I've received three emails in the last week from people claiming to be seeking advice on how much money to bring with them to Italy. All the letters have been different, but from the very first it was obvious that this is just another new pfishing scheme. It is possible that the scammers are lurking on forums such as ST and may contact other regular contributors.

Matt,
What specifically were they asking for that made you think you were at risk for pfishing?

quote:

Originally posted by Umbriagirl:
Matt,
What specifically were they asking for that made you think you were at risk for pfishing?

Very brief message - two with poor spelling and grammar. They only asked for advice - probably just trolling to see who is stupid enough to reply. Names of the geniuses also did not match the IP addresses. We have also been getting a fair number of false inquiries on our web reply form. I think that's just a dumb attempt to make a few pennies on a click-through. The difference between genuine inquiries and all of these is very obvious.

I have also had constant inquires from gmail addresses. They are all about the Vatican but don't seem real some how - this is one of the most normal:

Hi,
What does it cost to visit the vatican?
I am trying to figure out what is important. I was hoping you might be able to give me some insight. Please point me in the right direction. Thank you very much.
Thankyou, Terry

Hi Helen - very similar to the content in the messages I've been getting and at least two were from g-mail accounts. I suppose this will play out for a while until the next variation starts.

As I understand "scam", you would have to be at risk of losing something to the scammers. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see what you have to lose in these cases. Seems like just junky spam to me; annoying but not putting you at risk.

My guess is that they are trying to start a conversation with a tour organizer (or B&B owner) and want to see how friendly you are. Then -- this is just a theory -- they try to book your services in some strange way where you wind up losing money.

I heard of one strange scam, the details of which escape me, but in the end, the vacation rental owner had offered to cash a check or do some strange transaction that required wiring money and, of course, she wound up losing not just money but also the time to re-book the apartment.

I think it's wise to be very skeptical of these messages and ignore them. Plus, who wants to lead a tour of people who can't write normal-sounding emails or look in a guidebook to find out what entrance to the Vatican costs?

I think Marian is correct because I received a few of these on our Help line and because we get questions every day there for people seeking travel help, I answered them. But never got a reply. Finally, I just started junking them as overtime, they changed the question but always similar and never a response. I would just ignore them.

quote:

Originally posted by Kim:
I think Marian is correct because I received a few of these on our Help line and because we get questions every day there for people seeking travel help, I answered them. But never got a reply. Finally, I just started junking them as overtime, they changed the question but always similar and never a response. I would just ignore them.

There is no doubt that these are the initial contacts in pfishing schemes. The fact that so many similar requests are being received should prove it. The most prudent thing to do is to delete these requests and I hope people will do that if they receive them.

Yeah, but Matt, they never replied to me even when I did reply to them, so honestly, can't see the purpose other than clogging e-mails as opposed to some sort of phishing scheme and they've pretty much stopped last week. A while ago we were inundated on our blogs with spam but the spam was garbage and had no links - couldn't figure out why they were doing that either as it served no purpose.

Hi Kim - You are the eternal optimist! BTW.... I have a bridge in Bassano del Grappa for sale.