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.
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.
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.
Do click on the Facebook or Twitter icons on top right to follow Fight Back Ninja.
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.
Do Share this post on social media – click on the post title then scroll down to the social media share buttons.
“Congratulations. You have won a $50 Costco voucher as a reward for your purchases”. Strange since I don’t shop at Costco and have never joined. SCAM.
From the constant stream of message such as “your package is out for delivery” from Fedex and similar messages from other delivery companies, I must be buying dozens of things every week for delivery. Definitely not true plus the email actually came from direynao11ya @direx881yaya.com which is not Fedex or any other delivery company.
Next one was from Robben Davis. “official notification congregation your compensation fund $4.8m has approved in your email so confirm your delivery address including your cellphone number. to enable us continue with delivery of your package. Some strange use of grammar in that message and that’s all there is to the message. No attempt to make it look genuine – there are many very lazy scammers.
Some scammers try to frighten people e.g. “The Terrifying Event That Will Change…”. “Since it would create mass hysteria and CHAOS”. What is the email actually about? That’s hard to guess as the frighteners could be about anything. It does also say “It has nothing to do with nuclear attacks, EMPS or even terrorism”. But that’s the only detail. The aim of the message is to get gullible people to click a link to watch a terrifying video. All rubbish of course.
Yet another scammer’s email tells me for maybe the hundredth time this year that my subscription with MacAfee Anti-Virus has been renewed. The scammers all pick a different price for this despite it being very easy to find out what the actual subscription price is. This latest one chose $369.99 and the point of the email is to get you to phone a set number to cancel the renewal. But of course the scammer on the phone needs your details in order to make that cancellation. So instead of cancelling a mistake you would find your payment card has been emptied. No thanks.
Do click on the Facebook or Twitter icons on top right to follow Fight Back Ninja.
