WOMC: Word of Mouth Connection Scam…
I keep getting these stupid scam/spam emails that say:
Someone has just begun to research your background via our website. This email has been automatically sent to you so as to make you aware that your background is being looked into. The popularity of our website is currently growing at a very rapid rate. If another person begins to research you in the future we will again inform you via email.
Then the Word-Of-Mouth email (sent by their Report Awareness System, aka Connection Awareness System) supplies a link to click on that sends you to a page that says that someone who knows you “very well” has, and is willing to share, information about you with others. To send an anonymous email to this nonexisting person to find out whatever the heck they are supposed to be saying about you, you must fork over a minimum of $19.97 for a one-year subscription to the WOM Connection, or $29.97 for a two-year subscription.
Please, DO NOT fall for this scam! It’s bûllšhìt!
Number Nine in the New York State Consumer Protection Board’s list of the Top Ten Internet headaches is scam websites. The CPB specifically mentions that “all types of scams are attempted on the Internet, including a relatively new website called Word-of-Mouth.org. This website, registered to a company in the Philippines, claims people can file gossip about someone they know using that person’s e-mail address to identify them. Now Word-of-Mouth is sending e-mail messages to try to get people to spend $19.97 to see the gossip that allegedly has been filed about them. CURE: Hit the delete button when you receive this e-mail.”
Some vital information:
- The womc.info domain is registered to Peter Kestler located in Davao City, The Phillipines.
- Other domains include word-of-mouth-connection.com, wordofmouthconnection.com, word-of-mouth.org, womc.net, and wordofmouthconnections.info. There are probably many more.
- Womc.info is hosted in Las Vegas by A+Hosting.
- Word-of-Mouth is listed on the well-known website that exposes frauds and scams, snopes.com. According to snopes, “nobody needs to pay $20 to find out nothing.”
- The WOMC site is “in compliance with all United States laws.” Yet the legal section of the website states that “WordofMouthConnection.com, however, is not covered by any of these laws.”
- The site’s “users are anonymous.” Yet “we cannot ensure that all of your private communications and other personally identifiable information will never be disclosed.”
- Word-of-Mouth claims that “there are no U.S. federal laws governing spam.” They also say that they do not send spam, although they “send an initial unsolicited email”, which they claim is not spam in that there is no commercial aspect. Apparently they are trying to convince you that offering subscriptions to “an online community” is not a commercial endeavor.
- The testimonials are most likely fake. “I searched for Word-of-Mouth Connections on our nanny and was reassured because I found no Word-of-Mouth Connections.” Or what about “I was aghast at the stories [my girlfriend's ex's] told me about her lying, unfaithfulness, and past drug and mental problems. As a result of their input I decided to break off the relationship. WordofMouthConnection.com saved me!” Puuuuhlease!
- The last sentence on their legal page cracks me up the most! WOMC claims that their spam email “is not bulk mail because it is directed at one specific individual.” That’s about as dumb as it gets! All the spam I get is obviously directed to one person, me. That’s why I get it. If it wasn’t directly to me, I wouldn’t get any spam at all!
Do not send $20! Do not click the link! Go directly to the delete button!
UPDATE: I received another one of these emails on 1/12 from womexch.org - RDL
UPDATE: I’ve received dozens more of these emails, most of which I deleted immediately. Now I’m looking at them a bit closer. I received one on 2/7. It was from 209.25.171.75 (peter.wominfo.info), a server hosted at Maxim Computer Systems in Fremont, CA. Next one on 2/8 was from 207.36.180.23 (support.wordofmouthreports.com and peter1.wordofmouthconnections.com), a server at CyberGate/ValueWeb in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Both directed potential visitors to a URL on s.wominfo.info (peter1.word-of-mouth-connection.com), hosted by A+Hosting/Premia Networks in Las Vegas, NV. This guy is sure spreading it around! Pun intended…
UPDATE: I got another one on 2/8! Sheesh! This one from 216.65.117.86 (support.wordofmouthconnections.net hosted by Maxim/HostCentric in Fremont) directing users to a page on womc.info (64.235.50.54, the same peter1.word-of-mouth-connection.com site hosted in Las Vegas listed above).
UPDATE: Another one on 2/16. From “WOMC SUPPORT” with email address notify.sys@wordofmouthreports.info, title is “Background research being performed on you.” Offending mail server is support.wordofmouthreports.info (207.36.180.112) hosted at CyberGate/ValueWeb in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Directs (again!) to womc.info (64.235.50.54, hosted in Las Vegas). The marketing pitch on this one was “Someone is looking for people who know you and have experiences and/or opinions to share about you via our website.”
