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Disassembling the Woolworths Facebook scam

troyhunt.com

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Re: Disassembling the Woolworths Facebook scam

#21

Post by matznerd »

aresant wrote: post #14

I've spent ~15 years in online advertising and this sure isn't limited to just being a "Facebook scam". This style of advertising called "incentivized co-registration" (co-reg / co-reg path) (1) has been a long running plague - as far back as 2008 the FTC penalized ValueClick ~$3m (2) for this exact same thing as it's deceptive. On the front-end you've got Facebook, Microsoft, and Google (to name a few) making money…

They aren't all co-registration sites. Some of the examples are CPA (cost-per-action), where submitting email, taking phone surveys, submitting zip, etc generate revenue for the site owner.

Re: Disassembling the Woolworths Facebook scam

#22

Post by fingerprinter »

Can someone break down how the scammers are making money on this? Think of me as a complete idiot ;)

It seems that they are simply affiliates of these various sites and get a small percentage for signups? Is that correct? how much can they reasonably hope to make from something like this?

Re: Disassembling the Woolworths Facebook scam

#23

Post by arb99 »

ricardobeat wrote: post #10

The redirects are generating fake ad clicks for the scammer, it's very common and probably the main source of revenue for this "campaign".

Nope. Can't get paid to redirect to a (2nd) url but still have that (2nd) url redirect to somewhere else. They tend to redirect to another url/company when they don't have an offer to send to that IP address sometimes too.

Re: Disassembling the Woolworths Facebook scam

#25

Post by brc »

fblp wrote: post #16

Most scams might have a terrible success rate, but the scammers still make a lot of money. Over $80mil in scam losses were reported to the Australian Government last year, s surprising amount were from Nigerian style scams and the like that you'd think nobody would fall for. For every person that is willing to send money via western union to some guy in Nigeria, there would be thousands who would click through these…

I have seen probably 5 or 6 Facebook friends fall for this one. The typical profile is of a mother who isn't very tech savvy but likes the idea of free stuff.

Re: Disassembling the Woolworths Facebook scam

#26

Post by smartwater »

ddorian43 wrote: post #9

The whois record: Administrative Contact: James Smith Lagja e vjeter --- the name of the neighborhoo: old neighborhood tek pallati cope cope --- name of the building Elbasan, Albania n/a --- city Albania ilovefbinfo@gmail.com +355 692207020 --- some poor guys number Its odd to find Albanian scammers, usually they suck at programming. The number should be working. Spamming is a problem here in Albania. By checking my…

It's unlikely an entire race "sucks at programming." It's a skill like any other and can be learned to varying degrees.

Re: Disassembling the Woolworths Facebook scam

#27

Post by TallboyOne »

fingerprinter wrote: post #22

Can someone break down how the scammers are making money on this? Think of me as a complete idiot ;) It seems that they are simply affiliates of these various sites and get a small percentage for signups? Is that correct? how much can they reasonably hope to make from something like this?

Companies usually pay per lead $x amount. Most often you see them in the form of email submits, where if you "just put in your email" you will get a target giftcard. A successful email might yield you $.25 depending on the offer.

Re: Disassembling the Woolworths Facebook scam

#28

Post by hippich »

fingerprinter wrote: post #22

Can someone break down how the scammers are making money on this? Think of me as a complete idiot ;) It seems that they are simply affiliates of these various sites and get a small percentage for signups? Is that correct? how much can they reasonably hope to make from something like this?

It looks not like a scam-taking-your-money-away, but rather as a scam-register-for-a-fake-prize-and-we-get-paid-by-affiliate type. So it is less harmful, that's why I am not sure if "scam" word is appropriate. But it definitely waste time and might put bunch of spyware on your machine while you are going through this process.
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