Got some interesting spam in my email this morning. Here is just a tidbit…
Greetings and How are you Dear Friend.I am Wilfred Coulibaly from Ivory Coast in West Africa.I am a members of forums.comodo.com that is where i got your contact email address…
So, it appears that I didn’t check the box to hide my email address when creating my forums account here at Comodo.
Just thought I’d share this, hoping you guys will double-check your profiles to make sure your email addy is hidden to the public.
Someone is using the email addresses of the members of this forum to perpetrate one of the oldest scams around. I have been using some Comodo tools for a short time but this breach of security of my email address brings into question the effectiveness of these tools if they can’t protect their own site from invasion.
Here is the email I received.
[i]Letter of Relationship and Establishment Aid.
From : Wilfred Coulibaly
Abidjan Cote d’ Ivoire West Africa
Tel+22507924282
Attention: Respectful
Greetings and How are you Dear Friend.I am Wilfred Coulibaly from Ivory Coast in West Africa.I am a members of forums.comodo.com that is where i got your contact email address,I would like you to Please permit me to apply through this medium for your co-operation and to secure an opportunity to invest and do joint relationship establishment with you in your country. I have a substantial capital which I honourably Inherited from my late father Chief Coulibaly who was minister of Interior and also have Cocao and Coffee plantation with Gold, Diamond Mining and Trading in bouake Northern District of Coted’ Ivoire.
Before the Epmigo Rebels killed Him during this political crisis on the mutiny rebellion upraising that equally lead to the death of former military junta Robert Guei.
I am contacting on you because of my need to deal with honest person whom I can lay trust and personal confidence on with hope that he will not let me down. Because since the ■■■■■■ of my father,I have been subjected to all sorts of harassment and intimidation with lots of negative reports emanating from the crises from the rebellion people caused which have resulted to war in some part of our country Cote d’ Ivoire in West Africa since this past years.
I intend to invest this money I legitmately inherited from my late father in profitable areas in your country into a very lucratives business venture of which you are to advise and execute the venture over there for the mutual benefits of both of us.
Most especially is for you to help me come over to your base if possible for You be able co-operate with me to become my business partner in your country and create ideas on how money will be invested, properly managed and the type of investment after the money is transferred to your custody with your assistance.
I inherited this sum from my late father whom the rebels killed because he was not supporting their selfish interest to topple the president Gbagbo the present president of Cote d’ Ivoire in West Africa.
Meanwhile,on indication of your willingness to handle this transaction sincerely by protecting my Interest and upon your acceptance of this proposal.I will furnish you with the full details information, procedure on how to continue.The exact amount involved is the sum of Nine Million Five Hundred Thousand Five USD ($9.500.000.00)USD
If you accept to associate with me,both of us will mutually agree on your percentage interest and share holding for helping me to secure the release of the deposit and investing the money into lucratives profitable venture in your care.I will be glad to reserve this respect and opportunity for you if you so desire to relate with me with good mind and honesty.
However, I do urge you to kindly give this matter your immediate attention and the maximum seriouness it deserves for the smooth achievement of the aim.I want you to be rest assured that everything is in order and legitimate it was due to the political crisis in our country that have resulted to war in some part of our region which have cause everybody to find a way of geting out from the country,for this reason I use this medium to request for your assistance with hope that you will not let down the confidence I have already reposed on you.
This money is legitimately acquired by my late father from sales of Cocoa and Coffee and Diamond dealings.If it interests you, Please forward your reply including your telephone number and fiscal address to my private email address so that I can provide you with more clarifications and details about it all.Looking forward for your prompt response,
Thanks for your understanding and future cooperations.
Sincerely
Wilfred Coulibaly
Abidjan Cote d’ Ivoire[/i]
You can’t blame Comodo for this one - at least I think. Read my earlier post about this. Go into your member profile here at comodo and check the box to “Hide your email address”.
I don’t think it’s a breach of security, unless somehow someone was able to “MAKE” everyone’s email address visible to everyone.
It would be cool though if your email was hidden by default when creating an account to these forums.
Yep It’s an unfortunate event but anytim you leave an e-mail address legible on the internet It is susceptable to be picked up by a bot and used for spam. You cant blam comodo but it would be agood suggestion that they make hide my email the default
Maybe Melih will pick up on this and talk to the forum admins. It won´t help those who are already registered but it would help prevent this for new members
Well, if there is anything good to come out of this, it’s the fact that the dumb spammer tipped us off as to how he was able to obtain our addresses. If it weren’t for that, I would have never known that my ■■■■ was exposed on this site.
As for myself, the email addy that I used here for registration is a clean one and never received spam. (Yes, never) I just hope this incident did not open the floodgates. Time will tell.
An interesting note: It seems as though the Mazda forums were affected by this within the last week as well…
Yes you can, they are the ones who decided to set the WRONG option as default .
Even my girlfriend ,who is very blonde in these matters, knows better than to make
her e-mail publicly available .
Cars have their handbrake defaults to off position yet none sued vehicle vendors’ because their car crashed when parked on uphill roads and they forgot to enable the parking brake.
BTW only members can look at member’s public emails.
Although a car wouldn’t work with the handbrake on; a forum will work with addresses hidden by default.
