Welcome to RCF - WHF

Bobby · Dec 31, 2004

I recieved an e-mail allegedly from Walmart offering me a free $500 gift card if I would clink on the included link. After checking it out I soon realized that it was bogus. If you ever click on the link you become just another victim on some unscruplous person's mailing list. I have started recieving many of these lately. I have included ScreenShots of the original e-mail and the contents of the General and Source tabs. The Source is the dead giveaway.

rb2d2 · Sep 25, 2004

Thanks for the posting, Bobby. Yes, I get these too, also for Home Depot and several more. However they all come to an old email address that I maintain just to use on the internet when I need to use an email address. Since I've had it for years I'm not surprised it's been picked up along the way by spamers. I never use my main address anywhere but in email with friends.

The problem is people that forward email like jokes and stories to other friends and they all forward again. And all leave all the addresses in the body of the email. We don't even know who these people are but some of them are bound to have some spyware or virus on their PC that might pick up all these address. Including our main one.

I wsh people would use BCC when they forward to a lot of people and remove the ones in the body of the email.

Crying or Very sad

bigR · Oct 14, 2004

Good spotting, Bobby! Applause

Another scam to watch out for is the fake emails from your bank, or PayPal, or e-Bay, saying that your account will be closed down if you don't do something or other. On those, too, you can look at the source code and see that the links they want you to click on don't go to the proper site. When in doubt, use your own bookmark or favorite to go to the site and check on things; never click the links in emails.

I've gotten both e-Bay and PayPal spoofs in the last few days. The e-Bay was a fake message that someone had emailed me, asking where the item was that I'd already picked up the money for. Heh, I don't even have an e-Bay account, so I knew right off that it was a fake. Same for PayPal, I don't have an account there either.