Category: Scam email

September 18, 2021

Time-Wasters Update

It seems that everyone is getting numerous emails and text messages about DHL deliveries, Post Office parcels etc. Usually the message claims some piece of information was wrong and prevented delivery or there is a surcharge to pay. This latest one is clearly by an idiot. It claims to be from DPD couriers but the sender’s email address is trybpstabiizer.com and it says an APPLE iMac 24 inch laptop is due for delivery if I pay the outstanding £1 delivery charge. When someone sends such an item they get the delivery charge correct – it’s not a matter of guesswork. Just a dumb scammer.

“Grandpa Robert Miller lost 63lbs with no effort” – apparently with no exercise and eating whatever foods he liked. All this because he carried out an 8 second ritual each evening. This is the typical rubbish that scammers put in their emails about magic weight loss remedies. It’s hard to imagine anyone taking this sort of thing seriously but the messages continue so maybe someone does or maybe the scammers are too stupid to recognise their failure. As usual the magic remedy is supposed to be a carefully guarded secret, but 159,000 people are already using it. Pathetic.

Another 419 scam email arrives claiming to be from the FBI. Apparently they have tried to call me about the $2 million they have to send on to me, but couldn’t get through. That’s an old story that doesn’t work nowadays that everyone uses smart phones that automatically go to answer phone if not answered. Anyway, the FBI don’t even know my name as the email starts with Dear, The money is apparently compensation for something unspecified. Just the usual pathetic rubbish.

An email claiming to be from Amazon tells me my account has been suspended due to failure to pay Amazon Prime subscription charges. It’s an obvious scam message as it is actually from r0ggqpgxsmxcybu-uhu49mnok2accmxe which is clearly not Amazon, plus I don’t have an Amazon subscription.

Lots of fake messages arrive supposedly from Chinese companies offering various engineering products such as transformer coils. Some of these scammers also add fake mail delivery messages so you get an email with a title such as ‘Returned Mail Delivery Failure’ which looks like one of your messages wasn’t delivered, but it’s fake. The endless details are just copied from authentic delivery failure messages and the point for the scammer is to get you to open the message and click the link to see your original message but that’s where the payload of malware is hidden. Do not trust such messages.

September 16, 2021

The Search Engine Submission Scam

The email is titled: “Domain Notice”

“Notice for Registering your Domain with All Major Search Engines”

It lists one of my Internet domain names and the date the domain name will expire (unless I renew the registration).

In reality, this is just a sales pitch for search engine optimisation dressed up to look like domain name renewal.

When you have a website, you will want the search engines (Google, Bing etc.) to know about it.

The basic ways that the search engines get to know of your website are

The search engines come across links from sites they already know, to your site and then they search your site and add it to their lists.
You submit the domain name to each search engine
You use an online service to submit your website to hundreds of search engines – most of which almost no-one uses

The email continues:-

“Submitting your domain to search engines is essential in order to make it more visible on the web. Failing to register with search engines makes it difficult for visitors to search your business on the internet. That’s why we are sending this friendly reminder to submit your domain to all major search engines for better visibility”.

Generally, once your website is listed by Google and Bing there is little point in trying to register it with the small search engines unless there is a search engine specifically for the niche that your website occupies. E.g. if your website is about GIF animated images then you’ll want to register it on the GIPHY search engine which only searches GIF animated images .

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September 13, 2021

The Magic Letter

This scammer tells a story about a magical letter which will transform anyone’s life.

Supposedly, Charlie was down on his luck and had lost everything but then he came into contact with ‘The Letter’ and within 8 hours he had used it to manifest $11,900.

The email goes on about all of the benefits of making $12,000 every day and transforming your life – a new home, your dream car, your dream partner etc.

It ends with the message “This is why you deserve to have this secret letter for yourself.”

You just have to click to see the letter for yourself.

Really, this is not very imaginative stuff – must be a very dull minded scammer.

After all, fairy tales are much more creative and probably more likely to be true

e.g. I have some magic beans, which when planted will grow into a giant beanstalk that can take you to a castle where there is a goose that lays golden eggs

or I found a lamp, rubbed it and a genie appeared who offered me 3 wishes for anything I wanted

or the location of a cavern in the desert that contains gold and precious gems and a magical flying carpet

I’m sure you get the point.

