Perrie Juran Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Had this pop up in my viewer tonight about 7:30 SLT.I could not figure out where it originated. (who sent it) It didn't come from any of my groups or friends. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceka Cianci Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 spam bots maybe scanning areas or getting lists from someplace or maybe even off a database somewhere.. i have been hearing about this one in the other forums as well.. i haven't been in world today at all and i think this is like the 5th time i have heard this one mentioned just today in different media's..so it must be hitting the grid pretty hard.. i would suggest everyone just stay away from it if you don't want to risk your account information.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perrie Juran Posted April 10, 2012 Author Share Posted April 10, 2012 Ceka Cianci wrote: spam bots maybe scanning areas or getting lists from someplace or maybe even off a database somewhere.. i have been hearing about this one in the other forums as well.. i haven't been in world today at all and i think this is like the 5th time i have heard this one mentioned just today in different media's..so it must be hitting the grid pretty hard.. i would suggest everyone just stay away from it if you don't want to risk your account information.. I do know better than to follow a link like that. Just that I couldn't track the source of the message. Most of the current scamming I have read about has been people following URL's in group chats. This did not originate in any of my groups nor did it appear in my local chat. All I got was the pop up message. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceka Cianci Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Perrie Juran wrote: Ceka Cianci wrote: spam bots maybe scanning areas or getting lists from someplace or maybe even off a database somewhere.. i have been hearing about this one in the other forums as well.. i haven't been in world today at all and i think this is like the 5th time i have heard this one mentioned just today in different media's..so it must be hitting the grid pretty hard.. i would suggest everyone just stay away from it if you don't want to risk your account information.. I do know better than to follow a link like that. Just that I couldn't track the source of the message. Most of the current scamming I have read about has been people following URL's in group chats. This did not originate in any of my groups nor did it appear in my local chat. All I got was the pop up message. i know you know better.. i was just saying that in general to anyone reading.. plus just saying that it must really be getting around fast if i am seeing it in so many places and haven't even logged in at all lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amethyst Jetaime Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Firestorm team is aware of this and put a notice on their log in screen about it, so i assume LL Is too, Just don't understand why they haven't banned him the guy yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innula Zenovka Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Judging by offline IMs people in SLU have been receiving, he's been using several alts. And Inara Pey reports Firestorm have already been able to get several of the accounts that purport to be associated with them shut down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perrie Juran Posted April 10, 2012 Author Share Posted April 10, 2012 Amethyst Jetaime wrote: Firestorm team is aware of this and put a notice on their log in screen about it, so i assume LL Is too, Just don't understand why they haven't banned him the guy yet. I am aware of this from the Firestorm log-in screen as well as the FS Blog: "Phishing scams in Second Life There has been an increase in Phishing attempts in the last couple weeks and a lot of people have fallen for them and lost their Second Life Accounts. Phishing in SL is mainly the act of tricking a user into giving their login and password information through fake yet convincing Second Life login webpages. Here is how it works. - Someone posts a link and sometimes text to entice you to click it, sometimes this can be a friend or someone you know (because they've already had their accounts hacked). - You click the link and it takes you to what looks like a Second Life Login screen. - You log in using your SL Username and PW. - You've just been Phished and given someone your SL Login information. They can now log into your SL account, take your money, destroy your SL Property, delete your inventory.. etc etc etc." What caught my attention on this was the fact it didn't come in a group IM or notice or chat from anyone. So I decided to post it here because this is the closest thing I've ever seen to something looking like an official Linden Lab notification. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Perrie Juran Posted April 10, 2012 Author Share Posted April 10, 2012 Innula Zenovka wrote: Judging by offline IMs people in SLU have been receiving, he's been using several alts. And Inara Pey reports Firestorm have already been able to get several of the accounts that purport to be associated with them shut down. What was unique as it occurred was what didn't happen as Inara posts in her (his? sorry not sure) blog. "The object ‘Second Life’ has sent you a message from Second Life: Happy Holidays Everyone! Get 1000L just for signing up here and confirming your email –http://bit.ly/????" I did NOT get the normal "the object, etc" only the two pop ups that I posted screen shots of. Usually I am able to track the source of a message. In this case I could find nothing to associate it with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UncommonTruth Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Very weird Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dilbert Dilweg Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Is it just me or are Firestorm users only experiencing this? I went to the location of one of the spamming prims yesterday