Should this forum section be members only?

[kevsboredagain]

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.

Yes, I'm not happy about the way names and email addresses are published, often without much proof or technical understanding of the scams. 98% are no doubt scams but what about the innocent 2% that get incriminated by doing this?

Many years ago, my own email was used as a fake from address by spammers. It caused me huge problems and I could no longer use that email address. I had to close it down and create a new one, which was a major PITA. I had done nothing wrong but clearly my email address had been flagged as malicious somewhere on the internet by some vigilantes online who could not recognise a faked email.

I've even had emails from people I know or have done business with, with malicious links or attachments. Obviously they've become victim to a virus on their PC but I sure am not going to post their name and email address on here and label them scammers.

The text of the scam emails are the best way to search on Google. Report the email address to the ISP if you believe it to be a scammer. Innocent people will be affected if you try and police it yourself.

This relates to the USA but still likely relevant for many countries.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25007975/Fals ... s-Criminal

[CSE]

I do not think we have actually ever reported a scam email here. Often as not we do not use Spamcop thee days either. There simply so many scammers around and they are quit obvious.
We too have had one of our email addresses used for ending junk/scam emails. We have had a lot of returns that say the email you sent cannot be found. Then we know we have a problem. Next step is to inform the hosting company and they sort it--- somehow.

[Guest]

[Guest]

[other]

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[greenbarn]

It's something of a dilemma, isn't it?
Now that I'm aware of the background behind kev's interest in the issue, his position makes much more sense, and of course having a unique name would be a problem if a scammer's typically random choice of name combinations happened to duplicate it.

On the flip side, I'm aware of a number of people who have been part way into the process of being taken in by a scam and hit on this section of LMH by googling the scammer's assumed name, and therefore been saved considerable anxiety and financial loss. I'm one, and I've been contacted directly by others. It is the scammer's full name they google; if they were savvy enough to google the body text as suspicious they wouldn't really need to IYSWIM.

There is no doubt that posting the names of scammers in the subject line of obvious scams has saved a lot of people who would have fallen victim to the criminals, and we should recognise the value of that. However, it is also possible that it has had some effect upon innocent people; even if we have never been made aware of an instance that can be attributed to a post on LMH, it may have happened, and that is a highly undesirable potential consequence of helping to prevent other innocent people from being defrauded.

For my own part I derive no benefit whatsoever from the effort involved in posting on the forum about a scam; it's a time consuming exercise. I don't doubt that getting a scam, and whatever name the scammer happens to be using, visible to search engines is valuable to many potential fraud victims outwith LMH, but perhaps the downside outweighs those benefits?

Although the opinions expressed in this thread are inevitably divided, the balance AIUI seems to be against posting information, even excluding email addresses, that could possibly link the shared name of a number of innocent people across the world with the assumed working name of a criminal, and I respect that view, am grateful for the enlightenment and shall cease to post about obvious scams - it doesn't actually serve any purpose within our own community, which is perhaps best served just by anonymous examples of the latest type of scam. If rental owners who are unaware of LMH choose to google the name of a suspicious enquirer there are other fora dedicated to scams which they'll probably eventually hit.

[barbersdrove]

try being Julie Smith! My name is in the news most days for all sorts of things criminal and nice.

[kevsboredagain]

Indeed a dilemma and I can totally understand why many people would view my opinion as being obstructive to identifying possible scams.

One thing which is apparent from this section, is that most threads identify a person’s name in the subject. Then, when you read many of the threads, you actually see that an identical message was received by many owners but each one with a different name. How useful is that name when it's being selected from a list of innocent people by the scammer for each message? How useful is the email address, when it can be faked, in the case of a phishing attempt or closed down in a matter of days/weeks for other scams?

To me, the main purpose of this thread should be to educate people on how to recognise a scam from the contents. That includes posting the message itself and perhaps any follow up, which confirms the scam. I find very little value in a list of innocent names plucked by the scammer from a phone book. After a while, you won’t need to even look here to figure out if it’s a scam.

The one exception to this, however, are the scams where the name tends to be embedded in the message “My name is Dr Nigerian Scammer and I am visiting your country …” type of message. In those cases, the whole message, including the name, tends to be repeated for every attempt.

We need to learn how not to get burnt rather than try and p**s on the forest fire.

[Casscat]

The point is not that all these scams work in one of only about three or four different ways and that we are all wise to them, but to provide a pathway for people who have received a suspicious enquiry but lack the experience to know if it's likely to be genuine or fake. Often people will Google the sender's name - and that's what takes them here. You only have to read through the long, long list of past threads to find comments from newcomers saying how grateful they are that they stumbled across this site via a Google of a dodgy sounding email sender's name. To report an attempted fraud you first have to know it's an attempted fraud.

[greenbarn]

Casscat makes a very good point, in a similar vein to a point I was trying to raise but she does it better than I did. The parallel thread "Confusing One" also makes interesting reading and is very relevant.

I'm wary of getting drawn in to prolonged polarised discussions; can I pose one question (I hope it's one.... ):
Do we think that
a) this section of the forum should be of help to potential fraud victims outside of LMH - owners who have never heard of LMH - or
b)should it be entirely for our own benefit as LMH'ers, whether we be regular or occasional contributors, silent followers or lurkers?

If the latter, then it seems reasonable to limit posts to discussions about new (to us) scam formats; naming scammers is irrelevant as we're not going to need to search for names - we already know it's a scam.

If this section should be a source of help for "outsiders", then it would be pointless to not post the scammers' names - that is what most people will search on. The name chosen by the scammer is typically used for a scattergun approach, so a lot of potential victims will receive it in a relatively short space of time.

Maybe that's over-simplifying it, I don't know; time to drop out I think.

[Paul Carmel]

This section was set up for LMH and public awareness, Look back at some of the comments of folk who found this site because of it, and have said thanks! How you police it in the future is up to you, but please keep it public.

[e-richard]

The debate should not be about whether this area is open to the public or not, but about what is displayed.

When it was first created, scammers would typically create their own fake name and email address and it was then appropriate to publish, name and shame.

As time moved on, we would be well advised to heed Kevin's comments that the email address (and name) used by scammers may well be genuine email addresses belonging to totally innocent victims, who have nothing to do with the scam, and therefore we need to be much more wary and considerate when publishing name and specifically email address of scammers.

Will this make the post less effective ?
Well maybe, but that is still better than falsely accusing innocent victims.

[Nemo]

Kevsbordeagain you have been very out of order by emailing a few members here (I don't know how many) the result of which is an upset member here. viewtopic.php?t=22982

You have more technical knowledge than many of us and undoubtedly more than every single person who googles the name of what they believe might be a spam enquiry and finds themselves here at LMH as a result.

This topic is clearly going to divide us, but I hope that's the last time you use underhand tactics to single out a few members here. There are thousands more owners out there who need to be educated so a one man crusade like that will not work. Let's hope they continue to find LMH via the scam section in one way or another.