The Shibu Inu Cryptocurrency Scam

We are all getting used to the idea of cryptocurrencies such as the attention getting Bitcoin and Ethereum, but there are also weird ones such as Shibu Inu which was started largely as a joke. The creator made hundreds of trillions of coins, so that they can only ever be worth a tiny fraction of a cent each.

To increase their value, various organisations try to buy up Shibu Inu coins and burn them i.e. destroy them thereby increasing the value of the remaining coins.

People even have burn parties where they all contribute some coins and communally destroy them.

Is that Weird? Yes!

This isn’t a scam – it’s all perfectly legal and people knowingly destroy the coins.

But, scammers want to join in of course – to make money at other people’s expense.

A scam email tells a story of people working together to burn Shibu Inu but first of all making millions of dollars.

They say you just have to follow the instructions to buy lots of Shibu Inu coins then join 2 projects where you will make hundreds to thousands of dollars each day as robots automatically trade cryptocurrency for you.

Then you donate some coins and it all gets burned, except for the dollars you made and hence keep.

This is a scam.

By getting people to buy lots of Shibu Inu coins, the scammers hope to push up the value so they can then sell theirs and make a profit. This makes the price drop and the recent purchasers lose money.

That’s the classic pump and dump scam.

You may choose to buy Shibu Inu as an investment or just to take part in the growth of cybercurrency, but don’t join anything advertised by cold calls or spam emails as these are almost always perpetrated by criminals.

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

April 17, 2022

Stupidest Scam or Spam of the Week Magic Pain Relief

Scammers love to offer some latest magical way to stop pain, because it’s an easy sell. So many people have long term pain that modern drugs are either to addictive for or cannot resolve so they look for alternatives.

“Ancient healing technique backed by Harvard”.

The email has pages of junk such as:

“How a 70 year old woman with crippling arthritis in her knee can now walk pain free”

“How one woman was able to stop her cholesterol meds”

“You can even rub away diabetes”

“Destroy all viruses”

The magic is supposedly in the ancient technique used by all parents that when a child bangs their knee for example – if you rub it, that blocks the pain sensation so the child feels less pain.

But of course it’s not a cure in any sense – it just a temporary way to block pain signals.

Severe arthritis is painful because of damage in the joints – so reducing the pain sensation may be helpful but only works for the seconds you rub and does not cure anything so no-one with arthritis can possibly be cured by this.

As for eradicating viruses from your body or curing diabetes by rubbing – that is pathetically stupid.

Of course, if you check at Harvard University there is no such study.

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April 16, 2022

Time-Wasters Update

An email claims to have an IT3B certificate attached from Standard bank. These are tax certificates used in Southern Africa so you expect the scammer to only send such an email to South African email addresses, but no – she sent it to random email addresses regardless of their country. Dumb and very wasteful.

“Compliments to you and your family. Please confirm your email is still active. You have a donation of 2,500,000 Euros from the Gazprom Global Foundations.” Obviously rubbish, the scammer is just trying to find active email addresses for morons who reply to such pathetic messages. As is often the case with scam emails, the reply to address is different to the sender’s address and both are private email addresses rather than business ones.

The email promises 100% valid email addresses available for any country at a cost of $250 per million. Sold by a criminal with a Brazilian email address but through Whatsapp – if you buy and the emails turn out to be largely rubbish (as is typical with spam lists) then you cannot exactly go to the Police about it. Tough luck.

John D. Gillard whose email address doesn’t match his name, wants to conduct a business deal with me despite not even knowing my name or recognising that the email address he’s sent the message to is an admin address not a person. Lazy lazy scammers.

Another lazy scammer sent out messages with just a title ‘TRANSIT: NUMBER #KLP(AFRW!£”” with an attached PDF file and one line “Dear” followed by the recipients email address. That is so blatantly a scam as to be ridiculous.

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April 15, 2022

Those Fake Invoices and Statements Keep Arriving

Many small companies used to trust that when invoices or statements arrived, that they neededed to be paid but we all learned that scammers send these things out hoping the business is too busy to check, so it is essential to have systems in place to ensure only valid bills are paid.

Scammers still try sending in invoices, statements and other reasons why we need to pay them for some supposedly completed piece of work or product or other service.

A latest one claims to be from Yorkshire Logistics Group – which is a genuine company but they have nothing to do with this scam. It’s likely the scammer just randomly picked a company name.

The email is actually from fixdepartures.com – if the sender’s company name and their email address don’t match then it’s an obvious scam message.

The email tells us we owe them £356.21 and immediate payment is required. Trying to be helpful it suggests that we can have a hard copy sent to us on request.

There is no attached invoice as the scammer just wants a reply to the email which is strange as the sender’s email address starts with “noreply” so this scammer doesn’t understand that it normally means you cannot reply to that email – not difficult to guess really.

Always be careful of any unsolicited emails, text messages or calls that demand payment of any kind – ensure your systems pick up theses fakes and ensure you only pay for products and services you definitely have received.

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

April 14, 2022

The Fake Loan Application Scam

You receive a letter from a loans company telling you that someone has applied for a loan in your name and the company believe that it wasn’t you, but someone impersonating you who tried to take out that loan.

Now, that sounds worrying and these things do happen, so the letter could be genuine.

However, scammers also use this approach to try to get your personal information – it’s their despicable form of Marketing.

The letter may tell a story about someone impersonating you and may give some accurate information about you – usually taken from the electoral register i.e. name and address.

The letter then goes on to say they will register you on the government CIFAS service to protect you against further such attempts and may include a separate letter telling you about the benefits of CIFAS.

See https://fightback.ninja/cifas-identity-protection-registration/ for further information on CIFAS.

The problem comes if the letter asks for you confidential details e.g. full name, date of birth, email address, full address etc.

Registering on CIFAS will need you to provide such information but do not give it to a company claiming they will register for you.

If you decide you want to register on CIFAS then do so yourself safely and do not give out confidential information to others without being totally sure it is safe to do so.

The letter from the loans company is likely just a scam – they get your information under the false guise of protecting you then will use that information to try to sell you their services or sell the data to other scammers

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

April 13, 2022

Don’t Be Tracked Online So Easily

More and more websites, online services, social media sites, APPS etc want to track us – track what we buy, track where we go online, track any details about us they can get e.g. IP address, location etc. because that data is valuable to them.

Sometimes they ask for permission to track us e.g. when you agree to their terms and condition, but often that’s not the case.

Is it all bad?

No.

For example, that tracking means the website can serve up adverts more to your liking rather than random ads, but many people don’t like that as it often takes the form of the same adverts following you from website to website.

How to Reduce Your Trackable Information

Reduce the level of information about you on the Internet to a necessary minimum and be aware that criminals can use whatever information they find against you.

Email addresses

You can use multiple email addresses to separate your online activities e.g. use one email address for financial matters and one for social media and one for retail sites and one for unimportant websites.

You can also use disposable/ one time email addresses for any site you think will send you spam.

Withhold your information or make stuff up where it’s not important e.g. misspell your name and give a fake birthdate
If you’re not using any online accounts then delete them – you can always open a new one if needed
Be careful of anything you publish on social media or that other people publish about you – e.g. pets names (possible passwords) or dates you’ll be away e.g. on holiday

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