interesting!  Some of the items looked really familiar so I did some quoted text searches on EPay.   They were exact matches for some highly unique listings.... who is scamming who here....... Steve On 2/8/2023 7:47 PM, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote:

Avast claims the site is infected with a trojan. The contact address does not exist: 4144 Fannie Street Houston, Texas 77063 United States Stay away! On Thu, Feb 9, 2023 at 2:59 PM Sellam Abraham via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote:

There are some older folks on the list, so this is a good time to talk about internet safety. Please, if you see a website address like this: www.bryanipad.shop - DO NOT CLICK ON IT The address is very suspicious, as it does not seem like a very good website name, and ends in .shop, which valid shops in our hobby rarely if ever use. If in doubt, GOOGLE THE WEBSITE, and see if valid websites link to it, if it does not show up in google results, or has a warning, it is almost certainly fraudulent. Stay safe out there :) -Eric On Thu, Feb 9, 2023 at 4:22 AM Will Cooke via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote:

Hah, I am hardly a spring chicken myself. Being aware that aging comes with increased risks is essential. Too many stories of elders being scammed to not be direct about the risk to our older, and cherished, community members. -Eric On Thu, Feb 9, 2023, 8:52 AM Stuff Received via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote:

On Thu, 9 Feb 2023 11:09:58 -0500 (EST) Ethan O'Toole via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: In this case, "bryanipad.com" appears to be available.

On Thu, 9 Feb 2023 08:31:35 -0600 Eric Moore via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: Yeah, "bryanipad.shop" is definitely...strange. Only registrant info in the GMO whois: California, US. Which may or may not be accurate. Server is behind Cloudflare, because of course. The content seems odd as well. Like whatever human or bot is not just scraping auction listings, but maybe mailing lists, discords, or fora, as well, to guage interest. It feels somehow...targeted, and topical to very recent discussions of extremely obscure gear. Yeah, beware.

I am very sorry to anyone I insulted. My tone was condescending. My only intention was sincere concern for any fellow travellers who may be reading. -Eric On Thu, Feb 9, 2023, 12:58 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote:

On Thu, Feb 9, 2023 at 1:45 PM Fred Cisin via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: As an official Old Fart now, I just want to say that I want everyone off my lawn. Sellam

At this point I will chime in. I brought what looked like an Imsai keyboard from this crowd, or a previous version of them - The web site is *amazingly* similar. The keyboards were cheap as chips, $149, so I went for it, knowing that I was protected by PayPal. I get tracking details pretty quickly, set as awaiting shipment, I also got a weird - non professional email saying that they had sent the item. After a week, still no movement on the tracking item - I queried them and got yet another number. Still awaiting shipment. Another couple of weeks - no movement, no keyboard delivered, and no response from their customer service, so I contacted Paypal and raised a case. At this point, I am screenshotting everything for evidence. Paypal was great - they contacted the seller, who said that the item was shipped. Another new tracking number. After another couple of weeks, I contacted Paypal again - they contacted the shop - the shop provided 'evidence' that the item had been delivered to Sydney (350km away) - Paypal asked me if I had it - I live in Canberra, and of course I hadn't got it. They clearly went to the trouble of trawling through USPS tracking details to find something that was shipped from near their suburb to Sydney Australia by somebody else and submitted it as their evidence they had shipped. I went ballistic with paypal, and got a refund. 100% would not recommend. The only shops that pop up in a town selling impossible vintage bargains are in the Twilight Zone, and have the word Emporium in their name. Kindest regards, Doug Jackson em: doug(a)doughq.com ph: 0414 986878 Check out my awesome clocks at www.dougswordclocks.com Follow my amateur radio adventures at vk1zdj.net On Fri, 10 Feb 2023 at 09:13, Adrian Godwin via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote:

On Thu, 9 Feb 2023 at 23:27, ben via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: Talk to Dalibor Farny: https://www.daliborfarny.com/ -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lproven(a)cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven(a)gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053

