Jay Scammed in His Garden

The Tree work crooks.

Jay says I thought I was careful but I have just been robbed.

A man at the front door said my neighbour, who was out, wanted some of my back garden tree branches that were over lapping his garden trimmed back. He came in the back garden to show what he was going to do; I had no intention of paying for anything. He pointed out some problems with my trees that he could fix for £150 including removal. It sounded creditable and I was foolish and agreed.

Then there was a problem; a large branch had broken off. There would be a charge of £2.75 per kg to take it away, he wouldn’t give me a weight estimate, he said that it would be known when it was chipped. I was shocked when he told me it weighed 980kg and the cost was £2500.

I said it couldn’t be that heavy but he insisted it was. I was given a lot of hassle and told I had agreed to it and ended up paying online.

Later in the day I was phoned and told there was too much for one load and there was another £2000 to pay; he was extremely aggressive when I refused to pay. Later I found that nothing had been taken away; it had been hidden behind another tree.

Also, my neighbour hadn’t asked for anything to be done.

Every thing he said was lies. I have reported this information to the police.

Be careful.

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

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Stupidest Spam of the Week Fake Project Loans

Fake loans are big business for scammers.

Many offer loans in the low thousands of dollars – but these are just phishing scams intended to get your personal and financial information to sell onto other criminals who will then rob you and likely steal your identity.

Some scammers go big on these scams – this latest one offers up to $1 billion on 25 year repayment.

It can be for any reason, but only in a list of selected countries.

However, that list includes continents and only the Antarctic is not included, so ‘selected countries’ actually means every country on earth.

As if the offer of untold millions of dollars isn’t enough, the scammer also includes an offer to pay referral fees for any projects brought to their attention.

Of course, the scammer has a personal email address rather than a company email and the sender’s supposed name of ‘Nizat Shafterit’ doesn’t match the email address.

The scammers just want your details so they can choose the best scam to try on you.

Pathetic.

The number of people replying to emails like this is probably only a few in a million or even less, but the scammers send out huge numbers of these and they latch on to anyone dumb enough to reply.

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Strong Customer Authentication

New Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) regulations will add an extra layer of security at online checkout making it safer to shop online. This was proposed in 2019 and became law in the UK from September 2021.

As fraud levels in digital payments have risen in Europe, new regulations have followed. Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) has become a key piece of the EU’s Revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) required by merchants.

PSD2 introduced the concept of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA). The idea is simple: 2 out of 3 elements need to be checked during authentication.

As a customer, this means asked to identify yourself by another means as well as the payment card details e.g. through a passcode sent to your smart phone.

This may become an annoying delay at times but it is to protect your accounts from criminals.

The goals of PSD2

  • Make the European payments market more integrated and efficient
  • Improve the level playing field for payment service providers (including new players)
  • Make payments safer and more secure
  • Protect consumers from fraud

Strong customer authentication demands multi-factor authentication on all payer-initiated payments including at least two of the below methods.

  • Something you know g. pin or password
  • Something you have g. phone or device
  • Something you are e.g. facial scan or fingerprint

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

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Online Wish List Dangers

Christmas is a time when some people make wish lists online and these can be fun but they can inadvertently give away a lot of information to scammers.

Amazon maintains wish lists so in theory other people can buy gifts for you that you do want rather than having to figure out what you might want. Amazon has three levels of privacy – Public, Shared or Private.  Choosing Public lets anyone see the list, Private means just you and shared is where you can choose who gets to see the list.

Allowing this information to be public should be harmless, but people who are trying to steal your identity can use this information to get critical details about you.

Michelle Black works with Hope 4 USA in Ft. Mill. She spends several hours a day helping people recover from ID theft, which is one of the fastest growing crimes.

Black says “A scammer can log into these public websites, public wish lists. From there they might have such information as your city and state, your date of birth, your children’s names and perhaps their dates of birth and they can use that to start putting together the pieces of the puzzle they need to fully steal your identity.”

The thieves then create a fake website by making it look like Amazon or the online wish list company.

They  tell you someone has purchased an item on your list and all you have to do is login to confirm the mailing address.

And if you click on that link and login, the scammer has the information needed to access your account and maybe even for identity theft.

Make sure any online wish list or gift registry is set to Private.

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The Impact of Phishing Scams

Phishing scams are where the scammer sends you an email or a text or calls you, claiming to be from the government, the local council, the phone company or your Internet provider, a major retailer etc.  aiming to get your confidential information such as login and password details or credit card details etc.

These scams are extremely common with many people receiving numerous such emails or messages each day. Some organisations get hundreds of these scam messages every day and the Internet providers block billions of these messages every day.

For organisations, blocking these messages takes time and resources, but if the criminals get the data they seek, the damage can be long lasting.

A survey of large organisations suggested the cost of such activity averages around $2 million for a 10,000 person company and is attributed as follows:-

  • Business impact through loss of proprietary information (41%)
  • Loss of productivity (35%)
  • Other wider effects (16%)
  • Damage to reputation (8%)

Prevention is generally easier and cheaper than disaster recovery activities so make sure your organisation has the right systems protection in place and train staff on how to recognise phishing threats.

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

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