Your Phone APPS Are Tracking You

A surprising number of smartphone APPS ask on installation for permission to access your location. For APPS such as the Automobile Association or Map based APPS or Local weather or Find a Restaurant this makes sense but many APPS want to track your location for their own benefit – not yours.

Carnegie Mellon University carried out a study on Android phones. The researchers followed 23 Android phone owners for three weeks. In the first week, they were asked to use their apps as they normally would. In the second week, the participants used an app called App Ops to monitor and manage the data those apps were using. In the third week, the research team introduced a “privacy nudge” alert that would ping the participants each time an app requested location data.

The title of the study is: Your Location Has Been Shared 5,398 Times! A Field Study on Mobile App Privacy Nudging.

APPS access your location so they can build a profile on your activities and sell that data to Marketing companies. This is most common with free APPS as the makers need some way to make money and Marketing companies pay for tracking data.

Stop Location Tracking

Try to choose APPS that don’t require permission such as tracking location, but if you do use such APPS then reset permissions so they cannot access your location.

On your Android phone open the Settings app then go to Apps & notifications, choose an app, and select Permissions. On iOS open the Settings app then pick an app to see the permissions it has.

To find out exactly what use is made of your location data means reading the terms and conditions for the APP which almost no-one ever bothers with.

Taking back control

On Android you can disable location tracking on the device as a whole by opening Settings, then tapping Security & location and Location, and then turning tracking off.

On iOS open Settings, then go to Privacy and Location services, and disable the feature.

It’s your phone so you should be in charge.

July 4, 2022

Be an exclusive Product Tester

An email from “Luxury Opinions”

Title says “Join an exclusive community for free to test new to market luxury goods”

That’s a good ‘hook’ – who wouldn’t want to test luxury items for free.

It goes on to explain

“We’re looking for the most discerning members of the UK public to join our exclusive luxury research community. Our clients (major global banks and luxury companies) are looking for luxury minded people like yourself to join LuxuryOpinions.com in order to help them better understand the UK’s most affluent consumers”.

“discerning” and “luxury minded” are good phrases – used in this case to make me feel special.

“Members of LuxuryOpinions participate in occasional online luxury/wealth surveys in exchange for amazing incentives (up to £100 for a short survey).

On top of that:

Earn your first £20 just for signing up today.
100% Privacy protection
No marketing / sales, just honest market research”

Sounds too good to be true because of course it’s just a scam.

£20 just for joining – so you have to give bank details for the payment.

OOPS – that would be your bank account emptied.

Don’t be fooled by wonderful offers – they are always a con.

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July 3, 2022

Free Outdoor Power Thingy

Offering free electrical power is a common scam, particularly popular in the USA.

Some scammers offer simplistic rubbish and some write complex messages filled with technical jargon trying to convince the reader they know what they are talking about.

This latest scammer goes for a mixture – some technical jargon but she really cannot be bothered putting in the effort to make it seem realistic.

e.g. “Our factory has all kinds of professional; test equipment”

or “we keep exploring its very best in the way of depth of power innovation”.

Or “Bionics design”

Or “Extremely aesthetic design”

Her email address is alexy @marching.com and there is a website at marching.com but it’s loaded with malware so best avoided.

She is supposedly selling an outdoor power station but part of the description means her product is actually a power storage device not a power generator.

All rubbish. If you actually want solar power or other outdoor forms of power generation – find accredited products and never reply to unsolicited email messages.

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July 2, 2022

Time-Wasters Update

Oh NO! My computer is infected with 5 viruses, and it is unprotected and this can lead to loss of data and damage to the computer. That’s what the email message says and claims to be from “Account Support”. However, it’s from info @h781pkql.in which is an internet address in India and is complete rubbish. The message demands that I click a link to scan my computer for more problems. More likely it will scan for ways to steal from me. Not going to happen.

An email from Nutricogroup tells us that the company is shutting down and thanks us for our business. Never heard of them so cannot be a customer – that’s assuming the company actually exists which is unlikely. The purpose of the email is just to get people to click on the link to nutricocompany which no doubt leads to a malware site. Wont be clicking on that link.

A very business-like email arrives asking if we are carrying out research and development of new products. And If so then we may qualify for R&D tax breaks. It claims to be connected to HMRC but is from an eu domain name so is from a scammer. The scammer wants personal information and details but wont be getting them from us.

