WikiLeaky phone scam targets unwary in US A new voicemail phishing scam uses the threat of non-existent fines for visiting WikiLeaks to prise money out of panicked marks. Prospective marks are robo-dialled by an automated system that states their computer and IP address "had been noted as having visited the Wikileaks site, and that there were grave consequences for …
I'm well aquainted with 419 scams and the like so it's always surprising to hear about how the new scams are worked.
Take a trip to 419eater if you're constantly plagued by spam emails, they're fun to mess with as long as you're careful.
Or you can just read the accounts of other peoples dealings with some of these dumb scammers and have a laugh.
What exactly is illegal here - the use of phones, the completely baseless intimidating threats of fines, or that there isn't a law firm behind it?
If it's only the baseless-ness (sorry, couldn't think of a better way to phrase that) of the threat, then could the copy-lawyers employ similar tactics?
I'd venture that war dialing a college campus with similar threats based on file sharing might be more successful. Do people in Kentucky even have Internet connections?
/Also, it's not just military personnel that are banned from viewing WikiLeaks - it's all Federal employees including contractors.
Can imagine it being blocked at work, but banning people - thought the Americans just lectured the Chinese on such things? According to its self-publicity America is the worlds leading democracy etc etc etc bringing freedom to the world etc etc etc crusading against oppresive regimes etc etc etc
Yet they are imposing such bans on various people....
Amazing - only the Americans could be this stupid.
Though IANAL, there's probably some element of fraud, deception, demanding money with menaces, harassment, etc, which are likely illegal though depends on what the exact wording is.
Copy-lawyers do seem to use similar tricks, though they appear not to go fishing quite so wildly, rather making the assumption that A + B = C when it may not and act on the basis that it does. The difference is perhaps that copy-lawyers have some legally-valid grounds for believing A + B = C where the scammers don't even have that.
from visiting Wikileaks for security reasons» ? Security reasons ? Does this refer, perhaps, to a fear in the higher echelons that military personnel might view what their superiors tell them with a certain amount of skepsis after reading the material ? More power to that !...
Henri
...but the explanation I heard was that there is a law in place that restricts government employees from unauthorized viewing of classified documents. Since the documents are still *technically* classified, ergo... it is against the law for federal employees to view them.
Again, not supporting any of it.
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