"Toyota" trojan email

[dmckinstry]

Originally Posted by qbee42

I never believe anything of this nature. As you said, something like this comes by certified mail or Ed McMahon standing at your door with a TV crew. I only posted this to warn others, and for comic value.

Tom

I suspected as much. I've gotten a number of the "Nigerian" (some actually had a Nigerian address) email things. I was tempted to reply with phony information, but never have. If everyone who received these send phony info back, would they give up?

Dave M.

[timberwolf]

No, never respond to a spam email or click on any link in a spam email. Doing either will alert the spammer that they've found a live target, even just a live email address or ip address has a value that a spammer can sell to another criminal.

[qbee42]

Originally Posted by dmckinstry

I suspected as much. I've gotten a number of the "Nigerian" (some actually had a Nigerian address) email things. I was tempted to reply with phony information, but never have. If everyone who received these send phony info back, would they give up?

Dave M.

There are a fair number of people who toy with these spammers as a hobby. Their online forums are full of discussion about what is legal and how far you can go messing with them before the law comes and gets you for doing something illegal. It sounds like fun, but I have enough hobbies and time wasters as it is (as shown by my involvement with PriusChat).

Tom

[usbseawolf2000]

They can't even get the spec of the Prius right. 1.9L engine haha

[Tideland Prius]

This must be real! It's not from Africa!

[AussieOwner]

I don't believe it. I got one of those purportedly from Toyota Asia Region. It was much along the same lines, given away by the return mail being a hotmail account. I got it about two or three weeks ago in what I refer as my "dumb" mail account - this is the mail account that I use for any sign-ups to different web sites. So far, it has been a one-off. Not seen any other spams on the account, so it does question where they got the mail account from.

Maybe we are just a little more noticable on these things as we know Toyota.

[Patrick Wong]

Originally Posted by EZW1

I especially like the part that says, "Four doors or more"

Like they're not sure.

Well, if you count the hatch there are five doors.

Another scam may happen when you list a car for sale; I did this recently. I received a nice long e-mail to the effect that the sender was interested in buying the car but out of the country, wanted me to hold the car for him for 30 days and was willing to pay an extra $3K over my asking price for that privilege. I wrote back and said send me a $3K cashier's check drawn on a CA bank within one week, as payment for your non-refundable option to buy my car, to expire after the 30 day period. Never heard further from that joker.

[dmckinstry]

Originally Posted by timberwolf

No, never respond to a spam email or click on any link in a spam email. Doing either will alert the spammer that they've found a live target, even just a live email address or ip address has a value that a spammer can sell to another criminal.

The trouble is, that in my case they already know. University faculty and staff have online published email addresses. I get at least 200 spams a day. Fortunately most now get filtered in a junk email folder. I used to look at them just to see if there were any legitimate emails in there. Only one I found was actually legitimate. It was from the president of the university. I haven't looked at the junk email folder in ages, and empty it when it gets up to about 1000. I actually get a number of junk emails from "myself" and a number that are addressed to names similar but not the same as mine.

My first experience with phishing was a few years back (2 - 5 years). An email from CitiBank asked me to update my account information. Even though it looked very official, I didn't have a CitiBank account. That sort of clued me in to phishing. If they had happened to use a bank that I actually used, they might have caught me.

A lot of times, if they provide a link you can see that it's phony by holding your mouse pointer over the link and the actual link shows at the bottom of your web browser. I've seen links that actually are from high school students supposedly from banks.

Even then you're not guaranteed, since they make up site names that have a real financial institution's site as a part of the name.
I don't know what can be done about that, short of making the "organization" responsible for site names to not make it possible to have a site name with any legitimate company name as a part of it, unless it can confirm that it's actually a site of the company in question. Anyone attempting to set up such a phony site would be reported.

Probably not practical, but if the "Patriot Act" and Homeland Security can keep track of 100s of millions of emails or phone calls, why not?

Anyway, I've ranted enough.

Dave M.

[jayman]

Originally Posted by dmckinstry

Probably not practical, but if the "Patriot Act" and Homeland Security can keep track of 100s of millions of emails or phone calls, why not?

Don't even get me started. It's too early in the day for me to start drinking

[dmckinstry]

Originally Posted by jayman

Don't even get me started. It's too early in the day for me to start drinking

Really? I thought you were in one of the more eastern time zones.

Is it ever really too early to start drinking? OK, I take that back.

Dave M.