I must have received 10 or more of these junk e-mails; at first I thought it was a virus (I suppose it is, of a sort), but then they kept coming, so I looked up the site, which looked fake, so I just assumed it was some kind of scam. I didn’t even get to the place where it asked for scrill — that would have been a dead give-away. I don’t know how to research this: here’s the header in the e-mail I got(with my e-mail add. replaced by _): Return-Path: X-Original-To: ________@sdcc13.ucsd.edu Delivered-To: ________@sdcc13.ucsd.edu Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D9DB6CF2 for ; Mon, 8 Mar 2004 20:54:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailbox6.ucsd.edu (mailbox6.ucsd.edu [132.239.1.58]) by sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2DF606CF1 for ; Mon, 8 Mar 2004 20:54:43 -0800 (PST) Received: from support.researchpeople.net (host138.hostcentric.com [209.25.160.138] (may be forged)) by mailbox6.ucsd.edu (8.12.10/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i294sfqE096027 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=FAIL) for ; Mon, 8 Mar 2004 20:54:41 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 27128 invoked by uid 48); 9 Mar 2004 01:52:38 -0000 Date: 9 Mar 2004 01:52:38 -0000 Message-ID: To: _______@ucsd.edu Subject: Research re: ________@ucsd.edu From: WordofMouth Research X-Spam-Level: Level X-Spamscanner: mailbox6.ucsd.edu (v1.4 Mar 2 2004 11:47:57, 0.6/5.0 2.63) X-MailScanner: PASSED (v1.2.8 87098 i294sfqE096027 mailbox6.ucsd.edu) —- The link this e-mail gave to click on was: http://wordexch.info/pass.php?a=search&b=5&c=________@ucsd.edu I usually don’t get that much spam, so I’m not sure how my e-mail address got on this guy’s list. I hope you guys can do something with the information in the header.
More header info. I got rid of the stuff that looked extraneous. I’m at a workstation at UCSD. —- Return-Path: Received: from KINDPERSON (adsl-68-124-41-68.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net [68.124.41.68]) by mailbox4.ucsd.edu (8.12.10/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i2C4B7TV003741 Received: from munich ([127.0.0.1]) by KINDPERSON with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); Thu, 11 Mar 2004 20:10:44 -0800 Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 20:10:44 -0800 From: ALERTSYSTEM@RESEARCHINGPEOPLE.BIZ
Ray, Search results for: 68.124.41.68 OrgName: Pac Bell Internet Services OrgID: PACB Address: 208 Bush St. #5000 City: San Ramon StateProv: CA PostalCode: 94104 Country: US NetRange: 68.120.0.0 - 68.127.255.255 CIDR: 68.120.0.0/13 NetName: PBI-NET-10 NetHandle: NET-68-120-0-0-1 Parent: NET-68-0-0-0-0 NetType: Direct Allocation NameServer: NS1.PBI.NET NameServer: NS2.PBI.NET Comment: Comment: Contact IPAdmin-PBI@sbcis.sbc.com for general IP support. Comment: Contact support@pacbell.net for technical support issues. Comment: Contact abuse@pacbell.net for policy abuse issues. RegDate: 2003-03-07 Updated: 2003-11-21 TechHandle: PIA2-ORG-ARIN TechName: IPAdmin-PBI TechPhone: +1-866-937-3664 TechEmail: IPAdmin-PBI@sbcis.sbc.com OrgAbuseHandle: APB2-ARIN OrgAbuseName: Abuse - Pacific Bell OrgAbusePhone: +1-866-937-3664 OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@pacbell.net OrgNOCHandle: SPBI-ARIN OrgNOCName: Support - Pacific Bell Internet OrgNOCPhone: +1-866-937-3664 OrgNOCEmail: support@pacbell.net OrgTechHandle: PIA2-ORG-ARIN OrgTechName: IPAdmin-PBI OrgTechPhone: +1-866-937-3664 OrgTechEmail: IPAdmin-PBI@sbcis.sbc.com # ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2004-03-19 19:15 # Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.
