was I being scammed?

[earendel]

So I was checking Facebook on my phone this morning and suddenly I got a message from s3.amazonaws telling me that I had been chosen to receive a prize as a loyal AT&T Wireless customer (which I am). I had to answer three questions in less than 2 minutes - how long I had been a customer, how much my monthly bill was and did I have any outstanding bills. Each question had three choices, one of which was "I don't know". I did know, and answered, so I got a "Congratulations" message and a choice of prizes, including a MacBook, an iPad Air 2 and an iPhone 6S. The first two were listed as "Out of Stock". There was also a list of "testimonials" from people who had won previously. I chose the iPhone (my only option) and then got a message saying that I had to enter some additional information. There was also a warning saying that if I clicked out of the message I would lose my prize. At that point I decided that this wasn't worth the possibility of either some sort of phishing attempt or possibly an intrusion to install malware on my phone. I closed Facebook and went in search of more information. Googling "s3.amazonaws" pointed me to Amazon's Web services. But there was also a link to a page on how to remove the amazonaws virus from PCs (not phones). I may have missed out on the chance to get an iPhone 6S but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

[Pastor Fireball]

I didn't know there were Nigerian princes working for AT&T.

[Bob Juch]

That probably won't cause a problem on your phone but on a desktop/laptop system that would be an attempt to hijack your browser.

[silverscreenselect]

I got another call this week from "Steve" from Windows Technical Support. He wasn't as persistent as the last one who called me; he took the hint when I cussed him out the first time.

[ghostjmf]

I've "won" that prize a few times. The one time I followed it a little ways it wanted info I didn't want to give. I wrote it up here but can't remember thread name. Also, they or some entity much like them wants its "winners" to lure people into trying out "deals".


The ones I get usually say "you are the lucky 700th person on this page" or the like. Also, the i-pad is almost always already gone.

[Estonut]

I've "won" that prize a few times. The one time I followed it a little ways it wanted info I didn't want to give. I wrote it up here but can't remember thread name.

The thread name is not required. Search for "prize" under your username brought up less than a page of hits.

prize. or not.

[Jeemie]

I got another call this week from "Steve" from Windows Technical Support. He wasn't as persistent as the last one who called me; he took the hint when I cussed him out the first time.

I got that call this week while on a vacation day.

Since I was bored, and had some free time, I strung him along for almost 20 minutes, pretending to be severely worried there was something wrong with my computer, and asking him all sorts of questions that prevented him from getting me to do what he wanted so he could hijack my computer. I even told him at one point I had to help my wife because a shelf had fallen down in the other room. I went and got a cup of coffee- that took 10 of the 20 minutes. He was still on the line when I got back! Much of the rest of the time was getting him to try and narrow down to which of the five computers I have in my house that he was talking about.

I got that idea from another poster online who had done something similar...I was surprised it actually worked.

He eventually did hang up on me.

[earendel]

Last night, again on Facebook on my phone, I got another "Congratulations!" message. This one was from "apple.com-prize info", telling me I had won a free iPhone 6S. I guess this new iPhone isn't selling as well as anticipated, else they wouldn't be trying to give them away.

[silverscreenselect]

Not quite the same thing, but I've noticed a big uptick on my blog lately of spam comments. I have a system that requires me to approve every comment, and I've always received spam, but it was like one or two comments a day. Now, it's closer to 20 a day and they're directed to a variety of different posts. Most of them say things like

"Thanks for every other informative blog. The place else could I am getting that type of information written in such an ideal approach? I've a mission that I am just now operating on, and I've been at the glance out for such information."

I'm guessing that someone who doesn't speak English as a native language thought that might get past the spam filters. The thing is that I'm getting more spam comments now than I'm getting page visits. I don't know how they can leave a comment without visiting the page.

[Vandal]

Not quite the same thing, but I've noticed a big uptick on my blog lately of spam comments. I have a system that requires me to approve every comment, and I've always received spam, but it was like one or two comments a day. Now, it's closer to 20 a day and they're directed to a variety of different posts. Most of them say things like

"Thanks for every other informative blog. The place else could I am getting that type of information written in such an ideal approach? I've a mission that I am just now operating on, and I've been at the glance out for such information."

I'm guessing that someone who doesn't speak English as a native language thought that might get past the spam filters. The thing is that I'm getting more spam comments now than I'm getting page visits. I don't know how they can leave a comment without visiting the page.

