[Update 7/14/2010: Another update from a commenter. This time the site is appearing as ELL Property Management and it just went live today. See the comment thread for details.]
[Update 7/4/2010: A commenter dropped by and told us these assholes are still trying to run this same scam under a new name. Do not apply for jobs with VOV Property Management either. See the comment thread for details.]
I’ve been out of work just over two months now and, as you would expect, I’ve been spending a good portion of my time trying to find a new job. One of the resources I’ve been using to try and find something local is Craigslist. It was there that I came across this ad on June 24th:
Looks legit enough, if somewhat brief.
So I sent an email with a short cover letter and my resume. Yesterday I got the following email:
Hi Les,
Thank you for your interest and your recent resume submission. My name is Armanda and I am the Human Resource Manager that is in charge of the hiring process for our company TTJ Property Management. I’ve look over your application and due to the high amount of replies that we’ve gotten regarding our recent classifieds posting, I wanted to contact you as soon as possible and see if you would be interested in setting up an interview with us.
Before I continue let me tell you some background information about TTJ Property Management: We are an established Rental Company that was founded back in 1984 and we’ve grown immensely since then. Unlike other rental companies, we hope to foster a fun yet efficient environment for our employees since we have the firm belief that if we provide our employees with a welcoming work atmosphere we will see an increased return in productivity. Candidates should consider themselves self-starters and be able to work efficiently with minimum supervision. Other skills like great interaction with employees of all levels of the firm, strong communication skills, organization skills etc. are also valued very highly.
Our company aims to build a strong bond with its employees and therefore we offer benefits packages for you and your family plus we thrive to pay our employees a higher hourly wage than any of our competitors. We will be discussing compensation and benefits a little bit more in detail during our interview when we are in a more private environment instead of public emails.
Now due to our policies I will not be able to schedule an interview with you until you have filled out one of our online applications which can be found on our company website. Please visit http://ttjmanagement.com/application/ and fill out our short application so we can move on with the interview process. Each applicant is required to have a personal application code in order to fill the application.
Your code is: [Code Deleted]
Since we have received such a high number of replies to our job posting I will only be able to hold your application on my desk for 1-2 days more so please do not wait too long to fill out our online application! I will contact you as soon as I receive your online application!
Now if you have any questions please feel free to contact me!
Hoping to see you here for an interview soon,Armanda
Human Resource Manager
TTJ Property Management
It all looks legitimate enough and I was oblivious that anything might be amiss until I tried to click on the link in the email. My browser sat twiddling its thumbs and then finally announced that it could not resolve the domain name. That seemed a bit strange so I tried a Google search which came up with a big fat nothing. Well, not entirely true. It found results for companies with similar names, but if you put TTJ Property Management in quotes to force it as a literal result you get the dreaded “No results found for “TTJ Property Management”.”
I thought that was odd for a company that’s been around since the year before I graduated high school. Even if they never had a web presence themselves surely someone in the past 26 years would’ve said something about them on the Internet. No company is so perfect that someone somewhere doesn’t bitch about them at some point. For that matter any of a number of online Yellow Pages and business directories would have an entry about them someplace. That is, if they actually existed.
My curiosity piqued by this interesting turn of events I did what all life-long computer geeks do when confronted with such an anomaly: I did a WhoIs on the domain name. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that the domain belonged to someone in Moscow, Russia and had been registered for the first time the day before I got the email above:
Noooooo. This doesn't appear suspicious at all.
Now the klaxons in my head were going off at full volume, but I thought I should reply just to see what kind of response I might get. So I sent the following reply back to “Armanda” to see what she would say:
Armanda,
I seem to be having some trouble accessing the website you have listed in your email. The domain name doesn’t appear to be resolving properly and I’m not sure if it’s an issue with my ISP or not. I tried pinging the address and got no response so I did a WhoIs and it appears the domain is registered to someone in Russia and was just created yesterday.
I have to admit that for a company that’s been around since 1984, the above facts strike me as rather odd. Seeing as I am unable to fill out the online application as you requested is it possible I could contact you by phone to set up a time for an interview? I’d also like to verify the address I’d be going to when the time comes.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Les Jenkins
So far I’ve yet to receive a reply, but the webpage address is resolving properly as of today. If you go there today you’ll see this:
Again, looks legit enough on first glance.
