March 16, 2011 - 4:35am
Scam Alert
Hello Fresh Loafers. I need to inform you all who helped with the recipe testing for Peter Reinhart that it looks like the email list has been compromised by scammers. This morning I got an "Urgent Request to send Peter some money so he could get home from England". This is similar to the Nigerian scams we all know about. As amusing as it might be to think of poor Peter trapped in England with out a penny and no one to call, I assure you this is not the case. Please disregard this message.
If you get this email, notice that the reply to address is spelled recipetestars not testers.
Any questions, please message me.
Eric
A follow up by edit: The scammer is asking for $2500 to be sent to a London address in cash.
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I came here to make sure someone had done so, otherwise I was going to post something myself... targeted social engineering attacks like this can be very easy to fall for if you're not familiar with the vagaries of account hacks and so forth, so hopefully no one was taken in.
Nice to see I wasn't the only one tempted to respond, though, just to see what would happen. ;)
Eric,
I think it may have been the TFL mailing list that was compromised (could you check this Floyd?). I received the same scam e-mail and I wasn't a Reinhart tester.
SteveB
www.breadcetera.com
Steve, was the senders address the recipetester.com and the reply recipetestar.com?
Eric
Yep.
SteveB
www.breadcetera.com
There are no indications that anyone compromised the site or list here. Neither I nor my wife received the message (except the copy Eric forwarded me), so either this spammer is *really* clever and follows TFL closely enough to know who the moderators are they got a list elsewhere.
I've been wondering... is the recipetesters@yahoo.com a group distribution list? If I sent a message to it would y'all receive it? If so, that is just an invitation for abuse.
I don't think it is a group distribution list. I'm pretty sure Peter and his staff has a group list set up yo handle a large mailing for general notification and that may be what was compromised. However some people got the email that were not testers. That's puzzling to me.
Eric
Damn. I wish I was stuck in England right now.
You can all send me money, anyway!
I would think one of these parasite scamers would ask for money
to help the people of Japan.
There is a warm place for them on judgement day.
I just received a note from Peter himself telling me he is aware of this situation. He is well and not on the streets of London with a tin cup.
Eric
As annoying as it can be with all the spam emails, this post is funny. It made me giggle, quite loudly:) I can't get rid of the image of Peter Reinhart on the street of London with the tin cup and cardboard signage, perhaps.
Sue
http://youcandoitathome.blogspot.com
and came right to TFL to let you all know what was happening!
Betty
Just to let you all know, I just had yet another Nigerian style email scam from a supposedly Chinese man who wanted me to send him my bank and name info so he could add my name as next of kin to a family who blown up by a bomb, and collect half of 24 million dollars.
I must have "Stupid" written on my forehead today. Anybody else get this one?
Eric
I get these (seemingly) by the dozen in my spam mail folder. Very, very occasionally one will slip past the filters and make it to the inbox. I say seemingly because I don't check the spam folder that often, unless I'm looking for something in particular. But there's lots of scam mail in there.
I have read that 94% of all message traffic is spam. This got through because the sender was spoofed and was in my contact list as a safe sender I have had contact with. Spoofed emails are near impossible to stop. This was sent by a known yahoo account and the reply address was different. That's the hard part to accomplish. Most ISP's won't allow that kind of traffic.
Eric
I can't believe you are all so skeptical of these offers. So far I have helped with 273 carefully selected emails and collected $4,768,436,241.12. I haven't let it change my lifestyle though. Don't plan to since the funds are counterfeit.
Practice safe email. Delete all messages of questionable heritage and check out ANY such requrest before acting!
Jay
Thank you for letting us know. Right now, be careful, even for seemingly legitimate appeals for money for Japan, as well. As some of you know, we in Japan have our share of opportunists and internet scamming is not as rare as you might expect.
The way I heard it was that Japan has to accept monetary aid before they receive any, and the Japanese government has not accepted it because they're not stretching things too far, yet.
http://www.fornobravo.com/pizzaquest/component/content/article/42-pizza-quest-info/165-special-announcement.html