The Neighbourhood Watch

In these day of everything going digital, does the Neighbourhood Watch still have a role to play?

YES!

Neighbourhood Watch can provide security and assurance that nothing online can offer.

The Neighbourhood Watch scheme began in the United Kingdom in 1982 and is a partnership intended to bring people together to make their communities safer. It involves the police, Community Safety departments of local authorities, other voluntary organisations and individuals and families who want to make their neighbourhoods better places to live. It aims to help people protect themselves and their properties and to reduce the fear of crime by means of improved home security, greater vigilance, accurate reporting of suspicious incidents to the police and by fostering a community spirit. It is claimed that over 3.8 million households are covered by a neighbourhood watch.

Objectives of Neighbourhood Watch

To improve community safety generally including e.g. fire safety
To prevent crime by improving security, increasing vigilance, creating and maintaining a caring community and reducing opportunities for crime by increasing crime prevention awareness.
To assist the police in detecting crime by promoting effective communication and the prompt reporting of suspicious and criminal activity.
To reduce undue fear of crime by providing accurate information about risks and by promoting a sense of security and community spirit, particularly amongst the more vulnerable members of the community.
To improve police/community liaison by providing effective communications through Neighbourhood Watch messaging systems which warn Coordinators of local crime trends which they can disseminate to their scheme members, and by members informing the police of incidents when they occur.

Neighbourhood Watch schemes are run by their members through a coordinator and are supported by the police and in many divisions, a local Neighbourhood Watch Association.

A volunteer resident coordinator supervises the scheme and liaises with the police, they receive information and messages to keep them in touch with activities and some have marker kits, alarms and other security items, which are available to members. The schemes are a community initiative, which is supported by the police, not run by them, so success depends on what the members make of it.

Do Neighbourhood Watches Help to Reduce Door-to-Door Scammers?

The anecdotal evidence is that they do reduce this type of crime. This is largely because people are more aware of possible crimes and do keep an eye out for unexpected visitors to their doors. Also, door-to-door crooks tend to avoid areas where there are any signs of organisation against crime and Neighbourhood Watch areas are usually identifiable by stickers on homes and buildings.

If there is a Neighbourhood Watch in your area, then consider joining.

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

September 20, 2021

The Pet Scam

Kim tried to buy a dog and was caught in a scam.

This is Kim’s story.

I was looking for a pet for my family and searched on line for a Shiba Inu.

This website seem professional so I contacted them. A guy responded and started to email me.

We actually talked on the phone and he sent me pictures and videos of the dog. It seemed legit. He even sent me a contact on the purchase. His procedures were that I went to buy gift cards in the amount of $500 and $300.

The dog was got $600 and $200 for shipping. I had to take photo of the cards, front and back and text it to him before he shipped out the dog.

Of course I was excited to add a new member to our family because everything seemed legit. I did as he instructed and in minutes, the balance on the card vanished.

Long story short, $800 gone and I have no dog. Please put the story out there and make people aware of these scams. This person uses different sites, but same pictures of the dogs. Here is a site he used:

https://amazingshibainu.com/

Sorry Kim, there are many criminals offering puppies and kittens for sale. Beware these scammers and never pay without meeting the animal first.

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

September 19, 2021

Stupidest Spam of the Week Huge Scandal

Many scammers focus on one type of scam or one category of victims.

This latest email is a weird mixture.

The title of the email is “Something new was revealed please look”.

There is a strange photo of a man in front of three drums that look like large oil drums, with plastic pipes between them and it says “This device will change your health”.

Change your health for the worse I assume.

The story goes on to say it was invented by a firefighter and is 10 times more powerful than any treatment.

Treatment for what? It doesn’t say.

The scammer seems to be getting desperate as the email then contains strange claims such as

“Rumours say NASA has a department exclusively for this”.

“This device will start a huge scandal”.

“Even Trump’s administration worry about this.

That reference to Trump shows the email is just recycled rubbish from 2020.

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September 18, 2021

Time-Wasters Update

It seems that everyone is getting numerous emails and text messages about DHL deliveries, Post Office parcels etc. Usually the message claims some piece of information was wrong and prevented delivery or there is a surcharge to pay. This latest one is clearly by an idiot. It claims to be from DPD couriers but the sender’s email address is trybpstabiizer.com and it says an APPLE iMac 24 inch laptop is due for delivery if I pay the outstanding £1 delivery charge. When someone sends such an item they get the delivery charge correct – it’s not a matter of guesswork. Just a dumb scammer.

