Redisplay Messages: Compact | Brief | All | Full Show Messages: All | Without Replies| Author: | chetzler  | | Posted: | Mar 27, 2024 10:26 | | Subject: | Re: Fraudulent / Spam Emails Continue | | Viewed: | 51 times | | Topic: | Announce | |
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| In Announce, SylvainLS writes:
| | In Announce, Ziegelmeister writes:
| | I am -AB-SO-LUTE-LY- astonished that in 2024 people who use the internet are
still not vigilant enough to not fall for this stuff.
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Well, apparently, it’s BL’s fault to let phishers claim they are BrickLink, because
they are like “hawkers out front of your brick-and-mortar shop all day handing
out flyers to customers” and that you can chase by waving your broom in their
general direction 🤷♂️
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That comment seems to have gotten gotten under your skin. Why not reply to the
person who made it rather than griping about it to someone else almost a week
later? Unfortunately, as you know, you have misrepresented what I said. That
comment was about forum spammers, not phishers. You are usually so pedantic;
I’m surprised you would overlook such an important distinction.🤷♂️
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Mar 27, 2024 10:17 | | Subject: | Re: Fraudulent / Spam Emails Continue | | Viewed: | 49 times | | Topic: | Announce | |
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| In Announce, Ziegelmeister writes:
| | I am -AB-SO-LUTE-LY- astonished that in 2024 people who use the internet are
still not vigilant enough to not fall for this stuff.
|
I am astonished that people could think they would never fall for any type of
scam, especially those that don’t even operate a store here. Most people are
vigilant, but being constantly on guard leads to fatigue. Bad actors only have
to be successful ONCE. It costs them next to nothing to make thousands upon
thousands of attempts, and they will catch you the one time your guard slips
a little. But we have to be successful against EVERY attempt they make and it
costs us of time and energy to do that.
It’s easy to blame the victim until you become one. A major part of being vigilant
is being humble enough to recognize that you too could become a victim.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Mar 21, 2024 19:34 | | Subject: | Re: WARNING! Login from new device phishing emai | | Viewed: | 68 times | | Topic: | Problem | |
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| In Problem, waltzking writes:
| | As someone not in any LEGO groups (or at least not using my BL email address),
and am still getting the scam emails, I am certain it related to either the hack
or fake contact/orders on BL that can harvest seller emails. Had a lot of these
orders, immediate cancel request, and no contact there after a few months back.
I know it was to phish my seller info as often as the pattern was repeated exactly.
But even messages we reply to can do this as the system still lonks our email
to those. It really should not do this unless an order is placed, or even confirmed
as paid by the system (instant or seller marked). Simply put, contact info should
remain better protected until a transaction is deemed legit. BL is largely an
open book for all seller info if the party wanting to phish it knows how the
site works.
Waltzking
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Is there any need at all for buyers/sellers to see each other's email contact
info even on legitimate orders? Maybe I've been using instant checkout and
the pay now button for so long I have forgotton, but it has been a while since
a buyer has made a payment directly to my email address. Since BrickLink implemented
sales tax collection, all (at least all of my) payments are negotiated through
PayPal Marketplace.
Maybe other payment methods require an email address.
I know some people send photos via email (if only we could attach photos to a
BL message!).
I'd be perfectly happy to have "public-facing email address" be an
option that I can enable/disable at will.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Mar 21, 2024 14:15 | | Subject: | Re: WARNING! Login from new device phishing emai | | Viewed: | 56 times | | Topic: | Problem | |
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| In Problem, randyf writes:
| | In Problem, chetzler writes:
| | I don’t know why BrickLink has suddenly become such a juicy target.
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All of it started fairly shortly after all of the extremely unpopular part merges
started to actually occur. I have a strong feeling that a user here that was
very upset about the decisions made is having some "fun" at BrickLink's
expense.
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That feels like a stretch. The people that tend to get upset about some of BL’s
unpopular decisions (myself included) get upset because they love BrickLink.
I’d have trouble believing that one of those people would put in the time and
effort required to launch a phishing scheme that damages the thing they love
and at the same time subjects their fellow members to the collateral damage.
| |
And judging from the people who are receiving phishing emails (e.g I'm not),
the phisher is probably part of an online BrickLink group somewhere else (Facebook?
Discord?) that all of you are also part of or maybe they ordered from all of
the phishees in the past and already have all of your contact information to
use.
