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.

January 30, 2022

Stupidest Spam of the Week International Monetary Fund Payments

This is a simple scam trying to lead you to believe there is a fortune available for you – if you just follow the instructions.

But, this scammer weaves a pointlessly complicated story and uses strange phrasing.

“This is to intimate you of a very important information which will be of a great help to redeem you from all the difficulties you have been experiencing in getting your long over due payment.”

The sender claims to be a high official at the International Monetary Fund, but oddly can only use a Gmail personal email account.

She claims that a long list of organisations (NGOs, Banks, security companies, courier companies etc.) have been taking advantage of me by demanding various payments to release the $10.7 million that I am due.

There’s no reason provided as to why the IMF owes me such a lot of money, but then she doesn’t even know my name.

She says she has stopped all of those organisations from pestering me anymore (not that any of them ever have).

She is now in charge of ensuring I receive the millions of dollars and to prove her emails are genuine she will include the secret code (code:1207) in any future emails.

I guess that guarantees she is legitimate. NOT!

She also lists lots of names of people who have supposedly cheated me as they are corrupt and evil according to her.

Then a long story about someone named Donna Hewberling who visited the IMF and claimed I was dead and had given her power of attorney to collect my money.

Then more secret codes e.g.

“The Payment, United Nation Approval No; UN5685P, White House Approved No: H44CV, Reference No.-35460021, Allocation No: 674632 Password No: 339331, Pin Code No: 55674 and your Certificate of Merit Payment No: 103, Released Code No: 0763; Immediate (IMF) Telex confirmation No: -1114433; Secret Code No: XXTN013.”

And so it goes on for pages.

Seems that the scammer got carried away with her own words.

Pathetic.

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January 29, 2022

More of Those Terrible Time-Wasters

Marie-Elisabeth Schaeffler says she has a donation of 2.7 million Euros for me, as my email address was chosen at random for such a gift. Her email address is Indonesian-aerospace.com which doesn’t exist and I have to reply to a different personal email address and supply identification information to get the money. I don’t think I’ll be following up on that scammer’s plan.

Yet another magic trick to make you lose tons of weight with no effort. This latest one claims a 10 second breakfast ritual will supercharge your dead metabolism with no dieting or exercise. My metabolism isn’t dead – thank you and I wont be clicking the link as it’s such an obvious scam. If a person’s metabolism is dead then that person is dead and in theory the corpse will lose weight – probably not what dieters have in mind though.

An email from Susanna Harless states that she saw a listing for ‘us’ on www shinynewadrtt.com and it says we have a $25 plan. She wants to know if it is still available. The email is just a trick to get us to go to that website which is either filled with malware or is one that she gets paid when random people click to see it. It’s just a scammer’s trick – never click on links in unsolicited emails just to see what they are.

Lots of people sell lists of email addresses and contact details – Marketing companies, data gatherers and scammers. Some are genuine but many are fake. This latest one is clearly fake. It offers 16,290,884 sets of contact details and email addresses for just 49 Australian dollars. The real lists for sale do often contain millions of entries and are cheap but 100 US dollars per million is more like the going rate so this offer is fake at $3 Australian dollars per million.

“A breakthrough study has proven that this ugly plant turbo charges tour metabolism and melts fat” is the scammer’s claim, but it’s made-up. There is no magic plant that supposedly dissolves butt fat – just a scammer wanting you to watch a video so they can make money at your expense. Pathetic, as are all of the magic fat remedies.

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January 28, 2022

Company Director Gets 6 Year Ban For Nuisance Marketing Calls

Shaun Harkin was the sole director of Easyleads Limited, a company that generated sales leads for other businesses through telephone marketing calls, but he was knowingly breaking the law.

Cold callers cannot phone people indiscriminately – especially not those registered on the Telephone Preference Service i.e. registered as not accepting cold calls.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) received many hundreds of complaints about automated calls from numbers used by Easyleads.

The ICO warned of their investigation into the new complaints.

Despite this warning, Shaun Harkin continued his cold calling campaigns and the ICO continued to receive complaints about Easyleads.

The ICO issued a £260,000 fine against Easyleads for making unsolicited marketing calls to people without their consent and failing to include a company name and contact details in the recorded message.

Easyleads failed to pay the debt so the ICO got the court to wind up the company.

Investigations by the Insolvency Service found that the company had made around 16 million automated marketing calls to members of the public.

Many complainants were from people who said they received multiple calls, while others complained about being called in the early hours of the morning.

From July 2018, Shaun Harkin is banned from directly or indirectly becoming involved, without the permission of the court, in the promotion, formation or management of a company for six years.

Hopefully he will learn to treat the public in a better manner rather than as people to be taken advantage of.

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

January 27, 2022

Eco Chip Saves on Car Fuel

Cars and some other vehicles have ODB2 ports – that is a slot to plug in diagnostic equipment so a garage mechanic can access the data stored in the car’s computer control systems and pick up any warnings etc.

Modern cars need to be tuned to provide optimum performance, fuel efficiency and so on and this is done by the manufacturer before sale. They know best as they are the ones who designed and built the car.

However, scammers have for some years been offering magical devices that you plug into the ODB2 ports and they somehow reprogramme the vehicle to be both faster and more fuel efficient which is obviously impossible.

The scammers claim that the device assesses your car then reprogramme it and the flashing lights on the device show it is working. They claim you can save 35% on your fuel costs within days.

Experts who have purchased and dismantled these devices say (and show on video clips) that the devices typically are just a set of flashing lights – they are incapable of reprogramming your car or making improvements in any way.

Don’t waste your money on this kind of rubbish.

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