Is this a Hoaxy Charadey type Double-cross Scam?

[swinny]

Received this rather odd email this morning to my personal website email address...

hello,
this is samantha dempsey here, i dont know you but i found ur email
somewhere i cant actually remember where lol.
      I hope you dont mind me sending you this email but could you tell me
a bit about you because i think i might know you??!!

Please reply, are you 28 now or 26??  I know on the email it says mike, but
is ur name paul by any chance?
Sender:
Sam
xx

Now either a) this is a perfectly harmless and genuine email from someone whos somehow got hold of my email and is just a tad confused (I'm pretty sure I know nobody by this name!) or b) its a clever scam based on the fact they are trying to confirm my age and name, which might be useful to some people considering some pretty detailed info about me can be found by anyone with a basic knowledge of domain name lookups.

..Am I just being paranoid? Any suggest some hilarious replies?

[Speciality meat product]

I would guess it's spam. If they thought they knew you they'd say something like "Did you go to Prince Alberts school in the 80's", or "are you they guy I shagged round the back of mcdonalds?", rather than "tell me about yourself".

[smoker]

here's one. for the last few weeks i've been constantly getting messages like this:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

     Subject:   Hi
     Sent:   03/06/2004 05:18

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

     coby@ns2.pccentre.com.au on 03/06/2004 05:17
           You do not have permission to send to this recipient.  For assistance, contact your system administrator.
           < ns2 #5.7.1 smtp; 550 5.7.1 Message content rejected, id=12695-04 - VIRUS: Worm.SomeFool.Z>


and yet i've never sent a mail to any of the supposed intended recipents. anyone else get these?

[a bald avuncular jew]

Received this rather odd email this morning to my personal website email address...

Then it's most likely a spam, and they are testing to see if your address is valid.  Replying to spam is a good idea, providing you don't mind the amount of spam you recieve multiplying ten-fold.

[falafel]

here's one. for the last few weeks i've been constantly getting messages like this:

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

     Subject:   Hi
     Sent:   03/06/2004 05:18

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

     coby@ns2.pccentre.com.au on 03/06/2004 05:17
           You do not have permission to send to this recipient.  For assistance, contact your system administrator.
           < ns2 #5.7.1 smtp; 550 5.7.1 Message content rejected, id=12695-04 - VIRUS: Worm.SomeFool.Z>


and yet i've never sent a mail to any of the supposed intended recipents. anyone else get these?

Someone appears to be spoofing your e-mail address...

[smoker]

why the ... ?  am in the poop?

[Timmay]

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

     Subject:   Hi
     Sent:   03/06/2004 05:18

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

     coby@ns2.pccentre.com.au on 03/06/2004 05:17
           You do not have permission to send to this recipient.  For assistance, contact your system administrator.
           < ns2 #5.7.1 smtp; 550 5.7.1 Message content rejected, id=12695-04 - VIRUS: Worm.SomeFool.Z>

and yet i've never sent a mail to any of the supposed intended recipents. anyone else get these?

It's a virus on someone's machine, that's sending out emails to addresses from people's address list, but also supposedly *from* people on that address list.

The person with this address book has got the virus:

Person A
Person B
Person C

So the virus would send a mail from the infected machine to Person A, purporting to be from Person B, and then another mail from Person B to Person C. And so on, depending on how big the address list is. Some viruses just send to everyone, from everyone (people would suss it, but that's not the point with these), so with 4 addresses in your list, that make 12 emails. With 10 addresses, it makes 90 emails. With 40 addresses, it generates 1560 emails. I've diverged from the point, but this is why these virii cause such problems with email servers.

[Lord Spong]

I know on the email it says mike, but is ur name paul

Brilliant!  Easy to get the two mixed up.  As we all know, Mike is short for Paul.

Blackadder:  Well young man, you've got yourself a job.  What do they call you?
Kate:  Kate.
Blackadder:  Isn't that a bit of a girls' name?
Kate:  Oh, it's short for...... Bob!