Ray, Search results for: 68.124.41.68 OrgName: Pac Bell Internet Services OrgID: PACB Address: 208 Bush St. #5000 City: San Ramon StateProv: CA PostalCode: 94104 Country: US NetRange: 68.120.0.0 - 68.127.255.255 CIDR: 68.120.0.0/13 NetName: PBI-NET-10 NetHandle: NET-68-120-0-0-1 Parent: NET-68-0-0-0-0 NetType: Direct Allocation NameServer: NS1.PBI.NET NameServer: NS2.PBI.NET Comment: Comment: Contact IPAdmin-PBI@sbcis.sbc.com for general IP support. Comment: Contact support@pacbell.net for technical support issues. Comment: Contact abuse@pacbell.net for policy abuse issues. RegDate: 2003-03-07 Updated: 2003-11-21 TechHandle: PIA2-ORG-ARIN TechName: IPAdmin-PBI TechPhone: +1-866-937-3664 TechEmail: IPAdmin-PBI@sbcis.sbc.com OrgAbuseHandle: APB2-ARIN OrgAbuseName: Abuse - Pacific Bell OrgAbusePhone: +1-866-937-3664 OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@pacbell.net OrgNOCHandle: SPBI-ARIN OrgNOCName: Support - Pacific Bell Internet OrgNOCPhone: +1-866-937-3664 OrgNOCEmail: support@pacbell.net OrgTechHandle: PIA2-ORG-ARIN OrgTechName: IPAdmin-PBI OrgTechPhone: +1-866-937-3664 OrgTechEmail: IPAdmin-PBI@sbcis.sbc.com # ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2004-03-19 19:15 # Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.
Hello - for those of you who did get scammed by the jerks at WordOfMouth, file a complaint with your credit card company, sighting internet fraud as the issue. Depending on your credit card co., they may refund your money. Even if they do not, the transaction gateway used by WordOfMouth will eventually drop them due to the number of complaints they are gathering.
I gave this loser money before I found this site. Grr!!! Well, he/she/whatever is accepting PayPal and the $20 is for a 3 month subscription. I filed with PayPal to get my money back and here’s some info I rec’d from them: Transaction Date: Mar. 29, 2004 Transaction Amount: -$19.97 USD Case Number: XX-XXX-XXX-XXX Seller’s Name: Mirasol Mirabueno Seller’s Email: wordofmouthresearch@earthlink.net
Well, good news! They refunded me. So if you pay via PayPal, I guess they won’t fight a refund request.
ok, max, what do I do with this info? e-mail pacbell and complain? here’s another one: Return-Path: Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id A25636D16 … Received: from mailbox5.ucsd.edu (mailbox5.ucsd.edu [132.239.1.57]) by sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 61EE26CF6 … Received: from knud (adsl-68-124-55-145.dsl.irvnca.pacbell.net [68.124.55.145]) by mailbox5.ucsd.edu (8.13.0.Alpha0/8.13.0.Alpha0) with ESMTP id i352wIj1024328 … Received: from NEWYORK ([127.0.0.1]) by knud with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.6713); … From: research_dept@researchpeople.biz
Well, in 1969-70 I worked in an office in San Pedro with a woman who was married to one Knud Padborg. They had a SON, Christian or Kristian (I don’t remember which, and it may have been spelled -aan.) She left her husband after a few years and eventually remarried and had another son named Patrick. I haven’t seen or heard from her in about 19 years. Kristian would have been born in about 1970, and Patrick in about 1984. Knud taught German at Long Beach CC and remained in their old apartment in San Pedro for years. I lost track of him long ago, but remember that I always felt uncomfortable around him because even though his wife, my friend, was a stunning beauty, he always came on to any other women around. Seemed somewhat… sleazy. So maybe this IS the same guy.
Richard, somewhat off topic: I found this page after “Margaret” posted her spam at my blog in a thread about fax spams. I saw a link to your posting there, but couldn’t read it because these morons CHARGE to read *free* speech! That site is a bigger ripoff than wordofmouth, what do you think they do with the phone numbers and addresses they collect? Fortunately, the link to this page was free, and I’ve been getting those mails from wordofmouth too and so I checked this out. It really is NOT a mass mailing if they really only mail people to let them know that someone is looking for info. I also mail people unsolicited once I start publicizing their activities, usually a couple times, before and after posting their scummy business practices. I think it’s appropriate to let the subjects of publications know and to give them a chance to set the record straight. Of course wordofmouth has a different concept because you can’t find out what people say about you unless you pretend to be someone else. That’s IF the person who supposedly has info or wants info is a real person and not just fake to get you to subscribe. I can’t imagine CHARGING the subjects of my documentaries to access what bad things I have to say about them.