Category: Fight Back

KB Was Married to a Scammer

A post by K.B. Beaumaarks

I am an educated professional with an upper level income. My scams occurred not with an outsider but a partner…. yep first with my ex-husband who was a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine – a “trustworthy profession”.  I was blinded by the scammer that he was.

My point is to trust your gut no matter who the person is. If it feels wrong…. chances are it is wrong.

I had met my ex husband as a client with the many rescue dogs I had.

Started a whirlwind romance (not knowing he wasn’t divorced yet) and eventually marrying him. We built a very successful practice together and when it came down to whose name everything went in, he convinced me to put it all in his corporation name stating I was not allowed because I was not a doctor….. meanwhile he stockpiled and hid money from me.

He asked me to sign so many papers regarding corporate taxes etc and I trusted him. He was my husband. Our accountant was our friend. Long story short, eventually I caught him embezzling our life savings and planning on running away to an island without me.

Once I discovered this, I let the courts take over. How could a spouse do this to me. We were married…….

I have written a book called The Preah Secrets and it deals with my veterinary husband and how I discovered his heist and how I followed my gut to eventually discover his intentions of deceit. I prepared and eventually sought justice for myself. I hope the book inspires others to follow their instincts and remember, scams can happen to anyone by anyone.

The book is available at Amazon and other places.

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

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Using a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) protects you online by encrypting all data transferring from your device to the Internet and back.

This means that no-one can snoop on your online activities, not even your Internet Service Provider.

Of course, if you login on social media, retail websites etc. they can track you on their sites.

This is especially important if you’re using public Wi-Fi as they can be used by criminals to collect data on you. Using a VPN protects against this.

A VPN will also hide your IP address. Many websites and streaming services use your IP address to control what you can access. Through a VPN you can choose to connect from a different country if you wish.

The Way a VPN Works

Essentially you connect to the VPN, to whichever of their hubs in whichever country you wish and all of your Internet traffic is directed through their servers where the data is encrypted. Likewise any traffic from the Internet returning to your is also encrypted.

You will appear to be connecting to the Internet at one of the VPN provider’s IP addresses.

Most VPN providers also have a ‘no logs’ policy whereby they don’t keep any records of the data through their system and hence even if hacked – nothing except your profile could be found.

Using a VPN may slow down your Internet access marginally but is unlikely to be an issue as VPN providers need to have fast systems to stay in business.

In practice the only noticeable difference for users of VPNs is that when starting up a PC the VPN will connect automatically so you can it.

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

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The 38 Degrees Campaigns

https://home.38degrees.org.uk

38 Degrees is one of the UK’s biggest campaigning communities, with millions of members.

Campaigns

16,344

Total Actions Taken

39,649,749

 

38 Degrees say they are independent of all political parties. They are driven by issues and outcomes, and judge all politicians by the same standards regardless of what party they belong to.

They don’t take money from political parties, government or big business.  The campaigns are powered by small donations from thousands of 38 Degrees members averaging about £12 per donation.

If you have an idea to make your community, or the country, a better place, Campaigns by You helps you make it a reality. 38 Degrees let everyone create petitions, organise meetings, and win campaigns on the issues close to their hearts.

38 Degrees launched in 2009 and has several million people involved in the campaigns.

Highlights

  1. They helped stop the government’s plans to sell off our ancient national forests.
  2. They stopped plans for a massive mega-dairy in Lincolnshire.
  3. They stopped Donald Trump’s plans to build a golf course at the expense of families in Menie, Scotland, who were at risk of eviction.
  4. They also helped convince the government to sign up to the EU Directive on human trafficking.
  5. They forced the 2012 Olympic sponsors not to dodge their tax.
  6. They stopped eBay from selling illegal bee-killing pesticides.
  7. They helped make sure plans to cover up investigations into MPs expenses were scrapped.

Current campaigns

38 Degrees members campaign on a variety of different issues all year round – from keeping privatisation out of our NHS, to keeping libraries open, to stopping Murdoch’s power grab of BSkyB. They say they are concerned with defending fairness, protecting rights, promoting peace, preserving the planet and deepening democracy.

  • Provide a British Sign Language interpreter for Daily Government Briefings
  • End Our National Cladding Scandal
  • Urgently commit to doing more for all healthcare staff
  • Take real action on the climate emergency

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

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Facebook Privacy Check

Facebook can help you to review your privacy settings.

This feature is called Privacy Check-up and you can access it by clicking the small down triangle icon at the top right corner of the Facebook screen. You click “Settings and Privacy” then “Privacy Check-up”.

Things you can review in Privacy Checkup:

  • Advert preferences
  • Who can see what you share
  • How to keep your account secure
  • How people can find you on Facebook
  • Your data settings
  • How to keep your account secure

Everyone should go through these options carefully and restrict access to your account information, restrict who sees your posts and so on.

The less the criminals can see of your activity the safer. You do not strangers seeing your birthdate, phone number, relationship status etc.

The section on keeping your account secure contains good advice on having a strong password and turning on alerts means you will be warned if here is an unusual login to your account.

Many people use Facebook to login to other services – this saves on having extra logins but means Facebook knows a lot more about your activities. You can also review which APPS you have given permission to access your Facebook details. If you’re not sure why an APP needs that access then revoke that permission.

Stay safe on Facebook and periodically use the Privacy checker to make sure all is in order

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

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Money Mail Fightback

The Daily Mail newspaper Money Mail department (also called the Consumer Champion) does a lot of good helping people to get their money back after being defrauded.

They claim that during 2020 they have managed to ‘claw back’ more than a million pounds for their readers, including for one victim of an investment scam who was conned out of £190,000.

That total also includes many women who realised their state pension was being underpaid.

The newspaper does a great job in championing people trapped by bureaucracy, badly trained customer service staff, insurance companies that stick rigidly to the small print, organisations that don’t care and retailers who wont accept faulty goods back.

If you’ve been conned in some way or let down by organisations then possibly Money Mail can help, however they have limited resources and can only take on a limited number of cases compared to the large numbers of people who do get conned in some way.

One of their key tasks is actually advising people on how to make a complaint and to make it politely and with full information as often, people’s response to aggressive complaining is to be aggressive back which is not what you want.

It is important to follow the rules on making complaints of any kind as you are far more likely to get a good response.

The Money Mail pages online are a useful resource for advice, warnings and also recommendations such as deals of the week.

Well done Money Mail.

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

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The Google Phishing Test

Phishing is where scammers send you emails or texts or use bad websites to pretend to be someone you trust or an organisation you would trust, in order to get your confidential information such as login and password or account information, birth date etc.

Google has created a test to let you experience receiving phishing messages and see how you react.

https://phishingquiz.withgoogle.com/

It asks for your name and email address but suggests you make these up as they are not intended to be real.

It shows a set of 8 examples on screen one at a time and gives enough information for you to be identify each as phishing or legitimate and after you have chosen, for each it explains why to trust or not to trust the example.

This is a great and easy way to teach people what to look for in incoming messages to identify them as legitimate or dodgy.

The vast majority of scam messages are obviously fake if you just take note of who is sending it and why.

But some scammers do put in the effort to make their scam messages look authentic and it can be tricky to be sure if those messages are real or fake.

If in doubt – don’t open the message – contact the organisation or person directly i.e. look up their contact details and don’t count on anything in a message being real.

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

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