* IMPORTANT * Has Anyone Experienced/Been Targeted By This Scam?
 

Hi guys,
I am just wanting to put this out there to see if anybody else has experienced the same type of scam that we have. To summarize, we have come across a scammer pinpointed to Costa Rica, that has been mailing small blocks of our ex-members "special discount prices" promising all site access.

The scammer is accpeting payments through Paypal and of course the scammed ex-members are getting nothing in return.

The facts that we know:
- The scammer is located in Costa Rica
- The scammer has not breached our database, but has taken addresses 50 at a time (which brings us to the next point...)
- It is believed that the scammer is a rogue employee of a company that we have outsourced.
- The scammer is mailing with a footer advertising his company as: Insane Affiliates, Ltp.

For obvious reasons, we do not want to mention the company by name as we do not believe the actual company to be behind this, but we are interested in hearing if anybody else has had this experience.

Good luck with catching the fucker:thumbsup

no tits?

Guys this is serious. Please offer any assistance if you know anything
best
Duke

how did he get the email addresses of ex-members?

doh - i didn't read the original post closely enough. he worked for you and grabbed 50 addresses at a time

We haven't received any reports of that recently. If he's not able to actually grant access, I would think PayPal will shut him down quickly. I'm guessing you have an idea why it's fifty email addresses (a page full) at a time?

no he didnt work for us, it was a company in CR we used for support.
ds

That's all we allow customer support to view at a single time
ds

good luck :thumbsup

http://examples.moreniche.com/Uploads/Affiliates.JPG

You should be able to get Paypal to cut them off.

I would get your CR outsourcing company involved as well, since the person/company behind this is most likely playing the same shenanigans with other clients as well. :disgust

ADG

The .com for insane affiliates throws up some whois info. You've probably checked that though.

Ergo the reason for this post as the 1st time this happened no leaks were found (obviously).
ds

Well.

Stop using that CR company for support.

You are playing with fire when you use the same company that Media Revenue uses for support.

(But I don't think that is the cause of the issue.)

p.s. I added you to icq. Hit me up if you want. :)

Another Media Revenue success story? :winkwink:

http://media.cr/services.html

I make it a point to not trust anyone that has anything to do with Costa Rica.

It's always the shady as fuck webmasters who move to Costa Rica or do buisiness there.

Yes i'm generalizing, but it's true. Lots of other places on this list but Costa Rica is one of them because of the shady americans.

Expose the CR company. This is obviously on them.

great :thumbsup

what he said...
Costa Rica = I Stay away :thumbsup

Why hire people from third world countries like CR?

ummm bcoz its cheap :winkwink:

Hey Duke.. Hit me on ICQ

ok will do

becaypu start doing enough joins a day you need full time 24/7 customer service.
If this episode is even related we think it's a rouge ex employee or the scam would have been more elaborate
ds

database hack or your billing company is mailing your old members. I've seen that happen with a now out of business billing company before.

it's not a db hack. It's a rouge employee from an outsourcing company, ergo why such a small amount of emails has been sent because he can only view 50 at a clip. It would have taken him months to get them all.
ds

Months?

Cause he couldn't write a script to rip the shit in about 5mns all your records?

Even some Ticos know PHP. :1orglaugh

im confident with our safeguards in place we woukd have known if he ripped through it.
ds

Haven't seen anything like this. Bump for you guys Sherm

It wasn't someone connected with mystaffcenter.com was it? Someone posted a link earlier here which appeared to lead to the backend for all the mediarevenue related companies, including mainstream. I clicked it a few times out of curiosity and found a phone directory with a listing of all employees. I went further and found I had access to all sorts of trouble tickets in full with customer info. It looked like you might have been able to save and alter it too. I don't know I didn't try. But if you used these guys it looks like they have serious security problems in my opinion and your data may have been wide open to anyone for some time.

Bump for you guys, had an awesome Duke Dollars ratio last period!

a few shady people have given cost rican webmasters a bad name

i have a friend that got a job with iwantu many years ago as a lead dev ...he ended up getting married and lives there still working for another adult company now doing programming

he is far from shady :-)

Has the outsourcing company responded yet?

we had the company behind zenddesk forever not backend access
ds

Thanks for the responses everyone. Have had some nice leads and private discussions.

A few more facts:
- We keep our support behind ZenDesk, and they do not load their tickets through their private back end.
- We are able to track the list and up to what point was lifted. While a script to mine all addresses is possible, only a small fraction of addresses was compromised, hence the 50 at a time theory.
- The company did a full security audit and we do not believe the company itself to be behind the theft. Just a select individual which we are tracking piece by piece.
- No...Not all Costa Rican webmasters are rogue...Please don't think we are trying to blanket everyone. We're just looking to see if people have experienced the same issue as us, and what their findings were.

Sherm. I sent you a message on ICQ. I know how this BH Hacker does his stuff. It can be countered. Please contact me back.

Thanks marlboroack... Dropping you a line now.

Exactly the first thing that popped into my mind. :1orglaugh