May 17, 2004

New Domain Holder Spam Technique

Got the following email earlier today:


    From: “Parcon LLC” <parconllc@earthlink.net>
    To: <nospam@example.com>
    Subject: patrick.com
    Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 07:03:28 +0300

    Hello,

    I can pay you USD 1000 for patrick.com Please reply if you are interested.

    Best Regards,

    Parcon LLC


To which I sent my stock reply for unsolicited offers on my domains:

    From: Patrick Michael Kane <nospam@example.com>
    To: Parcon LLC <parconllc@earthlink.net>
    Subject: Re: patrick.com

    • Parcon LLC (parconllc@earthlink.net) [040516 18:04]:
      > Hello,
      >
      > I can pay you USD 1000 for patrick.com
      > Please reply if you are interested.

    Thanks for your note. The domain is in use and not for sale.
    —
    Patrick Michael Kane


About an hour later, I got another almost identical mail from these guys, this time asking about naperville.com:

    From: “Parcon LLC” <parconllc@earthlink.net>
    To: <nospam@example.com>
    Subject: naperville.com
    Date: Mon, 17 May 2004 07:03:28 +0300

    Hello,

    I can pay you USD 1000 for naperville.com
    Please reply if you are interested.

    Best Regards,

    Parcon LLC


Cute trick. Most people who went out and registered domains just to register them will jump at the chance to get $1k for them and will reply. Spammer then gets a list of known good email addresses to spam. Whee!

Posted by pmk at May 17, 2004 12:06 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Nice…

Posted by: Ted at May 17, 2004 2:39 PM

hehe.
reminds me of “i got milk.com”, somehow.. http://www.milk.com/value/

cheers,
patrick @ slurmfactory

Posted by: patrick at May 18, 2004 2:15 AM

Howdy,

I did a google search on Parcon LLC, and came up with your note about email spam stuff. I have had a domain name in my name for quite awhile, and have received a few offers, but didn’t follow up. Of course, I just received the same email you did… I said, yes, I’ll accept, and we’re going through escrow.com to proceed with the purchase. I’ve been quite careful to read through all the escrow rules and procedures, and it seems pretty safe, but after reading your note I’m now a bit worried.

Is it possible you have any other information about these guys? I have proceeded to the point that escrow.com says the buyer is in the process of sending the wire transfer (and I haven’t unlocked my domain, so I’m still in a safe ‘zone’ so to speak).

If you have any additional info, I’d certainly appreciate hearing from you. Thanks for your time!

Kirsten

Posted by: Kirsten at May 21, 2004 11:44 AM

I got the same and my reply was 10,000. If they are real they will come back. I suspect your story about escrow.com is a fake like them…

Posted by: Dave at May 28, 2004 6:07 PM

I sent Kirsten an email, explaining that the escrow site might be a phished/fake site or there might be some other scam going on.

I got a reply saying everything went perfectly and that silo.com, the domain supposedly purchased, was successfully transfered after the receipt of $1,000.

I’m highly suspect. silo.com now points to one of those terrible pseudo-search pages and belongs to some guy in Istanbul. The whole thing is so fishy that I smell a scam within a scam.

My guess is Parcon LLC found this blog entry and had someone act as a plant to talk about how smoothly everything went. Or maybe they really did do one legitimate transaction in an attempt to lure others to more shady escrow sites.

I hope I’m wrong, but given the number of referrals I’m seeing this site from people searching for “Parcon LLC”, I doubt it.

Posted by: pmk at May 29, 2004 5:36 AM

Hi, I got the same for intermilan.com. They are scammers no doubt about it.

Posted by: Chris Mcintosh at June 2, 2004 3:35 PM

lol didnt mean to put my full name in, that looks pretty dumb

Posted by: cm at June 2, 2004 3:36 PM

the funny thing is, i got that email the day after inter milan secured their place in the champions league for next season, so had every reason to suppose it was genuine.

Posted by: cm at June 2, 2004 3:39 PM

yup, same scam here

Posted by: plat at June 7, 2004 2:01 PM

had same emails. came back with 5k and no response back. emailed on 5/17/04

From : Parcon LLC
Sent : Monday, May 17, 2004 4:58 AM
To :
Subject : nbagames.com



Hello,

I can pay you USD 1000 for nbagames.com
Please reply if you are interested.

Best Regards,

Parcon LLC


Posted by: sonny at June 8, 2004 6:24 PM
Post a comment









Remember personal info?