Seems clear to me. Renovate your house or else! Are you sure your significant other didn't send it?

LOL, like it!

Here's another scam, just received. This one is a little bit smarter and the English is better:

As you can see, it purports to be a receipt from Apple for downloaded music, but cunningly offers to refund the total balance to the mail recipient if they didn't authorize it.

This could easily cause some non-suspicious (but opportunistic) person, especially a parent of teenagers, to click the link to receive the stated refund.

The 'Help Centre' address leads here:

http://23kle6uoj4n5pc2.thaibenesseree-count.net/ssl1/index.php

I've removed the link just in case anyone accidentally clicks it.

That one is a lot better. It would be easy to fall for. How do you keep receiving these? Are you on a sucker list? I want some too.

Rikkitic:

 

That one is a lot better. It would be easy to fall for. How do you keep receiving these? Are you on a sucker list? I want some too.

 

 

 

own a really old @xtra.co.nz address. Job done :) My intercepted box was as badly filled as my i4free acct

geekIT:

 

Re scams, I personally know one guy who got taken in by a similar ruse.

 

Cost him $500.

 

But the most astonishing part of the story is that he was, at the  time, on the Council of one of Central Otago's best known towns.

 

For me that's quite un-astonishing - in fact I would say it's borderline predictable that he'd be in some form of tax-payer funded employment.

Thanks for sharing that, I've sent it along to some people who might fall for it.

LOL, I've had the same Xtra address for...maybe 25 years. It's so old that it has aliases. Like, there's a main address, and five aliases that all lead back to the main one. I don't think TeleSpark offers them any more. Or, if they do, in not quite the same way.

Re my receiving lots of idiotic scams, it's quite useful to get them, being an IT guy, so I can tell my customers what to expect.

Xtra addresses aren't only ones I use - I have another twenty or so, of various types - gmail, fastmail etc. Handy for my visits to so-called dodgy websites...

But all of the scams come to the Xtra addresses.

Actually it's been fairly quiet lately. I used to get heaps of those "Dear Sir, I am a lawyer in Mombasa and I need your assistance to collect $5,000,000 before the end of this month" etc garbage mails. All good for a laugh <gr> 

cadman:

 

geekIT:

 

Re scams, I personally know one guy who got taken in by a similar ruse.

 

Cost him $500.

 

But the most astonishing part of the story is that he was, at the  time, on the Council of one of Central Otago's best known towns.

 

 

For me that's quite un-astonishing - in fact I would say it's borderline predictable that he'd be in some form of tax-payer funded employment.

 

Do you have some stats to show that public servants are more likely to be victims of scams?

cadman:

 

geekIT:

 

Re scams, I personally know one guy who got taken in by a similar ruse.

 

Cost him $500.

 

But the most astonishing part of the story is that he was, at the  time, on the Council of one of Central Otago's best known towns.

 

 

For me that's quite un-astonishing - in fact I would say it's borderline predictable that he'd be in some form of tax-payer funded employment.

 

I'm curious as to why you would think there's a correlation between "tax-payer funded employment" and falling for scams.

Data point to the contrary: I met a guy once who'd been scammed out of $620K -- he was self-employed.

floydbloke: Do you have some stats to show that public servants are more likely to be victims of scams?

 

Well, to give an opposing data point, I'm at a council and a couple of weeks ago one of our staff got a suspect attachment and handled it by the book - ran it through antivirus, came through clean, but still suspected something was wrong with it. Ultimately it was sent to Sophos who confirmed that it was a new attack that they'd never seen before! 

floydbloke:

 

Do you have some stats to show that public servants are more likely to be victims of scams?

 

You better jump on the anecdotal evidence below too. It doesn't seem like "stats" to me so no doubt that's got your back up. Of course, if you don't because it hasn't, we'll all understand exactly why.

frankv:

 

I'm curious as to why you would think there's a correlation between "tax-payer funded employment" and falling for scams.

 

Data point to the contrary: I met a guy once who'd been scammed out of $620K -- he was self-employed.

 

 

Not sure where my email has ended up, but I have been getting more of these recently. 

First was a "Paypal" one claiming $600 or so had been transferred, followed up a few days later by one with the "We noticed some unusual activity on your account." style of email. Both very convincing. Only the email and link addresses gave the game away.

Then I have had a bunch of fake Apple account ones. They look really convincing, but once again, the links and email give them away.

Here's a new one. Make sure your Spark customer friends aren't taken in by this garbage:

---------------------------------------------------

Dear Xtra Spark Email User  

This message is to all Xtra Spark Email Service Users.

This is a notice and update to our valuable customer’s that a malware was recently detected in your account system so we have implement Anti-Malware software removes and virus free.

As a result of that our Internet Tech Support is currently re-upgrading and verifying your email system networking center to identify and delete all email accounts registered unduly.

This will enable us increase storage capacities for existing users and create more space for registration of new webmail future users.  

To finish and fix your email account system service problem as it’s always up to date, and stops viruses before they reach your email account reply with the following details to upgrade and secure your email account for best internet service supply.  

Email Address: User name: Password: Reconfirm Password: Zip Code:  

Warning! Failure to reply with the above information will rendered your webmail account temporarily suspended by technical service admin.     Copyright © 2017. All Rights Reserved.

--------------------------------------------------

As usual, the busted punctuation and phraseology gives it away. The writer fell for the apostrophe trap - Customer's - when the context clearly indicates plurality, not ownership.

See how much garbled English you can find :-)