Looks OK, right? There’s plenty of pages to poke around on and if you take the time to do so you’ll soon be struck by how there’s so much text that isn’t really telling you anything. Sure, it all reads like what you’d expect on a property management site except that there’s no staff information, something which is pretty common on business sites offering services, and no information on where this company is located. If you click on the Contact Us tab you’re presented with a simple web form with no indication as to who the message will go to and absolutely no other information on how to contact anyone at the company.
It was about this time that it occurred to me to check the header on the email I received from “Armanda Elliot” and got the next clue that this was a scam. The email address the message was sent from was fezuqaxyxyfyq646818@hotmail.com. Now why would a legitimate Human Resources manager for a company so well established use an obviously randomized email address through a Hotmail account? Checking the originating IP address shows that it came from Amsterdam, NL. Website in Russia and emails from the Netherlands?
By this point I was pretty well convinced that this was possibly an attempt at ID theft, but before I started blogging about it I thought I should be thorough. So I went ahead and clicked on the link for the application “Armanda” had sent along and it took me to this page:
Starts off about how you'd expect.
You’ll note that I put a red box around the section that claims this is a secure page. I did this because it’s a flat out lie. The URL for that page was a standard http address and not the https of a secure page. Also most browsers will change the address bar to indicate when you’re on a secure page and Firefox gave no indication that the page was secure. I also took the time to ping the domain name and got an IP address of 217.23.10.25 which, when you look it up, is registered to the RIPE Network Coordination Centre in, you guessed it, Amsterdam. The same place the email originated from.
The next several pages were very surreal as they were filled with all manner of questions that seemed more like one of those find-out-your-personality-profile quizzes that are all over the internet than anything a company would put up. Some of the questions were OK such as “You see a fellow employee stealing from the company. What would you do?” followed by three answers — do nothing, tell a supervisor, confront employee — that I’ve seen asked before, but others seemed totally irrelevant to a job such as whether I consider myself a liberal, moderate, or a conservative. Right in the middle of the second page was where the next big red flag popped up as squeezed between the surreal questions was this:
Why would they need to know my credit history?
I can’t recall an employer ever asking me for my credit report before. What’s interesting is that if you click on the check box to get your “free” credit report the form launches an entirely new browser window which cycles through two or three URLs in rapid succession before landing at ID Complete.com which, ironically enough, has the following for its webpage title: Identity Theft Protection & Identity Theft Prevention by ID Complete. The URL goes to a specific sub-page and includes some codes that are probably affiliate indicators. Here’s what that site looks like:
This also looks fairly legit.
We’ll talk about these guys in a minute, but first let’s finish up with the TTJ Property Management folks. The last page of the questionnaire asks you to attach your resume and upload it to the site, which is odd because they already have my resume from the initial email I sent them so why would they ask for it a second time? More surprising, though, was the fact that they weren’t doing something obvious like asking for my Social Security number, which is what I had expected to have happen. I didn’t upload my resume again so I’m not sure what the screen after that would’ve been like, but I was feeling pretty confident at this point that I had investigated the site itself far enough.
Now as for the ID Complete.com folks, well, I’m not sure about them. Doing a Google search on IDComplete.com reveals they are all over the place with over 2,000 mentions mainly because it appears that they have an affiliate program which pays for traffic to their site. Having gone through the first dozen or so pages of search results I’ve been unable to find anything in the way of complaints and trying various search queries specifically looking for complaints doesn’t turn anything up either. Which is suspicious in itself as it suggests they’ve done everything they can to bury anything negative about them out on the net. That said, as near as I can tell, they are legit. Or at least as legit as any other company that attempts to sell you ID theft prevention and credit reports. You can bet your sweet ass that the “free” credit report involves signing up for their ID theft prevention service which will probably be very difficult to cancel once you’ve signed up.
Finally, to be on the safe side, I contacted the Better Business Bureau to see if perhaps they had any info on TTJ Property Management. Not surprisingly, they don’t and the representative I spoke with on the phone agreed that it sounded like a scam. He suggested I contact the Internet Crime Complaint Center and the FTC about it. The thing that is puzzling is that it appears they aren’t trying to steal your ID at all. Rather it’s a very involved affiliate marketing ruse. If that’s the case then what they’re doing may not even be illegal.
