Scamming & Spamming on iWindsurf

spennie · Joined: 13 Oct 1995 Posts: 975 Location: Thousand Oaks, CA

If you have stuff for sale and get one of these, DELETE IT!

latifat williams (latifat005@gmail.com) writes:
Dear seller,~nl~I hereby wish to inform you that i am interested in the
purchase from you.I saw the advert ~nl~on the internet today, Kindly give me
your best offer.Will you accept a certified check/money ~nl~order as
payment?I have interested and colleague of mine who will be ready to send
you ~nl~payment by post when we both finally agree on terms. If its still
available for sale,provide the ~nl~details~nl~below...~nl~YOUR
NAME...........~nl~ADDRESS FULL .....~nl~TEL. NUMBER.........~nl~LAST
PRICE...............~nl~Regard

They're just trying to get your e-mail address to send you piles of spam.

It's also possible that they will try to get you to accept a cashier's check, then have the bank cancell it by telling them it was lost or stolen.

I've gotten this exact same reply to my ads 4 or 5 times, now. I've alerted the staff at iWindsurf, but there's not much they can do, people have to be able to reply to your ads, so it's up to us to be vigilant.

SWE106 · Joined: 14 Feb 2005 Posts: 264 Location: San Mateo

You're not the only one... indeed very annoying, (that's a HUGE understatement). Just add their email addresses to your spam list.

But, to prevent is always better than to cure, so I would really like iwindsurf to include a security code phrase when answering to a sales add. A very simple feature that will deter most spammers/phisher etc.

2bluehawaiins · Joined: 07 Mar 2002 Posts: 194

This has been a problem for years ,I wish they would do something about this person.

faradroka1 · Joined: 14 May 2001 Posts: 216 Location: East Bay

1. require member login to send reply emails
2. install a CAPTCHA to block bots
3. require a confirmation sent to your email as originator of the email message. once confirmed, email is sent to seller.
4. Limit the number of emails you, as a member, can send each week/month/year. if you are sending 100 email replies, that's too many.

this system is wide open. you don't have to be a member, or a signed on user of the forum to send phishing emails out to all the sellers. You don't have have a valid email to send replies ( though i know this defeats the phishing purpose), and you don't have to prove you're human to send replies.

if you are selling something, create a temporary email on google/yahoo/hotmail such as "spammeplease123456@yahoo.com" and after a month just ignore it.

You can change your profile to use a particular email account and then change it back.

isobars · Joined: 12 Dec 1999 Posts: 20935