Author: comptroller

Kyani Superfoods

Kyani sell food supplements and that’s fine. Maybe they are good supplements or maybe there are better ones on the market.

But, Kyani is really a network marketing business.

“With Kyani’s unmatched Dream Car Program, exotic retreats and lucrative compensation, Kyani helps you create the lifestyle you’ve always dreamed of.”

The spam emails about Kyani do mention the food supplements but most of the sales pitch is about becoming a partner and having a rich lifestyle.

What they want is for you to become a Kyani ‘business partner’ which means an unpaid sales person for their business. For you to buy into the dream they peddle of riches for little effort. But it is they who become rich from your efforts – not you. To make the riches you are told to bring in more and more people to also become business partners i.e. people who pay Kyani.

To be a partner, you have to buy the products from Kyani then sell them on to others.

This is very low risk for Kyani but high risk for you. If you don’t manage to sell the products – well, you paid for them and are stuck with them.

For same people, this kind of network marketing is what they like and can do well, but for most it turns out to be a disaster and an expensive one.

Kyani is a legitimate company with legitimate products, but do beware that the chances of becoming rich through Kyani are exceedingly slim.

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The Shed That Wasn’t a Top Restaurant

This is the story of how a back garden shed became the number one rated restaurant in London according to TripAdvisor.

The guy who did this did lots of jobs including writing fake reviews on TripAdvisor for restaurant owners who paid him £10 a time.  One day, sitting in his shed, he wondered if it was possible to create a fake restaurant on Trip Advisor and push it up the rankings to number one.

Setting Up the Shed – April 2017

To get your restaurant on Trip Advisor you just fill in the details online and give a phone number, address, description etc. – all easily done. He didn’t give the proper address – just the street where he lived and described The Shed as an appointment-only restaurant.

Next he bought a suitable Internet domain name and setup a website for the non-existent restaurant called The Shed.

He knew that to create interest he needed something original and pretentious – such as naming all of the dishes after moods. So, he created pretentious descriptions of the restaurant and the food with ridiculous photos of these mood dishes using shaving foam and anything to hand. One photo is of a fried egg on his bare foot. Clipped so you cannot tell it’s a foot. Crazy stuff.

Getting the Shed to Number One

At first on Trip Advisor it was ranked at 18,149 i.e. the bottom of the list.

He got friends to start adding rave reviews of The Shed and that’s how Trip Adviser works so The Shed started to rise up the ranks despite the fact that no-one had ever eaten a meal there – it was just his garden shed.

People started to phone to make bookings – and were told it was fully booked for months ahead.  People were attracted by the fact it was brand new, little was known about it and it seemed to be difficult to get a table there.

People in his street would stop him and ask for directions to The Shed and the phone kept ringing with people keen to make bookings.

Six months after he started his fake restaurant, The Shed achieved number one status on Trip Advisor.

He did tell TripAdvisor of his ‘experiment’ and their response by email was:- “Generally, the only people who create fake restaurant listings are journalists in misguided attempts to test us. As there is no incentive for anyone in the real world to create a fake restaurant it is not a problem we experience with our regular community – therefore this ‘test’ is not a real world example.”

Fair enough. But do beware of reviews that may have been written for less than honest reasons.

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Ghost Car Insurance Brokers

The Police have warned that thousands of motorists could be unwittingly driving without insurance because of fraudsters known as “ghost brokers” selling fake policies.

Men in their 20s are most likely to be targeted by ‘ghost brokers’ who often contact victims on social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram. They also advertise on student websites or money-saving forums, university notice boards and marketplace websites and may sell insurance policies in pubs, clubs or bars, newsagents and car repair shops.

City of London officers report that detectives have received more than 850 reports of the scam in the last three years, with victims losing an estimated total of £631,000.

These criminals who sell fake insurance policies to unsuspecting drivers are known as ghost brokers; they carry out the fraudulent act in one of three ways:

  • Forging insurance documents, so there is no genuine policy of any kind
  • Falsifying a driver’s details to lower insurance costs, but the policy can be invalidated when the insurance company finds out the truth
  • Take out a genuine insurance policy then quickly cancel it and claim the refund as well as the victim’s money.

A national campaign has now been launched to warn drivers to be wary of heavily discounted policies on the internet or cheap insurance prices they are offered directly.

Some victims only realise they do not have genuine cover when they are stopped by police or try to make an insurance claim after an accident.

Police have taken action in 417 cases linked to “ghost broking” in the last three years, including one man who set up 133 fake policies.

How to avoid a ghost broker

  • Buy insurance directly from an insurance company’s website. If you want to use a broker, visit the British Insurance Brokers’ Association website and check the broker is FCA registered
  • Be cautious of brokers trying to sell insurance through social media, newsagents and pubs
  • Trust your instinct – if an offer looks too good to be true, it probably is.
  • Be wary of insurance brokers who only use a mobile phone or email to contact you

If you suspect a ghost broker is trying to contact you, call the fraud bureau on 0800 422 0421.

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Google and Google+

Google has said that it found a software glitch in its Google+ social network in March 2018 that could have exposed the personal data of as many as half a million users, but decided not to tell the public until months later.

Google found the flaw in March during an extensive privacy and security review according to Ben Smith, Google vice president of engineering. An internal committee decided not to disclose the potential breach of Google+ because there wasn’t evidence of any misuse of the exposed data, which included names, email addresses, ages and occupations. The bug was immediately fixed at the time, he said.

The Federal Trade Commission, as the nation’s chief privacy watchdog, has the authority to investigate data breaches. The FTC can fine companies when they violate terms of a consent decree.

Google has said it plans to shut down Google+ for consumers (but leave it running for businesses) and introduce new privacy tools restricting how developers can use information on products ranging from email to file storage.

Google+ was never anywhere near as successful as Facebook and social media networks. Even so, many users still have a profile that has personal information on it. Google will shut it down over the coming months for consumers, but keep the version built for businesses open and operating.

The other changes Google is making include requiring apps to ask separately for each type of information they want from a user, such as access to calendars or address books. On Gmail, Google’s ubiquitous email service, only apps that improve email functionality will be allowed to request access.

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