by Pinky
Tue Aug 31, 2010 11:17 pm
Hello old friends! Wow, I can't believe my account is still here. It's been a long time.
Well to update you, I am still actively fighting scams but have found my specialty niche is the love and romance scams so I've been active on a secular site specifically for those. But this site still comes up now and again and I'm happy to see it's still going strong.
I believe that education and warning potential victims is going to be the key to ending this particular form of cyber-crime. As you well know, law enforcement is not helping at all. We need to get the dating and social networking sites to be more proactive in warning their memberships. For this reason, I am enlisting the aid of all anti-scam sites, their members and even casual browsers here, who have been victimized by a romance scam.
I have been contacting matchmaking sites for a long time and asking for improved security for their members. Generally I am ignored entirely and next to that the responses I get are usually, "We know, we're trying." This is not good enough. If we work together and annoy, harass, pester, bombard and spam these sites with our pleas, it is my hope that we'll get their attention and make some progress. Will you please either write your own (preferable) or copy and paste the letter below, and send it to the administrative contacts for each and every online service you've had experience with. And then if you find yourself with extra time on your hands, send the same letter out to any social site you can think of.
Open letter to Admin of [fill in the blank]:
This letter is to bring to your attention a matter concerning the financial and emotional safety of your members. As you may already be aware, romance scams are a widely used and dangerous form of internet fraud that are running rampant on the internet. A romance scam is where a criminal anonymously and surreptitiously represents him or herself to be someone they are not, with the intent of confusing and conniving their victim into surrendering their own money, laundering stolen money, cashing forged checks and money orders or forwarding stolen property. Don't be naive in thinking these are infrequent or isolated incidents. This is internet crime and predominant on all dating and social networking sites, especially yours. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives have been disrupted, even destroyed and millions of dollars, pounds and other foreign currencies have been lost.
Your site is a business and like any business you have legal, social and moral obligations and responsibilities to your customers. Don't think because you offer free memberships, that you have no liabilities. Any established business owes due diligence towards any customer or potential customer who passes the business portals, both physical and virtual.
An internet scammer is not a customer, but a criminal. Surely you're aware that if and when scammers do ever create paid memberships, they use stolen credit cards and their charges are reversed. This is a merely a slight financial inconvenience for you. However, like any business, your liability exposure in not adequately warning and protecting the consumers of your service can cause you far greater loss than you can possibly imagine.
The purpose of this communication is to inform you that a class action law suit is looming in your future if you do not seek and act to better protect your customers from the aforementioned criminal activities. Several internet anti-fraud websites are joining together to amass lists of romance scam victims and are also conducting studies and surveys to determine which dating/social networking sites are negligent in their responsibilities to their customers. Attorneys in several countries have already expressed interest in pursuing compensations through legal actions for their clients who have been injured by online scammers. Will your site be named?
I am aware that many sites are actively combating this issue and have implemented some deterrents, but not enough is being done. New instances of romance scam fraud are occurring every day. For proof (and your better understanding) you are encouraged to visit any anti-scam web site, specifically those that fight romance scams. Here are some measures you may take to protect yourself and your site from liability:
1) IP and IP range blocking. The majority of scam/fake profiles are created by scammers in West Africa (predominately Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal), Lugansk, of Ukraine and Yoshkar Ola, of Russia. IP addresses from these areas should be blocked entirely. The few sincere and honest customers that you may block from these regions, need to realize that their fellow citizens are impeding their internet activities so perhaps they'll become more proactive and intolerant of criminal activities originating from their locale.
You should also be aware of and block known proxy IP addresses that are commonly used in spamming, fraudulent and criminal activities.
There are bad IP and scam IP lists all over the internet, some free but the more current and comprehensive might request a nominal fee.
2) Improve your Support/Customer service. Your customers are complaining that there's no one to call or write to when they encounter problems. Customer Service should be instructed to guide victims of scams to appropriate authorities, agencies, and services.
3) Warn your members! Prominently post where everyone is likely to see it when logging on or sending a message, advice against sending money to someone they've never met face to face.
4) Warn your members when they are contacted or are about to contact someone who's been a member of your site for less than 30 days. Advise them to ask questions about location, intentions and suggest they research carefully and not to be rushed or led easily into off site communications.
5) Remove offending profiles. When a member complains that another member asks them for money and you can see the offending profile's location or IP addresses don't match up, remove them and do your best to alert other contacts they may have made. Or optionally, some sites go so far as to leave the offending profile but block it from the scammer's access, edit it and then label the profile FAKE.
6) Make your members aware that there are many anti-scam sites where they can turn to ask questions and for investigative assistance.
There's so much more that can be done. But the 6 steps listed above would go a long way to proving to your members and customers that you do care and that your site is safe.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. If I can help in any way, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Name & email address.
