UKC

Hi people, quite new here. I set up my profile etc and within a week or so of going public got a phishing message by email from another ukc user... arthjhson

It reads...

(Hello,
I'm Arthur Johnson a Banker from West Africa, I write for the following
options in my office, which will be meaningful and very helpful for both of
us.....blah blah sob story , money money etc....If you are interested to carry out the project me, kindly send to me the following information’s.
1. Your full name.
2. Your address with your country.
3. Your telephone number.
4. Your occupation and your age.
I will then tell you what to do next in other to claim the fund.
I wait for your immediate response.
Regards.
Arthur Johnson.)



Is this sort of thing normal on here?

In reply to john jennings:

No it isn't - in all the years I have been on UKC I have never had such an email. Please make sure you report the user to the moderators and I hope your UKC experience is much better in future.

In reply to john jennings:

Hi John,

It's quite unusual for this to happen. I've just sent you an email so we can sort this out.

Cheers

In reply to Martin McKenna - Rockfax:

Hi Martin, Can't see any email from you.

cheers

In reply to john jennings:



Check your spam folder, sometimes messages sent through the UKC server can be defined by your webmail app as spam (although that does not explain how the initial message reached you)

As a regular user of this site and these forums since late 2004 I can say that perhaps I have had one or two such messages, in nearly 13 years.

I imagine some clever spambots can monitor sites like UKC and spot when a new user registers on a site, and they are programmed to think that you may be new to the Internet and thus a valid "target".

In reply to Martin McKenna - Rockfax:
I've had two similar emails in the past few weeks. Latest one was yesterday and the text was the same as John reported. I signed-up a couple of years ago.

In reply to andyjohnson0:

I've banned the account concerned. We have a IP blacklist that prevents the vast majority of spammers/phishers but it's not a complete solution. It's not often this happens though as you have said but we do take it very seriously when it does.

Cheers,
Martin

In reply to Martin McKenna - Rockfax:
Is it a coincidence that the two people who had this email had the text 'john' in their name and the spammer also had that text in their fake name?

In reply to john jennings:

I've had a couple of these, both in the last 2-3 years. Easy to spot, delete and report.

In reply to john jennings:

You link to your website in your profile and that shows your email address, physical address and phone number in plain text.

Probably got it from there.

In reply to Martin McKenna - Rockfax:

Thank you, Martin.

In reply to pasbury:

Oh, I suppose so. Perhaps that is a bad idea, but my website has been out there for a while and never attracted the wrong sort of attention before. It was just that the email came through messaging @ ukc. I'm not overly concerned about it.

Thanks everyone.