Category: Fight Back

Comedian Joe Lycette And The Property Scammer

Joe Lycette is a comedian and he likes to take on scammers, using humour.

One story he tells is about how a property scammer tried to con him, but Joe turned the tables and had a lot of fun in the process.

A friend of Joe’s was looking for a property on Gumtree and was emailing with an agent about a property he was interested in but realised it was probably a scam. His friend passed the emails to Joe

Joe then emailed Gemma the scammer posing as a property agent, saying he was interested in the property.

The agent claimed she was in Stockholm and needed Joe to pay $220 deposit so she could arrange a viewing.

The payment should be via her trusted partner moneytoindia.com

Joe sent her an email claiming he was on holiday in Stockholm and wanted to meet up.

Then the agent claimed she had left and was in Munich.

“Guten tag Frau Gemma – what a co-incidence” he replied “I’m also in Berlin in Potsdamer Platz”,.

So she then claimed to have left Berlin, but still wanted the $220.

Joe then replied that he was happy to forward the money, but a friend of his at the FBI would just do a quick check first to ensure it wasn’t a scam.

Gemma replied quickly –“The property is no longer on the market. Please confirm receipt of this message”

Then another email   – “Did you get my last email?”

He got a series of these progressively more desperate messages saying there was no need for an FBI check.

He ignored these for a few days  then finally replied.

“In order to secure cancellation of the FBI check you will need to pay me a deposit of $300 through my trusted partner moneytojoe.org.  or alternatively promise to stop trying to scam people. “

He actually got an apology and a promise from Gemma.

Joe performs this story very well – you can find him on Youtube.

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Netsafe in New Zealand

https://www.netsafe.org.nz/

Netsafe is New Zealand’s independent, non-profit online safety organisation. It provides online safety help, support, expertise and education to people in New Zealand. But that information is useful to people of every country.

Netsafe was founded in 1998 to help New Zealand internet users stay safe online.

After noticing the growing influence of technology in their respective areas, the New Zealand Police, Ministry of Education and several not for profits teamed up with telecommunication organisations and IT industry partners to create an independent body focussed on online safety.

Together they created the Internet Safety Group which was rebranded Netsafe in 2008.

Netsafe was given the remit to build an internet safety organisation that didn’t scare people away from technology, but instead encouraged people to adopt it by promoting the tools and techniques they could use to minimise their online risks.

Today Netsafe is an internationally renowned organisation with a focus on online safety practice.

As digital technology use grows and evolves at a rapid pace in society, it becomes more important for Netsafe to help people manage and reduce the risk of online harm, so that they feel more confident being online.

Netsafe’s remit is wider than just online security. They aim to cover  Online Bullying & Harassment,  Scams,  Security,  Parenting,  Business.  Educators and  Young People.

There is a reporting tool for anyone wishing to report an online incident that happened to themselves or someone close to them.

There is a wealth of information about common online scams and those in New Zealand are pretty much the same as in other advanced countries. (Developing countries typically face different types of scams.)

There is a lot of security advice but also advice for parents and education workers and sections for young people.

This is a great service offered in New Zealand but also useful to everyone, wherever they live, as scams and other online problems exist the world over.

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The Browse Safely App Scam

Google Chrome Safe Browsing offers protection against malicious websites – it warns you if you are about to navigate to a dangerous website or to download something dangerous.

AVAST anti malware offer their Secure Browser extension for the most popular browsers for Windows and Mac.

Other anti-virus and anti-malware companies offer similar facilities – designed to stop malware attacks in your browser before they can get to your device.

However there is a website “get.browsersafelyapp.com” which sis advertised as offering such protection,  but doesn’t do that.

Instead it hijacks your browser i.e. it changes your web browser’s settings and does not allow you to change them back.

Typically, browser hijackers promote fake search engines by changing the default search engine. In this case, it’s to browsesafelysearch.com which does give search results, but those results come from Yahoo (which is legitimate). However, the fake search engine can insert whatever fake links it wants to in the results.

Removing browsesafelyapp once it’s installed is possible but is a tricky process.

It is common that browser hijackers collect data such as IP addresses, geolocations, search queries etc. and forward the data to the scammers, where it can be sold to Marketing companies or to other scammers.

