Three Tools That Block Online Tracking

A lot of our activities online are tracked by a variety of organisations. The various tools described below operate in different ways and none can guarantee to eliminate 100% of trackers so it’s trying them to see if they suit what you want.

Sometimes this is just so they can display relevant adverts or to offer location specific answers (e.g. local restaurants), sometimes to learn about their customers and sometimes for less acceptable reasons. However, if should be our choice how much is tracked – not the software makers and users.

Ghostery https://www.ghostery.com/products/

This has a large database of tracking entities i.e. software that will track you. You install the browser add-on then it can detect these entities and block them as you browse.

On each website, Ghostery displays a list of trackers from that site in the upper right corner of the screen.. You can then go to the settings page and block individual trackers or block all trackers.

The browser add-on is available for the most browsers.

Disconnect https://disconnect.me/

The browser add-on blocks trackers as it finds them, but allows requests that it considers to be necessary for loading content.

Disconnect detects trackers based on the number of requests they’ve made for your information, and displays them in one of four categories: advertising, analytics, social and content. You can choose to block or allow each tracker.

Privacy Badger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

This tool is belongs to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and uses an algorithm to “learn” which social or ad networks are tracking you over time.

It initially allows third-party trackers until it detects patterns in third-party requests. Then it will start automatically blocking what it considers “non-consensual invasions of people’s privacy”. This approach may mean the tool identifies new trackers more quickly than its competition but it takes longer to be effective.

Privacy Badger is available for Google Chrome and Firefox.

You can see these tools operate in a different manner, all attempting to block online tracing without stopping anything you find useful.

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June 20, 2022

The Image Editing Scam

Most scammers choose to offer something unrealistically good – a huge inheritance, a lockbox stuffed with cash, an investment that will double your money in 30 days, a cure for Alzheimer’s, a magic ingredient that will make you lose 10 Ibs in weight every week with no effort and so on.

But others try offering what seems to be a sensible and needed service with no unrealistic claims.

The radio station receives about a dozen emails every week offering photo solutions, image editing, image correction, photo retouching etc.

This is all the same thing under a slightly different label.

These are services typically offered by genuine companies but these emails stand out as scams because

The email ‘from address’ is obviously fake e g. royalmail.co.uk
The ‘from address’ contains a first name such as Shon but bottom of the email is signed off with something different e.g. Sam
The emails are sent to addresses that are on spam email lists
There is no company name
There are far too many emails for it to be genuine
The emails have an assortment of names on them – typical of large scale scammers.

Unusually these emails are reasonably well written i.e. not full of the usual spelling or grammatical errors.

But they are just a simple scam – never reply to unsolicited offers.

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June 19, 2022

Stupidest Scam – Married Women Have an Affair

The email is a large glossy picture of a women’s hair meant to look sexy and fun. The words ‘Have an Affair’ and ‘There’s no risk’ appear repeatedly.

There are huge numbers of these spam emails in circulation suggesting someone is putting a lot of effort and probably money behind the campaign to attract women looking to have an affair or perhaps just interested to see what the offer is about.

The real targets of the fake websites behind this promotion is actually men as they are often willing to pay to be put in contact with women willing to have affairs, whereas women generally don’t need to pay in this way.

The whole thing is just a con.

You may remember the infamous website Ashley Madison which became very popular up to 2015 and its sales pitch was about people having affairs.

What male users didn’t realise is that it was setup to fleece them rathe rather than as a form of dating site.

If you want to have an affair – don’t use a website or you may be caught out as users of Ashley Madison were when data on all of it’s users was made public.

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June 18, 2022

Time-Wasters Update

“A breakthrough study has proven that an ugly plant turbo charges metabolism and melts fat”. Typical scammer lies, backed up by stupid claims such as “It’s 556 times more powerful than exercise – even when sleeping”. The 556 is an example of spurious accuracy. Any such study would not give figures like that as there is a great deal of estimating required in any such trial. The is no such study and the whole thing is laughably dumb.

