Author: comptroller

January 14, 2023

Time-Wasters Update

“Put one drop of this liquid under your tongue after eating and you can forget about visits to your doctor”. Is the opening line of yet another diabetes scam. It is obviously impossible, but scammers continue as long as people click to watch the video or to see ‘proof’. Scammers just make up any rubbish and send it out in millions of emails. You might think that surely people have stopped responding to such drivel – but not yet.

“Science has finally caught up with the Bible”. A strange start to an email but designed to get your interest. The scam is actually just another magic diet ‘trick’. This one claims you not only don’t have to diet but can even eat more sugary and fatty foods than ever and still lose 28 pounds in a month. It also reverses diabetes – this secret trick is supposedly in the bible. Pathetic lies as usual.

“Your APPLE ID has been automatically disabled”. “We sent you an email some time ago to fix this problem with your account”. This is a simple phishing email – the scammer wants your APPLE login and password so no doubt there is a fake website that looks like APPLE and clicking the link to ‘fix the problem’ will take you to that phishing site. Never respond to such emails. If you think that there could be a problem with an account, then go to the website or contact the organisation directly.

The scammer from cardioclr.beauty claims that a mysterious tar like substance will instantly clear your arteries of plaque and your heart will be pumping like it did when you were 20 years old. It is a substance called Shilajit that is used in Indian Ayurvedic medicine. There is such a medicine but no-one but scammers makes such ridiculous claims for it. Just the usual rubbish from a scammer jumping on any band wagon thing to make their own overblown claims and steal from people.

“Royal Mail informs you that your payment number 561524442/29019-290912/23091299 is still pending instructions from you”. No it isn’t – just rubbish from a scammer using the email address @lotsliquidation.com which is obviously not Royal Mail. Scammers keep sending this stuff from Royal Mail or courier companies because so many people now rely on such deliveries. Always be careful and don’t click links in unsolicited emails.

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January 11, 2023

Who Do People Contact Over Scams

I assume that many people when scammed contact the Police and probably talk with family, friends and neighbours in order to warn them.

However a legal web site surveyed people on this and the results are a little surprising.

This is a very small scale survey but is interesting.

On a larger scale, people tend to call the Police if there is an immediate situation or their bank or credit card company or similar or all of them. If the scam is finished then they are more likely to report it online to Action Fraud at www.actionfraud.police.uk or by calling 0300 123 2040

Action Fraud do record the reports and can instruct Police to take action in certain cases but otherwise they do little to help.

If you want your money back from a scammer – then a specialist recovery service will generally have better results than officialdom. Even so the chances of getting any money back is slim.

January 9, 2023

Double Shot Pill Scam

This is obviously a quite ridiculous scam targeting people trying to lose weight but who don’t want to cut down their calorie intake.

“Double Shot” pills, in which blue capsules burn fat and red ones block calories

Manon Fernet and her Quebec-based company agreed to pay $500,000 to settle FTC charges this year over their Double Shot pills.

The marketers did business as the “Freedom Center Against Obesity,”. One supply of pills “to lose up to 30 pounds” cost $79; the bottles “contained blue capsules that supposedly burned fat, and red ones that supposedly blocked calories,”

The marketers allegedly “claimed that the effectiveness of Double Shot as a weight-loss treatment had been proven by clinical studies.” NOT TRUE.

The advert above says that the pills would enable a user to absorb just 72 calories from a 720-calorie plate of spaghetti.

Consumers were tricked into believing Double Shot “would cause rapid, substantial, and permanent weight loss, without diet or exercise,” the FTC said.

January 8, 2023

Stupidest Scam Chinese Companies

The radio station receives endless scam messages offering the chance to work with Chinese companies.

Occasionally there are some in Mandarin Chinese.

With Google translate on-line free of charge – it’s easy to see what the message says in English.

“AI Intelligent One Click Matching”

“Email reading opens the sharing status background to grasp in time”.

“One click addition of overseas business opportunities”.

Well maybe – it’s not so easy after translation.

Further reading shows the email is trying to interest the recipient in new software that collects contact details from on-line sources.

Pathetic.

If you work for a Chinese company would you really choose to send out millions of emails in Mandarin to non Chinese companies?

Only a moron would consider that good Marketing

We wont be following up on this

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

January 7, 2023

Time wasters Update

More fake emails arrive, supposedly from Chinese companies. This one starts with “Hello website” as the spam list they bought must have included the radio station website address. “How can it possible become wine supplier”. Surely only Chinese companies or those with strong Chinese links would consider importing Chinese wine? The company’s name is Biological Technology- don’t think I’d drink anything made by them.

“Password Reconfirmation Server Notice”. That sounds like an official email but is fake. Scammers send out assorted efforts to try to get people’s passwords. Never click on such emails – read them carefully to see if they make sense and the sender’s email address matches the message. In this case it was sent from donaldo @madeoequipos.com which is not my company therefore it is a fake message.

An email claims to be from PayPal and that my ID has been changed. I now have to verify my account or lose it. Of course, you cannot change your ID in Paypal as that is your identification although you can change your name and other details. The message is from swiccpac.ph which is a Philippine Islands address, not PayPal. It’s just a scammer after my email address and password so he or she can spend on my account. Not going to happen.

Yet another email arrives telling me that my McAfee anti-virus renewal has just been charged to my account. The scammers seem too lazy to actually check up the correct price so they just make one up – I’ve seen prices from $75 to £822 and quotes in other currencies but mostly in dollars. Interestingly the email says that if it wasn’t me who authorised this then I should call a 1-888 number to report it. Presumably this scammer has a scam call centre – I wont be calling.

Rev Sis Simge Pinar wants to donate all of her $9,150,000 to me so I can continue her work of helping the poor. Yeah right! She’s in Istanbul and dying of some odd disease, so she only has weeks to live. What a shame – that’ll be one less evil scammer in the world if it’s true but of course it’s all made-up rubbish. No money and no donation – just lies.

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January 6, 2023

Facebook Conversations Checked Out

The New Statesman Newspaper carried out an interesting experiment to test whether or not Facebook was listening in to people’s conversations.

Six staff members picked one or more subjects that are not part of their lives and which they had never searched for online or bought anything relevant to the subject etc.

Then they each read out a script (with their phone switched on) designed to point out these subjects in their lives and see if Facebook then started advertising relevant items to them.

The subjects were things such as a vegetarian chatting about her desire for Domino’s Meat Feast pizza.

The most interesting was a lady named Lizzie whose lines included “I just wish there was an app that would sort it all out for you… some kind of contraception app”. When she opened the Facebook app the following morning, she was presented with an advert for Natural Cycles, the first app ever certified for contraception in Europe.

WOW.

However, there’s a psychological phenomenon called the Frequency Illusion (or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon). It states that If you hear a new word or phrase for the first time and consciously have a conversation about it, finding out what it means, suddenly, for the next few days, you’ll see it constantly.

If someone says to you ‘when was the last time you saw a yellow car?’ you’ll see three in the next two hours.

For the other five people in the experiment (including the vegetarian), Facebook did not show anything even vaguely relevant to the subject’s spoken about. It’s just a statistical effect that some people will experience Facebook offering relevant and unexpected adverts at times that can seem spookily accurate.

Facebook are very clear that they do not listen in to conversations.

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