Scam or just incredibly stupid botnet herder?

April 10, 2012 11:03 PM

Internet scam details, more info needed

A friend of mine has asked about a sketchy "job offer" she received that set off numerous warning bells. The offer is the same as listed at the following links:

https://www.odesk.com/jobs/REMOTE-SUPPORT-POSITION-MUST-LIVE-THE_~~790fb6775859f66a

and

http://www.freelancer.co.uk/projects/Data-Entry/REMOTE-SUPPORT-POSITION-MUST-LIVE.html

I've already warned her against it - red flags all over the place. But it has me looking for more info, wondering if someone has picked this apart already.

Obvious thoughts are: a) clickfraud b) in-country access to blocked services like Western Union, Visa/MC and so on, c) plain old fake job credential theft

.... but their insistence re: running a server on your home internet connection* has me wondering what angle I am missing - or if there is one.

Just a run of the mill "fake employer, phishing for personal info and banking credentials" scam -- or is this just the worlds stupidest botnet herder?

* esp considering the cheapness of VPS/botnets etc.

posted by bhance to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

It doesn't necessarily sound like a scam to me. The claim that they want to test geolocation services sounds like a plausible explanation for why they can't just use a VPN or rent a standard server, as you don't necessarily have fine grained control over geography in those cases, you just get a choice of a few large datacenters. Besides, geolocation basically boils down to maintaining a list of IP address ranges, and the quality of the results depends entirely on how well that list is cultivated; you wouldn't necessarily want to test that with IP addresses from a large hosting company, but rather from actual end-user DSL/cable systems, the same as the users whom you're targeting.

The ad is certainly somewhat questionable, as it seems to me like any legitimate company with a reasonable research budget would want to establish a physical presence in each location and set up an account with the local telecomm provider under their own name -- they wouldn't proposition random ordinary homeowners and offer them a paltry $50/mo. So it certainly seems like this company is trying to do this research on the cheap, but that's not necessarily an indication of malice.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:51 PM on April 10, 2012

(And your friend should certainly be using something like HTTPS Everywhere and never use non-encrypted sites for anything of importance, just to be sure.)
posted by Rhomboid at 11:55 PM on April 10, 2012

I'm not 100% convinced it's a scam. On the other hand the moment your friend is asked to hand over their cash, then it is a scam. If they're not paid very very promptly indeed, I'd also run.
posted by singingfish at 2:49 AM on April 11, 2012

Here is another discussion on it, for what that's worth.
posted by kmennie at 7:49 AM on April 11, 2012

I work as an online freelancer full time. I would maybe not classify this as a total scam, but probably a job that is never going to make money for the worker.

- Undefined deliverable. If you notice, all the terms used are pretty vague without any specific mention of an exact task.
- Multiple postings over many many sites. This is always a mark of a person with a hidden agenda. The idea is that they know they will not get everyone, so they are spreading their net as far and wide as possible.
- Looking for multiple users. Again, an issue as the poster knows there will be high dropout rate so they go for mass amounts of people.
- In one ad, they mention posting on Craigslist. Total Red Flag. The reason being that CL has pretty effective processes in place to discourage spam posting with ghosting and other features. The likelihood of seeing a potential $$$ return for the worker is low as their postings will be ghosted and the buyer will refuse payment because of that
- Many postings, but no award rate. Probably means the person is looking to steal workers form other job sites as opposed to working through that job site. In that way, they can manipulate the worker as the legit job site's protections will be void. And if the worker complains, it is a Terms Of Service violation and they will get booted from that job site. So it is never reported.

I could go on, but i would have flagged a job like this had I seen it advertised on the boards I work on. There are just too many question marks.
posted by lampshade at 10:29 AM on April 11, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks for the input everybody, I'm also convinced it is a scam.

I'm almost tempted to apply and set their "server" up on a test box just so I could traffic monitor/packsniff the thing for a few days and figure out what their exact game/scam is.

But I won't - seems too risky.
posted by bhance at 1:10 PM on April 11, 2012