The phony job application above says they’ll need a copy of your credit report at the interview, but they never ask you to send it to them. It’s designed specifically to get you to go to ID Complete.com website and sign up whereupon the owners of the phony job site will earn an affiliate fee. Seems like a lot of work for a few pennies, right? Naturally that made me curious to see how much they could potentially earn from this ploy.
Doing a Google search for ID Complete Affiliate Program returns just two results both of which point to oDigger.com which is a site for finding affiliate programs to join. The first points to an offer from Cactus Media for joining an affiliate program promoting ID Complete.com that apparently offers payments of $36 per conversion! Now I’m not sure what a conversion is, but I’d guess that it means for every person who signs up with ID Complete. The second points to an offer from Cpaway that offers payments of $19 per lead. Not as impressive as Cactus Media’s offering, but still not bad.
Interestingly enough, the Cpaway listing has the following description:
Identity Protection and 3 Bureau Annual Credit Report. Converts on a 2nd page submit with order of 30 day free trial. (Please be aware that his offer may not be ran on Craigslist and publishers found promoting it through CL will have their fund forfeited)
A prohibition against promoting on Craigslist! Now what would be a clever way to get around that prohibition and guarantee that at least some of the chumps applicants actually sign up for the service? How about a phony job listing that leads to an application that does the push to ID Complete? It’s brilliant! There’s also probably nothing illegal about it. It’s just a shame that they posted the fake job ad on Craigslist before they registered the domain for their phony company website and then were dumb enough to respond to an applicant before the IP address had time to propagate from Russia leading one overly skeptical job seeker to do a little digging. That would be me.
There’s not much more I can do to put a stop to this ruse, but at least I can blog about it. Considering that Google doesn’t have any search results for TTJ Property Management that means that this little blog entry will be the first it will index, probably before it ever finds the original page. And that means that the next poor schlep who decides to Google the company name will read all about it here.
If you’re that poor schlep and you haven’t applied with TTJ Property Management yet then you probably already realize that you shouldn’t bother. If you have applied then just ignore any emails you get from them as it’ll just point you to this phony website. More importantly, however, is knowing that this sort of scam is out there and to be properly skeptical when considering ads for jobs on sites like Craigslist. You can bet I’ll be looking at them a lot more closely from now on.
I did a bit of research on TTJ Property Management. And on my Google search the number 1 return was a site called SEB bitching about it:=)
They have actually helped you get recognized, and this is the thanks they get!
Great job exposing these creeps. I find job scams particularly distasteful, because they are taking advantage of sometimes desperate people.
With your permission, I’d like to cross-post an excerpt with a link to the Quatloos scam forums, to make sure they get the attention they so richly deserve.
Yeah, but there is an awful lot of entries after SEBs that’s calling TTJ PM a scam.
Unfortunately the thing about these scams is that it’s all 1′s and 0′s so when their “customers” begin to drop off, all they have to do is change the names, slap some new wallpaper on the web site (on a different domain of course) and they start fresh.
The best thing about the Internet is also the worst thing about the Internet; ANYONE can get a message out.
I wonder how long it will take for them to send out the first responders to claim that they not only got a job through this, they also got a free rainbow!
ElfNinosMom, please feel free to cross-post as you see fit. This one is brand new so it’d be nice to get the word out.
Will, from what I can see, those are all links back to this article either from aggregators such as Global Atheist (which indexes SEB) or through blogroll announcements which show a snippet of the latest article posted on a blog you’ve added to your list. In short, the only 10 links showing on Google for TTJ Property Management all point here.
Interestingly enough, I just tried connecting to their website again and the site is down. I can still ping the IP address, but the domain name is no longer resolving to it. It appears it may have been a hosted site as doing a WhoIs on the IP address reveals it belongs to W-H Hosting Company Ltd in the Netherlands. Perhaps they found out about it and suspended the account or perhaps the scammers saw how fast word got out on Google and decided to toss in the towel.
I suppose it’s possible these sites don’t last but a few days as it is, but I’d like to believe I upended a lot of effort and preparation and caused some trouble for some unethical scammers.
Les, Just so you know how I really feel, I think it is very low and disgusting that people would try to exploit someone who may be suffering financially from being unemployed.
It’s people like this that never see, or just flat don’t care about the end result of their actions.