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

September 11, 2021

Time-Wasters Update

“A Japanese fix for belly fat” is the title of another scam email. It’s supposed to be a completely natural method for getting rid of that fat belly, was discovered in Japan and uses ingredients in everyone’s kitchen. Apparently weight loss clubs hate this remedy, which is surprising as it’s secret. Just a typical pathetic scam.

Scammers love their catchy email titles, such as ‘WAIT! Don’t throw out those old jeans. Here’s how to fit into them again with a weird exotic fruit trick’. For anyone used to getting these emails, this is a classic title – containing an instruction “Wait” then rouses your curiosity with “Don’t throw out the jeans” then entices you to read more with ‘Here’s how to …”. There is a strange picture in the email that shows a frying pan with thin red liquid and an unrecognisable white thing the size of a lemon. As always it is supposed to be a secret but also claims that over 200,000 people already use this. Must be big supplies of this ‘exotic’ fruit.

Mrs Bill Chantal tells me I have been compensated with $4.4 million by the United Nations. The money will be loaded onto an ATM card and sent to me as soon as I provide the details of my bank account, address, passport details and my Whatsapp account. Strange that someone who wants to give me lots of money doesn’t even know my name or that she’s sent the email to an admin address of a hospital.

Yet another text message claiming to be from the Post office and that I have to click the link to pay the outstanding shipping fee to be paid. Sadly there are many millions of these message sent out every day. Never click the link in such messages – if you’re unsure if it’s real then login to the actual Post office website or APP to check, but never click that link.

Alzheimer’s toes is a new one in the world of scam email titles. It’s just another magical remedy to reverse Alzheimer’s and claims that one woman did a special toe exercise for 28 days and regained all of her memories without needing any medication. These stories are laughably bad but still they circulate.

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September 5, 2021

Stupidest Spam of the Week Trading Oil

The email claims to be from something like “The beginners guide to trading in oil’.

A few of decades ago, trading in currency, company stocks etc. was almost exclusively for the professionals, but cultural changes and technology changes made these types of trading more available for private citizens.
Some made money and some lost money but over time these kinds of trading have expanded greatly and more and more people have tried their hand at beating the markets.

A recent set of emails with titles such as ‘Profits in Oil’ and ‘Make Money in Oil’ have appeared and the purpose is to convince people that some kind of trading involving oil is the new future for making tons of money from home.

Oil for salad dressing? Or for lubricating your car? Or in health remedies?

Nope – just plain oil for refining into petrol, aviation fuel etc.

Fancy buying a tanker full of oil? Nope. Neither do I.

Just a new way to attract people with promises of big money but it’s only the scammers who make money.

No thanks.

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September 4, 2021

Time-Wasters Update

“Eat This Astronaut Food for Vertigo Immunity” is a very silly title for a scam email. It shows a graphic of a brain that supposedly proves that vertigo is not a normal part of ageing. But then nobody said it was part of aging. Vertigo is a simple biological problem that is usually temporary and easily resolved or sometimes longer lasting and requires an adjustment to a way of life. There is no such thing as food to make you into an astronaut.

An email from Microsoft warns us that they tried to take payment for our Microsoft 365 family subscription and the charge failed. We have to update our payment card details or Microsoft Office will stop working. The scammer is too dumb to realise that business email addresses are not going to have family subscriptions to Microsoft.

Lots of emails from fake Chinese companies currently. A latest one is from a company with no name that claims to be in Shenzhen. The grammar and spelling contain numerous mistakes. Any genuine business email would have been properly written and spell checked so is an obvious fake.

Another email claiming to be Twitter warning us that our account has been locked. The scammer wants us to click the link to login so they can steal our login and password. But the address the message is from is “twtter” – they hope we don’t spot the misspelling. Tough luck – we did.

Boost your memory or cure Alzheimer’s or improve your brain are typical scammer targets for magic remedies. “One Trick Tonight to Boost Your Memory” is the sales pitch by a scammer calling himself Cliff Carr. It supposedly lets you build a higher memory with no effort. There is no such thing as a “higher memory” and it’s all just a scam of course.

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