One quiet evening, looking for casual encounters on Gumtree...

One small sports mishap on a Saturday morning and I ended up having to stay the night in. Looking through ads on Gumtree and I became intrigued by the "casuals" section.

You get the believable ads:

I'll keep in short, I'm a fit girl, quite loud but with a good sense of humour. Not after a boyfriend, too much bother, just looking for a guy for some regular fun. Not too much to ask?

But then there are the less believable ones too:

Please lick me all over... Then fuck me. if thats not to the point then tell me what is... No strings needed. That's all I want. If it's important - I am 21, fun and sexy as hell.

Do girls really talk like this? Even if they have been sex starved for a decade?

Now what happens if I were reply to any of these...? So, first step: create a new gmail account! There's no way I'm giving out my real email address like this.

After a few moments, several attempts and a new random gmail account "spolops21", I'm off sending inviting and (dare I say) witty replies to as many ads as I can.

Some 45mins later, the first reply arrives. I'm all giddy and excited, can this be start of some exciting secret encounters?! It was from this ad:

Dirty sex in London is on the menu. Are you the dish of the day? Age: 21

Date posted: Saturday 20th December

Location: Wandsworth

Im 21 and single. Before I settle down, I want to play around, have some fun and to satisfy my high sex drive. I live near the centre of London and work in a local pub, you may have seen me. I'm a very energetic woman who is willing to try anything if it's fun. I would also love to try a bit of sexy modelling. Tell me what you are into, a long nice line means we will meet up. I like to have sex on my first date but it must be safe. I enjoy back seats of cars as much as I like warm beds. I enjoy oral, both ways, with the man who really turns me on, I also like anal. I am rather flexible when it comes to choosing a sex partner, so contact me.

Yep, that sounds like a real classy kind of gal, especially the bit about sex on first dates and anal.

Her email is quite innocent sounding though, very nice name too Chloe...

Things are already sounding a bit fishy... well more fishy than the original language of the post. For a start the writing style and spelling is really bad. But then let's look a bit at the email headers:

Delivered-To: spolops21@gmail.com
Received: by 10.214.150.19 with SMTP id x19cs240445qad;
Sat, 20 Dec 2008 10:47:41 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.67.89.15 with SMTP id r15mr5413011ugl.59.1229798860769;
Sat, 20 Dec 2008 10:47:40 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path: 
Received: from server.n-a-r.info ([212.143.230.60])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id e5si5119626ugf.24.2008.12.20.10.47.39;
Sat, 20 Dec 2008 10:47:40 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: error (google.com: error in processing during lookup of admin@server.n-a-r.info: DNS timeout) client-ip=212.143.230.60;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=temperror (google.com: error in processing during lookup of admin@server.n-a-r.info: DNS timeout) smtp.mail=admin@server.n-a-r.info
Received: from admin by server.n-a-r.info with local (Exim 4.63)
(envelope-from )
id 1LE6mC-0001zJ-Mp
for spolops21@gmail.com; Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:42:13 +0200
Content-Type: text/html; charset="windows-1251"
To: spolops21@gmail.com
From: chloe7jones2@gmail.com
Subject: RE: Your Gumtree.com ad #32442227: Dirty sex in London is on the menu. Are you the dish of the day?
Message-Id: 
Sender:  
Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 20:42:12 +0200

hi you! thanks 4 replying to the ad!
it took a bit to get back as ur mail was stuck in the junk folder, but i put u in my contacts now!
so, what's up? so come on then, let me know a bit more about you!
in the middle of trying to get a picture for you to see, wanna see it? :P
luv Chloe xx

Oh very interesting... How often does someone use Gmail and not the actual web interface. If you look up there, there's a step where another mail server hands over the email to the Gmail mail servers:

Received: from server.n-a-r.info ([212.143.230.60])

You would not see this if you are using just the Gmail web interface. So we have a lonely 21yr old girl in Wandsworth, gagging for some anal on her first date, using her own mail server which mails through a Gmail account.

Time for some more investigation, so first a quick install of Tor to hide my own PC location and the Torbutton for easier use within Firefox. In the meantime I fire off a quick reply to oh-sweet Chloe, my palms sweating with excitement at making contact with a real girl:
Back to her email header. Checking out the remote mail server IP gives us:

Non-authoritative answer:
60.230.143.212.in-addr.arpa name = 60.sharatim.co.il.

Authoritative answers can be found from:
230.143.212.in-addr.arpa    nameserver = sdns.goldenlines.net.il.
230.143.212.in-addr.arpa    nameserver = pdns.goldenlines.net.il.
pdns.goldenlines.net.il internet address = 212.117.129.3
sdns.goldenlines.net.il internet address = 212.117.128.6

Israel... huh. Not Wandsworth. Although she could be a nice Jewish girl, just using her mail server in Israel... hey Chloe, mah koreh?

There's also a server name in that header n-a-r.info, so looking at a WHOIS for it reveals some registrant details... from Russia:
Registrant Name:George Gorsky
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street1:Lenina st 319
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Rostov
Registrant State/Province:Not Applicable
Registrant Postal Code:347987
Registrant Country:RU
Registrant Phone:+7.8632365138
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:alex_moe@mail.ru

Russia, huh........ So Chloe is maybe a Russian immigrant to Israel, now living in Wansdworth... it's plausible... maybe... privyet Chloe!!

Let's do some more checks... let's see if there's any website on 60.sharatim.co.il. Nope, it's just an Apache web server default install page:
Maybe www.sharatim.co.il has something interesting... Nope, just a hosting company website:
Let's check if there is some other website sharing that initial IP address: http://www.robtex.com/ip/212.143.230.60.html and n-a-r.info pops up again. So, time to do a quick browser check against this site and we do get something very interesting:
Instructions how to create a conversation from a girl character! My image of the dream gal has been shattered.

Meanwhile another reply from Chloe and she includes a link to her picture:
And it's a very classy, artsy kind of photo:
Let's ask Chloe for more... don't know why I'm even trying to be mildly interested, maybe holding out hope that it is not all fake, that there is a real girl there in need of sex and not an automated chat-bot:

Which is followed by another reply from Chloe:
Poor girl, she's being thwarted by technology, but at least she's kind enough to point me to a paid site: http://www.sexintheuk.com where she also goes by the name of sexykitten54321:
But before I leave, let's send one last email to Chloe, and Alex Moe from n-a-r.info:

So, there you have it... the conclusion is: real girls don't talk like that!! Quit being silly. Gumtree casuals are more than likely to be complete scams, so get out of the house and try to meet real girls.

Now, how can get my hours of this evening back...