![]() | A news item involving Liliane Bettencourt was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 22 September 2017. | ![]() |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
"PARIS (AFP) – France's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, has been forced to insist she is of sound mind after she gave more than a billion dollars in gifts to a society photographer."
Complete article at Yahoo! News AFP: Ageing L'Oreal heiress defends billion-dollar giveaway —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.109.212.94 ( talk) 19:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/bernard-madoff/3932897/Bernard-Madoff-fraud-LOreal-heiress-Liliane-Bettencourt-invested-money.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.152.112.97 ( talk) 15:32, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Oh no wait my mistake —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.152.112.97 ( talk) 15:34, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
I received a scam email referencing this page. It might be worth mentioning something on the page. Email text follows:
Hello, I, Liliane authenticate this email. You can read about me on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliane_Bettencourt I write to you because I intend to give to you a portion of my Net-worth, hoping it would be of help to you and others too. Respond for confirmation. With love, Liliane Bettencourt ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
I also recieved an email.... since this is a real person i suggest a warning box be created to inform viewers of this page of the likelyhood of fraud if referred here by a giveaway email 22:03, 25 April 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qazwiz ( talk • contribs)
I also just got this scam. I clicked through to consider editing what I figured would be a fake page to point this out, but I see it's a real page... just obviously unrelated to the scam. 74.104.141.11 ( talk) 21:49, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
spam is still being sent out, got this a couple of hours ago:
I, Liliane Bettencourt Authenticate this email of 3.5M USD grant to you, please view my link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliane_Bettencourt and Email me on Bettencourtliliane88@rogers.com for more info
20:39, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Spam was also sent on 10 August 2014 referencing the article to defend legitimacy of the offer, it is still scam no matter what. I got one. The scdam email warning template was not present on the page as of the timestamp of this comment on this talk page. Article needs to be locked down after the template is placed on the page again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A601:506:5901:4477:350:2761:7DC2 ( talk) 13:44, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
I, too, just received the same email today. I have to say, I totally disagree with [[User:NeilN|. I do not think we should just sit by and do nothing. I think by not saying anything at all about the scam you are tacitly aiding the scammers. Surely, a simple note at the beginning of the article is in order. Or, barring that, a link to a separate article about the "Bettencourt Scam" might be doable? Todd Carnes ( talk) 17:40, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
Thank you to User:98.103.164.18 for these two:
Screech1616 ( talk) 11:21, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
References
As the Liliane Bettencourt email scam is a common one (based on the amount of users that have tried to edit the warning at the top of the page), I have added a Wikipedia article for it. The addition of the article allows us to add references without cluttering up the Liliane Bettencourt page. In addition, the "For information about email scam, see Liliane Bettencourt email scam." notice at the top indirectly alerts users to the scam, while remaining "encyclopedic" on Wikipedia. IQAndreas ( talk) 22:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
Just to give all a heads up that this scam is still going. I got this on a GoC email address.
I'm Ali Thierry Kier, to authenticate this email as instructed by mademosielle liliane, i would like you to get to know more about mademoiselle liliane, you can read about about Her Heiress on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliane_Bettencourt I write to you because she intend to give and extend the gesture for the purpose of making you her beneficiary with a 10% Donation portion of her treasury Net-worth which she want you to use for a charity and fund raising organization to help contribute to your environment and community. Onbehalf of LBS as authorised by mademoiselle liliane to cede the beneficary donation out as gift to you hoping it would be of help to you and others too in your enviroment and community at large. For further procession Respond for confirmation. My Email: lilianebettencourt_lbf@yahoo.fr With love, LBS FONDATION DIRECTOR, Ali Thierry Kier
There are some additions and changes, but theyr are still referring to this article for legitimacy. 131.137.245.209 ( talk) 15:36, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
In light of repeated removals of warnings regarding this Wikipedia page being used for scam emails, I have invoked WP:Ignore All Rules, since there really is no clear rule on what to do when Wikipedia is being directly used to scam people. In this case, scammers are linking DIRECTLY to the Wikipedia page.
Wikipedia is about making a positive impact on people's lives, and providing them accurate information. In this case, a factual Wikipedia page is being used by scammers for non-factual purposes, in order to take advantage of others through Advance Fee Fraud scams.
The decision to invoke WP:IAR was not taken lightly, and in this case I feel is very appropriate.
Editors keep removing the warnings, but only with the justification that it's "not encyclopedic". I think Wikipedia has evolved beyond just being an encyclopedia, since it is used and updated real time.
I also challenge any editor who wants to remove the warning - which does more harm or more good?
The warning is only one line in italics at the beginning of the article, and does not impact the content of the article, or affect its' NPOV. Very little harm is done by having the warning present, while at the same time the good it can do is tremendous - it could prevent many people from falling for these scams.