Well to update you, I am still actively fighting scams but have found my specialty niche is the love and romance scams so I've been active on a secular site specifically for those. But this site still comes up now and again and I'm happy to see it's still going strong.
I believe that education and warning potential victims is going to be the key to ending this particular form of cyber-crime. As you well know, law enforcement is not helping at all. We need to get the dating and social networking sites to be more proactive in warning their memberships. For this reason, I am enlisting the aid of all anti-scam sites, their members and even casual browsers here, who have been victimized by a romance scam.
I have been contacting matchmaking sites for a long time and asking for improved security for their members. Generally I am ignored entirely and next to that the responses I get are usually, "We know, we're trying." This is not good enough. If we work together and annoy, harass, pester, bombard and spam these sites with our pleas, it is my hope that we'll get their attention and make some progress. Will you please either write your own (preferable) or copy and paste the letter below, and send it to the administrative contacts for each and every online service you've had experience with. And then if you find yourself with extra time on your hands, send the same letter out to any social site you can think of.
Open letter to Admin of [fill in the blank]:
This letter is to bring to your attention a matter concerning the financial and emotional safety of your members. As you may already be aware, romance scams are a widely used and dangerous form of internet fraud that are running rampant on the internet. A romance scam is where a criminal anonymously and surreptitiously represents him or herself to be someone they are not, with the intent of confusing and conniving their victim into surrendering their own money, laundering stolen money, cashing forged checks and money orders or forwarding stolen property. Don't be naive in thinking these are infrequent or isolated incidents. This is internet crime and predominant on all dating and social networking sites, especially yours. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives have been disrupted, even destroyed and millions of dollars, pounds and other foreign currencies have been lost.
Your site is a business and like any business you have legal, social and moral obligations and responsibilities to your customers. Don't think because you offer free memberships, that you have no liabilities. Any established business owes due diligence towards any customer or potential customer who passes the business portals, both physical and virtual.
An internet scammer is not a customer, but a criminal. Surely you're aware that if and when scammers do ever create paid memberships, they use stolen credit cards and their charges are reversed. This is a merely a slight financial inconvenience for you. However, like any business, your liability exposure in not adequately warning and protecting the consumers of your service can cause you far greater loss than you can possibly imagine.
The purpose of this communication is to inform you that a class action law suit is looming in your future if you do not seek and act to better protect your customers from the aforementioned criminal activities. Several internet anti-fraud websites are joining together to amass lists of romance scam victims and are also conducting studies and surveys to determine which dating/social networking sites are negligent in their responsibilities to their customers. Attorneys in several countries have already expressed interest in pursuing compensations through legal actions for their clients who have been injured by online scammers. Will your site be named?
I am aware that many sites are actively combating this issue and have implemented some deterrents, but not enough is being done. New instances of romance scam fraud are occurring every day. For proof (and your better understanding) you are encouraged to visit any anti-scam web site, specifically those that fight romance scams. Here are some measures you may take to protect yourself and your site from liability:
1) IP and IP range blocking. The majority of scam/fake profiles are created by scammers in West Africa (predominately Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal), Lugansk, of Ukraine and Yoshkar Ola, of Russia. IP addresses from these areas should be blocked entirely. The few sincere and honest customers that you may block from these regions, need to realize that their fellow citizens are impeding their internet activities so perhaps they'll become more proactive and intolerant of criminal activities originating from their locale.
You should also be aware of and block known proxy IP addresses that are commonly used in spamming, fraudulent and criminal activities.
There are bad IP and scam IP lists all over the internet, some free but the more current and comprehensive might request a nominal fee.
2) Improve your Support/Customer service. Your customers are complaining that there's no one to call or write to when they encounter problems. Customer Service should be instructed to guide victims of scams to appropriate authorities, agencies, and services.
3) Warn your members! Prominently post where everyone is likely to see it when logging on or sending a message, advice against sending money to someone they've never met face to face.
4) Warn your members when they are contacted or are about to contact someone who's been a member of your site for less than 30 days. Advise them to ask questions about location, intentions and suggest they research carefully and not to be rushed or led easily into off site communications.
5) Remove offending profiles. When a member complains that another member asks them for money and you can see the offending profile's location or IP addresses don't match up, remove them and do your best to alert other contacts they may have made. Or optionally, some sites go so far as to leave the offending profile but block it from the scammer's access, edit it and then label the profile FAKE.
6) Make your members aware that there are many anti-scam sites where they can turn to ask questions and for investigative assistance.
There's so much more that can be done. But the 6 steps listed above would go a long way to proving to your members and customers that you do care and that your site is safe.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. If I can help in any way, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Name & email address.
Anything is possible!
