Should this forum section be members only?

Post scam emails to warn other rental owners, or if you are not sure if an enquiry is genuine, put it up here and see what others think.
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edinburgh
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Should this forum section be members only?

Post by edinburgh »

I wanted to post a suspicious email I'd received, and although I've rejected the booking, I didn't want to name the individual in case there it's a legitimate person. I wonder if anyone has thoughts on "scam email enquiries" being available to members only, and thus not indexed by search engines?

Anyway, not sure what the scam is. Someone messaged me via Homeaway yesterday saying her children were 4.5 and 7 years old. Today she'd prefer to pay by Paypal, and her children are 3 and 6 years old.... naturally I declined the booking.
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French Cricket
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Post by French Cricket »

Actually I agree with you edinburgh.

I always feel uneasy when people post names and contact details of enquirers where it might or might not be a scam. Imagine if it weren't and the person found themselves listed on here :shock:
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greenbarn
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Post by greenbarn »

Surely a key point of this section is precisely that it can be found by search engines and people who might otherwise be taken in by the scammers?

There would be little point in posting obvious scams in a closed part of the forum as it is very unlikely that anyone who has been on LMH for any time at all is going to be taken in by them; conversely, a significant number of members have discovered the forum by virtue of googling a suspicious enquiry and hitting it on LMH.

I can certainly see the arguments against open posting, but do they apply to what (to us) are blindingly obvious scam attempts? Should postings maybe start off as closed and be "elected" to open forum?

Of course, maybe if the information wasn't available to "outsiders", the scammers could have more success targetting them and we wouldn't have to contend with their increasing sophistication......
Last edited by greenbarn on Fri Dec 05, 2014 6:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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kevsboredagain
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Post by kevsboredagain »

I have to agree. A suspected scam is not reason enough to publish an email address, which could itself be fake and belong to some innocent person. Only scams which have been confirmed, deserve to be named and only then if you are 100% sure that the email address actually belongs to the scammer.
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Normandie
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Post by Normandie »

A compromise is needed, I think. It is useful to have the section indexed by Google but it is unfair to name and shame someone by accident, in effect - if scammers make up names, as they appear to, they can't fail to use the names of real people somewhere.

I think posting the body of the suspected scam email is okay plus either the first or last name but not the email address in full. So we'd know that *****.surname@gmail is looking for accommodation for 10 any time in 2015 ;-) and if any other LMHer has a similar enquiry from a similar surname, they can always email the poster to ask for the full email address.

Or maybe use f*****.s*****@gmail.com

I'd always search for a sentence from the body of the text when Googling to decide whether an enquiry is a scam so for me, the text is more important than the name because the name is often changed by prolific scammers.
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greenbarn
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Post by greenbarn »

Interesting. My gut feeling is that someone would be most likely to search on a full name, especially when many of them are unlikely (Ford Prefect anyone?). Even if the name is associated with a real person somewhere, which is very possible, I'm not convinced that's a real issue unless there's something else that narrows down the id.

On the other hand, an email address is unique and I can understand the thinking behind not posting that; kev raised the possibility of the email address being stolen from an innocent person fairly recently, and that was something I hadn't considered.

I'm currently veering in favour of the full name and the body of the enquiry minus any uniquely identifying details, but I'm interested to see more views.
I'd like to help others out there avoid falling for scams, but I wouldn't want to raise suspicions against someone innocent. Is there a best solution?
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

We found this forum via a scammers name. We looked them up as we were unsure of the request. So no lock down on this section please.


As a side point if you go and register with Spamcop- http://www.spamcop.net/ one can cut and paste all of the code (including headers in to the report form so find our actually where the email originates from. There is no need to report the email if one does not want to.
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other
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Post by other »

. .
Last edited by other on Wed Apr 22, 2015 10:42 am, edited 1 time in total.
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kevsboredagain
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Post by kevsboredagain »

It's fairly pointless posting an email address. The important part is the body of the email, which will be repeatedly used by the scammer from many email sources. However, some dodgy spelling or missing phone numbers if not proof enough for a scam.

As I've already commented, there are 2 types of scam we receive. Phishing attempts with links or attachments or payment scams.

