Stupidest Spam of the Week Biorhythm

“Powerful APP predicts the Future. Works for Everyone”.

Now, this is about biorhythms.

These are the natural cycles found in humans and many other organisms and they affect physical, emotional and intellectual activity.

They follow 23, 28 and 31 day cycles respectively in humans.

However, many believe that the theory of biorhythms is pseudoscience and that there isn’t any compelling evidence for their existence.

If you do believe that biorhythms make sense then you could see that having charts of how your physical energy levels fluctuate over that 23 day cycle could be useful.

But the scammer who’s flooding the world with messages about The Biorhythm is making ridiculous claims. Including

Identify the best time to buy lottery tickets
Know when to board a plane
Control your destiny
Predict death

Ludicrous. No thanks

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December 26, 2020

Give Peace a Chance

December 25, 2020

Happy Christmas

December 24, 2020

Fight Those Scammers

December 23, 2020

Understanding Website Cookies

Almost every website you visit asks you to accept cookies, and typically we just click yes rather than taking the time to read exactly what the cookies are being used for.

Cookies are tiny files containing a small amount of data about the browsing in progress. These cookies are either stored in memory or on your computer’s disk.

Types of Cookies

There are session cookies which enable a website to remember each page accessed and your login. These disappear when you leave the website.

There are persistent cookies which remember user preferences and allow you to access websites without having to login again

Then there are 3^rd party cookies and these are basically tracking your browsing for the purposes of advertising and marketing.

Advertising and Tracking

In most cases, cookies are useful. It would be annoying of a website asked you to login again each time you clicked onto a new page on the same website. Plus you do want that shopping trolley to remember what you’ve added when you looking for something new to add.

However, many companies, spammers and scammers use 3^rd party cookies to track your activities.

If you prefer adverts that are tailored to your tastes then you might agree to 3^rd party cookies but if you hate the idea of being tracked so avidly then you may want to deny such cookies.

By the way, in 2011 the EU decided that cookies were potentially a privacy problem and mandated that website owners obtain visitors’ permissions. This means the very annoying question ‘do you accept cookies’ on most website you visit.

Should you accept a cookie request?

Session and persistent cookies help the browsing experience but it’s those 3^rd party cookies that are the annoying and potentially intrusive ones.

Tips for protecting your privacy

Don’t automatically accept every cookie. You could even try to deny all cookies and see if it has adverse consequences, such as wasting time to fill in your personal details on a shopping site.

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

December 21, 2020

The Fake Delivery Notice

Coronavirus has speeded the move for many people from shopping on the High street to shopping online which then means a delivery, usually within a few days.

Again, the effect of Coronavirus has been that couriers just leave ring your doorbell and leave the item without ever seeing you.

When they cannot leave the item they sometimes leave a non-delivery card telling you how to collect your item from a distribution centre or arrange a new delivery. Quite often this is now done electronically but scammers have picked up on the use of these cards and create their own.

Across Surrey and elsewhere more of these fake cards are being left at people’s homes.

If you access the website listed then you get to a web page asking for delivery details then it will have a reason to ask for your payment details.

It may say you need to pay small fee to rearrange delivery or that there has been an underpayment by the sender.

Whatever the reason – they just want your card details to sell to other scammers and identity thieves.

If you believe a genuine delivery was attempted but did not happen, then find the company details for yourself i.e. not off any card pushed through the letterbox. Then contact the sender or courier directly to sort things out.

Any demand for further payment is likely to mean there is a scam in progress.

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