Category: Scam email

August 17, 2019

Time-Wasters Update

The Ketone diet is very popular and large numbers of scammers have their own version of the scam offering magical products or supplements or exercises to put you in the state of Ketosis whereby your body will burn fat. The principle is very simple and has been proven – if you are not eating sufficient carbohydrate then your body will start to burn fat instead. As with any diet it is difficult to maintain and means avoiding anything sweet so this latest scam describes a miracle supplement that you can drink and it will magically make your body burn fats instead of carbohydrates regardless of how much carbohydrate you eat. Nope – just the imagination of an evil greedy scammer.

Buying spam email addresses is sadly getting even cheaper. Latest offer is for 250 million email addressees of business people from across the world on sale for just $500. That’s $2 per million email addresses. It costs almost nothing to send out the emails so you can see why there are billions of spam email messages sent out everyday.

More emails from eToro which is a trading platform trying its best to cash in on uninformed “investors” of cyber currencies. It now claims over 10 million registered users but industry statistics show at least two thirds of non professionals who try this will lose money.

Some scammers go to great lengths to make their messages look authentic – like duplicating messages from a well know bank or famous organisation etc. and write a long story to draw in the victims. But some go for the opposite approach. A latest scam message just says the word Surprise and it’s a link to who knows what. I don’t want to find out.

The message says “Ciao! We make offer for you”. Sounds like someone has translated into English not so goodly. It is in fact an offer by someone wanting to send out billions of spam emails on our behalf at a cost of only $49 per million. No thanks – there’s enough crap in the online world without us adding to it.

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August 11, 2019

Stupidest Scam of the Week DIY Hack

“Car Industry Engineer Revolutionises DIY” so the email claims. This is a typical scam email headline – obviously rubbish but designed to attract suggestible people.

The scammer’s message contains the usual scam rubbish about professionals wanting this secret banned. They cannot claim as is usual with these scams that the big corporations want to stop it – because DIY isn’t about big corporations, just individuals and their high street DIY supplier.

The message says it’s a secret, then the next line says that over 10,211,459 Americans are already using this ‘secret’ . Well if only 10 million people already know it then must be kept secret.

What is it supposed to be?

“This quick carpentry hack will turn anyone into a Da Vinci of woodwork, even if they can barely hold a hammer”.

That is a strange image and not something that anyone with more half a dozen brain cells should countenance for an instant.

If anyone wants to learn DIY skills – there are training courses and lots of manuals available and good old YouTube of course. But they shouldn’t expect miracles – it’s a long learning curve.

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August 10, 2019

Time-Wasters Update

“A mob of angry people desperate for paying too much on electricity bills almost slaughtered a guy who didn’t want to join them in the fight against the energy fat cats” is a dramatic opener for a scam message. Supposedly the guy concerned was getting his electricity free from a device that can harvest energy from the earth’s core. Seems to be a little too much watching of sci-fI films going on plus a lot of greed. Could anyone with an IQ above that of a peanut believe this kind of rubbish?

“10 sweet savings for your car every driver should know” seems like a harmless title for an email. But that’s just a hook to get people to open the message and is likely to be unconnected to the content of the message. The sender is seasonscroosing.xyz which doesn’t match with car savings so it’s a scam.

“Tesla’s Secret Project”, “Tesla Brings The Big Energy Collapse” and ‘Tesla Slashes Your Energy Bill by 80%” are typical scammer email titles designed to get your attention. Tesla is in the news a lot and they do radically new things at times, involving electricity. But there is no big secret – they just make huge numbers of batteries. That will not bring any energy collapse and cannot reduce your electricity bills.

An email arrived titled “Loan Offer” from palynn.com and the only contents is one line “Seeking a loan. Kindly reply for more details”. There aren’t many emails that it would be more stupid to reply to. What possibilities are there? A loan shark charging over 1000% interest, a scammer looking for your confidential details to sell to other scammers, a hacker collecting active email addresses to sell to spammers, a scammer looking for morons to add to their suckers list to sell on to more scammers or possible a kindly person with tons of money who wants to help out people in need? All but the last option are very likely. No thanks.

If you were an Arab Sheik working in a huge conglomerate in petroleum engineering with Saudi Aramco on a massive project would you send an email to a local radio station (where you don’t even know anyone’s name) asking them for a quotation for provision of huge earthworking machinery? Seems just a little unlikely. At least a billion times more likely is that it’s a simple scam.

