The Economist Magazine reports that 7000 people were released from scam compounds in Myanmar last February. This is out of an estimated 120,000. One expert thinks this represents a pruning of the workforce. At one time, workers were recruited for fake jobs to Thailand, then kidnapped and brought across the Myanmar border. That still happens, but many today know what they are signing up for.
The Chinese government got pissed off earlier this year when a famous actor ended up in a Myanmar scam compound: they pressured Thai and Myanmar officials to act.
The United States Institute of Peace issued a report on these criminal syndicates in Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, whose activities may constitute 40% of those countries’ GDP. They characterize this as a national security threat: I agree. The Trump administration illegally shut down the USIOP earlier this year, so their anti-scam reports are no longer online. The Institute has since been returned to its rightful leaders, so perhaps we’ll some more small-bore efforts. USIOP had an annual budget of $55 million in 2024.
Second time in two months I received this email. Out of curiosity I clicked on the “Update Billing Info” button. It sent me to a page that asked for my email address and Netflix password. After entering fake info, it sent me to a page asking for my credit card info.
possibly, but they may just be harvesting the email address that he input.
I do like the list of names in the “To” line; all of them are ‘Do not reply’ & for other companies that have nothing to do with Netflix. Weird list. (& of course, any company sending you anything legitimately is going to put a bunch of other people in the “To” line )
I doubt it matters much. This isn’t like the old days of some call center trying to find people who answer their phones. These days you just give an email program a gajillion names and let it rip. You’re not really wasting time on the failed/filtered sends.
Also, any email address that’s more than a year old is probably on a million lists anyway.
I suspect this is an attempt to make email programs and providers think it’s a legitimate message. Without knowing how they detect spam, I have no idea if or why it would be successful. But spammers probably know more of the tricks than me.
Anoter variation on a common scam theme: I just got an e-mail notifying me of a $299 payment I supposedly made for a Geek Squad Protection Plan, which I can contest by calling Geek Squad customer service (the number provided is of course not an actual Geek Squad customer service number).
An additional possible scam clue is that the e-mail came from someone or something calling itself “During Ration”.
No, I will not be calling the provided number to give my financial details so they can “refund” the money.
“Refund” scammers are now resorting to robocalling. One such call, from “Florida”, was in my smartphone’s voice mail yesterday: hold music, followed by a robotic voice about an “iPhone purchase” and to press “1” if the charge was not authorized. No identification of what company was supposedly inquiring.
For fun, I called the “Florida” number from my work number; rang perhaps once then dropped.
I came a cross a Kitboga You-tube vid from March that showcases a bot army that telephones scam call center. He’s living the dream. I Built a Bot Army That Scams Scammers [Time].
Have any of you seen this one yet? Gmail is usually pretty good about flagging and sequestering spam. It let this one through, though it did warn that it was suspicious. The “Invitation” is supposedly from a person I worked with about 20 years ago (red flag #1) but I thought it might be a notification of something like a retirement party for a former colleague, for example, so I opened the invitation. Red flag #2 is that to read the text, you are required to enter not only the email to which the invitation was sent (wait – don’t they have that already?) but also the password for that email account. Yikes!
A quick on-line search shows that it is currently going around. If you give them your email credentials, the malware hijacks your account.
XXXX XXXXX sent you an invitation with AdobeOnline; VIEW INVITATION
I’ve had to use my own phone for an accounting project and that involved clearing up some old toll violations for them, so naturally I got on a toll scam list.
I am frequently bothered with a text message about how I need to pay an outstanding invoice, but the one I got today sounded a lot more threatening. I just report junk and delete until the next one.
Before this, I almost never got a scam text, so that’s the most irritating thing.
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