On 2/9/2023 5:40 PM, Doug Jackson via cctalk wrote: This is called a "brushing" attack. They sell you a high value item, then send some crappy nearly free item to some other address in the vicinity, and use that to "prove" to PayPal that you got it. The recipient has no idea WTF the item is so they discard it. Apparently the folks here don't understand just how far apart Australian cities can be.  Worked in your favor. It's good to hear that PP did that.     -Rick

DDG is just a Google fish bowl. Same data set, similar results. If you're concerned about privacy, there are much better options available. Sellam On Fri, Feb 10, 2023, 3:40 AM Adrian Godwin via cctalk < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote:

Brave Search / Brave Browser is one. Yandex is a Russian search engine that can come in useful sometimes. Trying to find ISO CD images of discs for music hardware (Samplers) it feels like the internet through google is way smaller than it used to be. The bad thing is there is a ton of knowledge on facebook that isn't indexed to the public web. -- : Ethan O'Toole

Seems click bait to me. The store has only 1 item listed and 809 reviews. 165 watchers too. If we have 165 watchers interesting in this thinkpad (which by the way one was sold with 15bid for $232 https://www.ebay.com/itm/144927584635) then maybe that 818,888 (notice the flowers too in the listing) than I assume at least one is in this group. Seems to me the listing is a sarcastic or insulting way to recognize vintage tech Regards, Tarek Hoteit

On Thu, 9 Feb 2023, Fred Cisin via cctalk wrote: My favorite is, "Don't try to teach your Grandmother how to steal sheep." :) g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.diy-cockpits.org/coll - Go Collimated or Go Home. Some people collect things for a hobby. Geeks collect hobbies. ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://scarlet.deltasoft.com - Get it _today_!

On 2023-02-09 15:31, Eric Moore via cctalk wrote: [...] In my opinion, one of the first things to do to try to stay safe out there, if not the first, is to stop using that website and use one that doesn't track what you search, that doesn't show you different results to what it shows to other people who do the same search, and that doesn't treat you as its product. Cheers, Ángel

On Feb 9, 2023, at 11:34 AM, Sellam Abraham via cctalk &lt;cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote: That’s an interesting observation Sellam, and I have to agree. In thinking about it, I was able to find stuff on the Internet easier in 1995 than I seem to be able to now. I mostly avoid Google like the plague now, but I decided to use it today to look for a very specific term, it still spews nonsense. Zane

On Thu, Feb 9, 2023 at 5:04 PM Zane Healy &lt;healyzh(a)avanthar.com&gt; wrote: The one thing Google distinctly offers and for which I still use it is the scanned book archive (books.google.com) because it has magazines, journals, etc. So it's a great database to search for obscure computer hardware and software in the ads or reviews of computer magazines. However, archive.org exceeds or surpasses Google Books these days because you're actually allowed to "borrow" the content and see it all, as opposed to the pathetic snippets Google allows you from its archive, due to "copyright". Google apparently doesn't know how to innovate. Sellam

:-) One approach I use occasionally is to access a search engine via TOR. paul

Ok as Google search is increasingly failing us, what other search engine should I use? Tom On Fri, 10 Feb 2023, 3:28 am Angel M Alganza via cctalk, < cctalk(a)classiccmp.org&gt; wrote:

On 2023-02-10 02:37, Tom Hunter wrote: I think the best option would be using open source decentralized search engines, without any company, entity, or individual directly responsible for the resources (other than their contributed code) and therefore directly profiting from them. Alas we're not there yet, and the ones I've tried or even looked at aren't ready (easy to set up and use) for most people, or even for more "advanced users". But I think they're improving. I've been using DuckDuckGo for many years now, and I'm quite happy with it, given that it isn't distributed and 100% open source, although increasingly so. They don't track your search or visits history, and therefore it gives consistent results, i.e. the same search yields the same results regardless of the person, browser, device, IP address, etc. Adds are based on your current search, so they aren't tailored to you and they don't follow you around all the time. I believe that combined with other privacy measures, like using VPNs, I2P, or even Tor, paying attention and "controlling" locally stored data (cookies, browsing history, personal data collected from data fields in web forms, passwords, etc.), or even using the "incognito" mode on browsers, make it a reasonably secure choice for the moment, until 100% open source decentralized alternatives are ready.