Unofficial E-mail Scam Warning

Astucio · April 16, 2006

Hello all,

Forgive me if this is the wrong forum board to use, but I thought I best give out a preliminary warning as this could be a threat to quite a lot of people and can be easily fallen for.

Also note that I have not yet proven this to be a definite scam, but for the sake of your safety, DO NOT COMPLY with what the person will ask you to do (you'll read about it in a minute).

Anyway, somebody with the e-mail address [email protected] (sorry for naming you if you are on these boards and this was not a scam) added me on MSNM. I logged on and he asked me about whether I was still selling ranarr seeds. I told him that I had never actually posted about selling ranarr seeds so he said that's strange, "Have a look at the post, that's where I got your e-mail address".

He then gave me a link to an official looking hotmail login page and told me to just login to see the post. I immediately had my suspicions. The address looked official as did the page, but I certainly was not going to put my password in. I think, if this is a scam, it is working on the assumption that your e-mail password may be the same as the one you use for Runescape.

Firstly, I don't use boards that have anything to do with hotmail, but I do know that MSN have some sort of thing where users post and it is a possibility that someone was using my e-mail address, though, I find that highly unlikely because if someone signed up to a service with my e-mail address, especially with someone like MSN, I would definitely have got a validation e-mail and I didn't.

Anyway, it ended up that he asked me if I had logged in and, for the fun of it, I decided I would put my e-mail address in and a fake password, along the lines of a more obscene way of saying, 'get lost' just to let him know I was on to him.

Rather conveniently, he said BRB as soon as I said I had logged in and, rather than have his status as be right back on MSNM, he was instead offline and hasn't returned, it is most likely that he has blocked me.

Therefore, I am guessing that at this very moment he is trying to use my Runescape username and the fake password I gave him to log on to my account. Thankfully, I had the sense to send him an 'alternative' password.

Anyway, as I said, this is not proven and it could my paranoia, but this is a preliminary warning for you all, even if this is not a scam, don't obide by the demands. If someone says someone using your e-mail address has posted saying you were selling something and you hadn't, just say that you, personally, haven't posted such a thing and move on, DO NOT agree to put in an e-mail address/username and password to check some boards.

If it is genuine, ask for a direct link as you can usually view posts on any boards as a guest without having to be logged in.

Anyway, I hope this is help to some people and some might have fallen for it already if it is a scam, but this person can just sign up with any online RS forum, look through the member list, and take the e-mails of everyone who has listed themselves with one and try to pull off this possibly convincing scam.

biggy08755 · April 16, 2006

Theres a thread for these kinds of things, i forget which one but i think its websites ubdates and corrections, may be the other one.

aznmidget448 · April 16, 2006

Thanks for the heads up...

A couple days ago, some guy imed me through aim. His sn was something like "strider21834". He said something about trying a new version of swiftswitch, but i checked the main website to see if there was a new version, and there wasn't. (I currently don't have swiftswitch because i'm not sure whether rs considers it a 3rd party server and a mod on tip.it said just don't use it). There was a link, but i didn't check it because i closed the screen asap and scanned my computer... (can viruses be sent through aim?)

You just have to keep your eye out for these things... they're everywhere.

Brinner · April 16, 2006

ya he talked to me on msn messenger: