Why would somebody bother to try scamming a $100 mower.
Are you OK if I organise shipping right from your door to mine? Nothing will leave your home before payment is made (Company name:Auspost-express, Location:Glenroy).3:51 pm today
Hi Max, I don't get it for a hundred bucks. Another one I have been getting each time I list a mower on Gumtree goes something like this "My father really wants this mower but he is unable to contact you through Gumtree so can you contact him on this email address they put in so you can discuss it with him" Red flag straight away.
Norm some my email box are swamp with scammer saying my antivirus license as expired or apple drive is full or one my streaming services contracts has expired. Well I know better than to click on any of those links as they are all scam emails.
Hi AVB, yes there is a constant stream of scam emails coming in but it is the targeted ones coming in on ads you have placed that get me fired up. I do use a lot of colourful language back at them. I never seem to get a reply
I'm not sure how to report them on Gumtree ,if they advertise a scam you can easily report them but can't see anywhere to report a scam message, on other sites I've reported them and their account has been deleted ,if they message my phone I block them and mark them down as spam .The thing I do on Gumtree if they message me twice is to block them in the email account.
I'm getting at least one scam message for everything I list on Gumtree and sometimes 3 scam messages for the same item(all different scammer user accounts).
I don't link my Gumtree account to my phone and I don't respond to Gumtree messaging so I only see the messages when I log in to remove an item that has sold. It's usually Gumtree messaging where people offer half the selling price ,too many time wasters on Gumtree messaging as I always get is this item still for sale .
The scammers accounts are also variants of Gumtree Admin ,Admin Lisa etc.
You get a lot of stupid scam messages ,like a recorded message that your parcel is illegal and there is a warrant out for your arrest and to call a number.
I think the Government should just disconnect / block all communication lines to Nigeria and that would probably stop 90 percent of scams.
Now you know why a website that I am an adminstrator for I have blocked all new user sign ups if their email is a Russia email address. About drove me crazy with all the spam.
Problem now is people are getting paranoid as you try to join a site and unless you know someone on the site already they wont let you join and if you accidentally send a message to the wrong number people won't tell you because they think it might be a scam.
Yes hack your phone ,computer and try and get money from your accounts ,they can get enough information about you and sell that on the dark web, they can sell your details to other spammers.
This week I've already had 2 spam messages on my phone sent at 2:30 am saying to click on a link to pay a toll fee ,they send them in the early hours because people are asleep and don't mark them down as spam so they can send more on without being blocked.
Yes Max, I get the toll fee ones about 2.30/3.00 am every few weeks. I just had another one on my phone saying that I had a $700 paypal payment awaiting payment. I wonder why they always say it is $700?
I don't get any PayPal scams sent to me Norm probably because when I get people messaging or asking to pay with paypal I say I don't take PayPal payments.
The $700. is probably a limit , like if you are a seller on eBay , their limit will at least be $700. a month so the amount is less suspicious.
Well there you go Max, cunning pricks know every loophole. It was just everytime I have had these Paypal calls they always claim it is a $700 payment problem
Personally I had to quit accepting PayPal due to new IRS policy that I must do paperwork on receipt of $600 total in a year. My customer basically have two options Cash or Check with Cash being preferred. A lot less paperwork.
Hi AVB I don't accept paypal payments I just use paypal for purchases so I I know straight away it is a scam because I'm never waiting for a $700 payment
I think Gumtree needs to rename their site ,Scamtree, there must be hundreds of scam accounts.
Also anyone that sells anything online should check your name on Facebook as I know there is nobody in Australia with my name yet there are people using my name of Facebook.
Yes I thought a Australia may be at the top with scammed victims but the USA with an astounding 466,501 online scams in 2022, the U.S. leads the world as the country with the most scam victims per year.28 Nov 2023
I just watched The Beekeeper ,some mindless violence towards fictional scammers.
I know people who never answer their phone if they don't recognize the number ,there must be a lot of people like that now. Not that this would help much if a scammer has spoofed the phone number which is easily done, I've had fake ID messages sent to my phone ,pretending to be someone you know.
