By Barry Nagassar
They're out there. Individuals trying to make a quick buck atyour expense. You labour hours on end to produce quality contenton your website only to get repetitive requests for huge numbersof product or promises for the greatest deals online. As awebmaster for a cell phone and PDA site, I've had my share ofspam and scams come through, mostly via email, some posted on myforum. The purpose of this article is to provide a few methodsof detecting spam and scams, and provide a few examples as well.Take a look over and protect yourself from online cellular fraud.
Anybody catch the 60 minutes episode where Andy Rooney teachesfaithful viewers how to detect junk mail? Junk email works inmuch the same way. Items with subject headings 'Great deal', or'limited time offer' usually can wait, and definitely don't havegreat offers hidden inside. Webmasters and consumers should havea golden rule, if you don't know where an offer came from (youdon't know the sender) then delete it. Plain and simple. Mostfree email accounts, GMAIL, Hotmail, Yahoo!, have good filtersthat label incoming spam and scams as, well, spam. However, themajority of webmasters do not use free email accounts for thesake of professionalism. To these individuals, a basic virusdetector usually includes email protection and generally willdetect possible spam items before they hit your box. Having saidthis, if you're doing link campaigns, or joining forums, etc.,in order to promote your site, it may not be a bad idea toenlist the free online email account and prevent all theunwanted junk from hitting your work emails.
It's been my experience that some people out there hand pickcontact pages of potential victims, and therefore the email maybe somewhat individualised to your site. Your name, the sitename, or similar content, may be communicated within the emailmaking it appear somewhat legitimate. Be mindful of your emailaccounts (contact pages) that are exposed to the world wide web.Some smart scammers have created bots that will automaticallyharvest emails that are sitting live on the web and input theminto a spam list. Remember this when trying to determine whethersomething from the web is legit.
If an questionable email has contact information, Google it. Ifit's a legitimate company contacting you, they should have sometype of online presence. I've noticed that the majority of spamand scams have fake mail addresses, but no online address.Furthermore, emails usually come from online web accounts likeYahoo!. Not only can you search contact information, you canserach content as well. Chances are a webmaster has posted thecontents on a forum somewhere wondering about its legitimacy. Ican't stress this enough, take 4 seconds and doabout the emailbefore you consider replying.
With these simple and quick tips you should be able to identifythe majority of scam and spam emails. If in doubt, delete. Ifsomething was important that you deleted, or legitimate, theindividual will likely try to contact you again. With this inmind, here are some examples of spam and scam emails from thecellular and technology industry, my comments are in brackets.
Subject: WE HAVE LOTS OF GSM/NEXTEL MOBILE PHONES AT VERY CHEAPPRICES'''''''' [The subject always varies.]
PHONES SELLERS INCORPORATED 12 Ademola drive,ikoyi LagosNigeria [Many, many, many emails have come with Nigeria asthe purported origin, doesn't mean it's from there, but out ofcountry addresses are always suspect of being fraudulent.]
Dear Sir/Ma,
LETTER OF BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP We are mobile phoneswholesalers.We deals on all brands and models of mobile phonessuch as Nokia,Motorola,Samsung and many more at very cheapprices. We are using this medium to look for buyers of mobilephones.Do kindly reply back if you are interested and as you doyou will be glad you do,thank's and God bless.
Fola David President.
[A variation of the above is instead of written bodycontent, they will actually send a product list of the cellphones they require asking for a dozen of each. Sounds likegreat business!...Here's the next one]
CONSOLIDATED PHONES LIMITED 152, OZORUMBA MBADIWE STREET OFFKINGSWAY ROAD. VICTORY ISLAND LAGOS, [no record of thisaddress] TEL: 0803-3870-694 FAX: 1- 817-0845, [not even areal number] Email:consphones_ltd@seeqmail.com. [baddomain] or consphone@galmail.co.za
Dear sir,
COMMERCIAL SALE OF BULK MOBILE PHONES
WE ARE EXPORTERS AND IMPORTERS OF GSM, TDMA, AND CDMA PHONES.[CDMA Phones do not run the majority of Africannetworks.] WE ARE ONE OF THE LEADING COMPANIES IN NIGERIANCOMMUNICATIONS SECTOR, AND WE GIVE OUT OUR BEST IN SATISFYINGOUR NUMEROUS CUSTORMERS. WE SELL IN BULK AND AT A VERY CHEAPRATE.
WE WILL LIKE TO USE THIS MEDIUM TO INTRODUCE TO YOU OUR VARIOUSPHONE BRANDS AND ACCESSORIES LISTED IN OUR PRICE LIST. THESEITEMS ARE READY FOR SALE AND THE PRICE LIST IS AS GIVEN BELOW.WE WILL BE WAITING AND READY TO ASSIST YOU IN ANY INFORMATIONREQUIRED BY YOU, AND ALSO, WE ARE READY TO DO BUSINESS WITH ANYCOMPANY, INDIVIDUALS OR GROUP AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOTFRAUDULENT. [Of course you wouldn't.]
WE WILL SEND OUR RANGE OF PRODUCTS AND PRICE LIST ON DEMAND.
BEST REGARD.
JULIAN JONES (MISS) Email: jonesjulian2001@yahoo.com [Thisemail is different than the ones atop] For: CONSOLIDATEDPHONES LTD.
But two examples of two spam/scam emails. Keep your eyespeeled webmasters!
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