to have this checked out ... Found in classified today - could be spam for someone who will answer OR geesh .... FOR SALE: Baby Alex Needs a New home Categories: Infant & Child No Photo Ad Number: 182313 Date Posted: 09/10/2012 Contact: Grace raleigh, NC Telephone: E-Mail: Reply to Ad Web Site: Description Times are hard and this little boy needs the best in life. Alex is a very cute little baby who needs a new home to call family, please if you feel you can take care of him and give him the best home every contact me for more details. Sandy
Very sad. I'm curious, though, as to why the contact name is "Grace", but the posting is signed by "Sandy".
That ad has been removed from the Classifieds. We've actually removed that same ad, with different variations, time and time again over the years. If you had contacted them, you would have gotten a hard luck story and the request to send money to "help." Just another attempt by scum of the earth scammers trying to take advantage of someone. We can only hope they fall down a flight of steps today and suffer multiple injuries. Karma ya know. Just sayin'. 8)
Next time you should probably call the cops and tell them someone is trying to sale a baby on here and let them see what "hard luck" really is
We've actually been contacted by the SBI about this in the past. However, there is nothing they can do about it. These ads are placed by people in other countries for the most part, and also use a variety of methods to cover their tracks. Anybody who had a method to stop these scum would be rich indeed...in many ways!
Since you can "see" a user's IP address, and since IP addresses are country specific, and since you don't really need people from other countries posting ads to our "local" classifieds, why don't you just filter out anything that does not come from the USA? (Look HERE for more info)
I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that the webmaster, by virtue of having a local website, knew everything there was to know. Perhaps he doesn't want to filter. Perhaps he didn't know it was possible. Perhaps he just didn't think about it. I seriously doubt he needs you to speak for him, though.
We actually do quite a bit of filtering on the server firewall, but that's not a perfect solution by any means. For instance....a lot of the scammers use Canadian IP's. We blocked them at one time and got quite a few complaints because folks at Northern Telcom couldn't get to the site. Their local internet traffic in RTP was being routed through the Canadian network of the parent company. So, someone attempting to browse 4042.com from RTP, it was actually coming from a Canadian IP, and thus blocked. I could go into other, similar stories concerning Iraq (Johnston County deployed who want to access the site), people traveling abroad on vacation or for work being blocked, etc. In short, blocking an IP number or a range of IP numbers that correspond to a particular country has a cost/benefit effect, and, in the long run, the scammers just switch to another country and get right back in. MANY of the scam ads that are placed and the replies that people receive come from US IP's also...from compromised networks. When we see that, we often email the network administrator to let them know that their network is being used by scammers, but, rarely do we see any action taken on that. So, it's an ongoing battle....much like swatting flies. You get rid of some, and others show up to take their place.
Dang it, this young 'un is driving me crazy and my ad keeps getting deleted from The Classifieds. Where's the complaint department?
What about IP addresses that are cloned? I from time to time use cloned IP's when I download torrent files.