I guess a lot of the time people aren't expecting people to blatantly lie to them because that's not what they would do to other people.
Yes Max, It is a never ending cycle with these scammers and the problem with not answering the phone with no caller id is that quite a few places like hospitals come up with that and I know of a person who was trying to be contacted by a hospital and she kept ignoring it. When she did answer it one day they told her they had been trying to contact her for weeks as they needed to discuss something. You are between a rock and a hard place
I've heard of that happening too Norm ,Hospitals using a private number so people don't answer the phone.
It's a bit of a problem all the scammers these days, your not even meant to say yes or no on a phone call these days in case a scammer records your voice and uses that .
When I checked my Gumtree account today a lot of the scammers have been blocked,it looks like Gumtree has finally done something.
Hi Max, that is good to hear at least they are trying. My grandaughter was enquiring about a car listed on Car Sales yesterday, got an email this morning to say to contact this email address and nothing else. Red flags came straight up and an hour later she got a notification from Car Sales that this was a scam listing.
It's the first time Gumtree have blocked scammers in 14 years of scammers messaging me.
I read somewhere that Fake sellers account for around 70% of used car sales scams.
These days you shouldn't list your number plate number and you need to blur the number plate in images when selling a vehicle online because of people who clone the rego number with 3D printers and then use your plate number to commit crimes.
I sold an unregistered car on car sales in 2009 and put some old number plates on the car just to drive the car to the end of my street to take the images, then I blurred the number plate numbers before uploading the images to car sales but they wouldn't allow the images and the advert until I showed the number plates in the images so I had to upload the original images showing the plates that weren't even from the car I was selling ,then they allowed the ad, funny how now it's the opposite and they don't show the plates.
The government is meant to be stopping scammers this year.
Hi Max, things have moved a long way since 2009, nobody would have thought about 3D printing number plates or even 3D printing anything. Scamming has moved a long way since 2009 as well
I remember in the mid nineties Swinburne in Hawthorn had 3D printers and in 2009 Windows 7 was new.
In 2013 anyone could download the plans for a 3D printed gun.
Pre 2009 criminals would clone all id numbers on stolen vehicles and sell the vehicle and the owner wouldn't find out that they had a stolen vehicle until the next registration payment.There would be 2 cars on the road with the same numbers and plates.
Also remember seeing car plates printed on paper and put behind a perspex number plate holder.
20 years ago i remember a company started making novelty plates and would sell them at swap meets, there has always been someone who can make number plates.
I had people wanting to pay by check for second hand goods back in the nineties instead of cash ,I would never take a check as you never knew if it would clear ,just like when people wanted to transfer money to buy an item , I wouldn't be giving them or sending the item until the money had cleared.
How Is Digital Fraud Becoming More Sophisticated As Technology Advances? link below.
I don't know why people ever bothered with user passwords on computers when you turn them on because of how easily they were circumvented, then they bring out secure boot processors to fix the problem but they can still be exploited.
I've recently heard a group of 3 Chinese nationals have been arrested in Sydney after being responsible for eighty million scam text messages , they were sending out the toll and parcel scam messages among others to millions of Australians .
I think this explains why the gumtree scammers got blocked ,police say as soon as one site closes down another operation springs up and they know of similar operations that are already up and running.
Apparently these scammers had 3 sim boxes with 192 sim cards sending out scam messages 24 - 7.
Possibly less phone message scams at the moment .They say don't trust any text messages from a business as they don't generally contact you that way and if someone rings from a business you're meant to hang up and google the business name to get their phone number and call them back..I guess most people these days don't trust anyone and don't answer calls from private or unknown numbers.
It is hard Max because I had a hospital ring me a couple of days ago with no caller ID. I wasn't going to answer it but I did and I was lucky I did answer it. Problem is you never know.
Yes I don't see the problem answering private number calls ,I've had a few when selling on Gumtree and just ask them for their number so you can message details back.
