
EBay/PayPal report a guy to FBI for posting a phishing email screencap - vaksel
http://www.ghettowebmaster.com/legal/ebay-paypal-reported-me-to-the-fbi/
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ErrantX
mass overreaction to what looks much like a stock email.

I was with him that it was a bit silly till he decided to call them "retards"
and to "piss off" right off the bat. He comes across as a bit of an idiot
really.

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kragen
He's entirely justified there. That _stock email_ could have cost him a lot of
money and hassle if his ISP had been a little less clueful. Sending it was
grossly irresponsible.

~~~
ErrantX
It depends how they found the picture surely?

If, for example, it was pulled off another site they would have no idea of the
context.

Certainly a douchebag response seems to equal sinking to their level.

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kragen
Sending legal threats like this, whose validity depends entirely on the
context, with _no idea of the context_ , is _grossly irresponsible_.

He did not sink to their level. If he sent them and their ISP baseless legal
threats that might result in a temporary loss of internet access, that would
be sinking to their level. If he tried to trick their domain registrar into
transferring their domain to him, that would be sinking to their level. If he
tracked down the families of the legal staff and threatened them in their
homes, that would be sinking to their level. All he did was write some bad
words in his blog.

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calcnerd256
Imagine the scenario where somebody hotlinks that image, though. That's my
only problem with it. If it were viewable only from his blog, that would be
more fair use than what he has going on instead. A slight change in context
and suddenly he's potentially enabling more phishing. Otherwise, I agree with
him almost completely (minus the attitude)

~~~
vaksel
its not like image uploaders are rare though, why would the scammers bother
with hotlinking his image when they could just upload the file to one of the
million of image uploaders out there.

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lsc
I wonder why it is seen as acceptable to send out automated mails containing
the legal equivalent of what I would call 'cartoony threats' - "I'm going to
sue you for a billion dollars!" especially when they lack solid evidence of
what is actually going on.

I'm not saying it should be illegal, but it does seem, at the very least,
quite rude.

Publicly pointing out 'hey, company X was really rude, and it turns out that
they weren't paying attention when they sent the mail' as this article does,
is probably a good first step towards convincing companies to be a bit more
careful before throwing around threats.

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TrevorJ
There is a proverb that goes something to the effect of "A soft answer turns
away wrath, but harsh words provoke anger."

Seems like useful info for this fella.

~~~
mbreese
Seems useful for both parties. The initial message from Ebay/PayPal was harsh
as well.

~~~
TrevorJ
Agreed. Point being, we oftentimes overlook the very powerful ability to de-
escalate a conflict by refusing to respond in kind.

I think part of this stems from the way people often picture the response of
the other party in their minds when they formulate a piece of communication.
If that response is level-headed and downright _nice_ when they expect it to
be rude, you can completely unman them diffuse the situation. Just the fact
that the response is very different from what was expected is often enough to
cause the other party to reevaluate their position. "(Hold on, this reply is
not what I expected, my understanding of the situation could be flawed, must
reevaluate.")

The crazy thing is, the substance of your reply can be absolutely the same,
but if you phrase it humbly and nicely you can often obtain a much better
result. Call it social hacking :)

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lsc
heh. yeah. I can't tell you how many bogus abuse complaints I get. The other
day, I got a spam complaint; the 'spam' contained within was an abuse report
sent by one of my customers.

Another time I showed someone on a mailing list how to look up the owners of
IPv6 addresses. he included that with his abuse report to the owner, and the
owner of the IP block (who happened to be an upstream of an upstream of mine)
forwarded the message back to me, as if I was somehow involved.

In both these cases, I responded to all involved. in both these cases, I
didn't hear anything back from anyone.

I can only imagine that most abuse desks are either understaffed or poorly
automated. The thing is, handling abuse is important, but it's not easy. It's
not easy to send a good abuse report, and it's not easy to parse it, to weigh
the rights of all involved, and to do the right thing on the other end. An
abuse desk person needs to be part lawyer and part network admin. Add to that
the fact that most ISPs put the least effort they can into abuse, without
getting put on blacklists, and you have a job that is usually done poorly.

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fishercs
Agreed. I'm sorry I gave this guy more traffic than he deserves, if i could
down rate this i would.

its just a standard email and that image could probably be easily found by
just google image searching

