Stupidest Spam of the Week Dental Magic

“Do This Dental Trick To Get Rid of Tooth Decay For Ever”. This email title is a usual scammer claim. They pick a problem that affects a lot of people e.g. tooth decay then claim a magic trick of some kind will solve the problem instantly.

These sorts of messages are always lies, but people are sometimes desperate for a solution and click the links to try to find it.

Sadly, they find irrelevant rubbish – sometime the links are to video clips they would never have chosen to watch but the scammer gets paid by the click so doesn’t care. Sometimes to scam websites and other times to an actual product which has a high price and turns out to be totally useless. You cannot complain to the scammer as they will have changed their name, web site, product etc. and appear in a new guise to con more people.

Common sense should tell anyone that the only way to get rid of tooth decay for ever is to get rid of their teeth. Dentures don’t get tooth decay but that is an extreme remedy.

Don’t be conned

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October 31, 2020

Time-Wasters Update

Fabrizio sent us an email containing a purchase order. Sounds good but it’s scam of course. The email comes from an Argentine address and the attached file claiming to be a purchase order is in fact an iso file. No genuine customer would use such a format – it’s used by scammers trying to get their malware through anti malware scanners. We wont be opening that file.

Selfridges are interested in buying from the radio station. At least, that’s what the email says. But the message is actually from selfridge-store.uk which is not the famous Selfridges store but just a scammer, despite links at the bottom of the email being to the genuine Selfridges website. No thanks scammer.

Some scammers make their emails look as if from your own organisation – to attempt to bypass the spam filters. This one claims to be from [email protected] but that’s fake as there is no such email address. The message says the sender has tried to contact us and is demanding payment of an outstanding invoice. Nope. Just the usual rubbish from an evil thieving scammer.

Most scam messages are quite short but some of the 419 type i.e. advance fee scam go into pages and pages of detailed story about how there happens to be a huge treasure waiting to be collected. This latest one is supposedly from the South African Settlement Committee and after multiple pages gets to the point of there being $67 million that the sender and I can share if I just send in the forms he will provide to me. And he guarantees it is perfectly safe and legal. Although he is a senior official I have to reply to a Gmail personal address. These scams work on the idea that some people are so greedy as to dismiss the obvious idea that it’s all fake and instead get involved. Sadly, they lose out and the scammer always wins.

“Greetings Winner”. Apparently, I have won $3.5 million in the Coca-Cola lottery draw. There’s even a note at the bottom of the scammer’s email explaining that I have won without even entering the draw as the organisers scoured websites to pick at random the email addresses to enter the lottery. Yeah! Right!.

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October 30, 2020

John McAfee Arrested

John McAfee was the creator of the McAfee anti-virus software and helped start a multi billion dollar industry but he holds some unusual opinions (including that taxation is illegal) and has come to the interest of the Police in various countries over the years since he sold his company to Intel.

He was arrested in Spain over tax evasion charges and faces extradition to the US.

Prosecutors say he failed to file tax returns for four years, despite earning millions from consulting work, speaking engagements, crypto-currencies and selling the rights to his life story.

If convicted, he could face up to 30 years in prison.

In a statement the US Justice Department said Mr McAfee allegedly evaded tax liability by having his income paid into bank accounts and cryptocurrency exchange accounts in the names of nominees. As a result, it is alleged, he failed to file any tax returns from 2014 to 2018.

He is also accused of concealing assets, including a yacht and real estate property, in the names of others.

The government regulator alleges that Mr McAfee made over $23m by “leveraging his fame” and recommending seven cryptocurrency offerings between 2017 and 2018, which allegedly turned out to be “essentially worthless”.

The SEC is seeking to impose a civil penalty on him, and remove any “allegedly ill-gotten gains”, with interest. It also wants to permanently ban him from serving as an officer or director of any listed company, or any company which files reports to the SEC.

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

October 29, 2020

Funeral and Cemetery Scams

Scammers will use any method they can to part people from their money and that includes sinking to the depths of funeral and cemetery scams. One such scam – the prepaid funeral scam is big business in parts of America and an FBI bust of one such scammers ring revealed 97,000 people caught out and $450 million in funeral goods and services that were paid for in advance but never provided.

The Most Common Funeral Scams

The Casket Scam

There will be a range of caskets available, from cheap to expensive.

Industry studies have shown the average casket shopper buys one of the first three casket models they are shown and usually the one that is in the middle price range.

The funeral directors know this and know no-one wants to be seen to be cheap at such a time, so they select carefully to ensure you get to see the bargain and the most expensive but concentrate on the one they expect you to buy – the mid-range model.

This means it is to the funeral director’s advantage to steer customers towards showroom models first.

There is always a price list you can ask to see before making a judgement.

The Insurance Scam

Many people take out insurance to cover their own funeral or that of their family members.

The issue is where they ask you what the insurance covers and for how much then tailors their offering to take maximum benefit of the insurance payment.

The Packaged Deal Scam

Most people will choose a standard package deal rather than working through all of the details of what’s involved with a funeral.

As with other industries you may find special offers, deals and other incentives to push you to a better package than you expected and the Marketing may be designed to make you believe you get a better deal by choosing a more expensive casket etc. than you wished.

Let’s hope you find a trustworthy and good value funeral director to help you at a time of need.

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

October 28, 2020

Review: Should I Answer

www.shouldianswer.com is a website about cold callers and fraudsters. There is a Should I Answer APP which warns you against all kinds of unwanted calls and can block callers if you choose.

These were created by Mister Group ltd who explain their mission to be:

“We have gained the first experience on our own few years ago. Our friends and people around us started to be bothered by telemarketing calls, which were rapidly raising in our country those days. Some of our friends even lost their money because of these telemarketing scams! So we decided to do something about it – and that’s the story about how the Should I Answer APP was born.”

“Our goal is to make our smart devices friendlier to regular users, so they should serve exactly the purpose the users want them to – not to the purpose the other dark side tries to force us. Telemarketing, number spoofing, unsolicited calls… all such activities are in our radar, and we try every day with all the possible powers to make them behave within legal boundaries.”

How It Works

The Should I Answer APP uses a huge database of spam and telemarketing calls from numbers reported to Do Not Call Registry, numbers reported to Federal Communication Commission and of all the community reviews at Should I Answer.

How is The Service Paid For?

Should I Answer say they try to keep as much of the project for free as possible. Plus, there are adverts on screen and donations.

October 26, 2020

The National Crime Agency Scam

The job of the National Crime Agency (NCA) is described as leading the fight against organised crime; human, weapon and drug trafficking; cyber crime and economic crime that goes across regional and international borders.

However, criminals are posing as National Crime Agency officers over the phone in an attempt to con people and steal from them.

The scammers target the elderly and some victims have lost their life savings.

The NCA has so far recorded hundreds of reports of scammers claiming to be NCA officers and they often give a bogus NCA identity number.

The criminals warn victims about a banking scam and persuade them to allow remote access to their computers, or to hand over personal information and bank details.

Sometimes they ask their targets to move the money to a “safe” bank account.

One case involved a 70-year-old man from London who transferred his life savings of £350,000 out of his account after scammers pretended to be NCA officers and staff from an IT security company. The victim allowed the men remote access to his computer after they said he had been hacked and needed to move his money to safe account.

Members of the public should be aware that an NCA officer will NEVER:

Ask for remote access to your computer via phone, email or online
Ask you to verify personal details such as passwords, account numbers or card details via phone, email or online
Ask you to transfer or hand over money via phone, email or online
Threaten you into providing this information

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