The Daily Ping

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April 29th, 2001

Spam-n-Scam

Here’s a strange letter I got a couple days ago:

Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 02:02:02 -0600
From: info3@msn.com
Reply-To: info4@msn.com
To: info4@msn.com
Subject: Please Resubmit

Dear $First_Name,
Sometime over the past 6 months you signed up for one of our free cruises or vacation package. We regret to inform you that the information we received was incomplete. We received the following information $First_Name $Last_Name , 540-654-4210 . Please click the link below and complete the information to receive you package.

Click Here

OR GO TO http://209.61.156.83/

If you would like to be removed please Click Here

Why is this strange? Well, aside from the obvious (just call me “$First_Name $Last_Name” from now on), the phone number they listed was my phone number during Junior and Senior year of college. I haven’t been at that number for 3 years. In addition, the e-mail address that it was sent to was a forwarding address I set up at college, but haven’t actively mentioned to anyone in about as long.

Of course I’m a tad disturbed by this, since most spam isn’t personalized to the point that it includes your phone number. So who exactly sold my information?

I ran the IP address through Sam Spade and was only clued in on the fact that the site is hosted on this managed hosting company’s servers in Texas. By this point, the site has shut down.

The obvious question is: what kind of person would fall for something like this? -ram

Posted in Miscellaneous

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