Author: comptroller

September 10, 2022

Time-Wasters Update

An email from Martin says my transaction of 54.9 Bitcoins is completed and is in my account. That would be worth nearly one million dollars, but it isn’t true of course. The scammer wants me to open my account at Bitciti using the login and password he provides. No-one gives away millions to people they don’t know. This is a simple phishing scam – trying to get my personal information for future scams or to sell to other scammers.

An email from 247LiveSuport tells me that one of my domain names is due to expire within 48 hours so I need to click the link to renew it or lose it. Quite untrue – the sender’s email address is a ridiculous one many dozens of characters long, and it’s from a domain name which is the Island of Palau – not where my Internet hosting company is based. Plus, the domain name isn’t due for renewal for a long time.

“Product Enquiry with Amended Specification” is a typical scammer’s message with the title aiming it at businesses selling products rather than services. This one claims to be from Microsoft Excel which even a scammer should realise it quite a stupid thing to put. There is a link for me to click to see an audit, certification and inspection report which does not match the title claiming the email was about a product enquiry. Rubbish from a stupid scammer.

Sometimes you get sales emails from Chinese companies and you wonder if they are real – perhaps from an idiot who thinks the best way to get new business is to buy a spam list and pay for millions of emails to go to random addresses in the hope that some will go to a business that may have an interest in their products. But almost always these emails are from experienced scammers who understand that sending out what appears to product details may get the message through scam filters and may encourage some people to respond. Those that do are clearly too stupid for their own good and are likely to be scammed. The message concerned is from yotanbattery.com and lists various types of batteries they sell and offers free samples. If you respond , all you get is a sample scam.

Many businesses use Microsoft Teams and Microsoft SharePoint so scammers are trying to find scams to target these people. The latest such messages are simple phishing scams. The message is made to look like a message from SharePoint. It claims to be a reminder meeting notice but the attached file is a spreadsheet not a reminder. Then it says the attached file needs to be authorised so I have to click to do that but the button to click actually says Join Meeting – this is copied from Microsoft Teams. Clearly the scammer has little idea of what she is copying and the result is a pathetic attempt to get a user’s Teams login.

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September 9, 2022

Cathy Deals with Scam Callers

Scammers call you trying to steal your money or your identity or both.

So, why not waste their time, drive them mad and get your own back.

Plus while you’re keeping them busy they cannot be scamming someone else.

Cathy Simpson came up with an unusual way to have a bit of fun while deflecting cold callers, although it needs a little preparation to really work well.

“I used to be plagued with them, sometimes as many as six in a day, so I applied serious thought to the problem. My life changed forever when I discovered that you can download MP3 clips of various sounds, which I saved in iTunes.

“So… a scammer would call, and I’d tell them I’d need to transfer them to my husband, then play a clip of someone snoring REALLY loudly for a few minutes or a chorus of screaming chimpanzees.

“Sometimes I’d tell them my computer was in the other room, and I’d need to go down there to turn it on. So they could accompany me on my journey, they were treated to the sound of someone walking along an interminably long echoey corridor, followed by the sound of wading through water. These guys have no staying power, you know. When I asked if they were still there, they’d already rung off.

“My favourite, though, was the time they phoned to tell me my IP address had been hacked. They told me to turn on my computer. I played a clip of artillery fire, followed by an explosion. I expressed dismay that my computer had just blown up.

“I told them I couldn’t tell, as the computer was now in small pieces all over the floor and the room was full of smoke. They told me not to worry, that they were working on it. I thanked them, of course. It was only polite.”

Have fun.

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

September 7, 2022

Random Words Messages

There are many emails that turn up, that deliberately make no sense.

e.g. “Accommodating bidder, our company is rather favour your effect” from airwaylease.com

or “Darling Gentleman, Our team is upwards effect joy” from andardas-net.com.br

or “Polite consumer, is preferably favour response” from une.eu.com

or “Darling master, our partnerships are with partner” from ig.com.br

In fact these emails are for pharmaceuticals – in particular Viagra and they use the random words approach to try to get through spam filters set by the email companies.

The emails are to get you to click a link and that can be for anything – not necessarily prescription drugs.

Sadly, sending out hundreds of millions of such emails costs almost nothing so scammers and spammers will continue to do so.

If an email makes no sense – delete it. Do not click on any links.

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September 5, 2022

Fake Car Parking Fines

The email arrives – it’s a “Notice of intended Prosecution”.

Oh dear!

The email sender knows my name unlike most scammers.

The email does have a company name and logo for Chariot car parks but the sender’s email address is a misspelling charoitcarparks.com which gives it away immediately as a scam.

It says I was illegally parked in a private parking space and caused great inconvenience to the owner of the parking spot.

It doesn’t specify a date or time for the incident but says it occurred on Self road near Chancery road.

Perhaps those are common street names randomly chosen by the scammer.

I have until the end of the month to pay £108 or the fine will be doubled and I will be prosecuted, supposedly.

There is a link to click to pay the fine and perhaps some people just pay without thinking about whether they actually ever parked in such a spot.

There is a box labelled Vehicle Registration which is blacked out and it says Click to Reveal

What the scammer really wants is for you to click that link. Obviously it makes no sense for the owners registration to be blacked out as it is their car.

The link leads to a fake website that will infect your computer with malware.

Never click a link in an unsolicited email and always take time to consider any worrying emails or texts before reacting.

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

September 4, 2022

Amazonian Finger Trick

“Top eye doctors are shocked to learn that this odd Amazonian finger trick sharpens vison effortlessly.”

Not really of course – it’s just rubbish from a scammer trying desperately to get you to click to watch a ridiculous video clip for which she gets paid.

“The biggest vision breakthrough of the 21^st century”.

“No more tired eyes or dry eyes”

“No more blurry or double vision”.

This scammer seems to have a little more sense than most. She avoided the phrase ‘weird trick’ and used ‘odd’ instead as ‘weird’ is very overused by scammers.

She also made big claims but did restrain herself compared to scammers who want their fake product to solve every problem imaginable.

But, it’s all rubbish – just another greedy scammer.

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

September 3, 2022

Time-Wasters Update

An email from Home Depot tells me I have won a Dewalt Extreme Drill. Congratulations to me! It’s not true of course – the email is from [email protected]… which is obviously made-up rubbish from a scammer, plus the sender doesn’t know my name plus most of the email is actually copied from a report about a National Forest. The scammer was trying to get the message through the email senders scam check. All rubbish as usual.

Esam Mouly sent me an email saying he has a business proposal for me. Why would someone who doesn’t know me and doesn’t even know my name have a business proposal for me? The proposal is that he wants to con me into paying him money for some fake or non existent thing. I can do without that.

The Bill and Melinda Foundation have spent billions of dollars helping the fight against Covid and now apparently they want to gift me $1.5 million for no apparent reason – just that my email address was randomly selected. I am supposed to reply with my details to cheapnet.it which is definitely not Bill and Melinda Gates. They would certainly not be dumb enough to randomly hand out cash to people they don’t know. There’s no chance of that happening.

Every company gets floods of email offers to build websites, SEO, social media management etc. Many of these are from genuine small businesses or individuals chasing work but most are simple scams. You pay and you get nothing. A latest one is from electricalwire.xyz which should put anyone off. No website business would call itself electricalwire and the only people who use the .xyz domains are either scammers or people with unusual businesses that don’t fit other more common domains.

TransferWise tell me my account has been restricted for my own protection. This is because I haven’t verified my phone number. The email is from pei.sympatico.ca which is obviously not a business called TransferWise. I don’t have an account with TransferWise so no problem.

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