Tag Archives: Crime

URGENT: BMG Music Service Scam?

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Yesterday I received the following e-mail claiming to be from BMG Music Service. The story is legit, and there really is a class-action suit like it says… but every link on the page goes to cdlounge.com, not bmgmusicservice.com:

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Now I was suspicious, especially since there’s nothing but a login box at cdlounge.com (Strike #1 in my book). So I started digging around a bit.

BMG Music Service’s FAQ section states:

Q. How do I know an email is from BMG Music Service?
A. BMG Music Service will send you emails about your orders and account as well as special sales and promotions, and these emails will come from bmgmusic@bmgmusicservice.com. Occasionally you may receive a fraudulent email that appears to be from BMG Music Service but is actually an attempt to trick you into providing personal information that can be used for identity theft. These emails are often called spoof or phishing emails.

BMG Music Service will never ask you to confirm account information like passwords or credit card information through email. If you receive suspicious email, please forward it to us immediately at emailspoof@bmgdirect.com and we will investigate it.

The e-mail I received says it came from cs@bmgmusic.com, so that’s Strike #2 (it should be coming from bmgmusic@bmgmusicservice.com, according to the FAQ). I looked at the questionable e-mail’s headers, and its Return-Path is soneill@103637-litigation1.yourmusic.com—Strike #3 (Yourmusic.com looks as if it may be owned by BMG Music Service, but like CDLounge.com, it could just as easily be a competitor).

I tried to forward the e-mail to emailspoof@bmgdirect.com like they said, but it failed in a “this account does not exist” sort of way. So I’ve forwarded the thing to bmgmusic@bmgmusicdirect.com now, and I’m waiting to hear from them. If this isn’t an instance of phishing, the folks at BMG really need to get their act together. You just don’t tell people that you’re one site on the logo (BMGMusicService.com) but link it to another site (CDLounge.com) and have your e-mail originate from yet another site (YourMusic.com). So it’s either really fishy or really tacky. :razz:

UPDATE: Looks like it’s legit. See my recent update for more details.

GTA3 Turns Kids into Criminals

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At least, that’s one of the implications of research like this:

“I think the really interesting question here is the morality of our relationships with avatars and artificial lifeforms. If we seem to forge emotional bonds with artificial life—even against our will, even when we know the bots aren’t real—what does it mean when we torture and abuse them?” — collision detection: Scientists remount Milgram “shock” experiment using 3D avatars

All About NSA

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Kudos to the many brave souls blowing the whistle on the U.S. Government’s illegal domestic spying programs! Some of the more recent examples include:

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Just a Sleepy Little Town…

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From The Evening Sun: “Man shot during robbery attempt near Gettysburg“

An attempted robbery and shooting in a Gettysburg-area gun shop Saturday morning ended when the two juvenile suspects were apprehended following a short chase.

According to state police in Gettysburg, two juveniles brandishing weapons and wearing military-type clothing entered Lincoln Trading Post, 1895A York Road, in Straban Township, at 11:30 a.m. and ordered everybody on the floor.

One man was shot multiple times before the suspects fled the scene.

Do you know where the Lincoln Trading Post is? No? I’m not surprised; it’s a few miles away from the sleepy little town of Gettysburg, PA. (Sure, the place was a hotspot in the 1860s, but these days its busiest moments are school field trips and the annual “Battle of Gettysburg” re-enactments that take place July 1-3.)

This is one of those rare moments (for small-town folk) where the abstract news hits home. Case in point: my little brother and sister knew one of the attackers (16 year old Elliot Miller). That’s just… strange.

Maybe a robbery/shooting by a minor isn’t a big deal where you live (or where I live for that matter; I’m just a few miles north of Baltimore!), but for the Sleepy Little Town of Gettysburg, this is a shock.

Sarah passed me a link for video of WHTM’s report, but it takes me forever to get it to load in IE, and I think it caused a crash with Firefox.