Category: Warning

The Biggest Car Scams

There are numerous scams involving buying and selling vehicles and the most common online are:-

Bait and Switch – An advertiser promotes one vehicle but when you go to see it – there is a problem. That vehicle is not available for some reason but the dealer has lots of other vehicles to show you. This is called bait and switch and you should walk away as dealers who practice this are likely to only provide bad deals.

Attrition – the dealer or seller will delay and delay and delay in the hope of wearing you down until you agree to a poor deal for any vehicle.

Leasing Deals – More people than ever are switching to lease deals as they can provide peace of mind and can be financially advantageous. However, you must read all of the details very carefully and not end up trapped in a long term deal that you cannot break. Also, many adverts for lease deals appear very cheap but  they are for  unreasonably small mileage and that is kept hidden from you till you are ready to sign.

Second Hand Cars – These can be great deals but unless you know about cars you may want to take out an AA inspection or equivalent by an expert to show exactly what you’re buying.

Craigslist – A very popular place for buying and selling cars. Fake postings are very common. Watch for unrealistically low prices and take those as a warning.  Buyers with stolen cheques or long stories of why they cannot view the car in person but can you ship it to them are commonplace. Anything out of the ordinary in dealings on Craigslist should make you think carefully before proceeding. Craigslist does have pages of warnings on its website if you want further details about the typical scams to watch out for.

Scammers on Craigslist also use the over payment scam whereby they send you a cheque for a much higher price than you asked then contact you with an emergency request that they made a mistake on the payment and can you return the over payment. This is a bad idea as given time, the scammers cheque would bounce leaving you out of pocket from the cheque plus the amount you repaid to the scammer.

Warning Signs

  • Cars are priced far below current market value.
  • The seller claims to be in the military and is stationed overseas.
  • The posting does not include a phone number.
  • The seller demands that you use an online escrow service of their choice (these are always meaningless).
  • Payment must be wired to or from another country. Western Union is often requested.
  • The buyer or seller is very anxious to conclude the transaction.

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

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Wrong Domain Names

Before explaining about wrong domain names, we’d better clarify what’s meant by ‘correct’ domain names.

Appropriate or matching might be a better description than ‘correct’ but you can choose your own descriptive word.

The internet domain name chosen by a business or organisation or individual should match whatever they are selling or publishing or what they are.

That’s simple to understand.

Suppose you know there is a UK company called Flowersby, you can search using a search engine to find their website or could guess e.g. www.flowersby.co.uk or www.flowersby.uk or flowersby.uk.com maybe.

If Flowersby is an international company then I might try www.flowersby.com

Business, organisations and individuals normally pick domain names that make it easy for them to be found.

If I’m a UK company then I should choose a domain name ending in .co.uk or .uk or .uk.com

If I’m a local cricket club then I might pick e.g. “.cricket” or “.club”.

If I’m a non profit organisation then I would probably pick a domain suffix “.org”

Make it obvious to people what you are.

The Fightback Ninja has the domain name fightback.ninja for obvious reasons and because people associate qualities such as stealth, silent and deadly, expert etc. with the word Ninja.

Is there any harm in people picking unexpected or unusual domain names or domain name suffixes?

NO.

You have a wide range to choose from and often it’s the need to standout that leads to the choice of domain name.

So, what is a ‘wrong’ domain name?

Many domain names have restrictions on who can buy them. This is to ensure integrity and to stop unscrupulous people buying up domain names they think other people will want then forcing them to pay over the odds for the name.  e.g. .ac.uk is only for UK academic institutions.

“Wrong” domain names are where scammers pick up whatever domain names they can get cheaply, using an automated system and without any restrictions on who can buy them.

e.g. “.bid” was very popular with scammers as it is cheap and available to all. “.icu” is a new domain name that is becoming very popular with scammers for the same reasons.

Say you get a message about some piece of farm equipment but it’s from an email address ending in diabetescure.icu then you should be suspicious as it looks like a scammer has changed from selling diabetes scams to selling farm scams.

Likewise someone offering a price comparison but the email address ends in .xyz

If the domain name doesn’t match the apparent company name or subject of the message then be suspicious.

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The 118 Call Redirection Scam

Disreputable 118 directories businesses have been buying up out of use phone numbers – they chose ones that are very similar to popular numbers e.g. one digit wrong from Marks and Spencer or numbers from well-known companies that have gone out of business  e.g. Toys R Us.

Why do they buy these numbers?

