Category: Fight Back

February 23, 2022

Which? Campaign Success in 2021

Which? Magazine is a British institution, fighting for consumer rights since 1957.

In 2021, their campaigns led to significant improvements for consumers and these are the ones they are most proud of:

Online Scam Adverts

Due to the pandemic, many people have become more reliant on digital platforms and there was a 30% increase in online scams in 2021.

In collaboration with the finance industry, law enforcement and other consumer groups, Which? led a coalition calling for the government to tackle fraud in its upcoming Online Safety Bill, so that the online platforms we use every day help to prevent scams appearing on their websites .

Which? and MoneySavingExpert made a powerful case in parliament which culminated in securing a major milestone, with a key committee recommending that the government should include paid for scam adverts in scope of the new legislation.

Bank Transfer Fraud

The government has committed to bringing in much-needed legislation to prevent the number of bank transfer frauds.

This will help to ensure reimbursement for scam losses are made mandatory and that getting your money back won’t be a lottery depending on who you bank with.

Access to Cash

Accessing and spending your cash became much harder in 2021. For some it was an easy shift to using a range of digital payments, but for many cash has been critical to buying essentials

More than 200 businesses, including major retailers, signed up to the Which? Cash Friendly Pledge to give people the confidence that they could spend their cash in store.

The industry-led Cash Action Group has committed to ensuring that communities’ needs for access to cash will be met by alternative provision before closing any branches in town in future.

Travel Problems

The travel industry has suffered greatly in the pandemic due to ever changing restrictions and rules for travellers.

Which? were delighted that by combing over 80 providers’ terms and conditions, they’ve been able to help more than 50,000 people find the best and most flexible holiday providers through the Holiday Checker tool . Which? have secured the return of around £8 million in refunds to affected travellers through CMA enforcement action.

For further details on Which? Campaigns go to https://campaigns.which.co.uk/

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

February 18, 2022

How to Identify Ransomware

If you are hit by Ransomware, you need to block off the attack by removing Internet access from your PCs and servers, stop any encryption processes in progress and any other processes running that shouldn’t be running.

Then the first stage of investigation is to identify what you’re facing and the website https://id-ransomware.malwarehunterteam.com/ is a good starting point.

You upload one encrypted file or the file that is the ransom message to this website and it will try to identify the variant of ransomware. Currently it can identify several hundred variants.

For each there is extra information which can tell you if there are decryption keys available on the Internet.

Some anti-hackers try to find the decryption keys and post them freely, but the blackmailers do know this and try to stay of ahead of them by using new variants for which there are no keys available except for the one held by the blackmailer.

The website is run purely as a free service to the public and does not decrypt files for you – you need an IT professional for that (assuming it’s possible as many cannot be decrypted without a key from the blackmailer)

If you have a suspected virus rather than ransomware then there is a website that may help to identify it at https://www.virustotal.com

As always, the advice is that it’s best to avoid being held to ransom – ensure you have adequate systems protection in place, staff that have been educated on the danger of cyber-attacks, regular backups (including off-site) and have a plan in place to deal with a ransomware attack.

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February 11, 2022

Trust Pilot Reviews

https://uk.trustpilot.com

Trustpilot is an online review community founded in Denmark in 2007 by Peter Holten Mühlmann.

The website has more than 120 million reviews of 529,000 businesses and 1,000,000 new reviews each month created by 45,000 reviewers each day. So you can see this is a serious business and also that there must be a huge need for unbiased reviews of businesses.

Trustpilot “believe that people’s voices should be heard, which is why we’re dedicated to helping everyone share their genuine experiences. We’re committed to being the most trusted online review community on the market. Genuine reviews written by consumers are published instantly without censoring, and businesses can see and reply to them”

TrustPilot say they have zero tolerance for fraud and investigate any reported misuse

How Does TrustPilot Make Money?

They offer a series of packages to businesses for a monthly subscription.

