BogusArtFair.Info

For a while in December, I was starting to wonder whether the scammers were moving on because I haven't gotten any spam in a while, but I guess they were just taking a break (at least from my email address).

This week, I received an email about the 2008 International Encyclopaedic Dictionary Of Modern And Contemporary Art which starts:

We beg to inform you that we are preparing the 15th edition of the prestigious 2008 INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPAEDIC DICTIONARY OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART, which will also be published on the Internet.

It goes on to tell me how great the dictionary will be and that it'll be sold online. Attached is the submission form (in two formats--PDF and .doc), with a section at the bottom asking how many copies you would like to purchase. The form indicates:

There is no charge for inclusion. You are only required to order one or two copies of the book.

A well known artist from Newfoundland had his gmail (google) account hacked into and used to send a series of fraudulent letters to the artist's friends and associates. The letters asked for a loan to help the artist's father with emergency medical expenses.

Read more here.

I was wondering why I suddenly received so many suspcicious new accounts, and it turns out I didn't have CAPTCHA activated for the new site!

I still don't know why that blue box is showing at the top of the front page... (fixed Dec 22!)

BogusArtFair.Info has been upgraded to accomodate some new behind-the-scenes features to help it run more smoothly. A new theme has also been implemented.

The management of inactive accounts is now automated. Accounts which have been inactive for 6 months will be disabled, and accounts which have been inactive for a year will be deleted. Full details can be found here. Visitors can still receive updates via RRS feeds for BogusArtFair.Info without creating a user account.

Last week, I received an email via my sculpture website from a supposed gold dust seller. Click "read more" to see the email. Other samples of copper/gold dust scam emails can be found here. The Export Bureau's report can be found here.

Coxsoft Art reports an increased amount of phishing scam emails being distributed, particularly with the use of corporate logos.

Today, I got another email from ATcultura soliciting my work for inclusion in one of their publications. I have not been able to find any conclusive evidence about whether they are a scam or a legitimate enterprise. At worse, they are a full-fledged scam; at best, they are a vanity publisher (which isn't very good at all).

Ian from Coxsoft Art Blog has posted a warning about a new twist on some old scams: a company calling itself PDS (Parcel Delivery Service) is leaving notices in people's mailboxes indicating that they were unable to deliver a package, and askin them to call 0906 6611911...but fails to indicate that it's a premium number.

Full story here:
A Scam For Christmas

There's a relatively new website, freerangestock.com, which offers two things: free stock photos for users and ad revenue-sharing for content providers. Unlike most sites, this one goes a step beyond the concept of "content in exchange for webspace/publicity/tools". I'm a bit cynical about how much money an artist can really get from ad revenue alone, but this is a step in the right direction.

An international crackdown on Internet financial scams this year has yielded more than $2.1-billion (U.S.) in seized fake checks and 77 arrests in the Netherlands, Nigeria and Canada, U.S. and other authorities said on Wednesday.

Spam-scam crackdown nets $2-billion
by RANDALL MIKKELSEN, Reuters, October 3, 2007 at 6:05 PM EDT, Technology section