[Purple Tentacle]

hello,
this is samantha dempsey here, i dont know you but i found ur email
somewhere i cant actually remember where lol.

Judging by the lack of captials, it looks like smoker's pox-ridden email is sending you viruses.

Case solved Watson.

[Pinball]

I love spams like this as it's so easy to get them closed down. I recently got an advance fee-type scammer. The prat had a netscape.net email address and wanted me to reply to him. Naturally I forwarded to abuse@netscape.net. A few days later I received an email saying his account had been closed. Now I know these bastards have thousands of email accounts, but it's nice to take a few down innit? :-)

[smoker]

soz

[sick as a pike]

It's a virus on someone's machine, that's sending out emails to addresses from people's address list, but also supposedly *from* people on that address list.

Yes I've been getting quite a few of these mails as well and came to the same conclusion. (apart from anything else some of the mails I was supposed to have sent were sent when I knew my computer hadn't even been on)
Is there anything we can do, does anyone know?  Apart from contacting everyone in my address book and making angry noises about virus scans etc?

[swinny]

I like the way she says she doesn't know me in the first line...then says she thinks she might know me in the next line...thats what I call confused!

Guessed it was some kinda odd spam...but just seems a bit "personal" for someone to be sat there sending out 'undreds of the buggers so caught my interest.

[a bald avuncular jew]

but just seems a bit "personal" for someone to be sat there sending out 'undreds of the buggers so caught my interest.

That's the whole idea, I've been on the net for years now but still momentarily hover over emails with subject lines like "hi" or "clare told me to get in touch with you" etc...  If in doubt, bin it.  If they're genuine, they will get back to you.

[Pinball]

I like the way she says she doesn't know me in the first line...then says she thinks she might know me in the next line...thats what I call confused!

Guessed it was some kinda odd spam...but just seems a bit "personal" for someone to be sat there sending out 'undreds of the buggers so caught my interest.

How about replying 1,000 times to "her" email to exceed the inbox capacity?

[a bald avuncular jew]

I like the way she says she doesn't know me in the first line...then says she thinks she might know me in the next line...thats what I call confused!

Guessed it was some kinda odd spam...but just seems a bit "personal" for someone to be sat there sending out 'undreds of the buggers so caught my interest.

How about replying 1,000 times to "her" email to exceed the inbox capacity?

Well, you'd soon find your internet account closed for abusing the service.  Good job too, as the (now defunct) email address wouldn't be worth using anymore if a spammer found out you were trying to fuck them.  It'd be given to every single one of his spammer mates for free, and you would soon find the email account completely unusable.  Anyway, I'm sure most of the reply-to addresses are faked, so you'd simply be wasting your time (which is effectively what yo're always doing when trying to fuck with spammers) and risking your internet account as well.  Not a good idea.  Get good filters, and forget about it.

[hencole]

It's probably to check if your email address is active or not. If you reply you get put on a million spam lists.

[Pinball]

Hmm, maybe replying numerous times is not a good idea then! I still like to hit the "report spam" button though.

[Crazy Penis]

This may shed some light on things.

8thw: Phasma3000 - One of the few truly anonymous Emailers available on the net today. Featuring 100% anonymous mail and fully customable mails from plain-text to multimedia mails. Full modification of any header as well as spoofing of both them and source IP. Ability to send attachments and no need for 3rd party smtp relays, send directly to the recipient without any fuss. Ability to send bulkmailing with custom body/headers. All in 100% privacy if wanted. (20733 hits)

There's no need for you to reply to let them know that your email address is active because they will have the receipt that they requested to be sent to them once you had opened it.

[a bald avuncular jew]

Not if you have a decent email client (i.e. Eudora) which *tells* you that a receipt has been requested, and gives you the option of not sending one.

