Output Stream of Consciousness

Hey, there are scammers out there! If you got taken by one, then you're obviously someone we want to talk to: more »

You know those lovely scam e-mails promising you some great portion of millions of dollars from some dying or dismissed general or administrator if only you would help get it out of the country... just by providing one more payment for this and that?… more »

I have been very happy about the collective realization of e-mail software that automatically loading images puts you at risk for more spam simply by having tailored image tags expose to the spammer the fact that you read the e-mail. Online web mail… more »

UPDATE: No, it slows them down but it does not stop them. I am going to have to put up with it in the short term and trying to dig into B2Evolution's code again at some point. F-ing jerk-ass spammers. The comment spam was really picking up this… more »

I must admit, a few months ago, we were bandying about the idea of changing our phone number. Why? The incessant barrage of telemarketers and scammers was getting to be too much. They outpaced our actual calls from friends and family by about a 4:1… more »

We got a call from a person wanting to buy a Jeep from us a couple of days back. That seemed pretty odd, but hey, wrong numbers happen. Then it kept happening. No huge influx, but 3-4 calls per day. I was home for one today, and decided to ask them… more »

A hearty thank you to the folks who do my hosting for catching this. A hacker or script kiddie managed to upload a somewhat nasty-looking package into my cgi-bin directory. I haven't thoroughly investigated the code yet, but from the looks of it, the… more »

Not content with letting me in on my European lottery winnings, or being a company representative, or helping ousted generals smuggle their money out of foreign countries, they have now outdone themselves with THE DEATH THREAT. Full text and very… more »

Just poking a quick heads-up here, since this particular scam isn't being caught by some anti-phishing filters. It's entitled "PayPal Resolution Center - Remove Account Limitations", and it points here. You get the typical bullshit that phishers use to… more »

Online IQ tests are ever so much fun, especially when you do well in them, especially after someone issues a challenge. Such was the case with the popular IQ Test on Facebook. Nevertheless, there was one question I didn't like - I've taken many such… more »

Here's the text of the scam: Royal Bank of Canada Dear customer, Due to the recent upgrade of our servers, we have issued this warning message. It has come to our attention that some of our customers no longer have access to their banking online.… more »

We got a small swack of spam comments today which point at pages on http://meta.missouri.edu/ serialize/tmp/@top/ (I've broken up the link here so the spammers don't get more traffic). I've sent the webmasters off a warning. UPDATE: Yay, the pages are… more »

800notes.com is a simple site with but two purposes: letting people post information on persistent, unknown callers, and looking up such posted information. It helped me look up our of our persistent nuisances, 1-800-566-8064, which seems to do cold… more »

Oh boy - the sources of free money just keep moving around, like some sort of Quantum Leap scenario. Who's got tons of cash and somehow needs me as a willing partner in crime this time? more »

I have seen a remarkable decline in the variant of the 419 scam with civil servant/general needing to get millions of dollars out of the country and having chosen you to help with this sub-legal endeavour. The slightly newer take seems to be asking… more »