Wealth and Finance Awards – Are They Real?

Trophy

We received an email titled ‘Your Business Elite 2016 Selection’ and the email claimed that one of the presenters had been chosen as one of the Business Elite for 2016.

First problem is that the name they used wasn’t a presenter or anyone else at the station and there was no mention of a job title or responsibilities or anything that would lead me to believe the email was anything but spam, but it is in fact genuine.

They claim rigorous assessment and checking of the market to find the best people but that really didn’t add up.

The email says we can announce this result but to appear in their magazine next issue we need to invest in one of their packages.

Elite Package for £1,400

Or Innovative Package for £800

Or Cutting Edge package for £300

And logos and trophies are available for an extra fee apparently.

This doesn’t seem to be a scam – there is a magazine Wealth and Finance International and they give out a lot of awards in the Finance industry.

The Elite package for £1,400 gives you

  • A double page spread
  • Inclusion of your article on their Homepage
  • A front cover headline
  • 1 trophy highlighting you as Business Elite Winner 2016
  • A Business Elite 2016 logo for use in your Marketing.

So, it appears that anyone with money to spend can get a lot of coverage in the magazine and website. That seems to be a novel form of Marketing.

But it doesn’t make me want to read a magazine where people are in it based on how much they pay rather than anything  worthwhile they have done.

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Email Marketing – Professional or Spam?

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You can buy millions of email addresses for a few hundred dollars and you would likely find that most of them are rubbish or out of date and useless.

But there are reputable Marketing agencies that strive to use email Marketing in a more considered and professional manner.

We received an email from a professional online Marketing company in Manchester offering to use their contacts database and create an email campaign for us.

It says an average campaign of 10,000 emails costs £415 including design of the emails, follow-up emails and website data.

This is not something we would ever use but you can see why so many companies do go down this route and try email marketing.

The key point really is use a professional business to do the work for you and pay a sensible price.

Don’t go cheap rate – you’ll only get rubbish.

Update on Those Time-Wasters

Stop Wasting my Time signSo, what rubbish emails and calls have there been to Brooklands Radio station in the last few days?

An email from a company that clearly has a fake name and is supposed to be about a breakthrough in supplements that can rapidly reduce weight. The email even says at the bottom that it came from the guys iPhone. Obviously a simple scam by someone who can churn out rubbish on his IPhone to send to millions of people.

We keep getting emails from Scoot business directory with assorted messages about our profile being out of date or not fully used but really it’s about getting money for having an entry in their directory. No Thanks

 An offer by a Marketing company to let us use their latest healthcare database of verified emails addresses and phone numbers.  We’re not in Healthcare. Our domain name is brooklandsradio – how much more obvious does it have to be that we’re a radio station. Plus the email address they used for the station has been dead for 4 years so that shows how up to date their records are.

A bunch of emails from a re-mortgage company wanting to save us money. But in fact the entire email is bogus – it comes from an automatic email generator and the links in it are random. Most likely they are just searching for Live email addresses they can then sell.

An email claiming to be from Nat West bank and that we have used an incorrect password. The whole thing is fake and the links are to company names that are obviously made up and will redirect to the scammers fake bank website.

These people just waste our time and clog up the Internet with rubbish.

 

Susan Deals With a Scammer

Confused Cold CallerA guest post by Susan
My response to cold callers and scammers varies depending on my mood… Sometimes I just put the phone down.  If I stay on the line, I always ask their name and I never confirm my name.

I never swear at them because it’s pointless – they’re just trying to earn money.

Once I had a guy ring me up telling me I had won some prize and all I had to do to get the prize was answer a simple question. It was obviously a scam so I played along.

Caller: What is the capital of France?

Me: Louisiana – that’s French.

Caller: No, the capital of France.

Me: Oh a city – New Orleans.

Caller: No. Try again. What’s the capital of France?

Me: Luxembourg – that’s in Europe. Right?

I answered Egypt, New York – anything that came to mind.

In the end, even he was laughing.

Of course I didn’t get the non-existent prize, but I did waste ten minutes of his time.

Ransomware: What is It?

Ransom Note

Imagine you’ve been working hard to create a new presentation for work or an official document or a personal photograph album. When you finally finish the work, a message appears on screen that says

“All of the files on this computer have been encrypted. You have 24 hours to submit payment to receive the encryption key, otherwise your files will be permanently destroyed.”

You’ve been hit with Ransomware.

This could be lies – it could just be an empty threat, but it could also be very real and if you don’t pay then your files may be lost permanently.

What do you do?

Step 1: disconnect from the Internet immediately.

Step 2 : Make a choice on whether to pay

If you pay, then maybe you get your files back and maybe not.

If you choose not to pay then switch the computer off and get it to an expert ASAP.

Across the globe in 2014, there were 8.8 million ransomware attacks reported and this crime is rising rapidly.

For further information refer to article  Fightback Online Ransomware