[Crazy Penis]

Eudora wouldn't send a receipt but the email itself would, probably from an embedded script. Legitimate email clients work on the basis that the sender is also using a legitimate client and hasn't been written for the purpose of bypassing the receipt request.

[Jaffa The Cake]

Even outlook does that.

[MojoJojo]

It sounds like it's some porn site... you're probably supposed to pretend to be Paul, and then she'll come back saying "oh I haven't seen you for ages, I've just put up some pictures up of my holiday at nudist resort, you have to see them at www.bigknockers.com".

Or it's genuine. What domain is the return address? It must be genuine because they want you to reply. If its from any of the big US/UK email people, it's probably real as spammers have stopped using them as they get blocked to quickly.

[swinny]

Well its all a little odd!

Against the better judgement of most people I decided to reply, so I asked:

Well I can't say your name rings a bell I'm afraid...where are you from, how
old are you etc? might help me work it out if I do know you...

Bonkersly I got a reply saying:

hello,
I am 17 and doing my A levels at the moment.  what else would you like to know?
what is your name?  Is it mike?  Is your last name swinny?  If so do you know a man in spain named paul swinny that is 26 or 28 now?
I hope you dont mind me bothering you but if you wanna chat anytime then add me to your msn if u have it or yahoo or just emails whatever suits me.
i live in spain at the moment with my parents but i plan to go to england next year and then finally go to uni when i am 19 to study Law.
Sam
xx

Now, for X number of reasons that reply still seemed a tad monkers...but the real madness began after I checked the email address (from MSN) for a profile...were no details there, but in checking it I'd obvioulsy pressed the wrong buton so somehow this person knew I'd checked their profile...had a little chat and they appeared to be the oddcase I'd imagined so made my exit as quickly as possible!

Anyway...maybe not all wierd emails are spam...they just come from nutcases instead!!

[Speciality meat product]

Did you not find out where she knows you from?

Also, did you get any photos!?

Oh god, i'd love to have an internet staker...

[Alberon]

I get the occasional returned email because some virus has spoofed my address, but I had a real problem a year or two back.

Someone spoofed my email address big time. For weeks I was getting dozens of bounced emails and complaints every day. I checked my computer and it wasn't coming from my machine. There was nothing I could do but wait it out. At the time I thought they lifted my address off of my website or usenet postings.

[swinny]

Did you not find out where she knows you from?

Well I've still n oidea where she got my email address from, but it would seem she knows/knew someone with a name very similar to mine (at least, my nickname)...so honest mistake I suppose...just no reason to be such a fruitcake.

[Crazy Penis]

I'll bet my bottom it's a script kiddie!

Usually they go directly to MSN and start a conversation with people. They claim to be female, 17, foreign (usually dutch) and have a younger brother. They are very keen to respond to requests for a 'photo' and who wouldn't want one, eh? They will explain that their younger brother has been messing around with their file extensions so it may not open (filename sambikini.exe or sambeach.bat). Of course  something happens but it won't open so they say that they will find another but they will have to scan it so are you going to be online for long. Well you are now because you can't wait to see sam in her bikini can you? She will pop back on in a bit saying that she needs more time as she is having dinner.
Meanwhile the file you clicked on has either installed a virus to open a port or you have ran a batch file to create an administrator account on you PC with a password and they will be able to access your computer usually by typing c:>net use <computer> <password> /USER:<username> at a command prompt. Then they will use the delete command to delete c:/windows. It won't delete files already in use but as soon as you do something your computer will crash because it can't find the file it needs and you will wonder why you can't reboot.
Something like that anyway ;o)

[swinny]

I'll bet my bottom it's a script kiddie!...

Hoorah for owning a Mac then I say! (although, I wasnt offered any piccies of her in a bikini...even fake internet females dont like me it would seem!)

[Crazy Penis]

hehe. Maybe he doesn't own a bikini!

Macs can be hacked too. Don't be too trusting on their supposed rock-solid security.