Lookout for Advanced Spamming and Identity Theft

EDIT: So IE Business School communication may or may not be legit...see post below.

Looks like spammers are stepping up their game. Just in the past week, I've come across two pretty thought out scams trying to get my personal information. While they didn't succeed, it was an effort far more targeted and advanced than the old poorly written emails and Nigerian wire schemes.

Characteristic of these Spam 2.0 efforts:

1. No more glaring typos and gramatical errors, sound American written (One of them even abreviated words to make it seem like it was a casual email typed up from a phone)
2. Targeted towards something you are interested in
3. Decently researched concept

Here's the ones I got this week:

IE Business School

Got a legit sounding email from IE Business School congratulating me on my achievements and encouraging me to apply for their early admission process.

Excerpt:

You stand out among your peers, and I think you could be uniquely qualified to excel in one of our International MBA, Masters in Finance, Master of Laws, or Specialized Masters programs here at IE Business School in Madrid. That's why you have been chosen to receive a special invitation to apply for admission.

And so on. The rest of the email highlighted:

• Benefits of this special invitation, and the application process
• Strengths, reputation, and ranking of IE
• Signed by Julian Trigo - Director of Admissions, IE Admissions Department
• Link to this special invite application form.

For all I know it could be real IE Business School email content that someone has rehashed for spam purposes. Sounded pretty good, but was suspicious so checked the email domain and link domain. Both were iebusiness-grad.org which is inconsistent with ie.edu. So yeah...not legit. But I could easily see people getting excited about this and quickly filling out tons of personal information.

The Craigslist Loft

I've been looking for a new lease, so when I saw a nice 2-br 3-story loft posted for less than $1600 in a good location, I quickly emailed the Craigslist contact. Soon after I realized I probably got suckered since the posting had been posted 4 times that day and it was one of those picture uploaded postings, so that the uploader does not have to type anything.

I write this one off as a loss, only to get a personal email a few days later from "Tammi." She apologizes for the delay in response, explains how she was visiting her parents over the weekend and forgot her laptop, and gives some more information about the loft.

Then things get fishy when she lists the cross streets of the building ( instead of address which I asked for, since I couldn't figure where these 3 story lofts were) and asks you to fill a form at prequalified.co to schedule a showing. She apologizes for the inconvenience but explains she needs to hire a babysitter everytime she shows the place so she doesn't want to waste time with non-serious applicants.

Quick search of prequalified.co shows its sketchy as hell, and a search for the craigslist headline "Two Bedroom 3-Story Loft Available + Great Loc'n" shows postings in multiple cities.

Even though the same picture and posting was spread across multiple cities the spammer DID do some homework as the posting included:

• Cross address that made sense for the given city and was indeed a good location
• Named a few real business around the location - i.e. "One block from Oasis Pub and Wall Street Coffee"

So keep your guards up monkeys. These spammers are getting smarter.