Only use the reputable search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

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

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Government Cyber Resilience Centres

The UK government has assorted plans to do with beefing up cyber resilience as businesses and other organisations across the country increasingly come under attack from hackers.

The government’s creation of local centres for cyber resilience is progressing well.

The Cyber Resilience Centre for the South East (SECRC) is part of the national roll out of Cyber Resilience Centres in the UK which began in 2019.

Lead by Policing, and facilitated by Business Resilience International Management (BRIM), they say that they have followed a structured modular programme based on a highly successful model that had previously been established for over 9 years in Scotland.

They work in structured partnership with regional Policing, Academia, Businesses, Third and Public Sector organisations through a variety of ways:

  1. Security Awareness Training

This is focused on those with little or no cyber security or technical knowledge

  1. Corporate Internet Investigation

This service may be used to learn what is being said on the internet about an organisation, what information employees are releasing, or if there are any damaging news stories, social media posts or associations.

  1. Individual Internet Investigation

These investigations gather information that can be used to support pre-employment checks, to manage potential threats to a Director of an organisation or their families, or to understand more about a specific person of interest.

  1. Remote Vulnerability Assessment

These assessments focus on identifying weaknesses in the way your organisation connects to the internet. Service reporting will provide a plain language interpretation of the results and how any vulnerabilities might be used by an attacker, as well as simple instructions on how any vulnerabilities might be fixed.

  1. Internal Vulnerability Assessment

The assessment will scan and review your internal networks and systems looking for weaknesses such as poorly maintained or designed systems, insecure Wi-Fi networks, insecure access controls, or opportunities to access and steal sensitive data.

  1. Web App Vulnerability Assessment

This service assesses your website and web services for weaknesses. The service reporting will describe in plain language, what each weakness means to your business and the risks associated with each. Service reporting will include plans and guidance on how to fix those weaknesses.

  1. Security Policy Review

This is a review of your current security policy, how it is written and how it is implemented.

  1. Cyber Business Continuity Review

This service offers a review of your business continuity planning and the resilience of your organisation to cyber-attacks such as ransomware or when attackers take control of your core systems.

https://www.secrc.co.uk/contact-us  is the south east SERCR

There are equivalent centres in other regions of the country.

​If you have any experiences with this do let me know, by email.

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Google Safe Browsing Report

Safe Browsing is a service that Google’s security team built to identify unsafe websites across the web and notify users and website owners of potential harm.

Google’s Safe Browsing technology examines billions of URLs per day looking for unsafe websites.

Google say that approximately two billion devices benefit from Google Safe Browsing technology. When Google  has identified a site as potentially harmful, Safe Browsing triggers a warning to users.

Warnings displayed per week

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When a user of a Safe Browsing–enabled browser or APP attempts to access unsafe content on the web, they’ll see a warning page explaining that the content that they’re trying to access may be harmful.

If a site identified as harmful appears in Google Search results, there is a warning next to that site in the results.

How Google Notify Website Owners

If your website is identified as being harmful, then Google will notify you through the search console.

That details the steps to recover from an infection and gives examples of the specific code that has been injected into their site.

Further information available at https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search

If you have an opinion on safe browsing, do let me know, by email.

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Strong Customer Authentication

New Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) regulations will add an extra layer of security at online checkout making it safer to shop online. This was proposed in 2019 and became law in the UK from September 2021.

As fraud levels in digital payments have risen in Europe, new regulations have followed. Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) has become a key piece of the EU’s Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) required by merchants.

PSD2 introduced the concept of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). The idea is simple: 2 out of 3 elements need to be checked during authentication.

As a customer, this means asked to identify yourself by another means as well as the payment card details e.g. through a passcode sent to your smart phone.

This may become an annoying delay at times but it is to protect your accounts from criminals.

The goals of PSD2

  • Make the European payments market more integrated and efficient
  • Improve the level playing field for payment service providers (including new players)
  • Make payments safer and more secure
  • Protect consumers from fraud

Strong customer authentication demands multi-factor authentication on all payer-initiated payments including at least two of the below methods.

  • Something you know g. pin or password
  • Something you have g. phone or device
  • Something you are e.g. facial scan or fingerprint

If you have any experiences with this new system do let me know, by email.

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