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11-23-2007, 07:09 PM
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Actor Website manager joins, offers info
Having built a legitimate website business for one of our medium-known actors over the past 6 years, I've worked with a couple of computer scientists who showed me how someone at or near software developer level can do almost anything, and make it appear like almost anything else.
We have experienced stalking, bank-fraud and identity theft in some extremely undetectable ways. The crooks used legitimate companies and links, and "siphoned" from them "offshore," usually by means of robot softwares called "packet sniffers." One example is the travel websites (you know the big ones). Routinely booking staff-travel for photo shoots and other events, we found a Mexico-based (they used American prejudice as a shield) theft group doubling airline, hotel and other fees, and siphoning through relays those companies were not aware of. They got their money, and the crooks got the mirror or duplicate fees. It took 3 weeks of painstaking work (wasted time in busines, on top of the bills we paid before noticing the doubling) to notify the travel sites and their clients - the bookers and air, hotel, etc providers. They shut it down, but one woman who worked for a rental car company told us the same thieves would likely switch to a new sniffer and siphoning network, as her rental company had not yet figured out how to find them "out there" in the dizzying world of internet relay stations. "It's hard enough for us to protect the security of our own servers," she said, " much less the linkers and other network partners we do business with. "When someone good at this siphons offshore, it is so costly we have to keep at it, but are working on developing anti-bot software by hiring former 'black hats' (hackers for illegal tasks), who them become 'white hats' for us." On two occasions, though, crooks placed the little buggers directly within our server and website pages. Those were disguised so well it cost us a $5,000 retainer with one of the country's best programming firms to expunge them. On our site, this was sometimes for mischief (hardly an adequate word when someone is trying to steal all your merchandise and post it in a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.), and sometimes we were used as a 'front' or repository for these out-of-domain information harvestings - just like the car rental company. We had up to 70,000 unique visitors (who visited more than once) per day. Luckily, most phishers and worse haven't this degree of sophistication. We were witnesses in a federal case against one such person, a software developer who was also a child pornographer and 'virtual theft' entrepreneur. I am no longer convinced the internet is at a stage in its history that is safe for much except entertainment and information. Later, once the industries have gotten a grip on this with their 'white hats' (or government steps in with effective controls), we may return. For now, real or 'brick and mortar' transactions, after our experience, will be conducted offline. Our experiences with the U.S. Postal Inspectors, states' attorney generals (three states), F.B.I., U.S. Attorney and real news organizations (NBC, CNN, daily newspapers and industry trade magazines) are available on request. Thanks for the needed service, 419. David 
Last edited by riothamus2 : 11-23-2007 at 07:26 PM. 
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11-23-2007, 10:45 PM
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Future trends
@riothamus2, thanks for your post it contained many truths!
The scammers are getting more tech savvy and we have seen them form into 'gangs' with a tech onboard! A few of us can see the direction they are taking and we are working on methods to stop them! any help would be appreciated! Much of the anti-scamming so far has been based on the assumption that the scammers are not very bright and in many cases this is true, however there are some who are developing technical skills and are becoming effective in ripping many thousands of dollars from innocent victims! The effectiveness of the anti scan communities can only be maintained by people who are prepared to look to the future and develop the newer methods needed to combat the growing technical skills of the scammers! This site and AFI. I am glad to say does not hinder this movement to advance, as some other sites do. And in some ways is actively helping to educate the public about the scams that are around! Please feel free to contact me via pm if you think we can work on these things together! 
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11-24-2007, 10:30 PM
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Dear riothamus2
Welcome to this forum. You wrote that "" a couple of computer scientists who showed me how someone at or near software developer level can do almost anything, and make it appear like almost anything else."". That is true but they forget to tell you that everything is traced even such actions. Always a hawk-eye can see the difference between original and fake and I am sure about that because one of my degrees is in programming since 1983 and I worked a few years in a bank's mainframe.
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11-24-2007, 10:44 PM
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Ordinary people
It isn't the programmers or developers I worry about - it is the ordinary people who get taken. And, once in the code, mechanisms leave traces (even though they showed my how some things can be so disguised as to defy detection without inalterable timekeeping functions on the server), but user interfaces and "silent sniffing" can go right past normal security.
It's the millions of non-programming people I worry about - like me. Dave 
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11-24-2007, 10:48 PM
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Dear Dave
This is the reason we are all here to help all innocent people giving information not to be scammed and I am glad to see daily members list to growing as also vivitors number to be already daily in a five digits number
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11-25-2007, 01:21 AM
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Wondereful site
Yes, and the more I look around, the two feelings get bigger :
(1) It's even worse than I thought, (2) Here is a good place for information and help. I am so grateful to find it.  Dave
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11-25-2007, 10:10 PM
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Quote:
Today in a post of 419legal I saw statistics about scam mails and percentage of victims and is the following: "" About 124 million people received phishing e-mail this year, up 118 percent since 2004, according to a survey Litan conducted for a soon-to-be published study. Of that number, 3.6 million _ or 3 percent _ lost money as a result of the scam, nearly the same percent as in past surveys "". But from the other side this forum started this year with a dosen members and we are now more than 3.500 (over 500 daily active) and the number is growing daily. Visitors of this site are over 30.000 daily and the conclusion is that we do good bussiness against scams. Soon (I hope) there will not any innocent person without info for all scams and scam methods.
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03-04-2008, 01:40 PM
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Last update of scam database gives the following resault for scammerslammer
Quote: Find IP Addresses for user scammerslammer Post IP Addresses 122.104.145.39 [Find More Users with this IP Address] And the resaults are Quote: 419 Database 122.104.145.39 Scammer Found ! (ID: 8416) IP Block 121.160.0.0 - 123.255.255.255 Country AUSTRALIA
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