But I still wonder what exactly is the end result they are seeking ?
I am reminded of the IE8 commercial on TV that shows a fake bank offering $500 to open an account. Applicants are giving their SSN, DL numbers, bank account numbers, DNA samples, etc, etc. Like P. T. Barnum said, one IS born every minute. It’s nice to know that computer-savvy techs can uncover these scams with a little effort. Caveat emptor!
Peace.
Good sleuthing job. If regulatory agencies were on the ball, they’d employ people like you to poke around the net and investigate suspicious “companies” like this.
I just got this exact email but for a different property management company named VOV Property Management. They are even using the same website just renamed it. I thought it looked like a scam so I had to investigate. Unfortuantley I am not as computer savy as the orginal poster for this topic, I do have the email if someone would like it… Thanks for the information regarding this!
Great catch Erin! It’s exactly the same assholes. I checked http://vovmanagement.com/ to see if the site came up, and it did, and then I pinged the URL and got back 217.23.10.25, which is exactly the same IP address as the TTJ Property Management site, and then I did a WhoIs on the domain name. You’ll never guess who it’s registered to: Sergey Ryabov in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Just like the site I originally wrote about.
It’s exactly the same assholes running the same scam in slightly modified form. Hopefully Google will index the comments here and this thread will start showing up on searches for VOV Property Management.
Edited to add: Google has already re-indexed this page and it’s showing up when doing searches for VOV Property Management.
Hey guys thanks alot for the info. I had gotten the TTJ Property Management email before. Now today I get the VOV email. I thought it was another scam, so I did a google search, and I found this site. So thanks, keep posting this type of stuff!!
Very interesting Les. My husband applied for a job on a Craiglist listing. Hmm…time to investigate.
I just checked now and it appears the VOV Property Management page has also been taken down. Again, not sure if it’s because we got the word out or if that’s part of their plan to only keep the site active for a few days.
Still, if folks see it pop up again be sure to let us know.
Hello again! I am still job searching and now I got another email that I am assuming is a scam. This one included an application that was attached. The sender is from BlueCoast Media. I searched the company and I am not finding results. So I opened the application and it seems they want you to try a game. I am not sure if they are getting paid for that or extracting info from the applicants computer. I thought I’d let you guys know and thanks for the response above. I am beginning to second guess job searching using Craigslist now. Here is the email I received. When I tried to get on the site it didn’t exist and then I clicked the link and it said the site was under maintenance this just doesn’t seem right to me!
Enable links:for this message |always for this sender
lisa@bluecoastmedia.net
Re: Customer Service Position On Craigslist
From: lisa@bluecoastmedia.net
To:
Date: Mon, Jul 5, 2010 5:31 am
[Attachment]
Attachment
BlueCoast-Application-2010.doc
Hello ,
Thank you for emailing me for an application. I do apologize for not getting back to you sooner, my inbox has been very full these last few days! We still have multiple full-time and part-time product support positions we would like to fill. I went ahead and attached an application for you along with this email, if you have any trouble opening the attachment you can also download it on our website, we are undergoing upgrades on the site this week but there should be a link for you there. For this position we do require that you take a basic computer skill evaluation test to see if you are a good match for this position, you will find more information about that inside your application. Once you have completed your application and evaluation in full, please email those back to me asap as I would like to schedule you in for an interview sometime this week if possible.
Looking forward to hearing back from you!
Lisa Moretti
lisa@bluecoastmedia.net
http://www.bluecoastmedia.net
I think it’s a scam any thoughts?
Thanks, Erin
I looked through the cover page, I am not an English Professor. But I noticed several typo’s and such. I certainly would not download anything into my machine. These people could be very dangerous.
Sorry if this posts twice…
Ok, I admit I was taken by this ad on CL. I have been out of work for several months and need SOMETHING lol. I thought the credit report thing was weird but I thought maybe they were screening out “bots” or whatever. I actually completed the whole process and even got what appears to be a legit credit report. I had to answer the normal questions like “which of these cities have you ever lived in?” and “which of these companies have you ever worked for?”, etc.
So am I screwed? Any suggestions on what to do now?
