Got it! The original scam that tricked lots of people into thinking that Eminem was dead.

This was the URI : http://mtv.com&page=o097&date=121600&article=eminem2@216.97.25.197/pp97y/index.htm

See how the @ sign is in there at the end? That was the actual server that was being hit, everything else was being passed as information to that site - and the site was just ignoring it. I suppose someone must have tried this with Pay Pal, which is why they put this in their e-mails.

Anyway, enough rambling and reminiscing. I'm just glad that Pay Pal found an easy way to educate people against something like this working.
posted by Zim at 11/07/2002 05:04:00 PM

Haha, trying to find the link to the eminem scam has turned up some interesting stuff.

Check this out!

See, so this just proves that Pay Pal is doing the right thing. Right on.
posted by Zim at 11/07/2002 04:55:00 PM

I got a wierd message in my confirmation letter from pay pal. It said to always check for the https:// in front of paypal.com when you get a link to them. I couldn't figure this out, until I remembered a link I got a long time ago that said that Eminem was dead. It was supposedly MTV.com, but if you looked, it was really mtv.com@www.someothersite.com or something like that - but it took you to the other site, not MTV.com.

So... I just tried to fool around with this for a sec and I realized that's why their entry page is secured and uses https. Pretty cool - because if they actually can get people to look at that link, then this sort of trick will never work.

Sometimes companies get it right, and it makes me happy.
posted by Zim at 11/07/2002 04:53:00 PM