The key sales points for these are:-

Connect with your customers by collecting reviews
Automate a review collection process seamlessly into your customer journey.
Build trust on a platform for both businesses and customers
Gather feedback and interact with customers on an independent website consumers trust.
Showcase your reputation where it matters
Amplify your presence across all channels including search, social, paid, and offline media.

The four business plans are:-

Free Plan £ 0 PER MONTH

Lite Plan $200 PER MONTH (PAID ANNUALLY)

Plus a number of paid modules, including:

– Invite

– Enhance

– Support

– Insights

– API

– Connect etc.

Collect & respond to Trustpilot reviews for free.

Showcase reviews on your website & clearly demonstrate marketing ROI.

If you want to build trust for your company. Then Trust Pilot may be able to help.

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February 4, 2022

Why do people call then say nothing or put the phone down?

This happens to everyone very occasionally – usually someone dialled a wrong number and realised and put the phone down or didn’t recognise the voice answering your phone.

But, this can be a regular occurrence and then the reasons are more concerning.

Automated Calling Systems

A lot of marketing companies and scammers use automated diallers i.e. computers that call people in turn on a list then pass the calls onto to call centre staff.. To maximise use of their staff, they set the diallers to call numerous people at the same time in the hope that at least some will answer the phone and those get put through to operatives.

However, this method also means many people will get silent calls when all operatives are already on the line to other people.

These calls can be hard to spot in advance because the scammers often hide or spoof the calling number i.e. make it look as if a different number such as a government number.

Overseas Cold Callers

It might sound expensive for scammers to call you from overseas, but the vast majority of such calls are now from other countries and they use VOIP i.e. let their computer make the call without incurring phone call charges.

The major phone networks in the UK have agreed to automatically block almost all internet calls coming from abroad if they pretend to be from UK numbers.

This should result in millions of calls from abroad being stopped, but so far only Talk Talk has implemented this.

Criminals have been using internet-based calling technology to make it look like a phone call or text is coming from a real telephone number – often one based in the country they are targeting.

We’ll see when the other networks start to block these criminals.

February 2, 2022

Bustin’ The Bogus

The bogusbuster website was setup 5 years ago to try to stem the tide of fake products.

The website is at https://bogusbuster.org/

If you are not sure if an item you have found online is fake or maybe a website contains fake products, you can use bogusbuster.org to check.

You simply enter the Internet address in the box and also your email address so they can send you a reply.

The website is not filled with adverts as so many are, so is a pleasure to access. Just useful information and that check facility

BogusBuster say they are an independent resource that will guide you through everything scam related.

BogusBuster is powered by SnapDragon, who are a brand protection company that helps businesses to fight fakes. SnapDragon founder’s experienced, first-hand, the damage caused by fake products when her own product was counterfeited. Fighting back, she founded SnapDragon to help protect and safeguard businesses, and consumers, from counterfeit crime. e

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

January 28, 2022

Company Director Gets 6 Year Ban For Nuisance Marketing Calls

Shaun Harkin was the sole director of Easyleads Limited, a company that generated sales leads for other businesses through telephone marketing calls, but he was knowingly breaking the law.

Cold callers cannot phone people indiscriminately – especially not those registered on the Telephone Preference Service i.e. registered as not accepting cold calls.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) received many hundreds of complaints about automated calls from numbers used by Easyleads.

The ICO warned of their investigation into the new complaints.

Despite this warning, Shaun Harkin continued his cold calling campaigns and the ICO continued to receive complaints about Easyleads.

The ICO issued a £260,000 fine against Easyleads for making unsolicited marketing calls to people without their consent and failing to include a company name and contact details in the recorded message.

Easyleads failed to pay the debt so the ICO got the court to wind up the company.

Investigations by the Insolvency Service found that the company had made around 16 million automated marketing calls to members of the public.

Many complainants were from people who said they received multiple calls, while others complained about being called in the early hours of the morning.

From July 2018, Shaun Harkin is banned from directly or indirectly becoming involved, without the permission of the court, in the promotion, formation or management of a company for six years.

Hopefully he will learn to treat the public in a better manner rather than as people to be taken advantage of.

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