On the flipside, should the warning be removed, people may believe the emails are genuine, since they refer to a trusted source (Wikipedia).
173.59.201.71 ( talk) 13:31, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
The lede lists her as the second richest, the Forbes ranking lists her as second richest. Please verify. GreaseballNYC ( talk) 21:08, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
The scam is still ongoing. It seems to have been running more than a year, using different emails. It is also worthy to note that if it wasn't successful (note that due to the huge volume of emails sent, scams are profitable with extremely slow percentages), the spammers would have changed to impersonate a different target or stop linking with Wikipedia.
Note that the live nature of Wikipedia allows us to expose their (fallacious) argument from authority.
I think we as netizens should try to dismantle them when able to. We already added warnings in the past when old page versions were used in scams. [2]
I don't think it deserves its own article, but a warning at the top of the page (until the scam stops) would be appropiate.
Answering to twsx above, I do think that when a scam references the online version of a newspaper to "verify" the death of his wealthy client with no next of kin (even though that simply states "a plane crashed two years ago"), they should add a warning.
The scam is harming both the subject ("she is a scammer") and Wikipedia image ("it's a fake article" / "the admins protect the scammers"). As well as paving the way for further abuse of Wikipedia as "source" in more scams.
This issue also accounts for more than 50% of edits to the article in the last months. Sometimes by the same user, but most often from independent people either adding a warning or vandalising the scammer page:
It is my opinion that the history of the article and its talk page clearly shows the existance of such scam, but if other editors insist in having a more reliable source before warning that Liliane Bettencourt is not giving out her money, I don't think it would be hard to get a CERT to confirm the scam prevalence (hopefully including some numbers).
What would you consider necessary before adding a one-line notice about the scam?
Platonides ( talk) 00:18, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
Still going strong in 2016… — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.213.156.169 ( talk) 09:28, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Is it possible to automatically change the net worth to whatever it says here http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime or can it only be done manually -- 88.111.129.157 ( talk) 20:06, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Liliane Bettencourt. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 20:53, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Liliane Bettencourt. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 08:13, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
![]() | A news item involving Liliane Bettencourt was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 22 September 2017. | ![]() |
![]() | This ![]() It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
"PARIS (AFP) – France's richest woman, L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt, has been forced to insist she is of sound mind after she gave more than a billion dollars in gifts to a society photographer."
Complete article at Yahoo! News AFP: Ageing L'Oreal heiress defends billion-dollar giveaway —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.109.212.94 ( talk) 19:25, 18 December 2008 (UTC)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/bernard-madoff/3932897/Bernard-Madoff-fraud-LOreal-heiress-Liliane-Bettencourt-invested-money.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.152.112.97 ( talk) 15:32, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
Oh no wait my mistake —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.152.112.97 ( talk) 15:34, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
I received a scam email referencing this page. It might be worth mentioning something on the page. Email text follows:
Hello, I, Liliane authenticate this email. You can read about me on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliane_Bettencourt I write to you because I intend to give to you a portion of my Net-worth, hoping it would be of help to you and others too. Respond for confirmation. With love, Liliane Bettencourt ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
I also recieved an email.... since this is a real person i suggest a warning box be created to inform viewers of this page of the likelyhood of fraud if referred here by a giveaway email 22:03, 25 April 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Qazwiz ( talk • contribs)
I also just got this scam. I clicked through to consider editing what I figured would be a fake page to point this out, but I see it's a real page... just obviously unrelated to the scam. 74.104.141.11 ( talk) 21:49, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
spam is still being sent out, got this a couple of hours ago:
I, Liliane Bettencourt Authenticate this email of 3.5M USD grant to you, please view my link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliane_Bettencourt and Email me on Bettencourtliliane88@rogers.com for more info
20:39, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
Spam was also sent on 10 August 2014 referencing the article to defend legitimacy of the offer, it is still scam no matter what. I got one. The scdam email warning template was not present on the page as of the timestamp of this comment on this talk page. Article needs to be locked down after the template is placed on the page again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:A601:506:5901:4477:350:2761:7DC2 ( talk) 13:44, 10 August 2014 (UTC)
I, too, just received the same email today. I have to say, I totally disagree with [[User:NeilN|. I do not think we should just sit by and do nothing. I think by not saying anything at all about the scam you are tacitly aiding the scammers. Surely, a simple note at the beginning of the article is in order. Or, barring that, a link to a separate article about the "Bettencourt Scam" might be doable? Todd Carnes ( talk) 17:40, 11 October 2014 (UTC)
Thank you to User:98.103.164.18 for these two:
Screech1616 ( talk) 11:21, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
References
As the Liliane Bettencourt email scam is a common one (based on the amount of users that have tried to edit the warning at the top of the page), I have added a Wikipedia article for it. The addition of the article allows us to add references without cluttering up the Liliane Bettencourt page. In addition, the "For information about email scam, see Liliane Bettencourt email scam." notice at the top indirectly alerts users to the scam, while remaining "encyclopedic" on Wikipedia. IQAndreas ( talk) 22:37, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
Just to give all a heads up that this scam is still going. I got this on a GoC email address.
