Stupidest Spam of the Week Colonel Gaddafi

Years ago there was a spate of advance fee scams using the name of Colonel Gaddafi’s widow. These were typical scams in telling a ridiculous story and claiming there is a huge fortune waiting to be collected and you can share in it if you offer just a tiny bit of help collecting those riches.

Some moron is now repeating these old messages.

e.g “Greetings from Libya, I am the wife of the ex-Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qadhafi, the former and late leader of Libya Colonel Muammar Qadhafi who was betrayed and embattled by Libyan

and murdered by the Libyan rebels which led to his untimely death.

Since then, me and my children has been on travel ban, no access to bank accounts and we have been rendered homeless and at the same time we are under threat and we are not allowed to

invest or operate bank account. I wrote this letter because I need you to help me to secure some of my family funds that is deposited by my late husband in different security companies abroad which is no longer safe under the name of my late husband therefore I urgently need your help to transfer the amount to your bank account”.

She offers you 30% of the total funds and just wants to know some details from you to start the process of recovering the money.

She wants your name, address, phone numbers, gender, age, occupation and a copy of your identification.

All good information to sell to identity thieves.

She wants to benefit from two scams at once – the Advance Fee Scam and Identity Theft.

Any riches that Gaddafi had are long since gone.

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November 21, 2020

Time-Wasters Update

“WHOIS final warning for email account shutdown” is yet another phishing email trying to get our login and password details. Never click on links in such emails – check with your email provider if you’re not sure whether it’s a scam or not.

Georgia Quinn emails to tell me that my gift is waiting for me. I simply need to confirm my name and address. The gift is apparently free cakes. The email sender appears to work for a company called Lead Forensics. That is a real company and is nothing to do with crime investigation. Their tagline is “Lead Forensics is the software that reveals the identity of your anonymous website visitors”. On the Internet, many people choose to be anonymous (i.e. not login or register on websites) so they don’t get pestered by spammers and scammers, but Lead Forensics see their mission as being to remove that anonymity and make sure those people are pestered by unwanted emails and calls. We don’t know if the cakes are real or just a lie to get people to send in their details. Don’t reply.

“Reverse Alzheimer’s in 3 minutes a day”. It’s sad that scammers go after people suffering from Alzheimer’s but there are many scams targeting them. This one claims that scientists have found the secret of how memories are stored and how to restore them. If there was any such breakthrough we would all know about it and not need scammers to inform people. The email even includes pictures supposed to prove the cure but of course they don’t prove anything except that the scammer can copy and paste pictures.

Another scam message and this claims that you follow an at home trick before bed and you are guaranteed to wake up with insane energy. Scammers always promise far too much to be anything but fake. Pathetic.

“Scientists from Harvard and Johns Hopkins have revealed there’s a nasty mistake most diabetics are making every single night”. Lots of scammers target diabetics as it’s very common problem and the only real answers involve weight loss and exercise. There are no magic pills to take diabetes away, so scammers invent magic potions, exercises and ‘weird’ rituals to entice people. This scammer keeps the supposed answer secret and instead lists lots of things that are proven not to work and claims his secret is different to them all. There are scientists at Harvard working on research on diabetes but their results are published for anyone to read and they do not have any magic answers as yet – or the entire world would know about it.

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November 20, 2020

British Airways Fined for Data Breach

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has fined British Airways (BA) £20m for failing to protect the personal and financial details of more than 400,000 of its customers.

An ICO investigation found the airline was processing a significant amount of personal data without adequate security measures in place. This failure broke data protection law and, subsequently, BA was the subject of a cyber-attack during 2018, which it did not detect for more than two months.

The Data Breach

The attacker is believed to have potentially accessed the personal data of approximately 429,612 customers and staff. This included names, addresses, payment card numbers and CVV numbers of 244,000 BA customers.

Also, the usernames and passwords of BA employee and administrator accounts as well as usernames and PINs of up to 612 BA Executive Club accounts were potentially accessed, but this is uncertain. It is often impossible to be certain which data the hackers copied.

The ICO concluded that there were numerous measures BA could have used to mitigate the risk of an attacker being able to access the BA network. These include:

limiting access to applications, data and tools to only that which are required to fulfil a user’s role
undertaking rigorous testing, in the form of simulating a cyber-attack, on the business’ systems;
protecting employee and third party accounts with multi-factor authentication.

Since the attack, BA has made considerable improvements to its IT security.

BA did not detect the attack in June 2018 themselves but were alerted by a third party more than two months afterwards in September 2018. Once they became aware BA acted promptly and notified the ICO.

“When organisations take poor decisions around people’s personal data, that can have a real impact on people’s lives. The law now gives us the tools to encourage businesses to make better decisions about data, including investing in up-to-date security,” said Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denman.

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

November 19, 2020

Warning Fake Dating Requests

The radio station received three fake dating requests in one day.

From Dinara, Tatyana and Ksenia.

Content such as

“Hi. How have you been? What is your name? Where are you from?

My name is Ksenia. I like to chat with you. What do you think of that?

That one was a short message and had an email address supposedly for Ksenia so the email recipient could reply and start up an online relationship no doubt leading to a scam.

The other two messages were basically adverts for a Russian dating service which again leads to a scam.

e.g. Hello sweetie.

How does it feel to be a loved one. I wish to feel it someday.

I am Tatyana, an educated middle class girl from Bryansk, Russia.

I am a doctor and earn a decent living. I am hard working and honest to my profession. Which implies I don’t have much free time. So I want to tell you straightaway that I am in search of my life partner.

The email leads up to a link to a Russian dating site megadatek.ru

This is a long winded way of getting someone to access a dating website.

Is the dating website real?

Is there actually a girl named Tatyana ?

We don’t know, but if you want to join a dating site then pick one in your home country with an excellent reputation as there are too many scam dating sites out there.

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

November 18, 2020

Online Fraud and Coronavirus in Scotland

Fraud in Scotland soared by 56% during the Spring/Summer lockdown, largely caused by criminals pretending to be NHS workers calling or visiting people.

There has also been a large number of fraudulent applications for UK government grants.

The criminals most commonly pretend to be officials of NHS Test and Protect. Some go door to door offering Coronavirus tests or collecting donations or offering to spray paths and driveways with anti- bacterial sprays etc.

This is all fake – you do not have to pay for Coronavirus tests (as long as you have symptoms or have been referred for a test by an official or a health worker).

The door-to-door activities are always fake – NHS Test and Protect staff will not turn up at your door unless they are tracking down contacts – and there is no charge involved in that.

As for spraying driveways and similar – this is just preying upon people’s fears and offers no benefit except to the scammer taking your money.

Callers

Criminals also called people’s homes, telling them they had to isolate for 14 days as they had been in close contact with someone who tested positive for Covid-19. The caller says they’ll send a home test kit and asks for bank details. Again, Covid tests are always free of charge.

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