What is Pharming?

Pharming combines the words “phishing” and “farming” to indicate large scale phishing attempts.

Phishing is online fraud where a scammer tries to trick you into giving them your personal information e.g. login and password, bank details etc. The scammer does this by pretending to be someone you would trust – e.g. a government department or a high street brand or BT or British gas etc.

The scammer gets you to click a link, believing it is to a reputable organisation but it is the scammer’s website and will steal your confidential information.

Pharming is the large scale version of this and involves either downloading malicious code to your computer which then redirects your browser to the scammer’s website, unbeknownst to you. Or it can involve changes to your Internet router that again automatically redirect your browser without your knowledge.

The Panix Attack

On 15th January 2005, the domain name for a large New York ISP, Panix, was hijacked and redirected to a website in Australia. The domain was restored two days later and ICANN’s review blames Melbourne IT. It appears they received a DNS change request and did not did not get express authorisation from the registrant in accordance with ICANN’s Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy.

Protection Against Pharming

Make sure you have strong passwords in place, anti-virus and anti-malware installed and staff are trained to avoid suspicious websites, links in emails, not to open unexpected attached files etc.

Do enter your email address and click on the subscribe button on top right to keep up to date with new posts.

December 3, 2019

Digital Pollution Table

The Digital World is increasingly polluted with lies, scams, endless Marketing and general rubbish – spam, fake products, fake services, fake news, falsified reviews, idiots pouring out meaningless drivel onto the Internet to satisfy their own egos, celebrity trivia and more and all of this drowns out the useful, helpful and honest content.

Some suggestions for positive and negative contributions in the Digital World

Positive	Negative

Meaningful reviews of products, services and companies	Fake or inaccurate reviews or paid for reviews
Search Engine Optimisation – Honest backlinks – Structured Content – Honest, original content – Honest blog posts, articles etc.	Black SEO or cheat SEO – Paid for backlinks – False structuring – Faked content – Bought blog posts, articles etc.
Organic growth in friends, followers, likes etc. on social media	Paid for growth in friends, followers, likes etc. on social media
Accurate advertising	Misleading advertising
Truthful News	Fake News
Useful comments on blogs, forums, websites etc.	Spam comments on blogs, forums, websites etc.

Emails to one or a few people	Emails cc’d to half the organisation
Useful newsletters	Newsletters produced to a schedule with no discernible content
FACTS	Opinions masquerading as Facts
Meaningful conversations	Vacuous, nasty or shouting conversations

What would you add to the positive side or negative side or both? Let me know by email.

December 2, 2019

Christian Donation 419 Scam

This is a classic 419 scam wrapped up as a Christian donation to charity.

419 scams are those where there is supposedly a large sum of money or gold or other ‘treasure’ available for the victim, but that leads to small payments for customs clearance or freight charges or insurance etc. and the victims has to make payments until they realise there is no treasure, just a scammer stealing their money.

The email claims to be from a Portuguese man named Ronald Davidson and tells a story of how he was very successful in business but was a horrible selfish person who has now found Jesus and wants to change his ways.

Plus, he has an incurable disease and $9.5 million to give away and needs your help to do so.

The story also gives excuses such as he cannot trust his family to disperse the fortune as he tried and was cheated by them. He cannot contact you by video as his illness is too severe and he can only be contacted by email.

These excuses are because contact by Skype for example would show he’s probably a young Nigerian man not an old Portuguese man dying from an incurable disease.

He wants 40% of the money to be donated to the recent earthquake/hurricane catastrophe (assuming there has been one) and 40% to a random charity and you get 20% for your troubles.

20% i.e. $1.9 million would be a good payment for so little effort but of course there is no fortune, just a scammer intent on stealing from anyone gullible enough to reply to the emails.

Do Share this post on social media – click on the post title then scroll down to the social media share buttons.

December 1, 2019

Stupidest Spam of the Week Toxic Towels

The title of the email is “These Are Toxic”.

So, that’s intended to worry and to intrigue people into reading the message.

“Those very same paper towels that you’re using regularly do massive damage to you and to our environment”.

Paper towels don’t really frighten anyone and the only way they could do massive damage is if a huge bale of paper towels fell on you.

So, it’s ludicrous but the scammer continues with a story about a super advanced technology that will eliminate your need for paper towels ever again.

There is a link to click which is for a video showing micro fibre towels that supposedly can clean anything using just water – no chemicals needed.

Micro fibre towels have been on sale in supermarkets for years – nothing new there except for a very stupid scammer looking for people even more stupid than him.

Do enter your email address and click on the subscribe button on top right to keep up to date with new posts.

November 30, 2019

Time-Wasters Update

Mohammed Abdulahim tells me he’s a relationship officer in a wealth management company and wants me to help him invest his customer’s money. He would have to pretty bad at his job to ask for investment guidance from strangers via spam emails. But of course, he’s a scammer looking to trap greedy people.

Win a £250 Morrisons gift card says the email. There is no such things as a £250 gift card from Morrisons and they have nothing to do with these scams. It’s just a phishing scams looking to get confidential information from people stupid enough to reply to the message.

Next is a more detailed message starting with the title “The #1 nutrient deficiency that’s making you ill”. It then goes on about how bacteria and viruses enter your body cells because of a deficiency, which of course the message sender can fix. In case you’re not convinced the end of the email also says that this nutrient will make you lose weight without otherwise changing your diet or doing any exercise. This scammer tells a good story but clearly thinks people are stupid. Let’s hope no-one is stupid enough to reply to him.

An email containing my payroll slip has good news – that I have a £295 winter holiday gift from the company I work for. However the email is from smokymountainnaturals and I do not work for them and have never hard of them so sadly it’s just a scam.

Yet another con targeting people suffering from diabetes. The title of this one is ‘It’s possible your beta cells look like this”. What are beta cells? The email doesn’t explain but it’s mean to sound scientific and the message continues with a story about how doing ‘this’ for just 5 seconds a day will control my blood sugar effortlessly. Sounds dramatic but is obviously yet another lie by a sick scammer.

Do click on the Facebook or Twitter icons on top right to follow Fight Back Ninja.

Get More Followers

The Panix Attack

Protection Against Pharming

Positive

Negative