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Child's Disappearance Fuels Scammers
David Utter
Staff Writer
2007-05-29
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The vanishing of Madeleine McCann from a Portuguese hotel spurred an effort to fund her search, followed by the attempts to exploit her abduction for financial gain.
 | | Child's Disappearance Fuels Scammers |  |
There's a classic bit where George Carlin suggests certain people need to be hurt based on their actions in life. Never was his suggestion of "they should be strapped to gurneys and castrated with fishing knives" more appropriate than for these scam artists.
The Trend Micro blog noted how duplicates of the official website dedicated to finding the child have been duplicated by criminals. Putting financial details into one of these copycats hands them straight to the thieves backing those sites.
Someone even managed to get a malicious link onto the official website via a linked news story. That link would bring in an old malicious JavaScript, which dates back to 2001 and is likely stopped by modern antivirus products.
Someone alert Jason Calacanis!: If you are offered the chance to rescue a bulldog puppy from Nigeria or some other country, it's probably best to delete the email.
The Seattle Times said email scams offer bulldog pups for free, with the victim only required to put down money for shipping them out of the country they would be rescued from by the spammer.
Some versions of the message have English bulldog pups offered for a sizable discount, while other scams list different breeds of dogs. The report said pictures of the dogs accompanying the messages were likely purloined from the websites of actual dog owners.
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Tag: Online Scams
About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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