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Email asking me for a donation.


pete.i

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Just had an email from "Canal World" asking me to donate £12 as a one off donation but saying that they had tried to take a donation from my Paypal account and failed. Is this a valid email or phishing? I do donateto Canalworld but I don't, particularly, appreciate being told to donate or web sites trying to take money from my accounts.without any prior notice. I may have set up a yearly donation but I'm pretty sure I haven't. Anyway if it is correct I will donate but, as I have done every year. If it isn't a bona fida email from Canal World I have deleted it and blocked that address.

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It sounds unlikely.

I am not a computer expert, but I have found that one way of finding out whether such e-mails are genuine is to reply to their e-address. If it is quickly returned to you as undeliverable, then it is a fake.

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7 minutes ago, Athy said:

It sounds unlikely.

I am not a computer expert, but I have found that one way of finding out whether such e-mails are genuine is to reply to their e-address. If it is quickly returned to you as undeliverable, then it is a fake.

Bad advice.

 

Hopefully someone with more time will be along to explain why.

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I agree that it is bad advice to reply to such emails! When my email account was hacked a few months ago, the Police told me that the hackers send out stacks of emails to made up email addresses and if they get a reply, it tells them that they have hit a genuine email address and they can then start scamming in the hope of removing some of your money. Best to delete any suspect emails.

 

haggis

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10 minutes ago, StationMaster said:

Bad advice.

 

 

It works for me, so why should it not work for other people?

6 minutes ago, haggis said:

the Police told me that the hackers send out stacks of emails to made up email addresses and if they get a reply, it tells them that they have hit a genuine email address 

 

haggis

As I'm with a small service provider (qcinternet) it's unlikely that anyone would find my e-address at random. Were I with one of the big companies, then I suppose it would be possible.

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Just now, Athy said:

It works for me, so why should it not work for other people?

Primarily because you don't understand what you are giving away by clicking reply...

 

Email active - check.   Someone who isn't very familiar in how to work out an email is a scam - check.

 

Just because you get an undelivered reply does not mean you haven't given info away that is useful to scammers.

 

Now for some boating for me.

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Just now, StationMaster said:

Primarily because you don't understand what you are giving away by clicking reply...

 

Email active - check.   Someone who isn't very familiar in how to work out an email is a scam - check.

 

Just because you get an undelivered reply does not mean you haven't given info away that is useful to scammers.

 

 

Rather a cynical point of view!

But, as in this instance, if I do get a reply, then I do know that the e-mail was genuine.

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I've had one too. My advice would be not to click on any link within the email as such things tend to report back to confirm you exist and then you can expect more of the same. The email address I use is unique to my Canalworld account which indicates their (Canalworld) address book has been hacked. 

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Just now, Athy said:

Rather a cynical point of view!

But, as in this instance, if I do get a reply, then I do know that the e-mail was genuine.

How do you know it's genuine? Maybe the next scammer has just realised that providing a method to convince you are speaking to a genuine person is enough.

 

Doubtful with CWDF but not something to advise people about as a general way of acting.

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39 minutes ago, pete.i said:

Just had an email from "Canal World" asking me to donate £12

 

3 minutes ago, bill brown said:

I've had one too.

 

Interestingly, neither of you have the little star that flags you as having donated.  Did you both donate exactly a year ago?

 

If so, then it might be a genuine message.  @RichM should be able to confirm if it was.

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2 minutes ago, StationMaster said:

How do you know it's genuine? Maybe the next scammer has just realised that providing a method to convince you are speaking to a genuine person is enough.

 

Doubtful with CWDF but not something to advise people about as a general way of acting.

Tee-hee.

Do you feel that they're all out to get you?

Just now, TheBiscuits said:

 

 

Interestingly, neither of you have the little star that flags you as having donated.  Did you both donate exactly a year ago?

 

 

Aarrgghh! Their little stars have been hacked! They're everywhere, I tell you....

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33 minutes ago, Athy said:

Rather a cynical point of view!

But, as in this instance, if I do get a reply, then I do know that the e-mail was genuine.

bad logic! If the email was from hackers and you reply you are in effect telling them that they have hit a genuine email address. They of course send you a reply to continue their quest to get at your money. I know, it happened to me. I believed the email was genuine (OK now I know that there was a one letter difference from the email address of who I thought I was corresponding with) and replied and lost a lot of money. I would never have believed that with my background I would be caught by hackers but I was. As you say, that fact that you are with a less well known ISP possibly makes replying less of a risk but believe me, hackers don't take long to work out the most common forms of email address with all ISPs and they get to work.

