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Tracking Down the Bulgarian Marketplace Scams
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoGood work! As noted, it probably won't change anything, but scammers are a lot more sophisticated, these days, than they used to be.
- vintermann 2y agoFrom the description, these are rent-a-scammers, who convince people that renting their all in one scam platform is a great deal. It probably isn't, or they'd be doing it themselves. It's a good deal if you place a premium on feeling clever from scamming people, and don't care about the risk of getting hit by the police, or by rival would-be scammers eager to show they're more tough criminals than you. It's the lifecycle of a scam. Once it really isn't worth the effort anymore, it gets packaged up and sold to stupid kids.
- dylan604 2y agoThis isn't any different from those seminars that teach you how to make money in real estate, forex, or similar. All you have to do is buy their books and attend their seminars and they teach you how to host your own seminars.
- phoronixrly 2y agoIf only there were authorities that would take actions to track down these scammers with as much zeal as they track down pirates...
- honzabe 2y agoThat's bizarre - someone tried to scam me in a similar way literally a few minutes ago. I am selling something on a marketplace. Someone contacted me - they want to buy the thing I am selling. Do I still have it? I say yes. They say they are sending a GLS courier to collect the item. I figure they need the item fast - we are celebrating Christmas tomorrow. Why not. The "buyer" sends me a link to a service supposedly offered by GLS, where GLS works as an intermediary - they collected the money from the buyer; when they collect the item, they will pay me. This is happening in the Czech Republic, and services like that seem plausible here. I do not know every detail of every delivery service offered here. The page looks just like an ordinary GLS page. I am in a hurry. I do not pay that much attention. I pause and check only when redirected to my bank's authentication page (this is the phishing part, obviously). Turns out GLS offers no such service. I was closer to giving them what they wanted than I imagined possible. I was on autopilot until the last second. Not even my bank's login page surprised me that much - we have something called "bank identity" that lets you authenticate stuff by your bank ID. It is so convenient that I got used to it and I do it carelessly. >> I hate scammers Yes, me too.
- Gys 2y agoI missed something: why do you as a seller have to enter your bankdetails?
- honzabe 2y agoThat is the thing - you don't. In Czechia, something called bank ID is commonly used to authenticate. The point is to verify it is you, for example when you sign a contract online, fill in tax returns online... stuff like that. The way it works is that you are on some site, you get redirected to your internet banking, you log in (that's what I meant by "bank details", I am sorry about expressing myself so clumsily), and your bank redirects you back to that site with confirmation that is you. Do I need to verify my identity when someone wants to send me money? Who knows. This is the part that made me check. But I was close to not checking simply because it is habitual, and you do stuff like that automatically. Nowadays, we are often dealing with systems we do not fully understand. You get redirected to some familiar login form, you log in, and you don't even pause. Well, at least I do it. I should be a lot more careful, apparently.
- XorNot 2y agoLogin page redirects have become a big user security hazard it would seem - and OAuth is basically the culprit.
- dylan604 2y agoThe entire social engineering of sending everything off to 3rd party is something that really irks me. The touted convenience of faster to deploy updates by using 3rd party rather than depending on local version updates has never been enough for me. It also was the sugar pill for switching to rent seeking SaaS to gain traction. I don't want my web server dependent on anyone else's server/service being available or in any other way slowing down my user's experience. The only service that I have no local solution is payment processing.
- ustad 2y ago
- cynicalsecurity 2y ago[flagged]
- meiraleal 2y ago[flagged]
- chasebank 2y agoRussian is not a race.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoNeither is "Mexican", yet saying something like "All Mexicans are <negative quality>" would be an unequivocally racist statement.
- ponector 2y ago[flagged]
- akaitea 2y agobecause their similarity in language with Bulgaria helps performing convincing scams
- atodorov99 2y agoThe author has shared information that he had discovered the scammers are operating in Spain and Italy as well. So it is not specifically because of language similarity.
- tsurkoprt 2y agoAll Ukrainians speak Russian, so it could very well be them.
- paxys 2y agoIt's so easy to spot marketplace scams that I'm baffled people still fall for them. Are you going to show up with cash on my doorstep (or another agreed upon location)? If yes, we can continue talking. If not, you are blocked and reported. End of story.
- meiraleal 2y ago> It's so easy to spot marketplace scams that I'm baffled people still fall for them. That's survival bias. There are some you can't spot.
- alangibson 2y agoYou missed their point. It's cash on the barrel head or counterparty is presumed to be a scammer. If you follow that rule you'll never be scammed.
- meiraleal 2y ago> If you follow that rule you'll never be scammed. until you get robbed, kidnapped or forced to do a bank transfer.
- dylan604 2y agoyou just named multiple things that are not a scam
- meiraleal 2y agoHow not? The robber never intended to finish the deal.
- dylan604 2y agoBecause like everything else in law, the lower charge becomes irrelevant in light of a worse offense. Breaking into someones home is burglary, but do it when someone is home and it becomes home invasion. Do it with a weapon and it becomes an aggravated charge. At that point, nobody cares if you were trying to steal the silverware.
- aorth 2y agoAwesome work. Entertaining read. Много поздрави!
- RobinL 2y agoI got several people wanting to send a courier last time I listed something on Facebook. Checking their pages, they were all from eastern Europe with no obvious connection to my city. Good to know the mechanics of the scam, I wondered what they were up to. Don't understand why Facebook couldn't have auto detected the messages though - seemed like a pretty major failure of marketplace that the majority of the messages I got were scams.
- lazide 2y agoSomeone is probably afraid to be too effective at filtering them out, as it would nuke their numbers. (Engagement/messages sent? Who knows) If most of the traffic is scams, it’s not like they can remove it without something showing up in their metrics after all. Search, and USPS ‘spam’ mail has a similar problem.
- hkdobrev 2y agoI had a bunch of those whenever I tried to use OLX - both on OLX messages and Whatsapp as well. Bot prevention is 0. I know people who were successfully scammed as they think they are entering their card details to get money transferred by their card number.
- evolextra 2y ago[dead]
- atodorov99 2y agoIf anyone here has done a similar reconnaissance operation - I am curious how much time does it roughly take ?