Kickas.org Forums Ankylosing Spondylitis General Discussion #1 AS Web Support Group Beware of Scam

Good morning all,

I just got on my computer to check out my morning email etc on and found a scam for me to share all my money with someone having the name of ZGlenna Mattie to buy shares in the "Fire Mountain Beverage Company".

The key words of her Subject to get me to click on the subject of her/his email was her subject line re why he/she was sending me an email letter was "AS Jaundice".

Of course, like many others with AS, I clicked on the subject line and found that it was only about buying shares in the "Fire Mountain Beverage Company".

Do we have a ZGlenna Mattie listed at KickAS? If so, selling shares in beverages is not what we do here.

What I am most annoyed about is if this person is not a member, the person was able to get my email address too easily which makes me think that withdrawing my email address from KA with the exception of the people who need to know. I will also continue to let those who I communicate with more regularly.

We do have a good way to communicate privately with others at KA by using a PM but I wonder whether we need to put our private email address out there for others to see? If anyone wants to share private information with me, they could both send me a PM or use the PM to ask for my email address. No one else needs to know our email address, with the exception of our members who make KA run, unless we deem it so.

Fire Mountain can do very well without my meager contribution.

OldGeorge

Hey, George:

The "AS" was nothing but a coincidence; the 'phishers' out there use about any combination of letters and weird phrases to get past more sophisicated filters. Certainly, the bot did not get your email address from kickAS, but it was probably available via the ISP; your local mail server.

You can remove your email address, but that will not stop future mailings; this is just one of those inconveniences along with the benefits. Hope you have a good virus scanner,

John

I'm covered with Norton all over the Computer.

Would you call that;
Great
Not too bad
OK
Reasonable
or YuK

_____________________

or Bleep


George

Hi George,

I've run a few test searches and it does not appear that we have any member by that name/or any similar parts/combinations thereof. It's highly unlikely that the email originated from any one on KA (but I'll ask Holly to double-check for us, to be certain! ).

Choosing to display your address is up to each individual members preference/discretion... and this is completely optional. I prefer to PM mine, only when there is something that can't be communicated by private message, such as the sharing of file attachments.

There are some methods used to trick spybots when posting an address... such as replacing '@' with the word 'AT' or replacing '.' with 'DOT' within the address itself. Most people will see these and make the necessary substitutions required to make it functional. I am unsure however about how effective this trick may be. Spammers are clever and seem more determined by the day.

One other point worth mentioning here, is that KickAS.org does not bulk mail anything to our members. Only notifications of messages and/or replies will be sent, and these only if a member chooses the option when setting their personal preferences.

Another good practice that is more of a 'general knowledge' tip is to avoid opening mail from unknown senders. Personally, I don't even open email attachments from friends (unless I am expecting something in particular) before checking that they did indeed send it. Virus Protection software, after all, is only ever playing catch-up and by the very nature of the biz is always running one step behind.

Thank you for posting this heads-up and querie, George!
Hugs!
mig

I had some scary person contact me a few years ago George ,so I deleted a lot of personal stuff on the site.I have had no more problems.I hope everything is going well for you.I am looking at a shoulder surgery in a few months as soon as Kaiser has shook me down for worthless steroid injections and a lot of pain-full Physical therapy, you 'd think with the exact same symptoms as the other shoulder and successful surgery with perfect results on the other shoulder2 years ago they'd do the same .But they see AS and they see bucks.
Take Care
Kev

Hi Kev,

Great to see you back on line. It's been a while since you have been around.

I'm back to where I was a few years back where my stomach has stopped doing anything to digest anything I have eaten and I have lost the ability to send the food on to the right spot where it will do me any good. Only 18 percent left in my stomach doesn't bode well for the future.

But things have been worse and I will get through this as I have done before, several times. The main problem is that I need more than 106 lbs.

Stay around for a while. Still a lot of folks around who would love to say Hi to you. Stay well my friend,

Regards,
George (OldGeorge)

George,

Just to allay your fears (and others'), I want to reiterate what John (Dragonslayer) said.

Most likely, the spammers got your email addy from yout ISP. The AS was just a coincidence. For example, if you put an add out for Viagra to 1000 people, chances are, one of those people will need Viagra. I personally do not, but I get them all the time on both my work email that is not published on KA, one of my personal email addresses that is published on KA and several others that are not published on KA.

The fact I have not received this email, nor has the main KA addresses, leads me to believe that the address was not phished here.

Also, we stopped bots of any kind, even Google, from indexing our personal informations tables of the forum. I will do some more research but I am pretty sure that the spam didn't result from KA.

I hope that helps!!
Holly

Hey, George:


Norton is "not too bad," but there are better that I had to discover recently.

I had hoped that your digestive troubles were better; it is a knotty problem.

Best to You,
John

I didn't know you've prevented bots from indexing the personal info tables... very clever techies, you guys!! (And I've now edited to correct my post.)

Thanks Holly!
hugs,
mig

For an antivirus program that works the best ,I count on avg free...if you want help in setting it up, just let me know.

Marn

Quote:

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Hey, George:


Norton is "not too bad," but there are better that I had to discover recently.

I had hoped that your digestive troubles were better; it is a knotty problem.

Best to You,
John

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