Each post on the blog contains one of the following to indicate the type of threat or scam.
419 SCAM
An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of releasing a significantly larger amount of money for their personal gain. (This also includes fake lottery winnings). Usually it initially appears that it is something for nothing but then the scammer will request money to cover "fees", "travel expenses" or other non-existent fake costs to obtain money from the victim.
DOMAIN SCAM
These emails try to persuade a recipient that their domain is due to expire, under threat from another interested party or has any other problem, which requires them to contact the fraudster. This can be to simply fleece the victim for non-existent fees to social engineering to obtain control of the domain.
FAKE INVOICE
These emails report to be from companies who you have done business submitting, requesting or demanding an invoice to be paid. In reality it is a fraud scam designed to catch out the unwary into paying money over.
MONEY MULE
Money Mules are used to launder stolen money and are usually recruited through emails for "job offers" that masquerade as being legitimate. The intention is for the mule to receive stolen money and then for the mule to forward it on to the criminals via untraceable money transmitting services. When the police come knocking the Money Mule goes to prison while the criminals remain anon.
PAYLOAD URL
An email message than tempts you to click a link to a website which then runs an exploit or offers a disguised download to breach your computer or use for other malicious activity.
PAYLOAD PACKAGE
An email message designed to get the user to open an attachment, which contains a malicious attachment often designed to hijack the victims computer.
PHISH
Phishing is a way of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Upon clicking the link in the email the victim is directed to a fake website where any details they enter are stolen and their accounts misused or emptied. Phishing emails also come in an attachment variety rather than directing the user to a website the victim fills out a form instead.
PUMP AND DUMP
Typically the scammer will buy a significant amount of penny shares in a legitimate company then attempt to inflate the share price by encouraging other people to buy the shares via spamming false information from fake takeover bids, aquisitions, new resource discoveries and other falsified things, all of which suggest the share price will suddenly rise for a quick profit.
Once the share price rises and hits the scammers marker they will sell all their shares and cash in their profit while other investors will see their investment drop often as the share price has been artificially inflated resulting in the loss of money to the victim.
DATE SCAM
These types of scams work by encouraging the target to engage in a fake relationship and once the target is comfortable the scammer will try to relieve the target of their money through a number of inventive ways generally playing on the sympathetic love smitten target who wants to help out. An example would be the "date" wants to meet up but cannot quite afford the plane tickets and / or accommodation costs or perhaps has some form of family emergency they need help with financially.
FEEDER SITE
A feeder website is a website designed to redirect a visitor to another website by encouraging the visitor to follow a link on the feeder website. The link will direct the user to a target website that can contain malicious scripts, downloads, exploits, contain spam or other types of scams.
419 SCAM
An advance-fee fraud is a confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance sums of money in the hope of releasing a significantly larger amount of money for their personal gain. (This also includes fake lottery winnings). Usually it initially appears that it is something for nothing but then the scammer will request money to cover "fees", "travel expenses" or other non-existent fake costs to obtain money from the victim.
DOMAIN SCAM
These emails try to persuade a recipient that their domain is due to expire, under threat from another interested party or has any other problem, which requires them to contact the fraudster. This can be to simply fleece the victim for non-existent fees to social engineering to obtain control of the domain.
FAKE INVOICE
These emails report to be from companies who you have done business submitting, requesting or demanding an invoice to be paid. In reality it is a fraud scam designed to catch out the unwary into paying money over.
MONEY MULE
Money Mules are used to launder stolen money and are usually recruited through emails for "job offers" that masquerade as being legitimate. The intention is for the mule to receive stolen money and then for the mule to forward it on to the criminals via untraceable money transmitting services. When the police come knocking the Money Mule goes to prison while the criminals remain anon.
PAYLOAD URL
An email message than tempts you to click a link to a website which then runs an exploit or offers a disguised download to breach your computer or use for other malicious activity.
PAYLOAD PACKAGE
An email message designed to get the user to open an attachment, which contains a malicious attachment often designed to hijack the victims computer.
PHISH
Phishing is a way of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Upon clicking the link in the email the victim is directed to a fake website where any details they enter are stolen and their accounts misused or emptied. Phishing emails also come in an attachment variety rather than directing the user to a website the victim fills out a form instead.
PUMP AND DUMP
Typically the scammer will buy a significant amount of penny shares in a legitimate company then attempt to inflate the share price by encouraging other people to buy the shares via spamming false information from fake takeover bids, aquisitions, new resource discoveries and other falsified things, all of which suggest the share price will suddenly rise for a quick profit.
Once the share price rises and hits the scammers marker they will sell all their shares and cash in their profit while other investors will see their investment drop often as the share price has been artificially inflated resulting in the loss of money to the victim.
DATE SCAM
These types of scams work by encouraging the target to engage in a fake relationship and once the target is comfortable the scammer will try to relieve the target of their money through a number of inventive ways generally playing on the sympathetic love smitten target who wants to help out. An example would be the "date" wants to meet up but cannot quite afford the plane tickets and / or accommodation costs or perhaps has some form of family emergency they need help with financially.
FEEDER SITE
A feeder website is a website designed to redirect a visitor to another website by encouraging the visitor to follow a link on the feeder website. The link will direct the user to a target website that can contain malicious scripts, downloads, exploits, contain spam or other types of scams.
