Online Frauds and Scams

[eastbayguy]

As a further sign of the decline and fall civilization at least as we've come to know it, it looks like the online world is deteriorating in to chaos. A couple of recent examples and suggestions. Sadly, formerly highly reliable online services are deteriorating in to carnival sideshows, and are now less than their former robust selves.

 

I have about half a garage full of stuff I no longer need. A lot of furniture. So, I put a couple of postings on Craig's List. In the past, Craig's List postings have produced a flood of results quickly, from qualified buyers and a deal gets done in a hurry. This ad produced three responses, all clearly fraudulent. All wanted to send me a cashier's check or something similar, for more than the amount of the transaction. I would pay the shipping, forward an excess amount to the buyer and keep a percentage for my trouble. All of the e-mails sounded like the writer spoke English as a tertiary language, if at all and perhaps the English was developed by an online translator. The e-mails all originated from a Yahoo or Hotmail account. The Yahoo account was apparently used a lot and was closed 18 hours or so after this started, before I had a chance to accept the gracious and generous offer. (NOT!)

 

The second is more insidious and borders on evil. Ebay uses this rating system where buyers and sellers rank each other. 90% of Ebay's activity comes from a tiny percentage of their total account holders. There are hordes of inactive accounts. Many of these inactive accounts use free e-mail services and have very high Ebay ratings. Some very sophisticated identity thieves have begun hijacking these old, inactive Ebay accounts. Everyone knows you check the Ebay seller rating before doing a major transaction. Whoever is doing this has figured out how to find inactive Ebay accounts with high ratings, where the seller sold high-dollar items. Both the Ebay account must be inactive, and the free e-mail service account must be snaggable as well. Whoever is doing this is very patient and has devoted a lot of time to it over a long period of time. The fake seller posts a series of well-developed ads, consistent with the seller's history, waits for the auctions to close, and disappears again. Two people I know well have had this sprung on them in the last ten days. Must be at least somewhat common.

 

Forewarned is forearmed. I hate to see crooks destroying the utility of online services. Meanwhile, I resorted to an old-fashioned classified ad in the paper. Got a parade of qualified buyers with cash in hand. Less than 36 hours after calling the first call to the newspaper, my stuff was gone, the garage was cleared out and my cash was in hand. Interesting to see how good, old-fashioned newspapers are holding their own at least on the advertising front.

 

--EBG