Its been a while since the last one but here we are again Just so we're clear on this site the real staff have coloured banners under their names...and we'll never send you a request to click on an external url, or indeed any url, to 'reset your account'
We previously had a guy called "admin' I changed his name to 'not the admin' and he immediately opened a dupe account called 'Adminstrator'(sic).., these people aren't too bright
this was a previous incursion from the old days - notice how the genius has repeatedly used the same avatar.
After a decade and a half (at least) of moderdom on a recently not-renewed forum, I find I really don't mind not making multiple forays through the threads on the lookout for scammers and trolls that got over the protective walls. I don't mind not playing babysitter for some of the more volitile types or posting "tone it down, folks" reminders. Yeah, though I was sorry the owner chose to abandon the site without hail or farewell, I'm good with being retired.
It's baffling how anybody who's been using forums for any length of time would try to do something that stupid. Obviously, a name like that is an insta-ban. And anyplace where accounts are approved first, I imagine a guy like that would be banned before they could even get into the forums.
Its a volume game - either using bots or scammers out of countries where labour is cheap, as soon as they get access they start blasting out pms with links...with hundreds of accounts across a thousands of forums they only have to catch a few vulnerable/or gullible people for it be worth their while likewise with "your phone/amazon account/paypal/credit card / etc has been hacked reset it here type stuff you get in email and text, not to mention the ever reliable rom con and 419
I get it on my FB business page a lot. Someone creates a page with a name like "Community Standards" or "Policy Admin", tags my page in a message that says "Your content has violated standards, your account needs to be verified", or something like that, which means I get an alert saying that username has mentioned my page. Started a few months ago, is still ongoing.
You forgot about the Nigerian princes that want you to help them move their fortune. Often these folks, have trouble with grammar and word choice, so they can be easily spotted.
I wrote a short story once about a nigerian prince who wanted to help people and couldn't understand why it was so hard to give his money away
The reason the "Nigerian princes" use bad English and silly stories is to weed out the people who are smart enough to not fall for the scam. No sense wasting time emailing back and forth with someone who's going to sniff you out after the third or fourth exchange, you gotta focus on the suckers, baby! Spoiler For years and years I didn't know that the Irish Sweepstakes were actually a real lottery. Back in the 90s I won them so many times (contingent on paying the bank transfer fee, natch) that I assumed the entire enterprise was 100% scam (insert opinions on lotteries here)
An acquaintance led a phone scammer on for days. Scammer pretended to be the acquaintance's grandson who needed money to pay an attorney to get him out of jail. Acquaintance conversed several times with scammer about the difficulties of raising the money and finally getting it all ready to go in an accessible account. Acquaintance's final words to the scammer were, "The password is your favorite hunting dog's name."
