Emergency Help Messages – Real or Fake?

For some time, people have been receiving fake emergency text messages from scammers.

The message seems to be from a friend and claims the sender is an emergency situation and desperately needs money to get home or to pay hospital bills or to pay hotel bills etc. Usually the sender claims to have been mugged or their hotel room robbed or similar, their phone has been stolen so they have had to borrow one etc.

It’s always an emergency and only you can help.

Most people have learned that these scams happen and will either ignore such a message or attempt to verify it rather than simply sending out money.

This case is the same kind of message but by email.

The email is from someone I know but he is not a close friend and he would have dozens of people he’d turn to in an emergency before turning to me.

I’m hoping you get this on time as i’m writing with a troubled heart i knew it was a long shot and i should have thought of all this sooner,i couldn’t inform everyone Hannah has been diagnosed with advance liver cancer. I’m still trying to digest this very bad news whether with the will to live or not we have been going through a lot with the Chemo it’s been very challenging for us so we both decided to get away from this saddening times just the two of us we are in Istanbul, Turkey everything was fine until on our way back to the hotel we were attacked and robbed all cash, credit card and mobile phones were stolen.

They had a knife poking my neck for two minutes i was scared and felt the deepest fear I’ve never felt before, we took precautions to ensure our safety and we are working with the local authorities providing details for investigation this process might take days due to some paper works, I’ve also made contact with my bank in order to block our cards also it would take 3-5 working days to process funds into my account which i can’t access from here, the bad news is our flight will be leaving very soon but I am having problems with the hotel bills. I need your help i am sorry if i got you at the wrong time but could you please loan me some money I’ll appreciate whatsoever you can give if you can’t help with everything and I promise to make the refund once I get back home safely.

An obvious scam and hopefully no-one who received it will send any money.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

January 5, 2022

What Are The Most Popular Spam Subjects?

Bitcoin is really popular with scammers currently – endless scam messages with titles such as “Ride the wave of Bitcoin”. That’s likely to keep being popular till Bitcoin crashes (if it ever does)

Herpes cures – titles such as “Get rid of it fast” sent from dozens of different names.

The ever popular Flight Simulator game is still on Clickbank paying very high commission to anyone who can get you to click onto their site and buy:-
“Are you a Good Pilot?”

“Learn to Fly Any Plane”

“Fly Anywhere in the World”

Then there’s always Shark Tank best product ever examples, such as :-

“Get Your Weight Back With This Shake”

“Super Slimming”

“This Product Changes Everything”

Although Shark Tank is a perfectly good American TV series, the name is used extensively by scammers so a mention of Shark Tank almost ensures the message is a scam.

Russian girls love you. Endless emails claiming to be a Russian girl who thinks you are cute. More likely it’s some ugly guys in a garage, churning out this trash, looking for victims. ”My name is Maria and I’m from Russia”.

“Earn a guaranteed $13,000 in 24 hours” If it was true then the scammer wouldn’t need to send out such messages to catch desperate people.

Then there’s hair restorer claims still popular with scammers – gives you a full head of hair within days.

The basic scams stay the same but are often dressed in new clothes to con new people.

All very sad.

Do you have an opinion on this matter? Please comment in the box below.

January 3, 2022

The House Repair Scam

The email claims to be from Housing Disrepair Alerts and the message title is “Discover if you’re eligible to claim for poor housing conditions“.

That makes it sound like a potential lifeline for people in homes with serious problems to be fixed.

But it isn’t – the email goes on about forcing your landlord to fix the problems and about claiming thousands of pounds in compensation.

Are the emails from local government? No.

They are from what appears to be a company collecting contact details for Marketing purposes and will presumably be sold to anyone wanting the contact details for people in poor housing.

The sender’s email address is cucejul.com which is just an email service so doesn’t identify the sender.

The email asks you to fill in details so they can assess your claim.

Not recommended.