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I’m not active in any online groups.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Mar 21, 2024 12:27 | | Subject: | Re: WARNING! Login from new device phishing emai | | Viewed: | 57 times | | Topic: | Problem | |
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| In Problem, SylvainLS writes:
| | In Problem, chetzler writes:
| | […]
I don’t envy the task that management has ahead of them, but they need to take
some substantive action soon.
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But what kind of “substantive action” can BrickLink take?
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I don’t know, that’s above my pay grade. It’s not my job to solve the problems
of a billion dollar multinational company, but I have trouble accepting that
LEGO is powerless to do anything. As others have pointed out, this level of
insecurity in simply not found to this degree in other online arenas: not in
any of my online banking or investment portals, not in any medical billing portals,
not in any government/tax portals, not in other online marketplaces I use, not
even at LEGO.com. BrickLink stands out as a site that is starting to make me
a little nervous.
I understand the gummy spam is probably a low security concern, but it should
represent a HUGE image concern. If our brick-and-mortar business had hawkers
out front all day handing out flyers to our customers, I’d be derelict in my
duties if I wasn’t chasing them off and taking steps to make sure they didn’t
return. If I couldn’t even do that much, how much faith should our customers
have that we would address more serious concerns? It really looks like BL management
simply does not care about a public-facing piece of their website.
I do know that, at my primary business, if our customers were being inundated
with spam and fishing attempts, we’d have a lot of angry customers and that would
result in a lot of bad word of mouth around the community if we didn’t figure
out a way to rectify the situation quickly. Worse yet, if one of our employee’s
response was a bunch of excuses followed up with, “eh, what do want us to do?
You need to look out for yourself!” that employee would probably be fired and
we’d be in serious danger of going out of business.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Mar 21, 2024 10:19 | | Subject: | WARNING! Login from new device phishing emai | | Viewed: | 330 times | | Topic: | Problem | |
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| I had a couple of these this in my inbox this morning. They looked completely
legitimate. I did login in to BL from my work computer yesterday. When I have
logged in from work before, I have never gotten an email like this, but I thought
that maybe it was a new security feature.
Anyway, with a very official looking email in hand, I clicked the suggested logout
from all devices link and had just about entered my credentials in the new window
to log back in when I noticed two minor things that seemed just a bit off. I
won’t mention those things in case the fraudsters are reading. I looked at the
URL and it was very close to BrickLink’s (it was not the .net one that was mentioned
before). Needless to say, I immediately changed my PW and reenabled the one-time
PIN (I had turned it off because I was being repeatedly prompted for a new PIN
over very short time spans even when I hadn’t logged out). I’ll also be downloading
my inventory
BE DILIGENT! I’m a pretty suspicious person when it comes to online activity,
but, in my groggy state when I woke up this morning, I almost fell for a phishing
scheme presented as a very authentic looking email.
I don’t know why BrickLink has suddenly become such a juicy target. These people
have no hope of accessing any of my monetary accounts. I assume the goal is
to gain access to a legitimate shop so they can list high-dollar items to scam
other members.
I don’t envy the task that management has ahead of them, but they need to take
some substantive action soon. This is not a primary income stream for me, so
at some point, when all the gummy spam, phishing attempts, and slow helpdesk
response times become too much, I may simply close my store for a while. I don’t
need the extra headache of worrying about online security for a part-time job.
Had I fallen victim to this phishing attempt, I’m really not sure how much effort
I would have put into trying to recover my account. BrickLink just feels like
a dicier selling proposition lately.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Mar 14, 2024 18:50 | | Subject: | Re: Buyer accused me of selling fakes | | Viewed: | 49 times | | Topic: | Selling | |
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| | | Buyer might have become enraged after a half-assed google search resulted in
bad information. Lots of misleading information out there.
|
Good food for thought.
| | Sometimes these claims disappear after
the buyer calms down and./or realizes they have to back up their "claim"
by paying for return shipping.
|
*fingers crossed*
| | Some people advocate a video of you opening the return in case its a scam, but
PayPal historically hasn't accepted video as proof. Maybe they do now?