“Grandpa Robert Miller lost 63lbs with no effort” – apparently with no exercise and eating whatever foods he liked. All this because he carried out an 8 second ritual each evening. This is the typical rubbish that scammers put in their emails about magic weight loss remedies. It’s hard to imagine anyone taking this sort of thing seriously but the messages continue so maybe someone does or maybe the scammers are too stupid to recognise their failure. As usual the magic remedy is supposed to be a carefully guarded secret, but 159,000 people are already using it. Pathetic.

Another 419 scam email arrives claiming to be from the FBI. Apparently they have tried to call me about the $2 million they have to send on to me, but couldn’t get through. That’s an old story that doesn’t work nowadays that everyone uses smart phones that automatically go to answer phone if not answered. Anyway, the FBI don’t even know my name as the email starts with Dear, The money is apparently compensation for something unspecified. Just the usual pathetic rubbish.

An email claiming to be from Amazon tells me my account has been suspended due to failure to pay Amazon Prime subscription charges. It’s an obvious scam message as it is actually from r0ggqpgxsmxcybu-uhu49mnok2accmxe which is clearly not Amazon, plus I don’t have an Amazon subscription.

Lots of fake messages arrive supposedly from Chinese companies offering various engineering products such as transformer coils. Some of these scammers also add fake mail delivery messages so you get an email with a title such as ‘Returned Mail Delivery Failure’ which looks like one of your messages wasn’t delivered, but it’s fake. The endless details are just copied from authentic delivery failure messages and the point for the scammer is to get you to open the message and click the link to see your original message but that’s where the payload of malware is hidden. Do not trust such messages.

September 17, 2021

KB Says Trust Your Gut

Post by K.B. Beaumaaks

I am 52 and considered to be of the baby boomer generation. We were raised in a world without the internet, taught to respect our elders and certain professions were considered very trustworthy. Examples are doctors, teachers, police officers etc…. we were raised that these are people we could trust no matter what and for the most part this was absolutely true.

I had not one but two similar situations happen to me and I am an educated professional with an upper level income. My scams occurred not with an outsider but a partner…. yep first with my ex husband who was a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine then to a boyfriend who was a Police Officer. Two professions that were “trustworthy professions” I was blinded by the scammers that they were. My point is to trust your gut no matter who the person is. If it feels wrong…. chances are it is wrong.

See below for KB’s posts about her first and second husbands

https://fightback.ninja/kb-married-to-a-scammer/

https://fightback.ninja/kb-and-the-police-officer-scammer/

Generally, the geriatric or elderly community were the ones that were scammed by door to door salespersons or telephone scammers. Today people believe the less educated, the lower income, elderly community are the ones prone to scammers. This is absolutely not true according to The Better Business Bureau.

People today believe what they read on the internet, they impulse shop, they receive emails and phone calls about tax issues or debt collectors and we fall for it believing oh if it’s on the internet, it must be true.

I have written a book called The Preah Secrets and it deals with my veterinary husband and how I discovered his heist and how I followed my gut to eventually discover his intentions of deceit. I prepared and eventually sought justice for myself. I hope the book inspires others to follow their instincts and remember, scams can happen to anyone by anyone.

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

September 16, 2021

The Search Engine Submission Scam

The email is titled: “Domain Notice”

“Notice for Registering your Domain with All Major Search Engines”

It lists one of my Internet domain names and the date the domain name will expire (unless I renew the registration).

In reality, this is just a sales pitch for search engine optimisation dressed up to look like domain name renewal.

When you have a website, you will want the search engines (Google, Bing etc.) to know about it.

The basic ways that the search engines get to know of your website are

The search engines come across links from sites they already know, to your site and then they search your site and add it to their lists.
You submit the domain name to each search engine
You use an online service to submit your website to hundreds of search engines – most of which almost no-one uses

The email continues:-

“Submitting your domain to search engines is essential in order to make it more visible on the web. Failing to register with search engines makes it difficult for visitors to search your business on the internet. That’s why we are sending this friendly reminder to submit your domain to all major search engines for better visibility”.

Generally, once your website is listed by Google and Bing there is little point in trying to register it with the small search engines unless there is a search engine specifically for the niche that your website occupies. E.g. if your website is about GIF animated images then you’ll want to register it on the GIPHY search engine which only searches GIF animated images .

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