and Derik Linden was there cleaning it up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 It's nothing to do with Firestorm users - it's not viewer specific. The message is sent to anyone. I posted this in another thread but I'll copy/paste it here as well:- It does not look like a scam or phishing to me. The destination page is not a copy of any SL page and you are not encouraged to enter your SL login details. As far as I can tell, it's not after your SL login details or your money. Objects are placed around SL, and they are owned by different avatars. The objects send the messages (IMs) to avatar names (not avatars that have been within scanning range of the objects). If the recipient isn't online at the time, it's emailed if that feature is set by the recipient. Affiliate systems exist on the web, so that website owners receive a payment each time someone either goes to a site from the affiliate's site, or goes there from the affiliate's site and signs up. The most common are seen by everyone - the Google ads that appear on so very many sites. The site owner gets a payment for every click on those ads. Thousands of companies are in affiliate schemes - paying for visitors or sign-ups. For instance, e-Bay used to pay me £5 for each sign-up that came from my site, so there's decent money to be had. Google pays for clicks, and they've paid me a lot of money over the years. Hotel bookings is another where I've made a lot of money over the years. I believe that the perpetrator of the messages is an affiliate, and gets paid an amount of money for each visitor to the final destination site (or for each sign-up at that site) who goes there from the perpetrator's site. Of course, there is no money for the person who clicks the link and ends up at the final destination site - not even if they sign up there. I said "the final destination site" because, clicking the link sends you through two sites before you get to the third and final destination site. The first of them is the bit.ly one, then there is an intermediate one, and then you go to the final one. The intermediate one is owned by the perpetrator. It's necessary for you to go via his/her site so that the final site's log shows that you've come from there and the perpetrator will get paid for your visit or sign-up. That's the gist of it. There may be a variation but it amounts to the same thing. The perpetrator is robbing the destination site, by getting money for fake visitors/sign-ups, and not looking to rob you. I should say that the emails I received made it clear that it wasn't anything to do with SL, and that it wasn't genuine. But the URL looked fine so I went to it. That's when I saw the trail of websites before I got to the final destination. At first glance, that site looked genuine and, since I've spent years in the affiliation field, realising what it all is was easy for me - if I'm right about it, that is Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dilbert Dilweg Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 I would think that Anything that disguises it self as an official message from second life without permissions from second life is a scam/fraud Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 That's true, but it's not trying to scam you. When we talk about scams here, we mean attempts at getting our money and/or login details - scamming us. It isn't doing that. The objects are named so that the IMs they send can give the impression of a message from SL, but the destination page doesn't pretend to be SL-related. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dilbert Dilweg Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Clever way of doing it of course . isnt the site shut down now? Did you give them your email for 1000? Brave enough? lol I am just surprised there has never been anything to block/filter/alter the ability for somone to use a prim to fake messages from second life What would really suck if there was a 0 day exploit not found by Anti viruses yet on the sites lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Yes, it's clever. The destination site is being scammed but they may not know about it. There are affiliate brokers, such as DoubleClick. A website owner usually gets sites to link to from those, and clicks on the links go to the destination site via the broker. If this method uses a broker, the broker and the destination site may not be aware of it yet. Methods of making the most of affiliate and similar schemes is common, and, if it weren't for the way it puts SL users out, this IMs method is a neat way of doing it. I did a nifty method for while. As well as affiliate brokers, there are search engines that a website can pay for click-throughs from, where the ads appear as actual search results. 'Overture' (used to be called 'GoTo') is the biggest and there are a number of smaller ones too. The more a website pays per click-through, the higher up the search rankings the site appears, and there is a lot of competition to be at or near the very top. The payment per click difference between the top 2 or 3 rankings and those only a little further down can be great. What I did was pick a top gambling site that advertised in one of those engines, and I advertised it in the engine so that it was placed a little further down the rankings - a lot less cost-per-click and still in the top 10. When someone clicked on my ad, my server received the click, did a quick search in the engine on the same searchterm that was used, did an auto-click on the gambling site's ad in the returned results (to get the right ID number), and sent the user there. That all happened without anything extra showing on the user's screen and the user arrived at the site s/he expected to arrive at. Everyone was happy. The user went to the site s/he expected to go to, I made money because of difference in what I paid the engine for the click-through and what I received from the engine for the more costly click-through, the gambling site got the visitor at the cost they wanted, and the engine was paid by both the gambling site and by me. I cleared it with the engine before