 

haggis

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1 hour ago, Athy said:

As I'm with a small service provider (*********) it's unlikely that anyone would find my e-address at random. Were I with one of the big companies, then I suppose it would be possible.

You might be underestimating how much of a market there is in harvesting and trading email addresses. 

 

You've given enough information here for a google search to turn up what looks like your email address (with the provider that you named) in plain text (along with your home address in Norfolk) on a couple of music related websites which could be harvested automatically. 

 

Checking that address on haveibeenpwned.com, it also appears to have been disclosed in data breaches of linkedin, last.fm and reverbnation amongst others and included in "master lists" of stolen credentials that have been widely circulated. 

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1 hour ago, chevron said:

I’ve had the email as well wondering how many have had it

I've had it as well (and I donate).

 

I did start a thread (which I now can't find) as last year I got an email "reminder" a month before the 12 months was up at which I promptly paid. This year I've had two reminders, a month apart - doubtless next year I'll get three.

 

On a more cunning note, if I pay promptly I'm actually paying my annual donation every eleven months!

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I got 2 emails!!  Was very suspicious as I don’t even have a paypal account.

 

Would add my voice/vote to those advocating not to reply as, yes, the least it shows is that its an active email account.

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There were a bunch of pending invoices so I just set them to re-issue which likely explains the email notifications. However, for those who previously made one-off donations, a subsequent invoice should not have been generated. We will look into why this occurred and will fix accordingly. Apologies for any concern caused by this.

 

 

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3 hours ago, peter n said:

You might be underestimating how much of a market there is in harvesting and trading email addresses. 

 

You've given enough information here for a google search to turn up what looks like your email address (with the provider that you named) in plain text (along with your home address in Norfolk) on a couple of music related websites which could be harvested automatically. 

 

Checking that address on haveibeenpwned.com, it also appears to have been disclosed in data breaches of linkedin, last.fm and reverbnation amongst others and included in "master lists" of stolen credentials that have been widely circulated. 

Athy's attitude is typical of an older generation who have been lucky enough to have never been hacked and then lost big!  I'm no computer expert but it was shockingly easy to find out pretty much all his personal details including home address.  Having said that, I'd always though it was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who lived at River Cottage...

 

My advice - never reply to sketchy looking emails and stop putting your personal details in the public domain!

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This is the second example in a week where someone who is not in the position to technically or accurately answer a query, has said/done the wrong thing. Can the site staff sort themselves out so that mistakes like this don't occur? Has kris88's ban been lifted properly yet?

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3 minutes ago, Paul C said:

This is the second example in a week where someone who is not in the position to technically or accurately answer a query, has said/done the wrong thing. Can the site staff sort themselves out so that mistakes like this don't occur? Has kris88's ban been lifted properly yet?

Good point, I forgot Athy is supposed to be a moderator! :banghead:

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5 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

But Athy is famously, at least on the forum, as being a technophobe,  this in no way devalues his voluntary role as a mod

But a technophobe who wrote this

 

"I have found that one way of finding out whether such e-mails are genuine is to reply to their e-address."

 

And there's the problem.  An uninformed man, in a position of authority, (and therefore to be listened to) giving out very dangerous advice and then defending his view and belittling other views when challenged.

 

I don't have a problem with technophobes but don't then wade into debates like this with awful advice.

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Just now, doratheexplorer said:

But a technophobe who wrote this

 

"I have found that one way of finding out whether such e-mails are genuine is to reply to their e-address."

 

And there's the problem.  An uninformed man, in a position of authority, (and therefore to be listened to) giving out very dangerous advice and then defending his view and belittling other views when challenged.

 

I don't have a problem with technophobes but don't then wade into debates like this with awful advice.

Yes I agree to that, terrible advice from Athy about the spam but I'm not sure how much authority he actually has, there's personal responsibility here, if someone takes advice from a random bod on a forum and it bites them on the arse who's fault is it?

 

I doubt very much if he was trying to belittle tbh it's just his how his posts come across sometimes, the teacher snark hasn't completely left him I think :)

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1 minute ago, tree monkey said:

Yes I agree to that, terrible advice from Athy about the spam but I'm not sure how much authority he actually has, there's personal responsibility here, if someone takes advice from a random bod on a forum and it bites them on the arse who's fault is it?

 

I doubt very much if he was trying to belittle tbh it's just his how his posts come across sometimes, the teacher snark hasn't completely left him I think :)

 

Those high walls of academia have shielded him from the real world for far too long.

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