Anyone else being the 'victim' of a brushing scam?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A little over two weeks ago we started getting small packages addressed to “Colin Boone” several times week, both from Amazon directly and passed through USPS. Now, this house was owned by hubby’s parents before us, for a total of a little over 50 years of continuous occupation by people with our last name, No one by that name, or any part of it, has lived here, been a guest here, or even come to a gathering so far as we know.

So apparently it’s a ‘brushing scam.’ At first we assumed it was a mistake and took the trouble to mark the packages “not at this address” for the USPS ones, and actually dropped two of them off at an Amazon place we happen to pass for other reasons several times a week.

But they kept coming. Finally we got a bubble-type package that had been completely sliced in half, retaped, with a clearly handwritten note enclosed that said “Sorry, opened in error.” so we decided to open it again. A tiny plastic bag of multicolored balloons, maybe ten or so! Yay!

Finally we went to the trouble – and time! – calling Amazon customer service, and they confirmed it looked like a classic scam, that they would try to stop the deliveries, and we should do whatever we pleased with any further deliveries for Mister Boone.

And, of course, we promptly got THREE more packages today. So we had an opening party to see what the Internet is gifting us with. We got:

  • a package of paintbrushes. Ones with plastic round handles in all different colors, with the bristle bundles about 3/4” in diameter. Like way sized-up watercolor brushes?
  • a plastic doodad we’re guessing is some specialized kitchen gadget? Or maybe a shop tool? Had no wrapping or label at all included.
  • five packages of zip lock/cable ties! All black, each package labeled as “count 100” but of different sizes: 4, 5, 8, 10, and 12” long. The heck? Who needs ziplock ties of that size? Maybe you could use them as improvised handcuffs?

We plan to gift the brushes to our church’s stash of random art supplies for kid’s projects, but the rest…. Anyone need 500 zip ties?

Why couldn’t they at least send stuff with some chance of being useful to random people? Send us candy. Cans of some soup. Erasers. Little toys for kids?

Anybody else getting ‘gifts’ from the universe?

2

What is the point of this scam? Is it a prank of some kind?

StG

3

Is there a way to give extremely bad reviews for these products on Amazon?

4

Would you care to define that?

5

My question, exactly. The purpose of a “scam” is illicit profit. The purpose of a prank is a practical joke. I would term this as the latter, but carrying it on and on seems like a tremendous amount of effort, and they can’t even see the results of that effort. I’m not getting this.

6

Scammers or sellers of knock-off merchandise find your address or other personal information online. They send you goods you never ordered and use your information to write fake online reviews about their products in your name — which helps them boost sales.

7

No, the scammer is trying to legitimize a fake e-commerce account by having items delivered to it. Any physical address will work as long as it accepts package deliveries.

The person receiving the junk delivery is really just a bystander, neither scammed nor scammer.

Each time an “order” is delivered, it can be given a high customer rating by the fake customer, so that the seller’s profile is rated higher and gets more visibility.

It’s called brushing for those who aren’t familiar.

8

What I gathered from the Amazon Service Person is that the idea is for the company/fulfillment company? to build up their ‘reliability rating’ on Amazon. They send some cheap item they make/handle to (lots) of random people whose names/passwords they get from various security breaches. Then they log in as, in this case, Colin Boone, and leave a glowing review. (Fast delivery! Great packaging! Exactly what I wanted!) and thus other shoppers are deluded into ordering whatever from their company.

Apparently there’s no intention of actually making any money off the people they mail the random stuff to, they just want the package to be marked as a ‘confirmed purchase’ for the algorithm to be able to say “100s of satisfied customers!”

Seems weird to me. But so does a lot of Internet stuff.

Anyway, the rep said it’s evidence that my account/password was in one of those mass data leaks, so I should change their password, and probably a whole lot of other ones. Which is a nuisance, but I did it.

9

Like I said, get the bad review posted ASAP and the “good” scam review is at least partially blocked.

10

I use them a lot. Mostly to anchor outside decorations, or mini flags to fences, or yard cameras to posts. If you lived close, I’d take all the zip ties.

11

Yeah, but that’s the whole point of the scheme. You can’t review a product on Amazon that you did not order. Whoever snatched Colin Boone’s account is the only person that can submit reviews for those deliveries.

12

You have the order number, the correct address and the name. That isn’t enough?

13

No, not at all. You have to have the account credentials. You have to be able to login as the person that made the order.

14

Ahhh. Thank you.

15

And to close the loop, the reason Amazon insists on that level of security is because back when you used to be able to review any product regardless of purchase, they had an epidemic of fake reviews, both positive and negative. So now, to keep a seller from inflating their stats, or a competitor from trashing a product, they only allow actual purchasers to submit. Or, to my dismay, to keep heroes like Henry Raddick from posting spoof reviews for the comedic factor.

16

At least they weren’t to Terrence Halsey; that can only lead to trouble.

(If anybody gets that reference, I’ll be very impressed.)

17

Ha! Jimmy boy!

18

But could they not just create a new Amazon account under a random fake name, use that account order items shipped to a random address they picked from the phone book, and use that account to post reviews? What advantage is there to stealing someone’s credentials? I suppose it might look less suspicious if the account ordered things from other merchants as well.

19

Yeah, that I don’t know. I assume that there’s something in Amazon’s system that flags brand new accounts doing things like this.

20

That’s exactly what they do in these brushing scams. They set up fake accounts with real addresses, send random items to those real addresses, then log into their own fake accounts to post a review.

it isn’t the person receiving those items that’s the one being scammed. He’s just an innocent bystander. The person being scammed is Amazon and its customers.