I'm Ali Thierry Kier, to authenticate this email as instructed by mademosielle liliane, i would like you to get to know more about mademoiselle liliane, you can read about about Her Heiress on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liliane_Bettencourt I write to you because she intend to give and extend the gesture for the purpose of making you her beneficiary with a 10% Donation portion of her treasury Net-worth which she want you to use for a charity and fund raising organization to help contribute to your environment and community. Onbehalf of LBS as authorised by mademoiselle liliane to cede the beneficary donation out as gift to you hoping it would be of help to you and others too in your enviroment and community at large. For further procession Respond for confirmation. My Email: lilianebettencourt_lbf@yahoo.fr With love, LBS FONDATION DIRECTOR, Ali Thierry Kier
There are some additions and changes, but theyr are still referring to this article for legitimacy. 131.137.245.209 ( talk) 15:36, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
In light of repeated removals of warnings regarding this Wikipedia page being used for scam emails, I have invoked WP:Ignore All Rules, since there really is no clear rule on what to do when Wikipedia is being directly used to scam people. In this case, scammers are linking DIRECTLY to the Wikipedia page.
Wikipedia is about making a positive impact on people's lives, and providing them accurate information. In this case, a factual Wikipedia page is being used by scammers for non-factual purposes, in order to take advantage of others through Advance Fee Fraud scams.
The decision to invoke WP:IAR was not taken lightly, and in this case I feel is very appropriate.
Editors keep removing the warnings, but only with the justification that it's "not encyclopedic". I think Wikipedia has evolved beyond just being an encyclopedia, since it is used and updated real time.
I also challenge any editor who wants to remove the warning - which does more harm or more good?
The warning is only one line in italics at the beginning of the article, and does not impact the content of the article, or affect its' NPOV. Very little harm is done by having the warning present, while at the same time the good it can do is tremendous - it could prevent many people from falling for these scams.
On the flipside, should the warning be removed, people may believe the emails are genuine, since they refer to a trusted source (Wikipedia).
173.59.201.71 ( talk) 13:31, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
The lede lists her as the second richest, the Forbes ranking lists her as second richest. Please verify. GreaseballNYC ( talk) 21:08, 14 June 2014 (UTC)
The scam is still ongoing. It seems to have been running more than a year, using different emails. It is also worthy to note that if it wasn't successful (note that due to the huge volume of emails sent, scams are profitable with extremely slow percentages), the spammers would have changed to impersonate a different target or stop linking with Wikipedia.
Note that the live nature of Wikipedia allows us to expose their (fallacious) argument from authority.
I think we as netizens should try to dismantle them when able to. We already added warnings in the past when old page versions were used in scams. [2]
I don't think it deserves its own article, but a warning at the top of the page (until the scam stops) would be appropiate.
Answering to twsx above, I do think that when a scam references the online version of a newspaper to "verify" the death of his wealthy client with no next of kin (even though that simply states "a plane crashed two years ago"), they should add a warning.
The scam is harming both the subject ("she is a scammer") and Wikipedia image ("it's a fake article" / "the admins protect the scammers"). As well as paving the way for further abuse of Wikipedia as "source" in more scams.
This issue also accounts for more than 50% of edits to the article in the last months. Sometimes by the same user, but most often from independent people either adding a warning or vandalising the scammer page:
It is my opinion that the history of the article and its talk page clearly shows the existance of such scam, but if other editors insist in having a more reliable source before warning that Liliane Bettencourt is not giving out her money, I don't think it would be hard to get a CERT to confirm the scam prevalence (hopefully including some numbers).
What would you consider necessary before adding a one-line notice about the scam?
Platonides ( talk) 00:18, 7 December 2014 (UTC)
Still going strong in 2016… — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.213.156.169 ( talk) 09:28, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Is it possible to automatically change the net worth to whatever it says here http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime or can it only be done manually -- 88.111.129.157 ( talk) 20:06, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified 2 external links on Liliane Bettencourt. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 20:53, 15 May 2017 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Liliane Bettencourt. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018.
After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than
regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors
have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the
RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{
source check}}
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 08:13, 30 November 2017 (UTC)