Wherein spammers sink to a new low

Soldato
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I was checking my Spam folder and saw one message had the title 'She is only 12' and it was cut off at that point by Gmail. Of course, I needed to check in case it was kiddie porn so as to report it to the police. Checking the message source text I discovered that the follow-on text was 'minutes away from you'. Sneaky.
 
Associate
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15 Jan 2009
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On the wagon
Surely the most sensible thing to do with an email you believe might be of that nature is to phone 101, ask them for an email address you can forward the message to (they probably have a dedicated CP team) without opening it?
 
Soldato
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13,162
I also don't get the angle of the spam. If it was a normal person they wouldnt be looking at kid stuff and a fiddler would be dissapointed to find it is an adult 12 mins away. I dont get it.
 
Soldato
OP
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18,540
Location
Aberdeen
I also don't get the angle of the spam. If it was a normal person they wouldnt be looking at kid stuff and a fiddler would be dissapointed to find it is an adult 12 mins away. I dont get it.

The angle is that kiddie porn is something you want to report but wasting police time is an offence so you need to open it to see if you need to report it. Whereupon it probably activates web bugs etc. I chose to disable images etc to prevent that and used the 'View original' in GMail to inspect the message in plain text.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Mar 2010
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21,785
get so many emails from legitimate sources that have irresponsible click-bait subjects
Be aware, protect yourself from Crypto scams, jpaul Santander
just don't bother to open any of this crap or turn on remotecontent that's the best protection,
if you wanted to load up some illicit virus onto an idiots computer those would be the best subject lines to choose.

why would the OP even open his message.... the blackmail email will arrive tommorow
 
Soldato
Joined
4 Feb 2018
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13,162
The angle is that kiddie porn is something you want to report but wasting police time is an offence so you need to open it to see if you need to report it. Whereupon it probably activates web bugs etc. I chose to disable images etc to prevent that and used the 'View original' in GMail to inspect the message in plain text.

lol wasting police time?
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Mar 2010
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21,785
depends how confident you are in your antivirus software when/if you open unsolicited emails ..
if you regularly back up your system then fine; even though i work in IT there are folks at work whose speciality is to protect against that,
but I don't have those resources at home.
 
Soldato
Joined
1 Mar 2010
Posts
21,785
the expression curiosity killed the cat comes to mind.

database of a number of email spearfishing strategies https://attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1204/001/

Don't ISP's have to provide some kind of investigation department you can forward suspicious emails to ... I pay them £30/month !

e: How to recognise and report emails, texts, websites, adverts or phone calls that you think are trying to scam you.
 
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