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It can't hurt, I'll keep that in mind, thanks
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Mar 14, 2024 18:47 | | Subject: | Re: Buyer accused me of selling fakes | | Viewed: | 42 times | | Topic: | Selling | |
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| In Selling, Ziegelmeister writes:
| | Counterfeits do exist. There _WAS_ an auction site I was buying through that
was selling Amazon and Walmart returns. If you're aware of how Walmart works,
it can be like Amazon where you're actually buying through a third party
through their store's platform.
|
Yeah, that's why I stick to buying direct from LEGO or brick-and-mortar stores
where I can inspect the merchandise. It's also why it's all the more
galling to be accused of selling fakes since I know with 100% certainty that
the figures were authentic since the sets came from the Mall of American LEGO
store.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Mar 14, 2024 15:49 | | Subject: | Buyer accused me of selling fakes | | Viewed: | 199 times | | Topic: | Selling | |
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| He went to straight to a PayPal dispute without even talking to me first. Aside
from the fact that I wouldn't even know where to find a fake or how to manufacture
one, why would I start selling fakes of medium-value figs (from the new Dune
set--figures about which no other buyers have complained!), after more than
10 years of selling here?
This is the first time anyone has ever accused me of something like this, so
I wasn't even sure how to respond. I was willing to give him the benefit
of the doubt. I first asked him what it would take to prove the figs were authentic:
no response. I then aksed if he'd be willing to present his case here in
the forum: again, no response. The only thing of substance he ever said was
that the limbs were loose and the quality was poor.
He wanted me to pay to ship the figs back, but I was advised by PayPal that he
should pay to ship them back (who even knows what I'd get back from someone
who is willing to make these kinds of claims). He didn't like this and escalated
the case.
Fortunately, I hadn't thrown out all of the set boxes after parting them
out, so I sent PayPal several high-res pictures of my LEGO store receipts (containing
set number and name), the boxes (to match the set number, name, and figs), a
note containing my name and the PayPal claim number, and a a screen shot of his
order.
Is there anything else I should consider doing? Is there anything else I can
do to protect myself?
He has just over 100 feedback with one negative from an NPB, but his stubbornness
and out-of-the-blue accusation is both galling and suspicious. Perhaps he has
done this with other sellers and no feedback was ever left by either party?
Any thoughts are appreciated.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Mar 12, 2024 13:10 | | Subject: | Anyone had order from member AndyGlideWell? | | Viewed: | 167 times | | Topic: | Selling | |
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| If so, would you mind sending me a PM?
Thanks
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Feb 13, 2024 15:53 | | Subject: | Re: Dupe Accounts to push Variant Merge Argument? | | Viewed: | 55 times | | Topic: | General | |
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| In General, wildchicken13 writes:
| | In General, chetzler writes:
| | Uh-huh, I see. Good thing he has you speaking on his behalf 
The specific figure of 60% alongside the word "compromise" was an unusual
editorial choice. It piqued my curiosity and left me wondering if there was
some deeper meaning.
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There was, in fact, and I'm glad you picked up on it. Many Americans know
neither history nor math.
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Hopefully, enough of us do.
| |
But on BrickLink, Americans are a minority. I wouldn't expect a Canadian
high school dropout to know the significance of that fraction.
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Ouch. Poor Nubs. 
| |
If USA, Minnesota means Minneapolis, I'm sorry.
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I'm not sure what you're apologizing for, but I'm not in The Cities.
| |
But if you read the rest of my post, you'll see that I'm actually embracing
diversity. The last line is just a facetious suggestion, as ridiculous as the
original it parodies.
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I did read your entire post. I just wanted to make sure that I did see what
I thought I saw: a comparison between the BrickLink catalog changes and the historical
devaluing of hundreds of thousands of enslaved African people. Thank you for
clarifying.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Feb 13, 2024 14:37 | | Subject: | Re: Dupe Accounts to push Variant Merge Argument? | | Viewed: | 51 times | | Topic: | General | |
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| In General, Nubs_Select writes:
| | In General, chetzler writes:
| | In General, Nubs_Select writes:
| | In General, chetzler writes:
| | | | Personally, I've to propose a compromise: Keep 60% of the variants in the
catalog…
|
So, it sounds like you are suggesting a 3/5 compromise? Can you elaborate on
this a little bit for anyone who might not understand how or why you arrived
at this number?
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It’s a joke 
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Oh… 
Maybe I missed the humor. Can you explain it?
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Wildchicken loves to say funny things so since everyone is saying keep them all
or get rid of them all, etc he said let’s just keep 60% as a compromise joke
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Uh-huh, I see. Good thing he has you speaking on his behalf
The specific figure of 60% alongside the word "compromise" was an unusual
editorial choice. It piqued my curiosity and left me wondering if there was
some deeper meaning.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Feb 13, 2024 13:33 | | Subject: | Re: Dupe Accounts to push Variant Merge Argument? | | Viewed: | 45 times | | Topic: | General | |
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| In General, Nubs_Select writes:
| | In General, chetzler writes:
| | | | Personally, I've to propose a compromise: Keep 60% of the variants in the
catalog…
|
So, it sounds like you are suggesting a 3/5 compromise? Can you elaborate on
this a little bit for anyone who might not understand how or why you arrived
at this number?