I did it, so it was all above board even though it sounded underhanded. Another method is common in Google. Google's system is called AdWords, and the ads appear on the results pages but not actually in the results themselves like those other engines do. Everyone has seen the ads on Google's results pages. Most are on the right side of the page and a few are above the search results. Websites pay Google every time someone clicks on their ads. What some website owners do is open both an AdWords account (an advertiser) and an AdSense account (an affiliate) with Google and advertise the top-paying things, such as gambling, but only for a smaller amount of money per click-through. When someone clicks one of the middleman's ads in Google's results pages, they are taken to a page on the middleman's site that offers affiliate links to top-paying AdWords advertisers' sites. When a user clicks one of those links, the middleman gets paid more from Google, as the affiliate share, than s/he pays Google for the click-through. It's called 'arbitrage' - taking advantage of a difference in prices. Google know it happens and they don't mind because, as they said, the user eventually gets to where s/he wanted to go. They also get paid twice - once from the bigger-paying AdWords advertiser and once from the arbitrager's lesser paying ad - so that undoubtedly influences their thinking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Dilbert Dilweg wrote: I am just surprised there has never been anything to block/filter/alter the ability for somone to use a prim to fake messages from second life The objects are called 'Second Life'. That's the only 'faking' there is. The messages they send are simple IMs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arkady Arkright Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Phil Deakins wrote: The objects are called 'Second Life'. That's the only 'faking' there is. The messages they send are simple IMs. Strange use of the word 'only', it's actually a major attempt to mislead unsuspecting residents for personal gain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Yes it is, but the object name is the "only" place where the system tries to look like SL. I don't think that the word "only" was strange at all. If I'd said it's only this or only that, then it would have been a strange use of the word, but the word was used indicate the singular, and not an indication of the magnitude. It does attempt to mislead SL users for personal gain, but not at the SL users' expense. I wouldn't describe it as a "major" attempt. If the webpage that the user arrives at makes an attempt to get the user's SL login details, then I'd describe it as "major", but it doesn't. It doesn't even pretend to be SL, LL or in any way related to SL or LL.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innula Zenovka Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 It's the only scam of which we're aware so far. I've looked at the site to which the link leads, and I don't see anything there in the sign-up procedure that asks you to specify an avatar to whom the L$ reward is to be sent (though that's maybe because I opened the link in an external browser, rather than direct from SL). If they're getting people's details on the promise of a reward they've no intention of paying, I'd call that a scam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 It would be a scam if they are trying to get people's SL login details, but, in my short visit there, that didn't appear to be what the page was doing. It didn't ask for anything SL-related. It looks like the genuine sign-up page on a genuine website. Imo, it's that website that is being scammed by the perpetrator, and not SL users. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innula Zenovka Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 If you tell me you will give me L$1000 in return for filling out a form when, in fact, you have no intention of giving me any money if I comply with your request, I would say you were scamming me. What would you call it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 I would only call it scamming if I lost money or goods by filling in the form (e.g. by filling in my SL login details so you could empty my account of money or steal my goods). If I don't lose money or goods, then it's only my time, and I don't call that scamming. I understand a scam to mean that the scammer is cheating me out of something - and I don't include my time in that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innula Zenovka Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 If I write you a script, or you make me some low-prim furniture, on the promise of a payment that's never honoured, all either of us loses is our time. Bet you wouldn't be too pleased if I didn't pay up, though, particularly if it transpired I was getting some money from a third party for getting you to make me the furniture. I know I'd be a bit annoyed in those circumstances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil Deakins Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Of course I wouldn't be too pleased but I wouldn't have been scammed because, without payment, I wouldn't have provided the furniture, after spending the time making it. I'd have been lied to, sh*t on, that sort of thing, and I would have wasted my time, but scamming is generally understood as acquiring other people's money or goods by cheating them so, if I'd made the furniture for you, and passed it you but you didn't pay, then it would have been a scam. Incidentally, I write my own scripts, so I wouldn't have been a customer lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innula Zenovka Posted April 10, 2012 Share Posted April 10, 2012 Without the promise of payment, you probably wouldn't have registered with the website though, either, or a lot of people wouldn't. The pitch, after all, is "Register with this website and we'll pay you," not "Register with this website because you may find it interesting". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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