From GM Nikola Mitkov

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  • From GM Nikola Mitkov

    Does anybody know GM Nikola Mitkov? I just received this email at the FQE office. Of course, it looks like a hoax, but just in case...


    "Hope you get this on time, I made a trip to UK(Scotland) and had my bag stolen from me with my passport, cash and credit cards in it. Unfortunately for me, I've made contact with my bank but they are not providing a fast solution. I need you to lend me some money to sort my self out of this predicament, I will pay back as soon as I return.

    Western Union transfer is the best option to send money to me. Let me know if you need my details(Full names/location) to make the transfer. You can reach me via email gmmitkov@yahoo.com or the May Marriott Aberdeen hotel's desk phone +44702-409-8795

    I await your response.

    Nikola"

  • #2
    Re: From GM Nikola Mitkov

    A well-known scam/hoax. One case:

    http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...-mail-scammer/

    Do a Google search on "had my bag stolen from me with my passport" and you will get about 27,500 hits.

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    • #3
      Re : Re: From GM Nikola Mitkov

      Originally posted by Hugh Brodie View Post
      A well-known scam/hoax. One case:

      http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/...-mail-scammer/

      Do a Google search on "had my bag stolen from me with my passport" and you will get about 27,500 hits.
      Of course this hoax is very well known in general, but this particular hoax is more sophisticated than usual... a chess grandmaster's name is used, and the email is sent to a chess federation.

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      • #4
        Re: From GM Nikola Mitkov

        What has usually happened in these cases is that either the user's computer/laptop was stolen, or the hacker got hold of the email/password in another way (maybe leavng his email signed on after leaving an Internet cafe). The hacker then sends out the email to everyone on the user's contact list (and usually changes the password) - in this case, it was Mitkov's legitimate email address, and the FQE was on his contact list.

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        • #5
          Re: From GM Nikola Mitkov

          My guess is not machine theft, but cracking the account or password. The reason is that I received similar messages, separated in time, from two arbiters who are not known (well, it would surprise me!) to travel together.
          Let's see, the first one gave the correct aol email address as a reply-to. So that account must have been cracked. The second one, instead of @yahoo.com, gave samename @ymail.com (they're not equivalent) as a return email, and this phone number
          http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/447045733705
          as the contact to send the money to. So my guess is that the first account was cracked, and the second account was simply the harvest of a cc: list.

          Amusingly, one of the emails claimed that the arbiter was in a country that he famously travels to!

          The run-of-the-mill fraud attempt that arrives daily by the billions in emailboxes around the world, is pathetically obvious. These frauds are somewhat less obvious. Let us not wonder at how well they are crafted, rather at how low we've let our credulity slide.

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          • #6
            Re: From GM Nikola Mitkov

            I had my hotmail account stolen and used for spam after connecting to a hotel network at one of the Guelph tournaments. I had a bad feeling about connecting to the network which was not a wireless connection but rather a wired connection. One of the other guests had a sniffer program to monitor network traffic is my suspicion. Fortunately they didn't change my password so I did as soon as I was informed and locked them out but not before a few people on my email contact list got some ads for cheap viagra...

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            • #7
              Re: From GM Nikola Mitkov

              Originally posted by Vlad Drkulec View Post
              I had my hotmail account stolen and used for spam after connecting to a hotel network at one of the Guelph tournaments. I had a bad feeling about connecting to the network which was not a wireless connection but rather a wired connection. One of the other guests had a sniffer program to monitor network traffic is my suspicion. Fortunately they didn't change my password so I did as soon as I was informed and locked them out but not before a few people on my email contact list got some ads for cheap viagra...
              I don't know about hotmail (haven't used it for years) but Gmail has an option to always use HTTPS connections for encryption... Using that would almost surely prevent sniffing. You may want to check to see if hotmail offers HTTPS connectivity.
              ...Mike Pence: the Lord of the fly.

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