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It’s a joke
|
Oh…
Maybe I missed the humor. Can you explain it?
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Feb 13, 2024 12:03 | | Subject: | Re: Dupe Accounts to push Variant Merge Argument? | | Viewed: | 46 times | | Topic: | General | |
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| | | Personally, I've to propose a compromise: Keep 60% of the variants in the
catalog…
|
So, it sounds like you are suggesting a 3/5 compromise? Can you elaborate on
this a little bit for anyone who might not understand how or why you arrived
at this number?
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Feb 4, 2024 10:46 | | Subject: | Re: Neo-Classic 60430 | | Viewed: | 34 times | | Topic: | My Own Creation | |
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| In My Own Creation, peregrinator writes:
| | In My Own Creation, chetzler writes:
| | I just got my son this set and I think it one of the best LEGO spaceships I’ve
seen in a long time, especially at a $20 price point. I’ve seen a few re-skins
of this set in Blacktron I, Futuron, and Space Police II liveries, but I haven’t
yet seen a classic space version. To that end, I made my own to show him what
things looked like back in Dad’s day. Now we have matching ships to go exploring.
|
Awesome!
My younger son is fond of the M-tron theme (his first name starts with M) so
we built an M-tron version of one of the 10497 alt builds
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Looks great! Re-skins are fun little side projects. One of my favorites was
from this guy. He not only revived the various space themes, but also had fun
with some town themes.
-Ward
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Feb 3, 2024 19:12 | | Subject: | Neo-Classic 60430 | | Viewed: | 108 times | | Topic: | My Own Creation | |
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| I just got my son this set and I think it one of the best LEGO spaceships I’ve
seen in a long time, especially at a $20 price point. I’ve seen a few re-skins
of this set in Blacktron I, Futuron, and Space Police II liveries, but I haven’t
yet seen a classic space version. To that end, I made my own to show him what
things looked like back in Dad’s day. Now we have matching ships to go exploring.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Jan 13, 2024 19:53 | | Subject: | Re: Finding mini figures series 25 is super easy! | | Viewed: | 117 times | | Topic: | LEGO products | |
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| In LEGO products, Saitolegos writes:
| | Just found out that if you scan the Q.R. Code on the bottom of the CMFs boxes
using the brick search app than it will tell you which one is inside!
|
I can confirm this; I just went 5 for 5 at a Barnes & Noble. But unfortunately
there is a catch: it only works if the box has a “large” QR code (see picture:
top box is a large code). Hopefully this trend continues. I remember that the
first two CMF series had unique bar codes back in 2010 before code readers were
ubiquitous, but LEGO quickly put a stop to that.
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Jun 28, 2023 17:22 | | Subject: | 15 Colors -- 60% off | | Viewed: | 52 times | | Topic: | Sales | |
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| Sure, they're not the most popular colors, but surely someone has need of
some!
All parts (except minifig parts) in the following colors have been set to 60%
off:
Bright Light Blue
Bright Light Orange
Bright Light Yellow
Bright Pink
Dark Pink
Dark Purple
Lavender
Light Aqua
Lime
Magenta
Medium Azure
Medium Lavender
Orange
Yellowish Green
Trans-Dark Pink
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| Author: | chetzler | | Posted: | Jun 3, 2023 13:23 | | Subject: | We've got the clones! 20% off of 5 | | Viewed: | 69 times | | Topic: | Sales | |
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| No, not clone bricks, clone troopers!
Commander Cody, 187th, 212th, 501st and others:
https://store.bricklink.com/chetzler?p=chetzler#/shop?o={%22q%22:%22clone%20trooper%20phase%22,%22pgSize%22:50,%22showHomeItems%22:0}
Buy any 5 different clone troopers and we'll give you 20% off those
items. We will apply the discount during invoicing (be sure to request invoice)
or we will prepare and reserve a special super lot for you if you prefer.
If you buy 8 different clone troopers we will give you 20% off those
items and free US domestic shipping.
----------------------------------------
We also recently parted out five
and we still have a super lot of three classic space minifigs:
https://store.bricklink.com/chetzler&itemID=349727219#/shop?o={%22q%22:%2270554%22,%22pgSize%22:50,%22showHomeItems%22:0}
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USA, Minnesota
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