Respond to spam?

I advertise my IT skills quite often, and sometimes I get good responses...other times, bad. A lot of the responses I get generally end up being spam. Not so cool.

For the past several weeks I've been getting this same exact email, only from different people. Worded pricely the same each time:

"Hello,
How you doing?
My name is Cindy Dobbin,i from from Tennessee and right now i work in Las Vegas I read your descriptionand am insterested in your services,I just brought some computers and they are are laptops pentium 3 dell computer ..i want you to Install software such as Microsoft Office and Antivirus, clean inner & outercomputer components, update software to current status,Get back to me with you total cost for the services ofeight computer excluding the shipping cost cus i have a shipper that will come with the computers and the necessary Softwares to you.i will like You to know that my mode of payment is by check or Money order.
I await your urgent response so that i can put the
arrangement in order.

Thanks
Cindy"

Obviously there is no way I'm going to get any money from this person. Though I'm curious as to what they would do if I accepted and sent them my prices. Would they seriously send me a bunch of dell computers(maybe even stolen ones)? My curiousity grows with every email that I get like this. What are they aiming at?

KG

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Comments

dynamik

Once they get a dialog going, something always goes wrong or there's some unforeseen circumstance, and that's when you have to step in and contribute financially or give away some sort of personal information.

JDMurray

One thing they want to know is if the email address has a live person on the other end of it. If you respond to ANY spam your email address will be validated to spammers as a live target. Even if the spam (or "Email Blasts") is from a genuine recruiter or vendor, your email address will still end up on a list that is sold to other spammers. In most spam today, the reply address is bogus and the spammers prefer that you click on the links in the spam message to respond. Needless to say, don't do this either.

dynamik

JDMurray wrote:

One thing they want to know is if the email address has a live person on the other end of it. If you respond to ANY spam your email address will be validated to spammers as a live target. Even if the spam (or "Email Blasts") is from a genuine recruiter or vendor, your email address will still end up on a list that is sold to other spammers. In most spam today, the reply address is bogus and the spammers prefer that you click on the links in the spam message to respond. Needless to say, don't do this either.

You don't even need to follow links on a lot of it anymore. All they have to do is include a reference to http://www.spammers-domain.com/your-email-address/1x1pixel.gif or something, and they can easily extract your email address from the hit on their server. That's one of the reasons many email applications do not download external content without your approval. If your email client doesn't support that functionality, you could be validating your address simply by looking at the message.

JDMurray

dynamik wrote:

You don't even need to follow links on a lot of it anymore. All they have to do is include a reference to http://www.spammers-domain.com/your-email-address/1x1pixel.gif or something, and they can easily extract your email address from the hit on their server.

Yeah, that's called a Web bug and it's easily defeated by not displaying embedded images in your email browser. Also, a hosts file that blocks spam sites will also prevent many Web bugs from working.

mikej412

KGhaleon wrote:

i have a shipper that will come with the computers and the necessary Softwares to you.i will like You to know that my mode of payment is by check or Money order.

Yeah, probably stuff bought with stolen credit cards -- so you become the person who receives the stolen goods. You update them, and then probably send them along to someone else who's going to sell them....

Plus you probably get paid with fake Checks/Money Orders. Then there could be an big overpayment for your services, and you'd be told to deposit the fake and send a check back (or give them permission to do an electronic check, and give them your checking account information). Then you're on the hook for the amount overdrawn in about 10 days when the fake check really doesn't clear.

RUN!!! RUN FAST AND FAR!!!

KGhaleon

I don't like how Outlook automatically opens emails by default when you click on them. Outlook bad.

Yeah, I shouldn't bother responding or doing anything with them. I wonder though whether stuff like this should be sent to the police so they can handle it. Then again, even the police may not bother with it. Wonder if there is a place where you can send suspicious emails, so that the Law can handle it in the event that it's not spam...but something of an illegal nature?

JDMurray

There are several organizations, such as CAUCE, which constantly monitor the flow of spam and work with the Federal Trade Commission to prosecute spammers. Spam is everywhere, so unless you are specifically targeted by a spear phishing scheme, you don't need to report it. If you suspect that you have been the victim of Internet fraud, contact your local law enforcement agency or organizations such as the NCL and the FTC.

Anti-Spam Organizations

Schluep

KGhaleon wrote:

I don't like how Outlook automatically opens emails by default when you click on them. Outlook bad.

Yeah, I shouldn't bother responding or doing anything with them. I wonder though whether stuff like this should be sent to the police so they can handle it. Then again, even the police may not bother with it. Wonder if there is a place where you can send suspicious emails, so that the Law can handle it in the event that it's not spam...but something of an illegal nature?

You can disable the message preview in the options so that you actually have to open the message not simply click on it and view while attempting to take further action.

There are literally trillions of spam messages sent daily. No law enforcement agency in the world could keep up with that. If you look at the stats on Barracuda Network's Site you will see their statistics shown daily. Yesterday they state that they blocked nearly 2 billion messages alone, and the majority of Corporations in the U.S. do not use Barracuda, let alone factoring in home accounts, messages blocked by mail servers, and the rest of the world (International boundaries don't have much affect on e-mail, as you know from the millions of Nigerian Billionaire Princes wanted to give you their fortunes).

There are organizations with software to monitor such activity, it is best left to them and Governments to investigate and us to block them. Only time you need to report something is if you are successfully scammed and want to try and catch them (not likely since they usually use wire transfers to remote locations).