Phishing scam emails trying to catch people who use IONOS services are very common because millions of people do use IONOS services for accessing the Internet, website hosting, email etc. This latest one claims that an automated system has detected an unpaid invoice (number #35019835178312-0912-1) and I must click the link to login and correct this. Apparently, I only have 24 hours to complete this. I don’t have an IONOS account so it’s obviously a scam and the sender doesn’t know my name just ‘customer’ although the scammer is dumb enough to spell this as ‘cosumer’ at one point in the message. Clicking the link would take you to a fake website made to look like IONOS and the scammer wants your login and password, and your payment card details.

Some scam messages are short and simple – this latest one just says “Can you do a job with me?”. Not even a fake name added. Perhaps he or she wants us to knock over a bank with them or to steal candy from a baby. Who knows? To be ignored of course. Replying to such messages just encourages them.

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July 1, 2022

Stop Badware

There used to be a useful website at https://www.stopbadware.org/ but it disappeared in 2021.

It was a resource to educate people and companies about “badware” and worked with various organizations that try to protect against various forms of badware.

The post below tells you about what the organization stood for.

Badware.org claimed that “Our work protects people and organizations from becoming victims of viruses, spyware, scareware, and other badware”. That sounds useful.

The StopBadware project started at Harvard University and was turned into an independent nonprofit organization in 2010.

What is Badware?

Badware is software that overrides a user’s choice about how his or her computer or network connection will be used.

Some badware is specifically designed for criminal, political, and/or mischievous purposes.

These purposes might include:

stealing bank account numbers, passwords, company secrets, or other confidential information
tricking the user into buying something that they don’t need
sending junk email (spam)
sending premium text messages from a mobile device
attacking other computers to prevent them functioning properly
distributing badware to other computers

Badware is sometimes referred to as malware. It includes viruses, Trojans, rootkits, botnets, spyware, scareware, and more.

The StopBadware programme:

provides Internet users with important and timely information about badware
helps website owners, particularly individuals and small businesses, protect their sites from badware; offers resources and community support to owners of compromised sites
engages web hosts and other key service providers to help them effectively and transparently address badware websites within their zones of control
encourages companies to proactively share data and knowledge with one another; leads collaborative information-sharing efforts that create greater security for all stakeholders
conducts high-impact research on malicious websites, cybersecurity econometrics, and critical infrastructure, to name just a few

Some badware may not have malicious intentions, but still takes away the user’s control.

For example, a browser toolbar that helps you shop online more effectively but does not mention that it will send a list of everything you buy online to the company that provides the toolbar. In this case, you are unable to make an informed decision about whether to install or use this software.

Another example is when you install a piece of software, and that software installs additional software that you weren’t expecting. This can be especially troubling if the additional software does something you dislike or doesn’t uninstall when you remove the original software.

STOP BADWARE!

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June 30, 2022

How Scammers Steal Reviews on Amazon

Unscrupulous sellers find ways to get positive customer reviews from other products and integrate them into their own listings for products that may be new and hence have no reviews or be poor quality and hence not want genuine reviews.

Most customers these days will check on product reviews and if there are large numbers of positive reviews then that is a buy signal. We rely on these reviews being largely genuine – there will always a tiny number of fake or exaggerated ones but we trust that the majority are real reviews by real purchasers of the product.

Positive reviews will push a product higher in Amazon’s internal search engine and might trigger an Amazon’s Choice badge—this endorsement is given to highly rated, well-priced products available to ship immediately.

There’s a lot of money at stake as more than two million companies sell products on Amazon marketplace for more than $100 billion each year.

Amazon say they spend over $400 million per year protecting customers from fake reviews, abuse, fraud, and other forms of misconduct.

Merged Reviews

Amazon allow reviews for products that are basically the same thing but in a different size for example or perhaps just a different colour. This makes sense If you were selling a beanie hat in 10 different colours and 3 different sizes – each with its own listing. You would expect any reviews to apply to all sizes and colours.

However, scammers use the merge process to take positive reviews from one product and attach them to quite separate products by cheating the system.

e.g. Which magazine found In a posture correction brace with size variations that included a card printing machine and dish washing wands. The reviews came from one of the products but can be used to advertise all three.

If you find a product on Amazon with reviews that clearly that belong with a different product, then Tweet @Amazon with a screenshot and use the hashtag #StopReviewHijacking

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