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| Tuesday, November 30, 2004 | |
This is a very suspicious site. The received email said that I'd definitely won an X-Box. The claim was that someone had entered my email address in at their site and so this was not spam. So I decided to check this spammer out. I was shocked to see the way that they may be trying to fool folks.
The destination site is GiftBounty.net. I was given a collection code that I could enter in to claim my prize. Once on the collection page, I was asked to pay a $7.50 shipping charge. WOW! This would be great if I could get an XBox for only $7.50.
Alas, it looks too good to be true. They claim that they can't take credit cards right now, only debit cards. So they asked me for my name, number, expiration date on the card, AND THEN, they asked for it's PIN number.
NO reputable website nor payment system requires your PIN number to process a transaction. This looks like a great way to get your bank account cleaned out.
I did a lookup at http://betterwhois.com to see who this might really be. Again, this looks suspicious:
Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: NS8.ZONEEDIT.COM
Name Server: NS13.ZONEEDIT.COM
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Updated Date: 22-nov-2004
Creation Date: 15-jun-2004
Expiration Date: 15-jun-2005
Recently registered and contact information blocked... hmmmm. But even more suspicious is that the name servers are with ZoneEdit.com. Zoneedit.com is a site that provides DNS services for web servers that may be running on home computers, etc.
So I went to my trusting Windows command window and typed in "ping giftbounty.net" and received 66.44.135.100 in return. Next on to dnsstuff.com to do a lookup on this web address. Seems like this IP address is owned by Comcast. It's really looking like this is a site running on a home computer and phishing for financial information. How many are going to fall sucker to this guy before he gets shut down?
Of course, I'll probably get accused of liable, but these are my suspicions only. What do you think?
Posted on 11/30/04 at 13:07:42 by Jim Gray
Category: Scams
Comments
GoDaddy shut this site down promptly. It's unreasonable to expect GoDaddy to do background checks on all domain applicants. GoDaddy is as much of a victim in this situation as would be prospective vistors. Unfortunately, one thing domain registrars have done in their attempts to provide better services to their customers is to offer private registration services. This provides an ability for scammers to hide behind the registrar. However, to GoDaddy's credit they would not let a scam site continue operating.
well, well, godaddy.com is a spamming site too, reaad in the news search in google or yahoo: "godaddy+spam" or "godaddy+abuse" and you'll see
As a follow-up, I did report this to GoDaddy's abuse department. They'd have the most direct way to shutdown this scam domain. When I attempted to access the site today, I received a website not found message. Hopefully someone was saved from getting their bank account drained.
No one should ever, ever give out a PIN number. Even your bank won't ask you to divulge that information.
I don't think you need worry about libel here Jim.
Jim, I totally agree with you. No trust worthy comany ever asks for pin numbers when using a debit card. Second reason I think that you are right is that there is no reason in the world that I can see why if they can run debit cards, why they couldn't run credit cards as well. That was even more of a tip off that we've got a bad guy here. Good article.
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