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Tuesday, September 4, 2007
It’s a scam and it’s legal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The most dangerous security threat in most homes isn’t a virus, it’s not spyware, nor is it some flaw in your computer’s operating system that opens the door to hackers. It’s you.
An example of this can be found at the link here.
To make things worse, this scam is at least arguable legal (there are parts of it that are illegal - but the main tool used in the scam is legal … you can read the story to see what I mean).
Here’s how it works. The Web page offered something free - it could even deliver on the promise - in return for personal data. So you’d fill in your name, e-mail address, maybe even your mailing address. And true to the promise you get the free item and the Web site operators got your information. So there’s no deception here.
In return for your ‘free’ gift the Web site operators have information that - at best - can be sold to spammers. At worst, gosh knows what will be done with it. But it’s valuable information - hey, it’s a list of guilible people. What a gold mine.
To add insult to injury, the information the scammers collected was posted on a public Web site for anyone to see.
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