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August 5, 2019

Bitcoin Advance Fee Scam

Advance Fee scams , also known as 419 scams are very popular with scammers as they are very simple to invent and played well can lead to a stream of stolen money from people whose greed overcomes their common sense.

The basic idea of an advance fee scam is that the scammer promises a treasure of some kind – a box of cash stuck in customs or a consignment of diamonds willed to you or the estate of a long lost relative – anything that sounds impressive and starts the greed reaction in some people. Once the person is hooked then the scammer needs an advance fee of some kind – a customs release charge or transfer charge etc. And the victim pays up, then another such charge appears and so on repeatedly until the victim realises there is no ‘treasure’ – just a scammer stealing money from them.

There are various standard stories used by advance fee scammers – the most common being of a shipment stuck in customs or money left in a bank account when someone died, but the latest story includes Bitcoins.

Everyone has seen mention of Bitcoins in the news and the idea that Bitcoin makes people into millionaires is widely believed. So this scammer is using Bitcoins as the treasure (but converted into cash for release).

The story is really just an updated version of the money in a bank account that the scammer wil share with you if you follow their guidance and claim to be a long lost relative and you agree to share the proceeds with the scammer.

Of course there is no such treasure – just a greedy evil criminal trying to steal from you..

“My name is Richie Lia, a client relations manager at one of Canada’s foremost Cryptocurrency exchanges snd I am contacting you in regards to the Bitcoin of a deceased account holder which has been valued at $7.2 million”.

Common sense warns you the story is a pack of lies – don’t be deceived.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

August 4, 2019

Stupidest Scam of the Week Earth’s Magnetic Core

The idea of free or very cheap electricity has been popular with scammers for some time, with everything from Tesla machines that create energy to supposedly super efficient solar panels that the energy industry is frightened by to devices you plug into your wall socket and never need to pay an electric bill again.

This latest one is about free energy from the earth’s core.

“The Earth’s Core is producing 1 million times more electricity every second that mankind can consume”.

”This crazy professor invented a crazy device that feeds itself from the earth’s core”.

The only thing crazy is anyone who buys into such drivel.

This has the standard hallmarks of a scam

– focus on a problem that is significant for a large number of people and promises an end to that problem

– offers a magical or ‘weird’ or long lost answer to the problem

– makes sure the apparent answer is unexplained

– states that scientists cannot understand this

– this new answer will change the world

– the answer must be available to everyone at low cost or no cost

– big industry is trying to keep the answer a secret

– big industry is trying to take down the website with the answer – so you have to view it immediately

The only thing missing from the scam email is celebrity endorsements which are common in these kinds of messages.

All the usual rubbish from a criminal’s mind, intent on trapping people into paying something for nothing.

Sad.

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August 3, 2019

Time-Wasters Update

There are endless scam messages proclaiming some new method for generating electricity free of charge and this one talks about Thomas Edison, the famous inventor, but strangely never mentions his name, just his patents and inventions. It also claims that all of our forefathers used this secret method of getting free electricity based on a device created by the famous inventor. But it’s all nonsense. Edison did invent various electrically powered devices and several ways to generate electricity but they are powered by a fossil fuel in some form – coal or gas or oil. Nothing free in that and certainly no secret as patents are all available for anyone to read.

“The Kachin Tribe of Myanmar Live Diabetes Free – See How They Do It” is a catchy title for an email but it’s just another moron peddling drivel about a new magic remedy for diabetes and of course it’s a secret that Big Pharma is trying to stop you seeing and the website with the answer will be taken down any time. Entirely a fantasy by a scammer wanting to steal anything she can get.

An email to the radio station from Abdul Musau of The Ministry of Endowment and Islamic Affairs Qatar. Sounds impressive but the email address is a give-a-way as it’s gnettelecom.net.br which is supposed to be a Brazilian Telecoms company. The email is a typical scam offering to buy lots of expensive products and pay me 5% of every deal. But Brooklands Radio doesn’t sell products and the whole things is a cheap stupid scam.

My billing statement is ready for download number 913E0565758394585786549RJK234890203948902302 and that’s quite a number. The company involved must have issued billions of billions of invoices already. The message claims to be from Microsoft Online Services team but is actually from invoicehome.net which is not Microsoft. No thanks.

Perhaps the next email scam message would play well in America or China but not in England. It claims that the man who killed the actor and martial arts star Bruce Lee has spoken for the first time and is demonstrating in a video how he used the Chinese Death Touch. It would be unbelievably stupid if true but obviously it’s a just a pack of lies to get idiots to watch a video for which the scammer gets paid for every thousand views.

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