Someone tries to post the following comment on the blog. The original was chock full of Urls to penis enlargement sites.
HELP! I’m currently being held prisoner by the Russian mafia and being forced to post spam comments on blogs and forum! If you don’t approve this they will kill me. They’re coming back now. Please send help!
This email has come to me on several occasions.
But is it real?
————–
From the Colorado Bureau of Investigation:
“Southern California law enforcement professionals assigned to detect new threats to personal security issues, recently discovered what type of information is embedded in the credit card type hotel room keys used throughout the industry.
Although room keys differ from hotel to hotel, a key obtained from the “Double Tree” chain that was being used for a regional Identity Theft Presentation was found to contain the following the information:
a.. Customers (your) name
b.. Customers partial home address
c.. Hotel room number
d.. Check in date and check out date
e.. Customer’s (your) credit card number and expiration date!
When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.Simply put, hotels do not erase the information on these cards until an employee re-issues the card to the next hotel guest. At that time, the new guest’s information is electronically “overwritten” on the card and the previous guest’s information is erased in the overwriting process. But until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it usually is kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!!!!
Information courtesy of: Sergeant K. Jorge,
Detective Sergeant————–
Short answer?
No, it’s a hoax. The story comes from a quote from 2003 by Sergent Jorge who said:
“In years past, existing software would prompt the user (employee) for information input. If the employee was unaware of hotel policy dictating that such information NOT be entered, it could have ended up on the card in error.”
However, the types of cards that hotels use just don’t have the storage capability to store your credit card number, address or name. They have a single track that includes nothing but a code linked to the room number. That code is wiped automatically when you check out.
I am featured in this great article on imposters written by Simon Caterson, author of Hoax Nation.
Simon, like me, is obsessed with hoaxes, imposters and scams and this article looks at famous swindlers such as Ferdinand Demara and Frank Abagnale Jr as well as less famous con artists, like me!
My new favourite con artists are also magicians.
Back in 1989, The Magic Circle in the UK, refused to let women join the society.
This annoyed female magicians such as Jenny Winstanley no end. But Winstanley had a plan.
She teamed up with Sophie Lloyd, a 28 year old actress, and taught her how to perform magic to a standard high enough to join the society (this was back in the day when clubs actually had standards rather then just letting every nerd with a deck of cards and a youtube account)
Sophie then created the character of Raymond, a young, socially awkard magician. Sophie spent a year performing in clubs around London until she was good enough and professional enough to join the club.
She auditioned in front of a panel of judges and an audience of 200 people and was accepted into the exclusive club.
A few months later when Lloyd and Winstanley revealed to the club they had been hoaxed, the circle didn’t see the humour and, rather ironically, kicked ‘Raymond’ out on the grounds of deception.
The pair even received the cliched late night “you’ll never work in this town again” phone call.
I couldn’t chase down Lloyd but I believe that Winstanley now makes and sells lovely cat sculptures in Norfolk,
As Groucho Marx said, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”
Sophie and Jenny, I tip my rabbit filled top hat to you.
“Raymond” and identified simian friend
Coney Island, New York’s home of carnies, sideshow and fairy floss, has performed a fantastic swindle on the national media.
Reports came out of the boardwork amusement precint of a 140 year old fossilised hot dog. The hot dog had supposedly been frozen in ice below a restaurant for more than a century.
However, the hot dog was little more than a fantastic hoax.
Number Five: Credit Card Skimmers
Back in 2004, I appeared on Today Tonight warning about credit card skimmers.
Since then we’ve had countless more attacks on people’s credit cards and the banks have responded with updating their security. Your average ATM slot is now covered with so many bits of coloured plastic and flashing lights that it looks like it might be capable of intelligence thought.
The idea is simple. A skimmer is placed belong the ATM card slot which reads and copies your card as you put it in the machine.
Since ATMs are harder to scam, the swindlers have moved onto other methods.
- In October, I had reports of taxi drivers skimming people’s cards when they went to pay on eftpos. The skimmer was hidden under the seat and the PIN was obtained remembered when passenger entered it in the machine.
- A dog in Sydney was found to have a skimmer attached to it’s collar. Police believe it was trained to rubbed up against victims and copy the card in their wallet.
- A man in Canberra went door to door posing as a delivery man in 2008. The victim had to pay a COD charge of a few dollars. However, his dodgy EFTPOS machine copied their card and remembered their PIN.
-This week, I’ve been getting reports of skimmers being attached to ANTI-skimming ATMS in Sydney
The ATMs have gotten safer but there are still more skimmers out there then in skim milk.
Wait. Let me try that again. More cards skimmed than milk which is skimmed in some sort of skimmed milk factory.
There’s more skimming going on then in a skinny cow skimming stones across a river…of skimmed milk.
I’ll get back to you.
Tomorrow: Real Estate Refinancing
Over the next ten days, I’m counting down the top ten scams of the past ten years.
These are the ten swindles that I think sum up the first decade of the new millennium.
Number 10: Poodles as Pets and other scams that weren’t
Back in 2007, the ‘odd spot’ sections of newspapers around the world reported on Japanese women buying dogs off of the internet that turned out to be sheep, shaved to look like French poodles.
Since sheep are so rare in Japan, the victims had no idea that their prize pooch was actually a sheep.
Even Japanese movie star Maiko Kawakami was a victim, bringing her ‘dog’ onto a Japanese talk show.
Of course, it was later reported that the story was a hoax. Japanese people know exactly what a sheep looks like and even have a saying “Youtou-kuniku” which means “Sheep’s head, dog’s meat.” The phrase is used to described the sale of inferior products as high quality.
The new millenium was rife with hoax scam warnings. Emails shot around the globe warning of eggs being thrown at cars to drive them off the road, fake eggs from china and Facebook applications that steal your identity.
There were so many fake scams out there that urban legend experts Snopes, even created a catergory for all of the fake swindles.
The winning combination of mass email, fear mongering and mischief making puts these counterfeit cons at Number Ten.
Tomorrow: Number 9: Charity Muggers
This is the latest scam warning to hit inboxes.
It appeared a few years ago and now it’s back with a vengance:
If you are driving at night and are attacked with eggs, do not operate the wiper and spray any water.
Because eggs mixed with water become milky and block your vision up to 92.5%
Then you are forced to stop at the road side and become a victim of robbers
This is a new technique used by robbers in Johor Bahru.
Please inform your friends and relatives
What you’ve got here is a case of bad research crossed with bad science.
Firstly, no link is given to any media reports of this actually happening.
Secondly, no reference is given to which scientist did the study that proves the visibility of eggs.
Thirdly, Johor Bahru is in Malaysia. Unless an international ring of egg throwing car jackers are making their way across asia, you don’t have much to worry about.
And perhaps most importantly, the whole scam is uncovered on snopes.
When con artists talk about victims they call them ‘marks.’ The folk wisdom if that it comes from the chalk markings that swindlers put onto the shoulders of suckers to show other con artists where the easy pickings are.
It’s similar to the old urban legend about hobos leaving marks outside of houses to tell other hobos whether a house is welcoming or unsafe.
Now, we have the 21st century version with reports of theives in the UK leaving chalk markings to tell their peers what sort of goodies a house has.
I suspect this particular story is a beat up, a hoax blown up by the newspapers.
Firstly, no criminals have been quoted as saying they know about or have used the system.
Secondly, criminals don’t tend to leave hints for other criminals. There is little honour among theives.
Thirdly, it’s the kind of story which is easy to fake and hard to prove false.
