Connectionists: 3490 fake conferences organized by WASET

[Wlodzislaw Duch]

Dear Colleagues,

 

checking the web address for the next ICANN 2013 International Conference on
Artificial Neural Networks (which is run by the European Neural Networks
Society every year) we have found the following WASET conference site:

http://www.waset.org/conferences/2013/amsterdam/icann/

 

Identical name, but no logo of ENNS, no chairman, it claims to be 34th
ICANN, but actually we had so far only 22 conferences in this series, and
the 2013 will be in Sophia in September (see http://www.e-nns.org), not in
May in Amsterdam.  The name has been hijacked and I doubt that such
conference will ever take place.

 

Investigating further we have found that the conference has no chairman, and
is run by unknown people, with few exceptions of people who may not even
know that they are in the committee or may have carelessly accepted an
invitation. And then looking at the list of conferences we have found that
there are 3490 conferences allegedly organized by WASET! Some of them I
could easily identify as well-known conferences that got also high numbers
in front to make you think that they have been organized many times.

Some of them are in Singapore. A search in the internet shows that many
people already lost 450 Euro paying conference fees. See the story

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/i_love_taiwan/TFx1WwltKl
Q

 

The whole scam seems to be connected to Azerbaijan, where WASET is
registered, and it seems to be run by Turkish people.

Incidentally Wikipedia redirects WASET to Thebes, ancient city in Egypt. As
this information is not yet easily found in the Internet please warn your
friends not to fall in this trap, as well as do not accept to be a member of
such conferences. Please tell me if you know about some international police
efforts to follow such scams, perhaps there is a way to block their site.

 

Regards,

Wlodek Duch 

______________

 <http://www.google.com/search?q=W.+Duch> Google: W. Duch 

 

 

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