Category: Phishing

December 28, 2019

Time-Wasters Update

Mike Gregg claims to be the Auditor General for Royal Bank of Scotland. And he has just completed an audit. In that work he found an account belonging to the ex chief of Enron and it contains 9.8 million dollars and it can be mine as long as I share it with him. Yup – if I wanted to commit a criminal act I would definitely approach thousands of unknown people by spam email to announce the fact. A typical Advance Fee scam.

Lloyds Bank Fraud Protection Services contact me to determine whether I have made all of the recent transactions on my account. However, the email is from billing @andrewwakefild.com which is not Lloyds bank, plus the sender doesn’t know my name or account number and I don’t actually have an account at Lloyds. Unusually this email doesn’t have a link to click or an attached file – just two phone numbers to call. No doubt the calls will go to a criminal’s call centre to be answered and the caller asked for their login, password, account number etc. so the criminals can empty the account and also sell the details to other criminals.

Message tells us that we have 6 pending emails waiting to be downloaded and we should click the link to release them. No thanks. The message is from testry.tk which I have never heard of and certainly don’t have an email account with.

An email tells us we must watch a video otherwise someone else will be paid $100 for watching it rather than us. No-one would pay $100 for a random person to watch a video unless that person was a celebrity. No chance.

Detective Alessandro Signorino is Chief Airport Security for some unnamed airport or so he claims. He wants me to confirm that an inheritance consignment destined for me is being rerouted as per my instruction. If not then I must tell him immediately so he arrange for proper delivery to me. Nope – just a typical advance fee scam. I have never heard of a box in airport security being called an inheritance consignment.

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December 25, 2019

Top Christmas Scams

The festive season is a busy time of year for scammers of all kinds as people plan to buy more products and services and the market for gifts reaches its peak.

Add in Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the pre- Christmas sales and the Boxing Day sales and you have an explosion of buying that the scammers want a share of. So, what have the scammers been up to?

Fake Shops

Scammers set up fake website shops offering whatever products are most popular. They usually copy the sales text and pictures from genuine websites to make their site look real, but if you buy then you’re unlikely to get anything and you will lose the money. Often they sell your credit card details to other scammers.

Always make sure you‘re on a genuine company website before buying anything.

Phishing Scam

There are any number of ways scammers will use to try to get your confidential information, including fake shops as above, fake text messages claiming to be from your bank, fake warnings where you have to click a link to login., but the link takes you to a specially prepared webpage that imitates your bank or whoever the scammers claim to be. The page is just to get your details.

The link may say it’s what you expect (e.g. Marks and Spencer/discounts) but it will be a fake page shop designed to get your confidential information.

Beware of these scams and don’t click a link unless you are sure it is safe.

Charity Scams.

Many people give more to charity at Christmas and the scammers go into overdrive with fake charity sites, fake charity emails and social media posts. They tug at your heartstrings in an attempt to get money.

They may claim celebrity endorsement or official recognition or anything to make themselves believable.

If you want to donate to charity then donate in person or go to the correct website directly – do not click on links in messages.

Scammers may pose as representatives of charitable organizations that are real (or merely sound real). At this time of year, their emotionally-charged appeals are more likely to succeed with normally careful people

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December 21, 2019

Time-Wasters Update

“Guaranteed Unsecured Business Finance” is the title of an email from insure-guide.panel.co.uk which sounds like a comparison site rather than anything to do with business finance. Apparently I can instantly access funds for any purpose I wish simply by filling in my details on a short form. Nope – it’s a phishing scam after my confidential details, probably to be sold to other criminals.

A scam email with two sides. Part 1 is about a new molecule that eliminates arthritis pain instantly. Obvious rubbish. Part 2 is about getting the secret techniques used by special forces. The two parts don’t match and are different scams so this is from one confused scammer.

A simple phishing scam email offers a fax for me to view online. But says it’s from Britco.tk which I’ve never heard of and the tk suffix means the email address is from a New Zealand territory called Tokelau – most famous for being used by scammers as anyone can get one of their addresses.

Strangely, there are still Black Friday messages arriving about how I can choose a free gift from Amazon but the email address seems to be an engineering company – don’t these people know Black Friday was in November?

