Category: Time-Wasters

Any time-wasters not normally classed as scammers or spammers

May 21, 2016

Update on Those Time-Wasters

So, what rubbish emails and calls have there been to Brooklands Radio station in the last few days?

A company named Toople trying to sell us business broadband. – never heard of them.

A company offering merchant cash advances against sales – we’re a volunteer radio station – we don’t sell stuff.

A Captain Tim of the US Army 82^nd Airborne division serving in Afghanistan. He wants help with securing two trunks and will pay handsomely for that help. He wants to know my name, address, telephone number, occupation and a copy of my drivers licence , which of course contains birth date and a photo. – This couldn’t possibly be an attempt at identity theft. NO. Never.

An email from a company telling us about a private jet service in Hong Kong – no use to us – we only ever use helicopters.

An email from an SEO company says “Over 80% of people in your industry search for and buy your products online” – Generic rubbish.

A set of emails titled “Contractor Working”, “Payroll Solutions”, “Contractor Call” etc.. advertising systems for contract workers. – This is just lead generation. The marketing company sending this stuff will earn money for every reply they pass onto their client.

These people just waste our time and clog up the Internet with rubbish.

May 20, 2016

Valerie Deals with Cold Callers

A guest post by Valerie.

Valerie says she got fed up with cold callers years ago and signed up for the Telephone Preference Service. This led to a big reduction in the number of calls but she still does receive them.

They seem to call her mostly around 6 pm – they wait till they think you’re home from work and some even call her around 8 am when she’s having breakfast. She had three callers in one afternoon.

Valerie pays the extra money each month for caller Id on her phone so she can see who’s calling.

For cold callers, she keeps a very loud whistle by the phone and if it’s a cold caller they get a good blast of that.

If the whistle isn’t to hand, then she simply says ‘I’ll just get Mrs J.. for you’ and leaves the phone off the hook so it continues to cost the caller.

Cold callers can be a real nuisance, but I bet Valerie doesn’t get the same caller twice.

May 19, 2016

Wealth and Finance Awards – Are They Real?

We received an email titled ‘Your Business Elite 2016 Selection’ and the email claimed that one of the presenters had been chosen as one of the Business Elite for 2016.

First problem is that the name they used wasn’t a presenter or anyone else at the station and there was no mention of a job title or responsibilities or anything that would lead me to believe the email was anything but spam, but it is in fact genuine.

They claim rigorous assessment and checking of the market to find the best people but that really didn’t add up.

The email says we can announce this result but to appear in their magazine next issue we need to invest in one of their packages.

Elite Package for £1,400

Or Innovative Package for £800

Or Cutting Edge package for £300

And logos and trophies are available for an extra fee apparently.

This doesn’t seem to be a scam – there is a magazine Wealth and Finance International and they give out a lot of awards in the Finance industry.

The Elite package for £1,400 gives you

A double page spread
Inclusion of your article on their Homepage
A front cover headline
1 trophy highlighting you as Business Elite Winner 2016
A Business Elite 2016 logo for use in your Marketing.

So, it appears that anyone with money to spend can get a lot of coverage in the magazine and website. That seems to be a novel form of Marketing.

But it doesn’t make me want to read a magazine where people are in it based on how much they pay rather than anything worthwhile they have done.

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May 14, 2016

Update on Those Time-Wasters

So, what rubbish emails and calls have there been to Brooklands Radio station in the last few days?

An email from a company that clearly has a fake name and is supposed to be about a breakthrough in supplements that can rapidly reduce weight. The email even says at the bottom that it came from the guys iPhone. Obviously a simple scam by someone who can churn out rubbish on his IPhone to send to millions of people.

We keep getting emails from Scoot business directory with assorted messages about our profile being out of date or not fully used but really it’s about getting money for having an entry in their directory. No Thanks

An offer by a Marketing company to let us use their latest healthcare database of verified emails addresses and phone numbers. We’re not in Healthcare. Our domain name is brooklandsradio – how much more obvious does it have to be that we’re a radio station. Plus the email address they used for the station has been dead for 4 years so that shows how up to date their records are.

A bunch of emails from a re-mortgage company wanting to save us money. But in fact the entire email is bogus – it comes from an automatic email generator and the links in it are random. Most likely they are just searching for Live email addresses they can then sell.

An email claiming to be from Nat West bank and that we have used an incorrect password. The whole thing is fake and the links are to company names that are obviously made up and will redirect to the scammers fake bank website.

These people just waste our time and clog up the Internet with rubbish.

May 9, 2016

The Miss Ayesha Gadaffi Scam

This email shows the level of stupidity of many scammers.

It reads

“I am Miss. Ayesha Gaddafi, one of the daughters of the embattled president of Libya, I am currently residing in one of the African Countries, unfortunately as a refugee. At the meantime, my family is the target of Western nations led by NATO who wants to destroy my father at all costs. Our investments and bank accounts in several countries are their targets to freeze.

I have been commissioned to contact an interested foreign investor/partner who will be able to take absolute control of part of the vast cash available (£35 million) for a possible investment in your country.

Therefore if you can maintain the high level of secrecy required in this project, kindly respond with the following information for details of

Your full names and address
Your private telephone and fax numbers
Your private email address
Age and profession

Best Regard,

Miss.Ayesha Gaddafi”

It’s nearly 4 years since Colonel Gadaffi died but still some moron thinks he should send out this old scam email. This is both ridiculous and pathetic.

May 7, 2016

Latest Time-Wasters

So, what rubbish emails and calls have there been to Brooklands Radio station in the last few days?

We received a series of emails that are bounce back messages as the email address was in error i.e. the email address they were sent to doesn’t exist or is over limit. How did this happen? We didn’t send the emails. Some scammer ‘spoofed’ our email address and sent out the messages. Spoofing means to make an email look like it came from someone else. This is very difficult to stop.

2. A message in French saying someone had left us a voice message on a site named kjiji. – Just a scam.

3. A message from Amazon saying our order has been dispatched, with a zip file to open. Yet another stupid scam message.

4. A message from a debt collection agency offering to collect our outstanding debts – we’re a volunteer organisation. No debts. But they didn’t bother to check of course, just fill the Internet with spam messages.

5. An email titled ‘The Quickest Way to Obtain Funds Generated From the Internet” from a Mackenzie Cremor (that’s a great fake name). The email is just a series of links to random websites. It looks like this spam is intended to tell if the email address is Live i.e. if they don’t get back an error message then they know it’s a real email address. Time-Wasters.

These people just waste our time and clog up the Internet with rubbish.