If you have problems with your housing – talk to the council or the landlord directly and don’t trust anyone sending out unsolicited emails whatever they promise.

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

January 2, 2022

Stupidest Spam of the Week Blackout

This is another conspiracy theory gone mad for the sake of getting people to watch a dumb video clip.

The email is titled “Scientists are warning of incoming total blackout”.

It then says that CIA director James Woolsey claims that over 228 millions American will be dead by election day.

It is true that there are occasional area blackouts of the electricity supply in America and some countries have experienced a total blackout for short periods.

Given enough days without mains electricity some people are likely to die, in hospitals, from the cold (central heating needs electrical control), from water that isn’t fully cleaned etc.

But, there is no case for millions dying in a blackout unless it becomes permanent which is never going to happen.

Blackouts are caused by faulty wiring, circuit overloads etc. and are easily fixed.

The whole idea is just ludicrous and only intended to frighten people.

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January 1, 2022

The Time-Wasters of 2021

There seems to be an endless supply of spam messages from companies you have no interest in trying to sell you things you don’t want.

Lists of contact details sell for around $100 per million email addresses or phone numbers from the better spam suppliers and as little as $2 per million from the worst suppliers who simply make-up email addresses e.g. for bt.com email address you can guess alice.jones @bt.com or john.connor @bt.com etc. and sell these to unsuspecting stupid spammers.

Any reputable company you deal with will let you unsubscribe from their messages and leave you alone but there are so many disreputable organisations who don’t care whether you ever agreed to such messages in the first place.

The most common subjects for spam and scam messages in 2020 included:-

Fake Covid passes
Fake Covid tests
Fake Covid PPE and similar
Fake Covid loans
Phishing scams where the scammer tries to get your login and password by pretending to be from a trusted source e.g. your bank
419 scams – the ones where you are promised an inheritance or a package waiting for you at an airport or someone wanting to share their millions with you for no good reason
Cures for diabetes, cancer, eyesight problems, arthritis etc.
Magic weight loss with no effort and no dieting needed
Fake invoices, fake payments, fake demands for payment

Take care never to click on links in unsolicited emails or to respond to emails from someone you don’t know.

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December 31, 2021

Illegal Medicine Websites

There are countless Internet sites selling drugs and medicines, without prescription, that should only be available with a Doctor’s guidance and prescription.

The reasons people buy medicines from Internet sites can be just about saving money but can also be about anonymity, fear of approaching a doctor, ignorance of the dangers involved and so on.

There is a government campaign called #fakemeds with a website at https://fakemeds.campaign.gov.uk/

You can use this to check if a website you are thinking of buying from is registered to sell medicines and you can report suspected fake medicines and suppliers.

In 2016, Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) seized more than 4.6 million fake medical products and closed thousands of websites selling medicines illegally. Many potentially dangerous products seized by the MHRA had not tested for safety and in some cases were found stored in dirty, rat-infested warehouses and garden sheds.

The three key messages are

More than half of all medicines bought online are fake
Side effects can include heart attacks, strokes and death.
Buying from dodgy websites also increases the risk of being ripped off through credit card fraud or having your identity stolen.

The #fakemeds campaign is run by MHRA and a recent study in co-operation with Slimming World shows:-

One in three slimmers have tried slimming pills purchased online.
77% were enticed by promises of rapid weight loss, more than half were attracted to being able to order discreetly and 44% ordered online because they didn’t want to speak to a GP or pharmacist.
63% suffered unpleasant side effects after taking slimming pills bought online. These side effects included diarrhoea, bleeding, blurred vision and heart problems. Worryingly, four out of five didn’t report these side effects to anyone.
Four out of 10 respondents said they had used the slimming pills knowing there were health risks, with more than 62% doing so because they were ‘desperate to lose weight’.

Be careful buying medicine online and if you should get a prescription for the product then do speak to your doctor and do not risk your health on cheap dodgy products.

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