Greg, the good news is that I don’t think your identity is in danger of being stolen by these people. The bad news is you’ve just signed up for an “identity protection” service you don’t need and will probably have a hard time canceling. I hadn’t looked too deeply into IDComplete.com at the time, but it appears that website may be an affiliate front end as well which signs you up for ID Theft Prevention from a company called TrustedID.com. According to the ID Complete Terms and Services agreement:
See that bit I highlighted there? That’s the important bit. When you applied for your “free” credit reports through IDComplete.com you also signed up for the service from TrustedID.com and if you don’t cancel it within the 30 day “free” trial (and just how the hell are you supposed to know if its working in a month’s time?) then you’ll be charged for their “service” which appears to be going for $8.50 a month for individuals or $16.99 a month for a whole family. It doesn’t say which plan you were signed up for.
You should have gotten some information from the TrustedID folks about your account with them either by email or snail mail and you’ll want to do whatever it takes to cancel your subscription before they start charging you. I know $8.50 doesn’t sound like much, but a whole year adds up to $102 bucks — $203 a year for the family plan — for a service that won’t even guarantee it’ll do what it claims to do:
We promise to take your money, but that’s the only promise you’ll get from us.
Incidentally, you can get your credit reports from all three agencies for real free directly from them. You can either contact each company directly or there is a real central website to do all three at once called Annual Credit Report.com. According to The Consumerist (a great website by the way) AnnualCreditReport.com is the only free credit report website that’s actually what it claims to be:
Let us know how much trouble you have canceling with the TrustedID.com folks. I’m curious to see if they will try to drag it out to get a couple of subscription fees from you or not.
Thanks for this exhaustive report, plus detailed comments. Posts like this are an important service, especially in a period when a lot of people are job-hunting – a process that many people (including me) hate.
@ Erin, OMG same company emailed me a few days ago… They responded to my resume the exact same way they did to you..
from lisa@bluecoastmedia.net
reply-to lisa@bluecoastmedia.net
to Linette
date Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 11:14 AM
subject Re: Customer Service Position On Craigslist
Hello Linette ,
Thank you for emailing me for an application. I do apologize for not getting back to you sooner, my inbox has been very full these last few days! We still have multiple full-time and part-time product support positions we would like to fill. I went ahead and attached an application for you along with this email, if you have any trouble opening the attachment you can also download it on our website, we are undergoing upgrades on the site this week but there should be a link for you there. For this position we do require that you take a basic computer skill evaluation test to see if you are a good match for this position, you will find more information about that inside your application. Once you have completed your application and evaluation in full, please email those back to me asap as I would like to schedule you in for an interview sometime this week if possible.
Looking forward to hearing back from you!
Lisa Moretti
lisa@bluecoastmedia.net
http://www.bluecoastmedia.net
The application told me to “Download the game 1st”
Here are parts of the application
Like an idiot I downloaded the stupid attachment… But after I did I was sent to http://www.gamevance.com/?lp=454&a=303&aid=19870-8268-30578128
To play a stupid game…
I then tried to go to take the evaluation test @ this site
http://www.bluecoastmedia.net/evalution And the page just kept loading. (Now when I checked I got a 404 Not Found)
So I went to the main site http://bluecoastmedia.net/ and got this
I looked them up from whois and come to find out they just created this domain
10 days ago
Registration Service Provided By: NameCheap.com
Contact:
Visit: http://namecheap.com
Domain name: bluecoastmedia.net
Registrant Contact:
WhoisGuard
WhoisGuard Protected ()
Fax:
8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #110 – 732
Westchester, CA 90045
US
Administrative Contact:
WhoisGuard
WhoisGuard Protected ()
+1.6613102107
Fax: +1.6613102107
8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #110 – 732
Westchester, CA 90045
US
Technical Contact:
WhoisGuard
WhoisGuard Protected ()
+1.6613102107
Fax: +1.6613102107
8939 S. Sepulveda Blvd. #110 – 732
Westchester, CA 90045
US
Status: Locked
Name Servers:
ns1.pipedns.com
ns2.pipedns.com
Creation date: 03 Jul 2010 22:39:00
Expiration date: 03 Jul 2011 17:39:00
Damn!! Another scam! this is the 2nd time this has happened to me! I’m sick of it! I just need a job!!
So beware of Blue Coast Media… They posted their job on criag’s List.
