Mary Steadman scam from Easy Google

I received an email today that looked like it came from Google. In my google webmail it reads "Easy Google to me." If I don't think about double checking the sender by clicking "show details" I may think I am offered a new program by Google. The mail says: "Increase your weekly income using Google and our kit." Most people may trash those kind of messages right away, but many are looking for opportunities to make money online, fed by success stories everywhere. This one is fake. I found an article published in May titled "Are Fake News Sites the Next Gold Rush?" The article confirms my suspcions. If you look at my header, you can see that the mail doesn't come from Google.com but from edgematter.com. Click on the image for a better view, then use the back button in your browser to come back to my blog.

The google mail header:


Read the article here. And below I explain how they do it.
The mail I received links to a news article that opens in my browser and that mentions my home town in the first sentence: "Are online jobs the next big thing? For Mary Steadman it sure is. Mary, a mother from Williamsburg, VA is thriving, in the middle of an economic recession working in the comfort of her own home." I was surprised, thinking I knew pretty much every successful person in town. Maybe there is a Mary Steadman somewhere hidden in her home office, so I looked up her name. She appears everywhere. Fortunately the bad news is already in the first couple of google hits.

What the spammer does is run some javascript when you open the page in your browser. The javascript is able to retrieve your location (unless you are browsing anonymously) and immediately insert it in the fake article. Here's a screen shot of the fake article:




Or if you want to see in your own browser which location it inserts, here's the link to the fake article itself.

Finally, below a screenshot of the html code showing the javascript that is used to create the false location of the fake Mary Steadman.




If for fun you want to see what the article looks like if you browse anonymously, go to this site of anonymouse and insert this link in the html field: http://www.online-job-news.com/?pid=52016&sid=GMMPS&trx=22991759-14304


The safe path is this: always always always do an online search before you believe a claim or get involved in anything, even if it is for free!!! The good news: there are many scams out there, but there are also many people working hard to expose them.