News and Views From my kids accomplishments, to my heretical perspective of the world

August 24, 2008

Anatomy of a Scam

Filed under: Computers, Tech & Science — Daryl @ 10:49 pm

This is a very interesting investigation into a very sophisticated computer scam. Clicking on the wrong link can get you into a lot of trouble if you’re not careful!

10 Comments

  1. Very interesting reading and a very sneaky approach. I wonder if I would have been tricked. I’d like to think not, but that was a very professional and good looking job.

    Comment by Richard — August 25, 2008 @ 6:35 am

  2. Looks like it wouldn’t fool Firefox users, since it fakes an IE screen. But I’m sure I would have been snowed if that wasn’t my saving factor.

    Comment by Donna — August 25, 2008 @ 7:30 pm

  3. I’m pretty sure the fact it didn’t have a penguin anywhere would have clued me in. 😉

    Comment by Don — August 25, 2008 @ 9:03 pm

  4. I was duped when I had earthlink into resubmitting my information for billing. I figured it out in 10 min and had my card canceled quickly. It is still very scary stuff.

    The thing that tipped me off with earthlink was that earthlink was misspelled on the website it sent me too.

    I noticed on this article that the word crashes was also misspelled in one of the first warnings.

    Crazy!

    Comment by Heather — August 26, 2008 @ 7:59 am

  5. The web server can tell which operating system and web browser you are using, so it’s possible that the web pages could have been customized to look like Firefox or even Linux.

    Though seriously I doubt they bothered with Linux, since the usage is relatively low, and Linux users tend to be more computer savvy (on average, present company excepted). It would be a lot of work for very little extra results.

    Comment by Daryl — August 26, 2008 @ 11:02 am

  6. Firefox usually recognizes scam sites, but of course it has to be trained. The scammers could probably catch a lot of folks before it got added the list.

    Comment by Donna — August 26, 2008 @ 2:00 pm

  7. Present company excepted???????????

    Comment by Don — August 26, 2008 @ 5:52 pm

  8. Calm down! What I meant was that the windows users reading this blog weren’t necessarily less savvy.

    Comment by Daryl — August 26, 2008 @ 9:44 pm

  9. Whew!

    Comment by Don — August 27, 2008 @ 8:57 am

  10. By the way, good save. 😉

    Comment by Don — August 27, 2008 @ 8:58 am

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