4 ms·

Note how this email includes a password. This particular form of scam relies on taking weak passwords acquired from database dumps and sending the scam email to

Note how this email includes a password. This particular form of scam relies on taking weak passwords acquired from database dumps and sending the scam email to the password owner, in the hopes that they'll recognize the password and think the email is legitimate (this is especially effective if the owner reuses passwords). I'm not sure how a mailing list would end up in a dump like that though, as people don't generally sign up for sites using addresses belonging to mailing lists.

knodi123 8y ago
> people don't generally sign up for sites using addresses belonging to mailing lists. And yet some dingus in hyderabad keeps using my email address to sign up on all the job boards in india. Users are weird.
asveikau 8y ago
I wouldn't discount the idea that they made up a password rather than got it in a database dump. Even an incorrect password might be enough to freak somebody out. I think these are not terribly sophisticated actors, they're running some scripts and looking for someone gullible enough to give them hundreds of dollars worth of Bitcoin based on what is in the end a pretty far fetched story.
- eridius 8y ago
  Every previous instance of this particular scam I've seen mentioned before used a password that the recipient recognized. I personally received this exact email just the other day, containing a password that I confirmed I actually used a very long time ago on a now-defunct site (which was known to be in at least one password dump). I don't buy the "an incorrect password might freak someone out" argument, because the whole point of this scam is that the recipient recognizes the password. Without that password recognition, the inclusion of the password is harmful (because it proves the sender is full of shit) and at best makes the email have no more persuasive power than one that didn't include a password at all.
  - asveikau 8y ago
    Hm. The mails my mailer-daemon account gets have a nearly identical message body but do not mention a specific password. People do freak out and miss details. Kind of like what people say about 419 scams having poor grammar and spelling. This somewhat ensures that respondents are people who don't read carefully.
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  They do use a database dump. What's more - according to Have I been Pwned, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org does show up in some databases.

knodi123 8y ago

> people don't generally sign up for sites using addresses belonging to mailing lists. And yet some dingus in hyderabad keeps using my email address to sign up on all the job boards in india. Users are weird.

asveikau 8y ago

I wouldn't discount the idea that they made up a password rather than got it in a database dump. Even an incorrect password might be enough to freak somebody out. I think these are not terribly sophisticated actors, they're running some scripts and looking for someone gullible enough to give them hundreds of dollars worth of Bitcoin based on what is in the end a pretty far fetched story.

eridius 8y ago
Every previous instance of this particular scam I've seen mentioned before used a password that the recipient recognized. I personally received this exact email just the other day, containing a password that I confirmed I actually used a very long time ago on a now-defunct site (which was known to be in at least one password dump). I don't buy the "an incorrect password might freak someone out" argument, because the whole point of this scam is that the recipient recognizes the password. Without that password recognition, the inclusion of the password is harmful (because it proves the sender is full of shit) and at best makes the email have no more persuasive power than one that didn't include a password at all.
- asveikau 8y ago
  Hm. The mails my mailer-daemon account gets have a nearly identical message body but do not mention a specific password. People do freak out and miss details. Kind of like what people say about 419 scams having poor grammar and spelling. This somewhat ensures that respondents are people who don't read carefully.
seba_dos1 8y ago
They do use a database dump. What's more - according to Have I been Pwned, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org does show up in some databases.