Watch out for PMs that trick you into giving up your forum credentials

[asabet]

I received this PM today:



If you look closely, the link provided is not for rolexforums.com. However, when I clicked on it (which I should not have done), it took me to a site that looked just like rolexforums.com:



That fake site shows a message saying that you can't view the thread because the material has been deleted "Or you are not logged in".

If you login, they harvest your login credentials, hack your rolexforums.com account, and then use your good name to scam someone into sending a wire payment to them for a watch.

Unfortunately, I learned this the hard way because last Thursday I sent someone with a good posting history as well as positive feedback on TRF a wire payment for a watch only to find out I had been scammed. I'm guessing that his account had been hacked in a similar manner to how DIBELLA tried to gain access to mine today. I am trying to recover my payment, but it is very unlikely that I will be successful since wire payments have no protection at all.

I did report that account here at TRF, the listing was deleted, and the scammer's account was banned. I also reported everything to my local police, the FBI, my bank, and the scammer's bank.

Anyway, I hope that posting this is helpful to someone else. I would strongly encourage everyone not to wire payments at all unless you are 100% certain that you are dealing with an established, trusted dealer.

Personally, I'm using forms of payment that have buyer protection from now on no matter who I buy from. I also changed my password on TRF to a much stronger one. Good luck, everyone.

[swaini3]

Thanks for posting

[TTalk]

That really sucks, thanks for posting.

[asabet]

Originally Posted by TTalk

That really sucks, thanks for posting.

It was a very expensive lesson, but life goes on.

[Rollied]

Ouch, sorry to hear, OP. And thanks for sharing, I got the same message from the same username. Rule of thumb, never click links attached to your private messages without reading the actual HTML

[juve]

Thanks for sharing

[Polarexplorerii]

That is crazy