Anyone heard of vitalwerks?
 

A friend of mine got money automatically deducted from her checking account.

Description Unit price Qty Amount
SMTP - Alternate Port (750 Msgs) b.t
Item# 0 $59.95 USD 1 $59.95 USD
SMTP - Alternate Port (750 Msgs) b.u
Item# 1 $59.95 USD 1 $59.95 USD

This was on three different invoices, so over $360 was taken out of her checking. It was paid via paypal, and she does not, to her knowledge have a paypal account. She's disputed these chrges with her bank, with paypal, and with vitalwerks.

Do these charges mean anything to anyone? She's not familiar with what SMTP is, and so am I. Just thought I would try to help her figure out what might have happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMTP

Someone ordered something online and used her banking info????

SMPT — Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

I have no idea what's up, but it's e-mail related. "(750 Msgs)" seems to be "750 messages."

Did you ask badgirl?

Looks like it, but she doesn't know what.

She recently separated (in the divorce process now), and the information was for where she lived with her husband. She was getting ready to sign papers to send to him, but now she's waiting to find out what this is about, and how it happened.

It's not PayPal. It's a scam.

Check this: http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/ser...tid/?p=2503465

A phishing scam that spoofs the PayPal site has recently been active at

http://secure-pay-pall.servehttp.com...cmd=_login-run

Thanks to phishtank.com and its contributors for catching this. The scam site currently traces to IP 69.65.19.125 in the USA, hosted by GigeNET.com with DNS services provided by no-ip.com and domain registration through " VITALWERKS INTERNET SOLUTIONS LLC DBA NO-IP" (no-ip.com).

Posted at 12/02/2009-10:38:10 PM by NotBuyingIt, Reviewer , View profile [ Reputation score: 9 / 9 ]

nice work detective....(that was a compliment, not a wise assed comment)

well, maybe a wise-assed comment too, but nice job anyway

I know I'm gonna regret saying this, but can someone dumb that up for me? How does it happen? Did she buy something online, and this got her information?

If it's any consolation, that didn't make a lick of sense to me either.

I'll let wikipedia do it:

"In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging,[1] and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users,[2] and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies.[3] Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures."

Blatantly stolen from Wiki: here's what phishing is:
In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging,[1] and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users,[2] and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies.[3] Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.

A phishing technique was described in detail in 1987, and the first recorded use of the term "phishing" was made in 1996. The term is a variant of fishing,[4] probably influenced by phreaking[5][6], and alludes to baits used to "catch" financial information and passwords

Just so you know....companies are going to be held more accountable for sensitive information being stolen from their database when the Red Flag laws truly go into effect.

mmaddog
*******

I understand what phishing is, but the person in question has never used PayPal to begin with.

All they needed was to send out an e-mail to her address (or millions of random addresses hoping that some of them were real). If she replies in any way at all, she's doing their spy work for them.

Even answering with the equivalent of "Bugger off. I'm not falling for it," lets the phishermen know that they've hit a legit e-mail address.