Mailing List Scams

 

For your friends and family that aren’t so good with red flags of scams here’s another chess related thing making the rounds.

I’ve extensively covered my personal thoughts on how internet chess is ripe for an explosion in scam activity, and I’m feeling somewhat vindicated to have the signs of it appearing.  And disgusted simultaneously at the waste of resources for those that fall for these.  So we’ll call it a draw.

Anything popular, like conspiracy hoaxes being way more popular than they should be, plus the internet means inevitably the scammers will try something.  I’ve shown the two cards I got in the mail along with the top picture being from a week old Reddit discussion.  The Reddit group has some posters giving more credit than it deserves.

It’s 100% total scam.  I don’t even have a membership.  I did but it expired half a year ago.  The phone number for verification isn’t even the same.  And “do this in the next five days!!!”  Nah, pushy door to door salesmen are a huge turn off for me.  The only time I answer the door is to let them see my big ass dog.

I’m on a mailing list, plain and simple as that.  The mailing list doesn’t know my membership expired.  If the USCF was actively involved they’d know that.  There’s no excuse for the other party, this Publishing Concepts group, to need more than one phone number.  There is no excuse for necessity to do it within five days.  Sometimes the mail takes longer than that.  The proper request for meeting a deadline is, “If you are interested please respond by July 31, 2024.”  Not some vague five days bullshit.

And I actually got an email from these nuts, too.  You guessed it.  More than five days before the cards arrived about a week apart from each other.

Even the most innocent seeming subscription to a free website opens the door for mailing list activity.  It’s not as simple anymore as ignoring the attached advertisements for the invariably scammy products.

This is not a new idea at all, this share your memories book.  Old variations include things like mailing lists of everyone that just passed the bar exam.  Then you get an email asking if you’d like to be listed in the Who’s Who of Lawyers for your area.  School alumni listings are another one.  Support your school and show off your coolness!

Recently there was a Quora question an answer in my digest.  How do I tell if someone on the internet is scamming me?  The answer - They asked your for money.  And that’s all you really need to know.  Not all of them go to the extent of printing out and mailing cards, but phishing has a lot of variations on the core platform of getting people to share info best left private.  On the plus side if you really want to get involved with these things, sometimes there is actually a physical product delivered.  It’s just unlikely it’s worth anywhere near the $500 price they’re asking.  Yes, some people have gotten curious and called and found out that’s the price of sharing your memories.  Personally, I think the memories are already preprinted fake stories to save time on editing and production.

There’s also the plus side of not having $500.  Full blown  identity theft requires a life worth stealing.  You’re on the road to not having a life worth stealing.  Getting yourself on a gematria generated mailing list is screaming out for trouble to find you.