TexasCHLforum.com

Approximately four hours ago, a new user, "tonyumeria", registered on the Forum and began to send Private Messages to members with an attempted scam. We banned and deleted the account within an hour. If you received this PM, there is no longer a reason to report it; simply delete it. And our thanks to those members who reported it quickly so that we could take immediate action.

There is zero evidence of a data breach. We have analyzed the timing of the reported PMs and the originating IP address; all evidence points to someone who registered an account, and then began to use the PM link on existing posts to manually send the attempted scam message.

For obvious reasons, our Forum is under a magnifying glass here at the start of 2016. Your moderating crew is small, and we rely on our valued members to stay vigilant. If you see something that is obvious spam/scam, or that clearly violates Forum rules, please report it. We got your six.

Thanks to Charles and all the Mods. You all do a great job!

Oh dang. I thought I was rich. :)

Thanks

Just curious. What was the nature of the scam?

I didn't win the Nigerian Powerball?

Thanks, Skiprr!

VoiceofReason wrote:Just curious. What was the nature of the scam?

Frankly, it was so poorly written it was hard to tell.

I am a Nigerian Prince. Please PM me your bank details, tax id number, and e-banking passwords. I will send $1 million USD to your account for safekeeping, then you may keep $100,000 after I come to visit.

By Royal Decree,

His Royal Highness ScottDLS

ELB wrote:Oh dang. I thought I was rich. :)

Now that you mention it I am a prince from Nairobi and if you could deposit $25,000USD into my bank account I will reward you with millions

Thanks. I needed that chuckle.

ScottDLS wrote:I am a Nigerian Prince. Please PM me your bank details, tax id number, and e-banking passwords. I will send $1 million USD to your account for safekeeping, then you may keep $100,000 after I come to visit.

By Royal Decree,

His Royal Highness ScottDLS

Your Highness, my bank password is Yg540s09...

Seriously, this is the first instance we've seen of PM-only spam. The scammer registered, verified via a link sent by email, then set about looking at posts and using the PM link on those posts to send his ridiculous message. There seems to be nothing automated about it.

Those who received the message were understandably worried that a breach of the database may have occurred. It did not.

This was one idiot manually targeting our Forum.

Interesting. I had seen some posting spam before, but not PM's. I'm noticing a slight uptick in spam in my personal e-mail recently, that's making it past my filter.

As a moderator on a diesel truck website, well done!

jrs_diesel wrote:As a moderator on a diesel truck website, well done!

Thanks.

We rely on our 17,000+ valued members to alert us to nefarious activity on the board.