Stupidest Scam or Spam of the Week Pope Inu

You might think that it’s difficult to invent your own cybercurrency but it’s not really so difficult and many hundreds of people have done so, in some form.

They are extremely unlikely to become as valuable as say Bitcoin, but people make these for a variety of reasons.

One recent one is called Pope Inu and features a dog dressed like a Pope.

These are called meme coins meaning it’s based on an idea or theme.

The presale price for these coins was set at $0.0000001 per coin although the value once it’s in circulation depends on supply and demand.

People who understand cybercurrencies and these meme coins may want to buy into Pope Inu but anyone chasing a quick way to make money should steer clear as meme coins are more for fun and novelty than anyone actually making money.

If you receive emails or see adverts telling you there are riches to be made from these coins – ignore them.

Do click on the Facebook or Twitter icons on top right to follow Fight Back Ninja.

Fightback Ninja Signature

Scam Survey Calls

This is a variation on the common scam survey phone call, as received by Bob.

The caller pretends to from an official body and is calling due to concern about dangerous dust caused by the rock wool or other insulation in Bob’s loft.

He wants to arrange to carry out a survey today as he is in the area.

Bob told him that he doesn’t have such insulation so the caller switched to concern about cavity wall insulation instead.

When Bob also said he doesn’t have cavity walls, the caller gave up and hung up.

Bob did check and there is no official body looking into such things in his area.

Just a scammer.

These scammers have two likely ways to steal from you

  1. They get into your house to ‘case the joint’ and see if they can grab anything
  2. They carry out a fake survey then demand cash payment of an exorbitant fee.

If you have any concerns over your cavity wall insulation or similar then contact the council or call an expert but never deal with cold callers or people who send unsolicited emails.

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

Fightback Ninja Signature

Can Victoria Track The Source of Her Cold Calls?

The journalist Victoria Bischoff was plagued by cold callers and wanted to find out how they had got her contact details. She started to investigate but didn’t expect it would take so much time and effort and that the result would involve so many organisations.

She started receiving cold calls to her mobile phone, including from Scottish Power and also lots of spam emails from companies she had never heard of.

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) laws give you the right to ask where these companies get your contact details from, so she started making that request (called a subject access request).

e.g. one request led her to Prize Reactor then to The Secret For You then to Response Concepts then to Green Flamingo who then claimed she had entered a prize draw at 5:20 am one morning, so she knew this to be false.  The data that Green Flamingo had on her was all wrong except for the email address and mobile number.

Green Flamingo claimed by entering the prize draw she had agreed for her contact details to be sold to other companies.

All lies.

There is more to the story – but you can guess that unscrupulous organisations collect email addresses and phone numbers from websites, directories – anywhere they can get them and then add on guessed information such as which house number to match with a postcode.

By this means, information that is partly true and partly made-up circulates among businesses wanting to make money from your details or to send out emails, make cold calls etc.

It is time-consuming and difficult to track down how this happens as Victoria found out.

Don’t give out your personal information to any organisation or website or on social media unless you are sure it is safe. Even this doesn’t keep you safe though as many times these unscrupulous people simply find some information about you online and make-up the rest then sell it.

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

Fightback Ninja Signature

How is Money Mail Doing?

The Daily Mail and Sunday Mail have a section called “Money Mail” and they do a good job fighting for consumers, revealing incompetence, highlighting injustice and trying to get money back for people who have been conned.

Their review of 2021 shows that they won back something like £1.1 million for their readers.

This included:

  • Scottish Power continuing to take monthly debits from a man forced out of his house due to a fire. They eventually returned £3,600
  • British Gas failing to take a meter reading for 2 years despite being told the smart meter didn’t work
  • Forcing Barclays to refund a £49,5000 mortgage deposit stolen by scammers
  • Covid fraud
  • Travel insurance failures
  • Power companies ignoring their customers

And much more.

If you’re struggling with a bureaucratic organisation and even the industry regulator isn’t much help then maybe the publicity of Money Mail on the case can help.

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

Fightback Ninja Signature

Type I Diabetes Cure Scam

There are lots of scammer’s messages advertising cures for diabetes.  But they normally quote type II diabetes which is due to lifestyle factors including weight, diet, levels of exercise etc.

HEALTH ALERT

Rid yourself of Diabetes forever

Type II diabetes can be helped by lifestyle changes plus an improved diet and more exercise.

But type I diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the body cannot produce enough insulin and is normally diagnosed in early childhood.

Changes to lifestyle, diet and exercise cannot cure type I diabetes, only mitigate the effects and it’s a lifelong illness.

But some scammers are so stupid they claim to have the magical cure for type I diabetes.

“Type I and II diabetes can be cured with this simple food within 7 days”

This is just dumb and hopefully anyone with type I diabetes knows enough about the disease to realise this is just a pathetic scam.

Never trust unsolicited emails.

Do enter your email address and click on the subscribe button on top right to keep up to date with new posts.

Fightback Ninja Signature