Bereavement Scams

The death of a loved one is a distressing time and there are scumbags who may try to take advantage of the bereaved at their most vulnerable.

Typical Scams Targeting the Bereaved:

Debt Claims

Scammers call or write claiming to be owed some money or to be from a debt collection firm.

They may make threats and will pressure for immediate payment.

If in doubt as to whether such a debt exists or whether you may be liable for any debt, check the details before making any payment and the Citizens Advice consumer helpline can offer guidance.

Life Insurance

A scammer contacts you in order to pay you the life insurance, but in order to do this they need your personal information, bank details etc.

Never hand over such information unless you are certain it is genuine.

If the caller or letters demand a final payment, release amount or any other payment similar then it is almost certainly a scam.

Identity Theft

People search obituaries for information they can use to forge identities. Please be careful of the information you put in an obituary and do not include details like date or place of birth or give out full addresses.

Long Lost Relative Scams

Funerals are a time to reconnect with family, but watch out for ‘long lost relatives’ who come out of the woodwork to claim they are owed something or should share in any inheritance.

If they want money, then confirm their identity with other relatives or the authorities.

If they insist they were owed money or an inheritance, a debt or property, consult a solicitor.

Register a Death

You may need to update various authorities e.g. local council, register of voters etc.

Scammers setup fake websites and advertise on Google to try to get you to use them for such registration. Typically they might charge you for this when it should be free or they just steal your payment information.

Always make sure you are using the official websites and don’t simply click on whatever is top of a Google search.

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

November 10, 2021

What is Digital Money

Digital Money / Cyber Currency / Blockchain / Bitcoin etc

Digital money (or digital currency) refers to any means of payment that exists in a purely electronic form. Digital money is not physically tangible like a dollar bill or a coin and Bitcoin is probably the best known digital money in use.

Digital money can also represent standard currencies, such as dollars or euros. Digital money is exchanged using technologies such as smartphones, credit cards, and online cryptocurrency exchanges.

Digital money has the potential to streamline the financial infrastructure of the world, making it cheaper and faster to conduct monetary transactions, easier to store money and legal to avoid the gaze of central banks and taxmen.

But it has severe limitations, many attempts at digital money will fail, criminals love cyber currencies, some varieties of digital money create instability in the markets and it is possible that the huge tech companies will come to dominate this space.

The money held in your online bank account can be called digital money – it’s just numbers on a computer.

The world is moving away from cash to digital money and Sweden is probably the furthest ahead in this move.

Sweden is expected to reach ‘cashless’ society by 2025, although they do admit that some retailers will continue to accept cash beyond that date.

Types of Digital Money

Central Bank Digital Currencies

Many governments around the world are struggling to understand digital currencies and how they can used without causing destabilisation.

Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies are the most common digital currencies and are based on cryptography. This is used to allow for anonymity, public ledger transactions and safe storage.

The most popular cryptocurrencies are Bitcoin and Ethereum. Cryptocurrencies are becoming fashionable investments and the overall market capitalization of crypto markets had by July 2021 surpassed $2 trillion.

Stablecoins

Stablecoins are a variation of cryptocurrencies and were developed to counter the price volatility of regular cryptocurrencies. The price is tied to that of a standard currency or a basket of goods to ensure that they remain stable. They can be a proxy for standard currencies, except they are not backed by governmental authority. The market for stablecoins has been growing rapidly.

The Advantages of Digital Money

The current financial infrastructure is very complex and every time money is transferred or changes hands there are costs involved.

Digital money eliminates the need for physical storage and safekeeping that is a characteristic of cash-intensive systems. You don’t need to worry about your digital money being stolen or lost (not strictly true)
Digital money simplifies accounting and record-keeping for transactions through technology. Therefore, manual accounting and separate entity-specific ledgers are not necessary to maintain records of transactions.
Digital money has the potential to revolutionize the payment industry by eliminating intermediaries and further reducing the costs associated with cross-border transfers.
Digital money makes it possible to include groups of people who were previously excluded from the economy by not having access to bank accounts. They can use digital money instead.

Digital money is a major innovation in financial technology. It makes payment systems faster and cheaper. But it has the attendant problems of technology, as digital money can be hacked and can erode privacy. While it is still early days for digital money, it will play an important part in the future of finance.

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

November 8, 2021

The Browse Safely App Scam

Google Chrome Safe Browsing offers protection against malicious websites – it warns you if you are about to navigate to a dangerous website or to download something dangerous.

AVAST anti malware offer their Secure Browser extension for the most popular browsers for Windows and Mac.

Other anti-virus and anti-malware companies offer similar facilities – designed to stop malware attacks in your browser before they can get to your device.

However there is a website “get.browsersafelyapp.com” which sis advertised as offering such protection, but doesn’t do that.

Instead it hijacks your browser i.e. it changes your web browser’s settings and does not allow you to change them back.

Typically, browser hijackers promote fake search engines by changing the default search engine. In this case, it’s to browsesafelysearch.com which does give search results, but those results come from Yahoo (which is legitimate). However, the fake search engine can insert whatever fake links it wants to in the results.