If you get a time waster on a private number I just hang up .
The thing is there are people who won't answer a call from a private number ,I've even seen a few ads on Gumtree and the sellers say that private numbers won't be answered but as you say they could miss a call from a Doctor or a Hospital.
Another phone scam is when someone rings your phone so it rings once and hangs up before you answer , then if you ring back it's a high priced number that you receive an excessive bill for.
I saw a show the other day where scammers in India were making $20,000 a day ,all from people who weren't very tech savvy but the governments have now arrested them so it looks like it's not a good time for scammers ,I just don't understand why the governments have let them get away with it for so long,
I'm was still getting all the Gumtree scammers sending messages every time I put a new ad on Gumtree but a lot of the messages were only blocked by gumtree from me replying to to scammers messages so I had to log into my email account and block them ,then send them all to the spam folder this stopped all the old scammer accounts sending messages, now there is a report button in Gumtree messaging and I just report them all to gumtree and Gumtree blocks them but you still need to block them in your email account.
I'm still getting at least 3 scam messages every week on my phone ,usually click this link as your parcel was not delivered and the click this link you have unpaid toll etc. It's easy to know when a scammer calls as they always tell you to do something .
The other day a group of scammers were caught and they have a list of all the scammers and are arresting them all no mater what part of the world they live in, if they continue to steal from Australia.
So it's only a matter of time and the scammers will be arrested.
Hi Max, Yes the scammers seem to have dropped off of late, obviously they are being flushed out. I still get a few in my emails but they are so easy to spot, they are so crudely put together they just stand out so much, I can't imagine why they keep bothering to send them. The odd one comes on my phone but they to are easy to spot and flick. Hopefully they keep getting caught.
As for free range eggs if you are a person that has chickens you will know the difference quite quickly. First is the yolk color will be quite dark when compared to hen house raised chicken eggs. My neighbor once complained that the eggs was turning her white cakes orange. But these so-called free range eggs has a another tell tale sign of something not right they are too evenly color; otherwords, no variance between the eggs. Many are just while egg shells dyed brown like Easter eggs.
Here my eggs range from white to brown to blue/green depending on the hens. And even the none white eggs varies in color each day from the same hen. And I know mine are truly free ranged as they call it. THey are free to go anywhere on the property but they get corrected if they stray out of bounds.And boy they hate when they see me with the mop as they know I am going to clean up their act. I don't hurt them other than scare the heck out of them.
Hi AVB, Out here if you have chickens you will have foxes hanging around waiting for any opportunity. Not sure if you have foxes over there but I know you have problems with opossums
Too many Foxes here ,I snuck up on some in the yard then took a photo just before they all bolted off in different directions.
Always dead possums in my yard ,the fox kills more than it can eat and just leaves them to rot, same if you had chickens doesn't kill one or two for a meal ,Foxes will kill them all and probably eat one.
I think if I had my own Chickens I would tell the difference in the eggs AVB ,I have heard it's difficult to tell the difference especially if free range can just mean that the chicken had a small patch of grass for part of it's life .
Yep the scammers are finally getting arrested, I do remember many years ago getting the scammer messages sent to me when selling online, and there was nothing to stop them ,I'm still getting 3 scam messages as soon as I list an item for sale but now most are blocked from me responding to them on Gumtree and if they aren't blocked I push the report on Gumtree messaging and they are blocked that day.I think more should have been done earlier though.
These days Scammers can sextort young people and as a result a few young people have committed suicide but at least now the scammers go to jail no matter what country they are from ,a lot of the times the scammers don't even have what they say they have to extort people.
Yes Foxes are everywhere ,I remember seeing a news report from London where a fox entered a persons home and attacked a child.
You still hear about a wombat attack from time to time and a roo attack isn't that uncommon.If you are a tourist I hear you need to watch out for the drop bears in Australia ,apparently they like attacking tourists. , what animal doesn't attack you in Australia ,I went near a blue tongue lizard the other day and that was trying to take a bite out of me .
