Friday, August 21, 2009

IMPORTANT: Scam Alert!


I just found out that someone created the www.SusanPolgar.org website to promote an event by the name Susan Polgar Junior International. This event is supposed to take place on October 9-12, 2009 in Boston, Massachusetts.

There is NO such event.
I have NOTHING to do with this "so called" event.
I am NOT organizing this event.
This event is NOT affiliated with the Susan Polgar Foundation.
This event is NOT affiliated with FIDE.
I have never approached FIDE with such event.
This event is NOT affiliated with Rochester Chess.
I have NOT promoted such event on my blog.
I have NOT advertised such event in Chess Life.
Please do NOT send entry fees for this event.

All of my events would be promoted on this blog, Chess Life, and other reputable chess sources. When in doubt, send me an email at SusanPolgar@aol.com.

The perpetrator copied and paste information from my legitimate websites and/or past events to make things look authentic. But this is a complete scam and I am reporting it to the proper authority. If you know who is behind this scam, please let me know immediately so I can forward the pertinent information to the authority.


Thank you!
Susan Polgar

(The website frame came from www.bielchessfestival.ch. The photo on the main page came from my world record simul in Palm Beach Gardens in 2005. Some information came from www.SusanPolgarFoundation.org and www.SusanPolgar.com.)
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19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like the registrant left a name.

http://www.networksolutions.com/whois-search/susanpolgar.org

Anonymous said...

I found the same info .. seems to be registered in Hong Kong. I sent email to your AOL address.

Anonymous said...

Lawsuit!

Anonymous said...

ditto
sue Jason Wong and get the website pulled down

aam said...

Don't know how anti-phishing databases work, but if you can get them to add this site to their database, then most browsers will alert their users when loading a phishing site.

Firefox, for example, checks with google's phishing site service for every new site. For IE, Microsoft has its own phishing site service.

I don't know how these services get their data, but you can google it.

Good luck. This is aweful.

aam said...

to the lawsuit suggestor: it's what you feel like doing, but unless the other guy is wealthy, it's not practical. your lawyer will charge you $400/hr and it might take gazillion hours, esp with the guy in Hongkong.

Best you can do is alert everyone like Susan is doing, and alert a phishing service.

Anonymous said...

Jason Wong isn'y guilty. His computer is a proxy used to serve the page. If you traceroute the IP address you will discover the source of the page is in Colorado USA.

A chess nutcase is responsible for this bad joke.

Anonymous said...

This is why the domain extension, .com or .org etc, should not be part of the unique domain name. Dubious design decision many years ago.

Jason Wong said...

The web scammers page looks professional!

Perhaps Susan should hire him?

Anonymous said...

Because it is acopy of the official page of the Biel Festical :)

On the page, click Contact and click on the button with chinese characters. You will get to the Biel website :)

Anonymous said...

nslookup www.susanpolgar.org
Server: 192.168.16.1
Address: 192.168.16.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
www.susanpolgar.org canonical name = biemin.web3.itpz.cn.
Name: biemin.web3.itpz.cn
Address: 122.225.103.206

Doubt you'll be able to get it taken down. If you use firefox though, click Help Menu and Report Web Forgery to get this site added. At least then it will warn others.

Odds are someone put this up soley to get better search ranking now then later they will change the site to push scams or something along those lines.

Anonymous said...

Registrar: Xin Net Technology Corporation (R118-LROR)
Status: TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Expiration Date: 2010-08-10 13:50:34
Creation Date: 2009-08-10 13:50:34
Name Servers:
ns.xinnetdns.com
ns.xinnet.cn
See susanpolgar.org DNS Records
IP: 122.225.103.206
IP Location: Huzhou, China
Website Status: inactive

Anonymous said...

Registrant Contact Information:
Name: JASON WONG
Organization: JASON WONG
Address 1: KONGKUAN RD 6F-8E
City: HONGKONG
State: Hongkong
Zip: 85601
Country: CN
Phone: +86.2082526607
Fax: +86.2082526607
Email: Email Masking Image@yahoo.com.cn

Anonymous said...

IP: 122.225.103.206
OrgName: Asia Pacific Network Information Centre
OrgID: APNIC
Address: PO Box 2131
City: Milton
StateProv: QLD
PostalCode: 4064
Country: AU

ReferralServer: whois://whois.apnic.net

NetRange: 122.0.0.0 - 122.255.255.255
CIDR: 122.0.0.0/8
NetName: APNIC-122
NetHandle: NET-122-0-0-0-1
Parent:
NetType: Allocated to APNIC
NameServer: NS1.APNIC.NET
NameServer: NS3.APNIC.NET
NameServer: NS4.APNIC.NET
NameServer: TINNIE.ARIN.NET
NameServer: NS2.LACNIC.NET
NameServer: NS-SEC.RIPE.NET

Anonymous said...

http://spamtrackers.eu/wiki/index.php/Xin_Net

Perhaps this link can help tracking them down.

jMac said...

I reported it to http://www.us-cert.gov/nav/report_phishing.html but I don't know if that will do any good, or how long it will take. People shouldn't put up fake websites or send fake email.

Mark Ginsburg said...

I checked the fake tournament. The fake 'organizers' (what's their motivation, they are not trying to collect money - weird) are kind enough to include this special event in their fake tournament schedule:

"All day: international competitors recover from jetlag"

Quite a special event!

jMac said...

The best thing to do would be to contact the ISP that is hosting it.

Anonymous said...

Doppelganger