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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Company Director Gets 6 Year Ban For Nuisance Marketing Calls

Phone Caller

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.

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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.

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What is a Fake Website Link and is it Dangerous?

You will come across fake website links in emails, on websites, social media, text messages and more.

In this context, “fake” means a link that doesn’t take you where it says but instead goes to some other website or web page.

Why do people make such fake links?

Mostly there is a deliberate intention to mislead – promise a link to one site but take you to a different site where you don’t want to go.

This may be an attempt to infect your computer with malware or to get you to a page you have little interest in or simply to get you to look at a video or a webpage for which the link poster gets paid per visitor.

How to Identify Fake Links

  1. On a PC hover the cursor over the link and it should show the real destination URL. If this does not match what the link says then you have a fake link and you should not click it.
  2. On a MAC make sure you have the status bar showing first
  3. On Android phones you can press and keep your finger on the link and a box will open offering options but at the top it shows the complete link

Shortened URLS

Some webpages have very long addresses and if you’re sending a link to someone or posting on Twitter for example then some way to shorten these links would be welcome.  There are various services on the Internet that can do just that.  Twitter does this automatically for long links.

These shortened URLs make it difficult to identify the destination of the link. If in doubt – do not click.

Very Long URLs and Email Addresses

Most people create short URLs i.e. links as they want them to be easy to remember and to type e.g. fightback.ninja/the-inflammation-scam/

But some large websites deliberately create long URLs in order to make the purpose of the page easy to understand  from the name e.g. www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/classification/kc_classification_appearance.htm

Scammers use long URLs in order to try to hide the true destination of the URL.  E.g. www.customerservice.lloydsbank.768092676414336492872654576277cheapscam.com

That is not Lloyds Bank, but is cheapscam.com

Scammers also use the confusion trick with email addresses e.g. customerservice.lloydsbank.768092676414336492872654576277@78397123719273917cheapscam.com

This is not a LLoyds bank email address.

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Paid To Market Videos

Having a video clip go viral can be advantageous to any video producer, including to scammers.

To try to make this happen you can employ people to market your video and hopefully get lots and lots of people to view it.

That can be done in an open honest way – telling people what it’s about so they can make an informed choice on whether to watch it or not.

Or can be done dishonestly.

The radio station, along with many other businesses get numerous emails offering to pay if we include other people’s video clips (usually YouTube clips) on our website.

“I need someone to market these videos to reach a lot of views and engagement”.

“Our budget is $1000”.

That may sound reasonable but the whole thing is just a scam.

The message sender doesn’t want to pay for anything – just to get you and millions of others to view their videos as they get paid each time someone does watch.

The emails usually contain a list of videos and the exhortation that you should watch them to see which best fit your website.

Do not view whatever they are – it’s a simple trick.

Anyone who genuinely wanted to pay you for showing their videos would know who they are talking to, not sending emails to ‘undisclosed recipients’ and would have checked if your website already contain 3rd party videos and would describe the videos.

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

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