The next scammer wants us to add one ounce of baking soda to tea in the morning and this will supposedly let you lose 23 lbs of fat in just 21 days. One ounce of baking powder is 5 to 6 teaspoons full which is quite a lot to take and taken regularly is likely to cause organ damage. There is no reason to believe that taking baking powder will reduce someone’s weight. Dumb and dangerous.

An email message claims to be from the radio station asking us to verify one of the radio station email addresses, as it requires an update. But the message sender is actually ka.boom @lawyersofarizona.com which is obviously not the radio station. Ludicrous.

“Brain leak to cause blindness” is a strange email title but this scammer wants to frighten people then reassure them there is an answer to the problem. The email follows the typical scam template of warnings laced with testimonials and supposed scientific proof all ending up with demanding that you watch the video clip. All lies of course – just a scammer trying to get people to watch a useless video for which they get paid.

Not many scammers send malware infected spreadsheets, but those files can contain macros which do try install malware on your computer. “Attached are reconciliations of the payroll/ funding for April” is a title that would convince few people to open the attached spreadsheet (file type xls) but some will because it sounds important or just out of curiosity. That would be a bad move though – once opened the spreadsheet can infect your device. Never open attached files unless you know the person who sent you the email and it is a document you asked for.

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June 17, 2022

SCARS Campaigns Against Scams

https://againstscams.org

The Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams (SCARS) claims to represent more than 25,000 people, dedicated to changing the world of online fraud for the sake of everyone. They have been conducting large campaigns since 2017.

SCARS say they are committed to doing everything possible to eradicate the plague of online scams.

The campaigns aim to enlist the public’s help in providing direct information in the local community. They are asking SCARS Members to begin organizing opportunities in their towns and communities to inform and expand awareness about romance scams and other forms of fraud.

SCARS asks those that are interested, once they are approved for participation in the Campaign, to contact local community organizations, from schools to civic groups, private clubs, and even work with your local police, to better educate your fellow residents about these severe crimes and how they affect us all.

SCARS will provide you with a complete training kit that will help you learn more, and that you will use in conducting these presentations. The materials are designed to provide a 30 to 45 minute presentation, and allow for additional time for questions and answers. This will make it easy to cover the right information, regardless of your knowledge or experience. This helps you make a huge difference in the safety of your local community.

The SCARS™ Act Against Scams™ Campaign Kit consists of:

Introduction Brochure – for attendees
Introduction graphics to promote your presentation (can be used on social media)
Introduction Video – to allow you to promote your presentation (cane be used on social media)
Official PowerPoint Presentation
Presenters’ Guide
How To Report Online Crime Guide
An Official SCARS Presenter ID Card

All of the above are provided for you without cost, for download by the Campaign participant, and can be emailed to the entity or organization that will host your presentation. If you are producing significant results, SCARS may provide additional materials, including signs, etc.

They will also provide support to promote your events, and a webpage where interested persons can sign up for your presentations. This will also provide a means for you to follow up with the attendees for your presentations, enabling future local victims’ support.

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June 16, 2022

Threats To Get Back Links

Some Scammers will threaten you to create their backlinks or else.

People try all sorts of tactics to get back links to their websites or blogs. Often they are paid by someone to get those links because the more backlinks there are to your website – probably the higher the website appears on search lists. So, legitimate companies do this but also scammers.

A lot of people do this for perfectly respectable reasons as they want people to see their website or blog but the scammers are in a hurry and use more nasty approaches, sometimes including threats.

An email from Billie Clancy claims he works for Bizcope SEO company in Bangladesh i.e. a company that among other things will try to get backlinks for websites.

He requests a backlist and a 5 star rating for his company on GMB and Trustpilot and offers to provide a backlink to our website in return.

Then he gets nasty

“If I do not see a backlink within 7 days then I am create one million toxic blog spam to you”

Then he signs off with “Best Wishes from Bangladesh”.

Maybe he is schizophrenic or just plain stupid.

Never provide backlinks to websites you do not know and trust as you do not want to be linked to criminal’s despicable and often illegal websites

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