The first requires no reply to the scammer, so the from email is often fake. I've even had some of these from previous guests. You should definitely not be posting these email addresses.

Then there are the payment scams where communication is required. The scammer uses a disposable gmail or hotmail address. This may last a few weeks before enough people report it and Google close it down. The address probably goes back into the available pool after some time. How would you feel being assigned an address which had previously belonged to a scammer and was now published for eternity online?

The correct thing to do is report the fraud to Google or whichever service it is. The email address will be suspended if enough people do this and will end up benefiting far more people.

You cannot justify publishing email addresses on the basis that "most" of them are scams.
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kevsboredagain
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Post by kevsboredagain »

casasantoestevo wrote:We found this forum via a scammers name. We looked them up as we were unsure of the request. So no lock down on this section please.
For someone that brings up the subject of law or legalities on so many other subjects, I'm surprised that you are willing to be internet police, judge and jury on the basis that most of the suspects are probably guilty. Who cares if a few innocent people get are caught in this net, right?
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Nemo
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Post by Nemo »

I think we must remember that many members here are still learning about scams, how to spot them and understand the process. I'm still learning even after years of being a member but I didn't start getting proper scam emails from guests until I joined OD.

I do not post email addresses and agree there's no need, but even I may have been guilty of posting a name (I honestly can't remember) but that's because for many if us we don't understand how to spot them or check with others if it's not via the name.

So let's not be judge and jury but simply educate each other, kindly and politely. Many of us are older, didn't get taught any IT so make honest mistakes in this process.
Last edited by Nemo on Sat Dec 06, 2014 9:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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paolo
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Post by paolo »

kevsboredagain wrote:Surely a key point of this section is precisely that it can be found by search engines and people who might otherwise be taken in by the scammers?
Absolutely, that is the point of it.
greenbarn wrote:A suspected scam is not reason enough to publish an email address, which could itself be fake and belong to some innocent person. Only scams which have been confirmed, deserve to be named and only then if you are 100% sure that the email address actually belongs to the scammer.
This is my view. I try to keep on top of this, if someone posts an email address for an enquiry they are merely unsure about I alter it so it cannot be found with a search.

If you are posting a 100% scam to protect others, you should post name and email address so they can be found by others.

If you are asking whether an enquiry is a scam, you should cloak name and address. If it turns out to be a scam you can go back and edit your post to make the name and address clear.
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greenbarn
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Post by greenbarn »

Paolo - you've switched the attribution of the two quotes from myself and kev
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kevsboredagain
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Post by kevsboredagain »

The other week, I attempted a little experiment but had to postpone it until I had some more time.

I was going to send a few of the regulars in this section a typical scam email, with some bad English and suspect details. Nothing malicious. However, the from email would have been YOUR OWN email address. Unfortunately I could not quickly find an email server which would allow the email to be sent and would probably have to run my own server. Creating the email itself was trivial.

How many of you would have posted yourselves as scammers in the section?

Even the names themselves can cause a problem. I replied to another thread this morning, with someone naming Jan P** as the scammer. I looked up this name and found several people of the same name on both Facebook and Linkedin. Imagine if that was your name. Would you be happy finding it listed as a scammer as on page 1 of Google, which is where it can be found now? The scammer may well have used this name but the LMH post incriminated everyone else unfortunate enough to have the same name.
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CSE
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Post by CSE »

kevsboredagain wrote:
For someone that brings up the subject of law or legalities on so many other subjects, I'm surprised that you are willing to be internet police, judge and jury on the basis that most of the suspects are probably guilty. Who cares if a few innocent people get are caught in this net, right?
Kevin, You are obviously upset about something.
You have taken the quote out of context all we asked for is the area, about scams, not to be hidden away from search engines ie not locked down. We are not the only ones asking for this section to be kept open. We therefore feel that the personal criticism on us is not warranted.
Further more contrary to your believes, we never have tried to be police, judge or jury. We will continue to post about laws which we all should try and abide by when running our business. We feel that is useful information for everyone. If a person wants to take that advice it is for them.

We do not insist you to read or respond to those posts you do not like.
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