Wednesday, July 20, 2011

New Term

New Term starts 27 August - see Souhair.com

Spam and scam

Sigh. I’m getting tired of getting so may scam emails from ‘foreigners wanting dance classes’. I’ve been getting two or three a week recently.

How to spot a scam

Someone out of the blue emails asking for a place for some dancing classes. Usually for a group, usually for a month worth of classes of 4-5 hours per day. Usually there is some bizarre story about how they have to prepare for a performance for some event or wedding. One of the funniest I ever had was from a group of “Oil rig workers off the coast of Afghanistan who wanted to come to Australia to learn to belly dance.” Funny for so many reasons!!!

The email often appears to come from someone in England but the IP address indicates that it originates from another country. They usually have a generic yahoo or hotmail email address and usually provide you with a phone number that starts with +4470 or +44(0)70. 44 is the country code for the UK but the (0)70 part indicates that it can be redirected to another country. These numbers are only used by people wishing to hide their location, and no honest person has any need to use one.

This is often a scam in which a scammer will try to pay with a stolen credit card. He will either want to pay above the amount and have you remit the surplus to another party (also played by himself) or he will cancel and ask for a refund paid to him. If he does agree to your request to be paid by check the check will be fraudulent or forged on a stolen account.