Site security notices Please take the time to read the section entitled "protecting yourself" this contains important information designed to help you better protect yourself against fraudulent adverts on internet. Security alerts are located further down on this page. Protecting yourself Security alerts Report a security issue

Protecting yourself

Escrow declarations

Avbooking have introduced a requirement for escrow declarations on all adverts placed or modified after 24.03.2008. Adverts placed before this date and not modified after this date will not have an escrow declaration. Escrow declarations are intended to help our site visitors by providing advance information about the advertisers intention of involving a third party company in transacations for the item(s) advertised. It is important to remember that these declarations are provided by the advertiser and should not be considered a guarantee that an escrow company is legitimate. Where an escrow company in involved in a advert, we strongly recommend that you carefully check the credentials of the company concerned thouroughly through official channels and check internet for any reports about problems with the company. DO NOT rely solely on the escrow companies website for information, many "fake" escrow websites can appear very professional and look 100% legitimate. Bottom line? Be suspicious of any transaction involving an untraceable or anonymous payment method. Check out any escrow company involved through official channels before entering into a deal. Check internet for any reports about problems with the company that is involved. Check how long the website for the escrow company has been registered using a "whois" service. Be suspicious of advertisers that stray from the declaration they have made in their advert. If in any doubt, seriously consider not continuing with the transaction. Useful links https://www.escrow.com/fic/index.asp http://www.westernunion.com/WUCOMWEB/staticMid.do?method=load&pagename=fraudIndex http://escrow-fraud.com/ http://www.ic3.gov/preventiontips.aspx

Fraudulent adverts

Here at avbooking we try our best to keep fraudulent adverts off of the system, such as the time someone tried to place an advert posing as a "military contractor" charged with the disposal of "airworthy" Ex-Nigerian airforce C-130's into the public domain. A quick check of the aircraft registration database showed these aircraft to be scrapped or destroyed. This does not mean that bad adverts cannot slip past us, just that we try our best to filter out the most obvious scams. You should always treat any advert placed on this system (or any other internet site for that matter) with caution. If you see something suspicious on our site, please help us by bringing it to our attention using our contact form (remember to include the advert code or the webpage address). Should you get caught up in an obvious fraud, we suggest that you report it to the law enforcement agency that is most relevant for your location. Remember that although you might not be fooled by a fraudulent advert yourself, by reporting these things you are helping to reduce the risk of anyone else being scammed.

Security alerts
Mon 4th February 2008
Responses from Mr Williams Major
	Seems like Nigeria has a whole bunch of new IP addresses to play with. A large number of responses were sent to a number of our advertisers. After checking the Afrinic database (African IP registrations) we have decided to block the entire 41.X.X.X range. This is a huge range and will affect many African countries. We will re-evalute removing blocking from sub-sections of this range later.
Tue 22nd January 2008
Advert responses from Thomas Cole
	Earlier today there were a large number of responses from Thomas Cole giving Cardiff as his location and UK phone numbers. The IP trace shows that these emails originated from NIGERIA. As a result, all IP addresses in the range 41.204.224.0 - 41.204.227.255 have been blocked from the site. If you have received a response from this person, we suggest that treat it as highly suspicious.
Sat 18th March 2006
Emails from Ghana pretending to be from Australia
	A small number of responses were sent from suzzy8000@yahoo.com.au in response to adverts on our system. The IP address for these emails were from a network in Ghana. We picked this up as the responses were being sent and immediately blocked the offending IP. All IP's for the offending network have now been blocked from our servers.
Fri 23rd December 2005
Advert responses 23 Dec 2005
	A response was sent to multiple adverts (approx 40) at the rate of roughly 15 responses per minute from the same user. The adverts responded to were different geographical locations (USA/Canada/UK) This seems highly suspicious to us. If you have received the following response (name removed) please treat this with caution! Message hello my name is xxxxxx i saw your advert for sale and am very intrested in buying it so i will like you to give me the lat selling price nad i also want you to know that am my payment methold is wire transfer so if you will like this methold of payment pls get bak to me thanks
Mon 28th November 2005
Advert responses 28 Nov 2005
	Today there was another batch of responses sent to just about every advertiser (including our own test adverts) with a sob story and requesting assistance retrieving $10m. This is yet another 914 scam. The originating IP for these responses was the Ivory Coast. Needless to say, the entire range of IPs for this ISP have now been blocked on our server (adding to an increasingly long blocking list of African and Asian IP's). If you have received an email from priceller_mbuto3000@yahoo.ca, we recommend that you do not respond to this in any way.