tactics | Comments Off
Friday, July 23rd, 2010
Yahoo has apparently found yet another way to assist spammers.
As if longstanding abuses of Yahoo Groups weren’t enough for the spammed masses to suffer though, their blog site, Yahoo Pulse, is now making life easier and more productive for spammers as well.
The latest emails being spewed throughout the Internet have long and convoluted Subject lines (in an attempt to evade spam filtering) that allude to online sales of medications, such as:
more »
Tags: Hotmail, Microsoft, spoofing
Posted in Above The Law, Spam Tactics | Comments Off
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010
While the dominant Internet email providers (Hotmail, MSN, AOL, Gmail & Yahoo) frequently talk about their commitment to fighting spam, they are actually amazingly inattentive to the rampant spam abuses allowed and enabled by their own systems.
We only occasionally point out examples of how sloppy, permissive and ineffectual these firms are in regards to spam, because thoroughly documenting the spam faults of these enterprises would be a full time job in and of itself.
That said, from time to time the abuses are just so obvious (easy to spot and catch) rampant and perpetual that we can’t help but wonder if they even deploy more than 2 or 3 high-school summer interns to their entire anti-abuse efforts.
more »
Tags: botnet, spoofing
Posted in Above The Law, Message Control, Spam Tactics | Comments Off
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
Apparently Bank of America doesn’t want the public to know specific details about all of the various Phishing campaigns that are active on the Internet and that target Bank of America customers.
In a real “BP-ish” management response…. within 24 hours of our last posting Bank Of America Alert: Your Account Has Been Locked – Phish we received a suggestively threatening email from them, which was ALSO sent to one of our collocation providers, and additionally to our Domains by Proxy administrator address, that says, in part:
more »
Tags: phishing
Posted in Above The Law, Phishing Lessons, The Lighter Side | Comments Off
Thursday, June 10th, 2010
We’ve certainly seen a lot of spam come out of the Google mail servers in the past, and now we’re seeing even more spam content hosted by the popular Goggle Docs applications as well.
Emails typically have simple subject lines, with intentional misspellings used as an attempt to evade spam filtering.
Examples include:
- Subject: We ship direc7 to you
- Subject: From Canada4t5 you
- Subject: all medic6tions ar3 on S3le
- Subject: ricrac7 sue
- Subject: See 2uge dis64unts now
more »
Tags: hosting, spam, viagra
Posted in Above The Law, Spam Tactics | Comments Off
Monday, April 12th, 2010
Nowadays, “legitimate businesses” typically don’t send out too much blatant spam themselves. When they do send email solicitations, they’ll usually have some legitimate rational for initiating the contact. Perhaps you’ve done business with them in the past or you forgot to opt out of their direct marketing lists.
But, when it comes to pure junk email, they can always rely on “affiliates” or “marketing partners” to do the dirty work for them.
Case in point, this bogus piece of junk sent on behalf of CreditReport.com:
more »
Posted in Above The Law, Spam Tactics | Comments Off
Monday, January 11th, 2010
While in the thrall of the Holiday Spirit, one of our staff members went out on a limb and joined the Sears Craftsman Club. “How bad could it be?” he thought. “Surely Sears wouldn’t abuse my trust in giving them my email address. If there’s a problem, I’ll just unsubscribe and it’ll be over.”
Five unsubscribe requests later he’s still getting unwanted email from Sears.
more »
Tags: can-spam
Posted in Above The Law | 11 Comments »