An invoice arrives from Melbourne Live Seafoods. No doubt the attached invoice is loaded with malware. No thanks.

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December 14, 2019

Time-Wasters Update

Mohammed Ali lives in London and has a lucrative business proposal for me as he wants to finance my projects for golf courses, hotels and resorts, real estate parks, amusement parks, manufacturing, water parks and anything else. I think the scammer had ‘parks’ on the brain when he wrote this one. He claims he has funds available for immediate use by me. No. He’s a penniless scammer trying to steal from other people.

I have no dealings with Danske Bank so an email claiming to be a transaction report from them is obviously a scam. This one is to tell me that my account may have been hijacked and I need to confirm a recent transaction by clicking the link. It’s a simple phishing email trying to get a login and password from me, which of course I do not have. The email has paragraphs copied from real Danske bank emails warning people against scam letters. The strangest thing is that the message contains the line “Emails sent to you by Danske Bank are encrypted”. If that was true then I wouldn’t be able to read the message, which is from one very stupid scammer.

“The legendary Eldorado Investment Fund has returned to the international cryptocurrency market in your country” says the email. No. It’s just a simple scam trying to get people to click on what is supposed to a link to the Eldorado website but is in fact to a YouTube video that the scammers get paid for getting people to watch.

Dr. Ryan Sheldon wants to give me the gift that will wipe 10 years off my age within 30 days. It must be true because he says he has proved it and he knows how to activate a dormant protein in your body that will make your skin brighter, lighter and tighter. Good rhyme there but he’s just a scammer of course.

Business Funding Guide want to offer my business an unsecured business loan, according to their email. They don’t care about the purpose of the loan so they must be mad or bad. There is no such website as businessfundingguide.co.uk so it’s a scam and the link in the email goes to a different site.

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December 9, 2019

Blocked Incoming Messages

We all rely on email and know that sometimes emails don’t get through to us as they should.

Maybe the email provider is blocking messages believing them to be spam or that they contain malicious elements such as viruses, trojans etc.

Maybe there is something wrong and messages are stopped that shouldn’t be stopped.

So, when an email turns up that states that a number of messages have been blocked and gives you the option to release them – it might seem a good idea.

But it isn’t.

This is a simple trick to get you to give up your login and password which can then be sold to other criminals.

Your email provider will not send you such emails. There are settings in all email software that allow you to set the level of security you want and most allow the download of messages marked as spam. There is no reason for an email provider to send emails asking about other email messages.

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

December 7, 2019

Time-Wasters Update

Online reviews of products, services and companies are increasingly important as more and more people check reviews before purchasing. This creates space for bad reviews to damage business (rightly or wrongly) and for people to offer to remove bad reviews for a price. Typical email title is “Is a bad review destroying your reputation”. Better to ignore people offering these services as you don’t know what they can actually do, if anything. If you have bad reviews and there is any justification for them then fix your problems. If you believe the bad reviews are fake – report them to the relevant website.

Dr. Ryan Shelton wants to give me a gift that will wipe 10 years off my age. I assume he means something that will make me look 10 years younger as opposed to something that will actually change my biological age. The message has strange contents including a line about a “few wrinkles that could caused you to consider something that could end your life”. Just a simple scam of course – there is no free gift and no anti-aging formula.

Yet another detox scam. This one goes to great length about 10 day lemonade cleanses, 7 day green juice detoxes and other yuk sounding exercises and tries to discredit all of them. But her product is supposedly far better than any alternative – a one day cleanse that helps you lose weight (Yup – not eating for one day will drop a little weight off you and paying for the scammer’s product will reduce the weight of your wallet), save you time and money and give you a big advantage over everyone else. No – it’s just a typical scam and there is no product.

Al Ain Convention Centre claim they want to book our venue and facilities for a conference meeting in Abu Dhabi. Date and time unspecified as no doubt the scammer will send out the same message many times. They’ll be out of luck as we don’t have a conference centre anywhere let alone one in Abu Dhabi. Plus, why would anyone other than a dumb scammer send an email claiming to be from a conference centre wanting to book another one?

An email tells me that my mailbox is almost full and has a little graphic showing an almost full mailbox. But I have never heard of letras.up.pt and the ‘pt’ means it is from an email address registered in Portugal. Not mine.

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