namelesstavern.net

The SANS Institute is reporting that there are several e-mails soliciting donations through a Paypal link. According to SANS, it may be difficult to tell whether the e-mail is from a legitimate organization.

"The hurricane is a dreadful natural disaster, and it's sickening to think that hackers are prepared to exploit the horrendous situation in an attempt to break into computers for the purposes of spamming, extortion and theft," added Cluley.

After discovery of the sites yesterday, several have been removed. "There are now about 230 .com domains that contain the strings 'katrina' and 'hurricane'. We will make a list of more domains like this public soon to ask for your help to review them," SANS said on its Web Site.

Gidan wrote:Is it really that hard to believe?

1. Did he notify PayPal of what he was planning to do to see if it was even possible?
2. Did he give them a heads up that he was going to create and account for this purpose that could possibly see a large flow of money in a very short period of time?

If they had been a normal bank and suddenly they saw an account have $30,000 in deposits over a small period of time, they probably would have also frozen the account. This process would be automated, you want it automated you don’t want some human being to have to sit and watch money transfers or stare at some screen waiting for a warning to pop up about an account that looks suspicious. Think about all the protections that are built into credit cards that automatically suspend when unusual spending is being seen. The automated system also doesn't see that this is some humanitarian cause. The only thing the system can see is an account that has suspicious activity.

Now look at the negative side, let’s say this had been a huge scam and this guy walked away with $30,000 and people start yelling asking for their money back because they were scammed. When they can’t find the guy, who are they going to demand gives them back the money? PayPal that’s who.

I will agree that PayPal didn't handle the situation the best they could have, they should have had a real person that he could have talked to, though its not unusual that these online businesses have very few actual humans to talk to when you have a problem.

The guy's heart was in the right place when he set this up, but he didn't put the planning into it he needed to. I know he wanted to do something for the people who donated, however in this case the best thing to do would have been to just direct people to make donations directly to the Red Cross.

EDIT

came across this a little while ago

The SANS Institute is reporting that there are several e-mails soliciting donations through a Paypal link. According to SANS, it may be difficult to tell whether the e-mail is from a legitimate organization.

"The hurricane is a dreadful natural disaster, and it's sickening to think that hackers are prepared to exploit the horrendous situation in an attempt to break into computers for the purposes of spamming, extortion and theft," added Cluley.

After discovery of the sites yesterday, several have been removed. "There are now about 230 .com domains that contain the strings 'katrina' and 'hurricane'. We will make a list of more domains like this public soon to ask for your help to review them," SANS said on its Web Site.

http://isc.sans.org/

Also might want to check out http://isc.sans.org/katrina.com.txt

Maybe more people should take possible fraud issues a little more serious with regard to this hurricane.

Captain_Insano wrote:Paypal
Fuck them.

1. Did he notify PayPal of what he was planning to do to see if it was even possible?
2. Did he give them a heads up that he was going to create and account for this purpose that could possibly see a large flow of money in a very short period of time?

Captain_Insano wrote:

Gidan wrote:Is it really that hard to believe?

1. Did he notify PayPal of what he was planning to do to see if it was even possible?
2. Did he give them a heads up that he was going to create and account for this purpose that could possibly see a large flow of money in a very short period of time?

If they had been a normal bank and suddenly they saw an account have $30,000 in deposits over a small period of time, they probably would have also frozen the account. This process would be automated, you want it automated you don’t want some human being to have to sit and watch money transfers or stare at some screen waiting for a warning to pop up about an account that looks suspicious. Think about all the protections that are built into credit cards that automatically suspend when unusual spending is being seen. The automated system also doesn't see that this is some humanitarian cause. The only thing the system can see is an account that has suspicious activity.

Now look at the negative side, let’s say this had been a huge scam and this guy walked away with $30,000 and people start yelling asking for their money back because they were scammed. When they can’t find the guy, who are they going to demand gives them back the money? PayPal that’s who.

I will agree that PayPal didn't handle the situation the best they could have, they should have had a real person that he could have talked to, though its not unusual that these online businesses have very few actual humans to talk to when you have a problem.

The guy's heart was in the right place when he set this up, but he didn't put the planning into it he needed to. I know he wanted to do something for the people who donated, however in this case the best thing to do would have been to just direct people to make donations directly to the Red Cross.

EDIT

came across this a little while ago

The SANS Institute is reporting that there are several e-mails soliciting donations through a Paypal link. According to SANS, it may be difficult to tell whether the e-mail is from a legitimate organization.

"The hurricane is a dreadful natural disaster, and it's sickening to think that hackers are prepared to exploit the horrendous situation in an attempt to break into computers for the purposes of spamming, extortion and theft," added Cluley.

After discovery of the sites yesterday, several have been removed. "There are now about 230 .com domains that contain the strings 'katrina' and 'hurricane'. We will make a list of more domains like this public soon to ask for your help to review them," SANS said on its Web Site.

http://isc.sans.org/

Also might want to check out http://isc.sans.org/katrina.com.txt

Maybe more people should take possible fraud issues a little more serious with regard to this hurricane.

You have no idea what you are talking about...

Paypal does this to hang onto cash that isn't theirs, make interest, show profit it doesn't have and to fuck people.

Their intentions are not based upon security, but to profit at the expense of their customers.

Fuck them.

Minrott wrote:

1. Did he notify PayPal of what he was planning to do to see if it was even possible?
2. Did he give them a heads up that he was going to create and account for this purpose that could possibly see a large flow of money in a very short period of time?

Yes. Yes. And even used their special accounts for donation drives. It's not like he opened up a personal account under his own name.

They're not governed by the FDIC and because of that they can pull stunts like this to do just what ralf said. They have maybe 2 monkey's and a beligerent donkey running their phone systems, and it is absolutely impossible to get in touch with a real person when they pull stunts like this.

I don't care what they do in the name of protection from scammers, if you can't put a real person on the phone to tell somebody why they're not letting them send their $30k to the red cross, you need to be fucked in the ass with a splintering fence post.

Minrott wrote:No, you're right about that and I'm wrong. I guess he never did beforehand. But the fact that they couldn't put someone one the phone with him after the fact is maddening regardless.