Also, easy enough for this sort of low-level fraudster (not aiming for millions of addresses) to register on a forum or take a newsgroup (where many posters use a plain address).
Geez. ;D
Then we should make a petition to build cars with headlight always on to prevent someone to drive blindly when the sun sets.
This make me wonder… ???
Actually there are some cars that turn on windscreen wipers automatically during rainy days and others with automatic headlights :-X
Oh my… Billions of drivers are at serious risk of car accidents… :o
How they could turn on lights in a dark rainy day if they are unable to read car dashboard and light switches symbols? >:(
It’s time for a class action 8)
Seriously this is only a matter of preferences but I agree that changing the default option from “Hide email address to public” to “Show email address to public” in the registration page could be of help to non english readers and people plagued by reading impairments.
Has anyone else received a “Nigerian” email like this one? Notice that the letter actually names Comodo as a source for my address. Thank you, Melih and team for your security products.
Best regards
Letter of Relationship and Establishment Aid.
From : Wilfred Coulibaly
Abidjan Cote d’ Ivoire West Africa
Tel+22507924282
Attention: Respectful
Greetings and How are you Dear Friend.I am Wilfred Coulibaly from Ivory Coast in West Africa.I am a members of forums.comodo.com that is where i got your contact email address,I would like you to Please permit me to apply through this medium for your co-operation and to secure an opportunity to invest and do joint relationship establishment with you in your country. I have a substantial capital which I honourably Inherited from my late father Chief Coulibaly who was minister of Interior and also have Cocao and Coffee plantation with Gold, Diamond Mining and Trading in bouake Northern District of Coted’ Ivoire.
Before the Epmigo Rebels killed Him during this political crisis on the mutiny rebellion upraising that equally lead to the death of former military junta Robert Guei.
I am contacting on you because of my need to deal with honest person whom I can lay trust and personal confidence on with hope that he will not let me down. Because since the ■■■■■■ of my father,I have been subjected to all sorts of harassment and intimidation with lots of negative reports emanating from the crises from the rebellion people caused which have resulted to war in some part of our country Cote d’ Ivoire in West Africa since this past years.
I intend to invest this money I legitmately inherited from my late father in profitable areas in your country into a very lucratives business venture of which you are to advise and execute the venture over there for the mutual benefits of both of us.
Most especially is for you to help me come over to your base if possible for You be able co-operate with me to become my business partner in your country and create ideas on how money will be invested, properly managed and the type of investment after the money is transferred to your custody with your assistance.
I inherited this sum from my late father whom the rebels killed because he was not supporting their selfish interest to topple the president Gbagbo the present president of Cote d’ Ivoire in West Africa.
Meanwhile,on indication of your willingness to handle this transaction sincerely by protecting my Interest and upon your acceptance of this proposal.I will furnish you with the full details information, procedure on how to continue.The exact amount involved is the sum of Nine Million Five Hundred Thousand Five USD ($9.500.000.00)USD
If you accept to associate with me,both of us will mutually agree on your percentage interest and share holding for helping me to secure the release of the deposit and investing the money into lucratives profitable venture in your care.I will be glad to reserve this respect and opportunity for you if you so desire to relate with me with good mind and honesty.
However, I do urge you to kindly give this matter your immediate attention and the maximum seriouness it deserves for the smooth achievement of the aim.I want you to be rest assured that everything is in order and legitimate it was due to the political crisis in our country that have resulted to war in some part of our region which have cause everybody to find a way of geting out from the country,for this reason I use this medium to request for your assistance with hope that you will not let down the confidence I have already reposed on you.
This money is legitimately acquired by my late father from sales of Cocoa and Coffee and Diamond dealings.If it interests you, Please forward your reply including your telephone number and fiscal address to my private email address so that I can provide you with more clarifications and details about it all.Looking forward for your prompt response,
Thanks for your understanding and future cooperations.
Sincerely
Wilfred Coulibaly
Abidjan Cote d’ Ivoire
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I receive these kinds of emails (few of them) a day My only amusement is how they utilise the current affairs to modify their emails to make it more credible. And in this one, they are trying to make themselves seem as credible by throwing our forum into it…Sad really but there are a lot of scammers out there.
One of our admins (Nick) has now set the following option:
Hide email box now defaults to ‘hidden’ upon registration
For those of you already registered, click on Profile, then Account Related Settings and tick ‘Hide email address from public?’
Then click the ‘Change Profile’ button.
Hmm, as always Comodo’s Staff feedback is excellent…
Maybe to prevent similiar misunderstanding would be useful to hide all member public email and send an adminisrative alert to all people whose mail is not hidden to other forum members to enable it in their profile
if they did really mean to enable it upon registration.
Few spammed members still haven’t disabled their mail in this forum…
Comodo should be like other programs, you are the only one that see’s it.
You know that sign you see where you live, it is just code that only you see so if you are from
Palm Coast Foridia, Atlantic Beach Florida, Savannah Ga, or St. Louis the message will very each time depending were your IP is from.
My only amusement is how they utilise the current affairs to modify their emails to make it more credible. And in this one, they are trying to make themselves seem as credible by throwing our forum into it…Sad really but there are a lot of scammers out there.