[littlebeast13]

Not quite the same thing, but I've noticed a big uptick on my blog lately of spam comments. I have a system that requires me to approve every comment, and I've always received spam, but it was like one or two comments a day. Now, it's closer to 20 a day and they're directed to a variety of different posts. Most of them say things like

"Thanks for every other informative blog. The place else could I am getting that type of information written in such an ideal approach? I've a mission that I am just now operating on, and I've been at the glance out for such information."

I'm guessing that someone who doesn't speak English as a native language thought that might get past the spam filters. The thing is that I'm getting more spam comments now than I'm getting page visits. I don't know how they can leave a comment without visiting the page.

Wordpress has a program called akismet to handle the spam comments so I don't have to even notice them. Thankfully, it does store the spambot comments for a few weeks so I can get a good laugh out of them when I need a topic to mock...

http://evilsquirrelsnest.com/2015/08/18/its-my-treet/

lb13

[silverscreenselect]

Here's a new one. I got a call from "Mastercard" about my most recent statement. He asked if I recalled getting the statement and the letter. I asked him which institution issued the Mastercard. His reply was "You don't know where you have your Mastercard?" My reply was not printable. The phone call terminated shortly after that.

[silverscreenselect]

Wordpress has a program called akismet to handle the spam comments so I don't have to even notice them. Thankfully, it does store the spambot comments for a few weeks so I can get a good laugh out of them when I need a topic to mock...

http://evilsquirrelsnest.com/2015/08/18/its-my-treet/

lb13

I never activated Akismet on my blog because I didn't want to pay a licensing fee (technically, my blog is a commercial blog, which makes it tougher to find images to use). I installed a program called "Anti-spam," which didn't require Captcha. After reading your comment, I went back into my control panel to see if my settings were wrong for my programs and found, along with the 34 new spam comments in the last day, that I had never actually activated "Anti-spam." I've done that now, so we'll see how it works.

[Estonut]

Wordpress has a program called akismet to handle the spam comments so I don't have to even notice them. Thankfully, it does store the spambot comments for a few weeks so I can get a good laugh out of them when I need a topic to mock...

http://evilsquirrelsnest.com/2015/08/18/its-my-treet/

I never activated Akismet on my blog because I didn't want to pay a licensing fee (technically, my blog is a commercial blog, which makes it tougher to find images to use). I installed a program called "Anti-spam," which didn't require Captcha. After reading your comment, I went back into my control panel to see if my settings were wrong for my programs and found, along with the 34 new spam comments in the last day, that I had never actually activated "Anti-spam." I've done that now, so we'll see how it works.

Hey, SSS! If you want people from here to visit your website, you should go into your signature entry in the control panel and place the tags around both URLs. I'm pretty sure that's why lb13's work and yours don't.

[littlebeast13]

Wordpress has a program called akismet to handle the spam comments so I don't have to even notice them. Thankfully, it does store the spambot comments for a few weeks so I can get a good laugh out of them when I need a topic to mock...

http://evilsquirrelsnest.com/2015/08/18/its-my-treet/

I never activated Akismet on my blog because I didn't want to pay a licensing fee (technically, my blog is a commercial blog, which makes it tougher to find images to use). I installed a program called "Anti-spam," which didn't require Captcha. After reading your comment, I went back into my control panel to see if my settings were wrong for my programs and found, along with the 34 new spam comments in the last day, that I had never actually activated "Anti-spam." I've done that now, so we'll see how it works.

Hey, SSS! If you want people from here to visit your website, you should go into your signature entry in the control panel and place the tags around both URLs. I'm pretty sure that's why lb13's work and yours don't.

I just checked, and I don't have the url tags in my signature (I figured if I did, I wouldn't have bothered to have the whole url written out). I'm not sure why SSS's signature url isn't a hotlink.... maybe it doesn't work when you add the www?

http://www.silverscreenvideos.com

http://silverscreenvideos.com

lb13

[littlebeast13]

Well, that's weird. Maybe the Bored doesn't like SSS....

lb13

[silverscreenselect]

Well, that's weird. Maybe the Bored doesn't like SSS....

lb13

Problem solved. I tried several things out, and finally figured it out.

Below the signature block on your user profile are three check boxes that are checked by default. I unchecked the bottom one, which say: "Do not automatically parse URLs." The link automatically became hot without having to play with the .

And in the four hours since I activated the anti-spam plugin, not a single spam comment has come through.

[silverscreenselect]

What we've been discussing is small potatoes. Here's how the big boys pull off scams.

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/03/ ... .html?_r=0

Somehow, the ability to spell doesn't improve with the size of the attempted scam.