So they can put what is essentially an advert for themselves but cunningly made to look as if it is instructions from the out of business company.

e.g. you call a number you think is valid but get a recorded message telling you the number is no longer valid and you should call 118 …….  You call them and you will be talking to a directory service which then charges you for calling and asking for the right number and likely charges you for every minute you talk on that new number.

This can catch people out and they can end up with hefty bills that are unexpected. In some cases more than £50.

Power Tel that run the 118 023 service has been fined £200,000 by the Phone Paid Services Authority for this scam.

Do you have an opinion on this matter? Please comment in the box below.

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American Crisis Scams

American conspiracy theorists love a good looming crisis and so do the sellers of survival equipment. But so also do the scammers and they push out lots of messages about catastrophes and stocking up on electric generators, special rations, machines that make electricity from the air etc.

One latest such message starts with ‘The next big crisis is closer than you think”.

Howz that for an attempt to frighten people while being entirely unspecific.

It goes on about whether your house is safe or not and has a picture of a gun secretly hidden under a table and says watch this video to see how to avoid these 3 simple mistakes.

Anyone advocating hiding guns around their house is definitely bonkers.

If you believe in forthcoming catastrophes then do prepare and buy from reputable stores but don’t take notice of the scammers messages.

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Why Do People Fall for Romance Scams?

Romance scams are someone is seeking a partner in romance on dating websites, social media or elsewhere are conned into believing that someone online is the right person for them, but that person is a scammer who has created a fake profile etc. in order to entice people and this in time leads to fraud.

For some scammers this is a long term game they play for fun and money and for some it’s a large scale operation carried out on an industrial scale where they respond to large numbers of men and women and in time reduce that to the most promising victims.

These scams have been around for a very long time and were common 20 years ago and more in the classified  section of magazines and newspapers.

Nowadays, the scammers target their victims mostly through social media and dating sites.

They create the perfect match using pictures copied from the Internet of unsuspecting individuals, adding fake profiles and interests etc and responding to large numbers of men and women.

Scammers create fake online profiles designed to lure you in victims. They use fake names, borrowed photos of someone attractive and a fake back story – all designed to appeal to you.  Quite often, they use a story of a military or ex military person and generally the fake person works overseas – to provide a reason why they cannot meet you in person.

Why Do People Fall For These Scams?

The possibility of love can make you overlook obvious danger signals. Seemingly meeting someone online who is perfect for you and has time for you, is loving and makes it clear they want you can be hard to resist. Many people who consider themselves sensible and level-headed fall for these tricks.

Scammers will put in the effort to get you to trust them – maybe through loving messages, small gifts, thoughtful reminders, personal details etc. In some cases this can go on for months.

Then they try to get money out of you.  Maybe by claiming they have been mugged and lost the months salary or something valuable was stolen or they need money to get a passport so they can visit you or to buy a permit from a corrupt official so they can leave their country.

It can be simpler though – just asking for money to do something for you or for you to set-up a joint bank account or a bank account in your country in their name which they will transfer money to.  (These accounts are then used for money laundering and the Police may arrest you when it is found out).

Warning Signs of Fake Romance 

  • They very quickly ask you to take the conversation off the dating site to use telephone, messaging or email instead
  • They ask you to wire money using a money transfer service such as Western Union. These payments are untraceable and cannot be got back
  • They ask you to set up a new bank account in your name or in their name or in joint names

Be careful.

`If you have fallen for any of these tricks, do let me know, by email.

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Google Play Protect

Google say that Google Play Protect is the most widely deployed mobile threat protection service in the world, but that’s not so surprising as its free on all Android phones and there are a lot of those around.

Google Play Protect is Google’s built-in malware protection for Android

Google say it works constantly to keep your device, data and apps safe. It automatically scans your device and makes sure that you have the latest in mobile security, so you can rest easy.

It scans and verifies over 50 billion apps every day

Are There Problems?

Google Play Protect is supposed to protect users from malicious apps in the Google Play Store — but of 20 Android programs evaluated by AV-Test, Google Play Protect did not perform well at identifying malware.

Those results come from AV-Test, a Germany-based security firm, which periodically evaluates antivirus programs for Windows, Mac OS, Android and Linux.

AV-Test scores each Anti-Virus suite out of a possible 13 points: six for protection, six for usability and the one remaining point for extra features. Earning eight points is enough to secure at least a tentative recommendation from the company. Google Play Protect did not perform well. However the other products are anti-virus and Pay Protect is not intended to be that.

Google Play Protect does protect but do not relay on it for anti-virus protection as it falls down in that area.

If you have any experiences with scam APPS do let me know, by email.

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