Removing browsesafelyapp once it’s installed is possible but is a tricky process.

It is common that browser hijackers collect data such as IP addresses, geolocations, search queries etc. and forward the data to the scammers, where it can be sold to Marketing companies or to other scammers.

Only use the reputable search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

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

November 7, 2021

Stupidest Spam of the Week Fund Authorisation

There are endless 419 scam messages i.e. those offering some fortune in cash or diamonds or gold etc. and a long winded ridiculous story of why they have that fortune for you.

The scam works by getting you to pay small sums of money to release the fortune and paying again and again until you realise it’s a scam and stop.

Some scammers moved on to trying to catch out people who have already been stung by this scam, by sending out emails claiming the people responsible have been caught and now you will really get the fortune owed to you.

All lies of course.

This latest scam claims to be from the World Bank although the sender’s email address is a personal Gmail address.

It says that your problems are over because you have been issued with security Identification IFC09-WB2021-17CCXX65(PIN2001)/ ATM CARD

The ATM card had supposedly been loaded with $10.5 million and will be sent anywhere you want it to go.

That would be a very stupid way of sending money to someone. Would you trust $10.5 million to the post?

The email is addressed to Dear beneficiary i.e. they have no idea of the people’s names they are sending the emails to.

Hence the email then asks for your name as well as address, occupation, contact details etc.

All good information to sell to identity thieves.

Pathetic lies.

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November 6, 2021

Time-Wasters Update

Most criminals with products to sell try to stay unknown outside of criminal circles and sell only to known associates or on the dark web. An email from Isabel Growth tells a story about she has hacked several pieces of key software to do with extracting email addresses from websites. This is software that scammers and spammers use and also some less than upright Marketing companies. Announcing that she is stealing from the makers is something you would expect her to keep quiet about but no! She sends out millions of emails to spam addresses. Let’s hope she is found and prosecuted, if only in civil court.

A message from the laziest scammer in the world just says ‘Hello and Bye’. It’s an attempt to see if the email address is valid so don’t do the scammers work by ever replying to empty messages.

Mandy Hughes tells us we are now 30 days overdue paying her invoice for 230.32 – no currency specified so it could be anything. Her due date and date of email are more than 30 days apart so she cannot count. She doesn’t have a company name or list the items supposedly bought. Just a simple scam looking for gullible people.

“New scientific studies show that this 5 second water trick crushers all sugar cravings and will reduce fat while you sleep” is a catchy sales pitch by a scammer. It goes on about Harvard scientists proving this and that Sandra lost 30 pounds in no time using this trick without a diet. This is just the usual scammer rubbish – there is no such trick.

Aniska Dugal wants me to confirm that I received her previous email about Digital Marketing. I did but have no intention of replying as her email is one of hundreds received at the radio station each week offering website development, SEO, digital marketing etc. The title of the email is ‘Please revert me’ which is a use of words sometimes written by Indian people and often by scammers. Either way the message is just spam rubbish and will be ignored.

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November 5, 2021

Government Cyber Resilience Centres

The UK government has assorted plans to do with beefing up cyber resilience as businesses and other organisations across the country increasingly come under attack from hackers.

The government’s creation of local centres for cyber resilience is progressing well.

The Cyber Resilience Centre for the South East (SECRC) is part of the national roll out of Cyber Resilience Centres in the UK which began in 2019.

Lead by Policing, and facilitated by Business Resilience International Management (BRIM), they say that they have followed a structured modular programme based on a highly successful model that had previously been established for over 9 years in Scotland.

They work in structured partnership with regional Policing, Academia, Businesses, Third and Public Sector organisations through a variety of ways:

Security Awareness Training

This is focused on those with little or no cyber security or technical knowledge

Corporate Internet Investigation

This service may be used to learn what is being said on the internet about an organisation, what information employees are releasing, or if there are any damaging news stories, social media posts or associations.

Individual Internet Investigation

These investigations gather information that can be used to support pre-employment checks, to manage potential threats to a Director of an organisation or their families, or to understand more about a specific person of interest.

Remote Vulnerability Assessment

These assessments focus on identifying weaknesses in the way your organisation connects to the internet. Service reporting will provide a plain language interpretation of the results and how any vulnerabilities might be used by an attacker, as well as simple instructions on how any vulnerabilities might be fixed.

Internal Vulnerability Assessment

The assessment will scan and review your internal networks and systems looking for weaknesses such as poorly maintained or designed systems, insecure Wi-Fi networks, insecure access controls, or opportunities to access and steal sensitive data.

Web App Vulnerability Assessment

This service assesses your website and web services for weaknesses. The service reporting will describe in plain language, what each weakness means to your business and the risks associated with each. Service reporting will include plans and guidance on how to fix those weaknesses.

Security Policy Review

This is a review of your current security policy, how it is written and how it is implemented.

Cyber Business Continuity Review

This service offers a review of your business continuity planning and the resilience of your organisation to cyber-attacks such as ransomware or when attackers take control of your core systems.

https://www.secrc.co.uk/contact-us is the south east SERCR

There are equivalent centres in other regions of the country.

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