Beware of scams
Hi, hope everybody is enjoying the last couple days of their holidays. I’ve definitely enjoyed mine but that’s not really what I’m posting about today. It’s kind of sad to think that my potentially last post on this blog will be about a scam that I’m trying to bring to everybody’s attention.
For those in holidays who still regularly checks their student portal email accounts, you may have seen an email from “Carla Baker” who is offering you a job to make money by doing online surveys. While I’m always initially wary about this kind of stuff, I thought since it came through the uni network and the lady addressed me by my name, it was probably legit (there are a few legit websites around) and worth a shot. So I wrote back, asking for more info (giving them my personal email address because I rarely check my uni account), she directed me to this website <a href=”http://www.ktyresearch.com/” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.ktyresearch.com</a> which upon registration, demands a $29.95 registration fee.
I immediately became suspicious and googled “KTY Research a scam”. The company only no contact information except for an email address, which definitely should also have rang alarm bells. Turns out this company is a scam and has had numerous reports filed against them on the Better Business Bureau. In addition, our university is not alone because KTY specifically targets uni/college network, thinking students will trust them because it came from uni. I certainly fell for that. If Carla had sent it to my gmail account, I wouldn’t have given the email a second look and would have filed it away as spam.
So if you have indeed received an email from Carla Baker, definitely do not sign up. It’s a waste of your money. I’ve contacted the Student Administration and hopefully, they’ll get back to me about it as well as address this issue directly. In the mean time, don’t fall for the trap! If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
Cheers to all,
Yuan
Yep, I received one from the ad cbaker@lmndirect.com addressing me by my first name, which I find really really odd.
I searched for http://www.lmndirect.com but there was none. Anyways, I already learned my lesson before (early in 2008) so I did not even think of emailing back.
What I am concerned about if there’s actually someone in Uni who actually sells our uni email ads to these scammers…
Ah, I didn’t think about that. But then again, how else did they get our email addresses + our first names. Despite being jaded and cynical by all the spam emails we get elsewhere, we all instinctively trust the uni email account because, well, it’s trustworthy. Not a single spam mail in sight. I did search lmndirect as well but I sort of still gave them the benefit of the doubt since it came to my uni account.
On the other hand, this does give all of us a good lesson – not to trust everything by its cover. It also highlights the brilliance of online information. Google a particular company and you’ll find the appropriate info and comments regarding its reputation.
Let’s just hope nobody got tricked.
I’ll probably be careful in the future of signing up for mailing lists, competitions, free stuff,etc. I have signed up to a few during O-week last year. So there
This would mean I’ll be more paranoid than ever about my personal and contact details
You went all year without receiving any of these? Seriously?
It’s not what you signed up for – anyone with a uni address can mail the entire university through studentlists.unimelb, and the autoname is basically a mailmerge function from whatever your uni email uses to get your name. Basically, if you have access to an address, with or without consent of its owner, it’s not that difficult to run. I use studentlists all the time to put out club notices – there’s a mailing list for each stream of each subject, so you can target only people who are taking first year music theory, or only second year commerce students doing a diploma of modern languages, or only people who hold particular staff positions, etc. etc. Lots of lecturers use it to email their students.
Also, every month or so, they come under a different name. I’m surprised yours was an actual human; I always thought they were bots. I’m also surprised you haven’t come across the sexually suggestive spam yet.
The university address is not remotely safe from spam. In fact, if anything, it’s more vulnerable because of the various university mailing lists your account is linked into, and because the spam filter is not particularly good.