Spam - Introducci�n

Internet fraud - Introduction

NO, no more spam! (c) John Coppens 2003

Everyone connected to the Internet receives Spam - I know of no exception. This has to be the most equally distributed fraudulent activity of all. Even if exceptionally the recipient of spam mail actually gave his e-mail address voluntarily, in the huge majority of cases, the addresses were 'harvested' by indirect means.

Though these pages originally only described spam, the sheer volume of other kinds of fraud invading our privacy has increased in such a way that we have to be more careful than ever. Some are so convincing that even a normally vigilant computer user can easily be lured into these schemes.

Your privacy cannot be garanteed on the internet... Period. Even a page owner who has good intentions, can tomorrow be part of another firm with less scruples... and divulge the data you provided him with. Your address may be on some Windows machine, which may then be infected with a virus and distribute it over the entire 'net.

In the next pages, I'll try - with time - to describe some of the more common frauds and the techniques applied. The main raison d'�tre for these pages is the Spanish version - little or no information is available on the subject in Spanish. Below is the list of the Spam forms covered - on each of the pages are more links to sites with related information.

Specific pages

The famous 'Bill S.1618': 'You cannot consider this message spam'. Who hasn't received a mail with this phrase or a variation of it? Like all good lies, it's based on something that exists - it was a proposed bill that luckily was never approved.Read more on this bill and some other intents to make spam more legal-looking or respectable...
Nigerian Fraud - 419: At this time, about one of each 250 messages is an invitation to help out in a multimillionair business deal, where you have been chosen as the only trustful person to participate. Did you know that some organizations estimate this fraud to be the second source of national income to Nigeria?
Not as innocent as they seem: There are many small tricks spammers use to get your e-mail confirmed. Too many to dedicate a page to each of them. Here's an (ever-growing) list of things I detected or found documented on the web.

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