Stupidest Spam of the Week – Brain Disease Fix

As a scammer, if you’re going to offer a magical way to stop one brain disease then why not say your remedy can fix all known brain diseases – especially the most common ones of dementia, Alzheimer’s and all forms of memory loss.

“My heart froze as I watched the video explaining how these brilliant scientists cured Alzheimer’s, dementia and the other brain diseases in 100% of patients”.

This is all supposed to be secret although the cure has reportedly already worked on 7,000 people, so not exactly secret after all.

Then comes the clincher. “But Big Pharma is already knocking on their doors to sell out the formula”.

It’s all fantasy of course. There haven’t been any such trials, various brain diseases have different causes and need different forms of help so one magic remedy for everything is impossible especially as Alzheimer’s and Dementia cause a reduction in the number of brain cells and no formula can fix that.

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February 5, 2022

More of Those Terrible Time-Wasters

Many many scam messages simply want you to play their video clip as they get paid for each person who clicks to watch it. So, the scammers invent some ridiculous story to make you watch it. This latest one is another in the free electricity game. “62 year old from New Jersey discovers how to destroy your electricity bills”. This scammer obviously a little drama as she includes the line “Rumours say the inventor was about to get killed for his secret as some bad guys wanted to steal his invention and become rich”. Just sad pathetic lies as usual.

The scam email claims that new documents have arrived for the radio station. It says it is from the new cloud service for the station. I must click to retrieve the documents (retrieve was spelled “retreive”- who doesn’t use a spell checker nowadays?). It is ridiculous and relies on people in large companies not knowing what’s going on in other parts of their business. But, as a local radio station we do know, so it’s obviously a fake email.

All businesses get lots of scam emails that try to look like product enquiries. Usually the attempt is pathetically poor as with this latest email. “Product Inquirey” from sumporn juanggroonergruangkits which is such an obviously made up name. The email claims to be from “thaisummit” group but the email sender’s address is actually a misspelled version of that i.e. “thaisummiit” which again shows the email is from a scammer. Never respond to product enquiries or similar unless they make sense as otherwise you’re just adding your contact details to the scammer’s mailing list which will be sold to other scammers.

For some reason, the Maersk shipping line is one the scammers like to impersonate. Another shipping document turned up on email. This one claims to have our bill of lading, packing list and invoice attached and also the ETA of the cargo. But we don’t ship anything by Maersk because don’t ship anything into or out of the country. Never open attached files unless you are sure what they are and who they are from. These attachments are likely to be loaded with malware so we wouldn’t touch them.

Another invoice supposedly past its due date turns up as an email. This one claims to be from FD Platinum Ltd. Never heard of them, and certainly don’t owe them any money. The email was sent to a fake address at the radio station and is not addressed to anyone so is an obvious scam.

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February 4, 2022

Why do people call then say nothing or put the phone down?

This happens to everyone very occasionally – usually someone dialled a wrong number and realised and put the phone down or didn’t recognise the voice answering your phone.

But, this can be a regular occurrence and then the reasons are more concerning.

Automated Calling Systems

A lot of marketing companies and scammers use automated diallers i.e. computers that call people in turn on a list then pass the calls onto to call centre staff.. To maximise use of their staff, they set the diallers to call numerous people at the same time in the hope that at least some will answer the phone and those get put through to operatives.

However, this method also means many people will get silent calls when all operatives are already on the line to other people.

These calls can be hard to spot in advance because the scammers often hide or spoof the calling number i.e. make it look as if a different number such as a government number.

Overseas Cold Callers

It might sound expensive for scammers to call you from overseas, but the vast majority of such calls are now from other countries and they use VOIP i.e. let their computer make the call without incurring phone call charges.

The major phone networks in the UK have agreed to automatically block almost all internet calls coming from abroad if they pretend to be from UK numbers.

This should result in millions of calls from abroad being stopped, but so far only Talk Talk has implemented this.

Criminals have been using internet-based calling technology to make it look like a phone call or text is coming from a real telephone number – often one based in the country they are targeting.

We’ll see when the other networks start to block these criminals.

February 3, 2022

Internet Connected Gadgets at Home

Some homes are now filled with dozens of appliances, devices and children’s toys which can be connected to Wi-Fi and some are useful while others are just for fun, but if they are not fully secure the consequences can be unpleasant .

They often arrive with just a default password or no password, these devices can provide an easy route for cyber attackers to get into your systems and look for confidential information.

The Internet of Things

The “Internet of Things” is a name for the adoption of Internet enabled devices in the home. The idea being that more and more household objects will communicate over the Internet. Common such items now include thermostats controlled by an APP, smoke alarms that phone you, toys that access Internet stories and music, the Alexa and Google Home devices that you can say instructions to and they use WI-FI to control other devices or find information or translate something. This also includes Internet-connected “wearable” devices, such as fitness bands which upload your GPS co-ordinates and telemetry to the Internet so you can access the data on your PC.

Many companies are working on more of these Internet of things devices.

These devices can give out information to interlopers that you may not consider e.g. the recent case of American Special Forces soldier wearing fitness bands and their location being broadcast on Google. OOPS.

How to Make Your Connected Home More Secure

Secure the wireless network. Use the WPA2 protocol if your broadband router allows that option.
Give your Wi-Fi network an unusual name that doesn’t identify your address e.g. General Electric.
If guest access is enabled on the network – disable it.
If your router is capable of creating two separate WI-FI networks then use one for computer devices and a separate one for household gadgets.
Always use strong passwords that cannot possibly be guessed by anyone e.g. a string of random words.
Login name is often admin or administrator by default – If you are able to change the login name then change it to something that cannot be guessed.
Disable any remote access for gadgets. If you ever need it for allowing the supplier to fix a fault then you can re-enable it temporarily.

Some of these gadgets have appropriate Internet security and insist on strong passwords etc. but others have little or no thought of security, so you must take care to plug any holes in security.

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February 2, 2022

Bustin’ The Bogus

The bogusbuster website was setup 5 years ago to try to stem the tide of fake products.

The website is at https://bogusbuster.org/

If you are not sure if an item you have found online is fake or maybe a website contains fake products, you can use bogusbuster.org to check.

You simply enter the Internet address in the box and also your email address so they can send you a reply.

The website is not filled with adverts as so many are, so is a pleasure to access. Just useful information and that check facility

BogusBuster say they are an independent resource that will guide you through everything scam related.

BogusBuster is powered by SnapDragon, who are a brand protection company that helps businesses to fight fakes. SnapDragon founder’s experienced, first-hand, the damage caused by fake products when her own product was counterfeited. Fighting back, she founded SnapDragon to help protect and safeguard businesses, and consumers, from counterfeit crime. e

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

January 31, 2022

WeTransfer Scam

WeTransfer is very popular for people wanting to send files by email that are too big for their email system or maybe would take too long to send.

When someone sends you a WeTransfer, you get a message from WeTransfer listing the files, who sent them etc. and you can download the files.

The scammers send out messages designed to look like those from WeTransfer.

e.g. … has sent you some files

In this example, it said “7 files, 94MB total. Will be deleted in 7 days.”

This scammer has copied some text from a genuine WeTransfer message but is dumb as the list of files he included only add up to 5MB not the 94MB specified further up the message.

Plus, the filenames are a little stupid e.g. certificate.pdf.pdf.pdf

The big give-a-way that it’s a scam is simply that the supposed sender of the files is the same address the email was sent to – nobody sends files to themselves using WeTransfer as that would be pointless.

Do not assume a WeTransfer message is genuine – check carefully before downloading anything.

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