Erin and Linette:
I can’t say for sure whether or not Blue Coast Media is a scam, but it does seem suspicious. We can’t tell a lot about them from their WhoIs info because they’re using WhoIsGuard to prevent people from seeing their contact information. It’s the same service I use on my domain to keep my contact info private. The email address of the sender does at least match the domain they are sending you to so that’s not an obvious clue either.
The three red flags I can see are the creation date of the domain being July 3rd of this year, the fact that the application page errors out with a 404 Not Found, and the fact that they wanted you to download an executable. I’d be very wary of running any executable sent to me by an unknown company via email. It’s quite possible you may have installed a key-logger or other form of malware into your system.
So here is my recommendation: First, if you don’t already have an up-to-date anti-virus program installed and you’re running on Windows then go out and download one of the free programs out there and do a full system scan. I’d recommend either Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast, or Avira AntiVir. I’d follow up with a scan using Spybot Search & Destroy and AVG Anti-Rootkit. You can find more recommendations on how to detect key-loggers and other malware in this thread at CNet.
Now as to why you would want to go through all that trouble. First, if it’s a key-logger that got installed then it’s possible that the anti-virus program might miss it as it’s not a virus per se. It’s a small program that will sit and monitor your keyboard directly recording everything you type. Because it’s reading the keyboard’s output directly it can capture everything you type including usernames and passwords and then sends all of that text back out to a server for the hacker.
And Erin, my apologies for not responding to you sooner. I somehow missed your comment.
Thanks Les!! Don’t worry, As I type this I’m cleaning my PC out now…
STUPID EVIL BASTARDS Grrrrrr
No Worries Les! I did not open the attachment so I should be good I hope. Thanks for the response. Linette good luck on the job search! I am still searching myself!
Thanks again!
New scammer site popped up – same gag.
http://ellmanagement.com/
Domain name: ellmanagement.com
Registrant Contact:
Izmail Martynov ()
Fax:
Lenin ave 83/56
Moscow, 20503
RU
Administrative Contact:
Izmail Martynov (IzmailMartynov@gmail.com)
+1.1286645215
Fax:
Lenin ave 83/56
Moscow, 20503
RU
Technical Contact:
Izmail Martynov (IzmailMartynov@gmail.com)
+1.1286645215
Fax:
Lenin ave 83/56
Moscow, 20503
RU
Status: Locked
Name Servers:
ns1.ellmanagement.com
ns2.ellmanagement.com
Creation date: 14 Jul 2010 08:45:00
Expiration date: 14 Jul 2011 03:45:00
Thanks for the heads up, Troy. I pinged the domain and it’s the same IP address so it’s the same assholes. Looks like it went up today based on the creation date in the WhoIs you posted.
I think I’ll try contacting the hosting company and see if they care that someone is using them to host this sort of scam.
Yep, they show up on the Flakelist as well.
Great work, Les!
Like most people, I’ve got a lot of friends hunting for jobs right now. For those who don’t have what I think might be a sufficient amount of tech savvy to recognize something weird when they see it, I tell them just not to use Craigslist at all because it seems there’s more phishing scams and other BS than actual job postings there.
Oh, and a “conversion” is when a customer goes from being a trial to a paid account. Some affliate programs pay on signup, some on conversion and some do revenue sharing (or a combination). I’ve only ever been an affiliate for subscription sites, but that’s how it worked.
Great job on exposing them. I just applied for a job via Craigslist but became a little suspicious after(of course stated above) I couldn’t find any company history. I dont know if its been mentioned or not but the new name is UIC Property Management. Heres the link http://uicmanagement.com/.
Thanks for letting us know about them, David. It looks like the same assholes yet again. Domain was registered just two days ago.
Big thanks to you for this blog. Yeah they have changed thier name again or are at least using several different names to increase the number of people they can pull to thier sites. Here is the new name and it looks just like yours in the blog.
http://odnmanagement.com/
I guess what every way they can get around CL rules and get people to thier site is what they are doing. Oh well, back to looking for a job.
Thanks again for all your work to help. It is sad but a lot of people are not as aware of these types of scams and never even think to lookup a companies background. For everyone that does there are probably 10 who don’t and after awhile that would add up.
I usually respond to these obviously phony sites with profanity until I get bored (my name has been f*uck you a number of times now). Unfortunately, there are quite a few unsophisticated users out ther