It started about 3 months ago. Email from strangers wanting to charter my airplane. I’m starting to think this is the FAA fishing for people who are willing to charter their aircraft in violation of FAR’s. The emails below were both received today.
What’s common about the emails I get?
~Often, a gmail account or another free account that is untraceable.
~Heavy use of “–”.
~The signature they use is tied to the NE US. (area code, school, employer). Employee signature with gmail account?
~A lot of first initial(s), last name.
I’ve got a feeling I’m not the only pilot with a web site getting email like this.
Hello, Mr. Holbert –
I saw your on-line entry about flying into Gansner Field in Quincy, California; I am contacting you to see about the possibility of arranging a charter flight to and/or from there. My mother lives in Quincy, and I had been planning to visit her this September, but the budget cuts that have recently beset California have put an end to the only public transit link from Plumas County to the nearest large airport in Reno – effectively cutting us off from each other.
Thank you; I appreciate any help or advice you have to offer.
hey Frank
i came a cross your website while searching of a way to get/fly from death valley to my friends place in Riverside California.
Do you , or do you know of any body that fly’s from Furnace Creek to some where near Riverside? Is there a charter?
if you have any information
it would be greatly appreciated
Frank- Don’t reply to any of those emails or open any attachments from them. It sounds more like some hackers targeting a “rich guy with a plane”. The emails could contain Trojans and stuff to grab your online banking info etc.
That is the problem and one of the items that raised my suspicion. That and the emails seem to be written by the same person who is trying to hide their writing style.
I’ve worked in IT since before IT was cool and feel pretty well protected. I always reply with the same message; “I am not for hire. Suggest you contact the local airport for a charter operator.”
I wouldn’t think that it would be the FAA as it would be entrapment… My suspicion is some other scam or a lure to steal your aircraft for “activity” south of the border. Either way be very wary…as I’m sure you are.
No, if it was Allen when I replied that I’m not for hire Allen would have argued with me. When it became clear I was right Allen would switch positions, edit his email trail then insist he was correct all along.
Oh I hear ya… But that would be the purview of the FBI, not the FAA. If it’s a situation where the act has already been committed then the FAA investigates and levies enforcement action. BTDT. Not an operator that I was involved with, but let’s just say an entity and individuals that were charter poseur’s and got what they deserved.
That’s not the IP address the mail server sees and puts into the MIME header – it will contain your modem’s / router’s WAN IP address.
If you’re not behind a firewall and NATed, people can in fact come get you based purely on the X-Originating-IP field in the message header.
If you get questionable e-mails, it’s best not to even respond, you’ll just give away the fact that you are in fact reading the messages, and possibly give away your IP address.
My machine address is 192.168.1.2 and you’re questioning if I’m NAT’ed? Yes I’m behind a firewall.
What is a nonroutable IP address?
One that starts with 192.168. or 10.27.
These addresses are used for a LAN that has access to the internet through a local router which routes traffic to/from any PC connected to it via an address in either of those ranges from/to the internet. Addresses in those ranges are not routed by the internet routers. Most cheap off the shelf routers you can buy at Circuit City or your friendly local computer shop default to 192.168.0. or 192.168.1. as the first three parts of the 4 part IP addresses that they assign to any PCs connected to them. The router then gets a legitimate routable address from whatever ISP supplied router that it connects to for your internet connectivity.
Glad to see that you know 192.168.x.x is only internal to your home net. But the modem’s address is still a potential pathway into your home, so you still need to lock it up pretty tight. I think the ISP puts that IP into the routing history in the headers of your outgoing mail. (Test it and see!)
It’d still be one step safer for you to handle all your website-related emails through GMail or Hotmail or whatever. You can arrange it to funnel into your regular account and then into Outlook or Thunderbird. (AOL does IMAP, which is very convenient). But then if you get a suspicious one, you just log in through the website to reply. (Also worth a test.)
