• SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    18 hours ago

    Took me a second to figure out what was wrong with the email… I choked on a laugh when I saw the IP

    What a bizarre, narrow window of knowledge that person must have

    • new_world_odor@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      12 hours ago

      That’s exactly the reaction they want. That aspect of the scam helps filter out people who might be smart enough to properly retaliate if they were to get scammed out of 20k or whatever.

    • ThetaDecay@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      15 hours ago

      Alternatively, the scammer is saving themselves some time; more educated, well-versed people will see the ip and not bother calling in. Less savvy people who don’t know the IP address is bogus are likely easier to scam if they call the phone number or reply to the mail.

  • gergo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    18 hours ago

    no shit they don’t recognize that IP :-D but hey, they also single handedly solved the IP4 address space crisis!

  • python@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    18 hours ago

    Ok I admit I didn’t get it at first because I expected the joke to be that the IP is 127.0.0.1 and didn’t look closer at the digits

    • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      30
      ·
      1 day ago

      It’s good to see someone in this thread who knows what an IPv5 address looks like:

      IPv5 addresses consist of four hextets a 16bit each.  For the visual
      representation, those grouping are used.  The hextets might be
      written in decimal, separated by dot '.' characters, or as
      hexadecimal numbers, separated by colon ':'.
      

      It’s long past time to start replacing our IPv4.1 deployments!

  • 9point6@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    143
    ·
    1 day ago

    I often assume this kind of thing is part of an effort to filter for idiots

    If you know that’s an invalid IP address, you’re probably less likely to fall for the scam after the scammer has put the setup work in. So if they filter you out before a scammer has to spend any actual effort on you, that means more time they can spend scamming people who might be more likely to fall for it

    That’s why these things often have egregious spelling errors and other seemingly obvious red flags

      • entwine@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        13 hours ago

        I remember reading about this many years ago as an explanation for why there were so many banner ads that looked like they were created in MS paint.

    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      1 day ago

      It’s possible in general, but I don’t think that’s what’s going on specifically here; not many people read IP addresses in such detail to notice such things at first glance.

      • Cypher@aussie.zone
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        ·
        1 day ago

        It’s exactly what is happening, they’re filtering out people who know what an IP address is and can contain so that they get fewer time wasters.

        • communism@lemmy.ml
          cake
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 day ago

          The point schnurrito was making is that even if you know what an IP address is and what are valid or invalid IP addresses, a lot of people won’t read the IP address. They’ll just see numbers and skim over them. Even if you’re keeping eyes peeled for scams, most people don’t have their IP address memorised off the top of their heads so they wouldn’t be looking to check if the IP address looks right or not.

          • Cypher@aussie.zone
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            8
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            1 day ago

            And the point I’m making is that they’re doing it to filter out people who know and pay attention. Real simple stuff.

            • communism@lemmy.ml
              cake
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              4
              ·
              1 day ago

              Then I don’t think that would be the most effective way because most people aren’t paying that much attention, independently of knowledge. What would tip me off to it being a scam would be other parts of the email.

              • Apathy Tree@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 day ago

                You, maybe, someone else, maybe not.

                They put in a lot of flags like that, of varying obviousness, to filter out as many people as possible who would be savvy enough to not fall for the scam overall. It’s not just one clue, it never is.

    • Teddy Police@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      1 day ago

      Movies and TV shows actually do it this way to prevent actual machines getting group hugged.

      Like in that one X-Files episode, where the Lone Gunmen hack into an invalid IP.

  • Zozano@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    32
    ·
    1 day ago

    For the uninitiated, the joke is:

    spoiler

    Each number should has a maximum value of 255.

    • imjustmsk@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      edit-2
      22 hours ago

      The fact that I have a test in school today, and this is probable questiom in it, and this post reminded me of it,  thanks I guess?

      EDIT: wait, so each number should be maximum of 255? Why did I think it was just the last numbe :|

      anyway thanks again for the unsolicited coincidental heads up

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        53 minutes ago

        Yes, each number can land somewhere between 0-255, but there are some default reservations on specific IP ranges.

        For instance, 0 is typically used as an identifier for the subnet, not as an actual device IP. For instance, a DHCP server may tell a device “your IP address is 192.168.1.168. The subnet range is 192.168.1.0/24 (meaning the mask is 255.255.255.0). But the 0 won’t (or shouldn’t) get assigned to a specific device.

        255 is another special address, as it is used for broadcast messages. A packet sent to 255 gets sent to everything in that subnet. So for instance, if I wanted to broadcast a message to everything on the 192.168.1.0/24 range, I would send it to 192.168.1.255.

        In regards to reserved IP ranges, there are a few standard private IP ranges:

        192.168.0.0/16 one of the more common. (Subnet mask of 255.255.0.0). This basically means that (if everything is configured properly) your WAN IP won’t ever be something inside of that same range, as the router would very quickly throw up its hands in defeat. Like if your WAN IP from your ISP was 192.168.1.50, and you also had a device on your network with that same IP address, the router wouldn’t know which one (WAN IP or LAN device) to send traffic to.

        The second private IP range is 172.16.0.0/20 (subnet mask of 255.240.0.0) meaning the second number can range from 0-31, and the last two octets can range from 0-255.

        The last common private IP range is 10.0.0.0/8, (subnet mask of 255.0.0.0) so the last three octets can range from 0-255. You tend to see these more in corporate settings, as it allows for a truly astronomical number of devices to be connected.

        Basically, all of this means that if you see an address in the 192.168.x.x, 172.0-32.x.x, or 10.x.x.x range, you know it’s a private IP address, not a WAN IP.

      • REDACTED@infosec.pub
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        11 hours ago

        I’m still angry even 15 years later after a teacher lowered my grade just because I checked “USB” as capable technologies for video transmission. There are literally USB monitors.

        Granted, back then it really wasn’t popular and bandwidth was shit, but it was capable of it.

        • scutiger@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          8 hours ago

          USB to VGA dongles were definitely a thing over 15 years ago. USB 2.0 could manage it fineish. Maybe not at high resolutions and refresh rates, but it could handle a monitor just fine.

  • thr0w4w4y2@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    52
    ·
    1 day ago

    In addition to what others have already posted, I suspect that this might be an attempt to evade spam/phishing filters that are looking for an IP address with a specific regular expression. Having a fake IP address that doesn’t match the traditional ^((25\[0-5]|(2\[0-4]|1\d|\[1-9]|)\d)\\.?\b){4}$ format might let this message slip through.

    • InFerNo@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      19 hours ago

      And it hooks tech illiterate people, avoiding people who know something’s wrong. The perfect target.

    • ∃∀λ@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      23 hours ago

      Neither 867:5309:: nor 867::5309 appears to be allocated. Do IPv6 blocks work like car license plates where you can pay more to get a vanity plate of your choice or do you just get what you get?