The Power Saver Device Scam

There are endless adverts for small devices you plug into an electrical socket and can magically reduce your power bills massively.

The adverts often contain numerous testimonials from happy customer who have reduced or even eliminated their electricity bills.

Sometimes there is a supposedly technical explanation of how the device works, including diagrams.

All of this is rubbish.

It is not possible for any plug-in device to somehow reduce the amount of electricity used.

The adverts mention phrases such as ‘dirty electricity, ‘clean your electricity’, ‘sustainable electricity’, ‘power factor’, ‘non-linear loads’ and so on. None of which explain how the devices reduce your electricity usage.

One of the most popular of these scam gadgets is called the Tesla, supposedly after the famous scientist Nikola Tesla who invented it – not true. He did invent industrial electrical supply regulators but they don’t help anyone’s household electricity usage.

Most of these fake devices just plug in to any power socket and somehow magically affect the use of electricity around the whole property.

That’s like putting a water filter on a bathroom tap and expecting the water in the kitchen to also be filtered.

Don’t waste your money.

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

June 20, 2021

Stupidest Spam of the Week Marine Corps

Advance Fee scams, also known as 419 scams are highly prevalent, especially by scammers in Nigeria who operate this scam on an industrial scale.

There are many variations, but it is a simple scam – they offer a fortune of some kind, then when someone falls for the bait, they have an elaborate story about how they have got or will get the money and need just a little help in getting the money out of their country or away from the bank etc.

Once a victim is hooked, then a series of small payments are needed to get the fortune.

Of course, there is no fortune, just a victim who will be conned repeatedly until he or she realises it’s fake and that there is no fortune.

This latest email is a very simple one with no effort to look realistic, but sadly these can still attract some people desperate for money.

The sender claims to be in the U.S. Marine Corps and recently was part of an operation in Asia and netted a lot of money in a raid on the opposition. (You can see this is deliberately vague so the scammer doesn’t have lots of details to remember).

Now, she needs a man or woman to help her repatriate the money and will pay a large percentage for that.

Strangely, this scam also goes down the romance route as she claims to want to find a man to have a long term relationship with.

Confused as that is – that’s all the information in the message.

She asks for a photo by return and wants to talk by Whatsapp only.

This has all the hallmarks of a large scale scam operation with each scammer no doubt dealing with perhaps dozens of victims at a time.

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June 19, 2021

Time-Wasters Update

An email from sendbulk*.com tells me they offer unlimited mass mailings and are happy sending non permission based messages i.e. messages that no-one has agreed to. Disgraceful.

Yet another email warning. This one is from System Administrator to tell me the mailbox is over quota and needs to be upgraded. The message is actually from aniflex.pl and our mail servers are not in Poland so it’s fake.

Tan K. takes a challenging approach to emails. Starting with a complaint that he has been phoning our office and not getting a reply. He is desperate to place an order and wants to pay 50% up front and the rest on delivery. There is an attached file, claimed to be a proforma invoice for us to open. But it’s a compressed file in .arj format and no-one placing an order would do that – only a scammer trying to spread malware in our systems. DELETE.

An email from Jose Gomez to tell me he has a client with a huge amount of money who wants to form an investment partnership with me and that I should send him my phone number if interested. Just a scammer’s way to get people’s names and phone numbers.

A nameless person sent in an email titled ‘New purchase order and 30% deposit’ from a Chinese company. The attachment is supposed to a pro forma invoice and a payment but is in fact an ‘.html’ file, which means it’s a web page – no doubt designed to load malware onto the computer of anyone trusting enough to click on it. No thanks.

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June 18, 2021

The Do Not Disturb Function

Most smart phones have a Do Not Disturb function of some kind. This can be very useful for reducing the number of spam calls you get. When enabled, it mutes all calls, alerts and media sounds but you can set exceptions to that rule.

Android Phones Do Not Disturb

Go to Settings > Sound & Vibration > Do Not Disturb

This gives you the following options:

Turn on Now
Turn on as Scheduled
Allow Exceptions
APP Rules
Hide Visual Notifications

Under Allow Exceptions, you can choose to allow alarms only or customise so that for example repeat callers are OK or calls from specified people or messages from specified people are accepted etc.

Generally it gives you a more peaceful life until you turn it off again.

Apple Phones Do Not Disturb

This behaves in a similar way to on Android.

Go to Settings > Do Not Disturb

When Do Not Disturb is on, a crescent moon icon Do Not Disturb icon will be displayed in the status bar.

If you’ve set an alarm in the Clock app, the alarm will go off even when Do Not Disturb is on.

You can set Do Not Disturb to be on and off according to a schedule. This would for example give you a quiet period each day at the set times.

Under Silence, you can choose to silence calls and notifications at all times or only when the device is locked.

Under Allow Calls From, you can allow calls from everyone, no one, your favourites or specific contact groups stored on your device or iCloud.

If you have any better uses for Do Not Disturb, do let me know, by email.

June 17, 2021

Psychic Scams

Psychics and clairvoyants have been around for a very long time. Some people believe in them but many do not.

Whether real or fake, there are many on the Internet, offering advice and guidance, for a fee.

Scammers see this as an opportunity – they usually claim to know something important about the victim’s future or that they are cursed etc. then reel them in with details gleaned by asking questions, doing online research and so on.

The typical start to this scam is that you receive an email or letter from somebody claiming to be a psychic or clairvoyant. This person claims to have some sort of special insight into your life – something dangerous coming your way, or a great windfall or that you’ve been cursed etc. The psychic claims they can protect or help – for a fee of course. The scam can also start as a fake website advertised heavily or via social media posts.

You may be offered a good luck charm, the secret to enormous wealth, magic potions or winning lottery numbers for a fee.

Do not be convinced by their cold reading techniques or lucky guesses. If you do want to contract a psychic or clairvoyant then find someone local with a good reputation and take care.

June 16, 2021

What is Fleeceware

Fleeceware is the name for APPS that deliver some benefit but charge far too much compared to similar APPS. E.g. a basic flashlight APP for $10 when usually these are free or come pre-installed on your phone.

The problem is not that there is something malicious in these APPS – just that they are ripping people off.

Google and APPLE check all APPS for malware but don’t have such clear rules on value for money as that is a more personal choice. However, APPS that obviously rip people off do get banned by both Google and APPLE.

Usually these Fleeceware APPS have subscription charges or hidden charges or both and people sign up without realising they can get the same thing either free or at a much reduced price.

Sophos, an Internet security firm, found 25 such apps on Google Play that had a combined total of more than 600 million downloads. They also found 30 apps in the iOS App Store that can be considered Fleeceware APPS.

Scammers may choose any high selling APP where they can duplicate basic functionality easily and then con people into the high charges. To improve their ranking, they will also typically create zombie accounts and use those to post outstanding reviews of the APP.

Sometimes there is a free trial period listed on the adverts but the APP insists on payment on first use, or the adverts show a reasonable subscription charge annually but then the APP charges that same amount every month or has In APP charges that cannot be avoided etc.

Once installed, users may think that deleting the APP will stop the recurring charges, but this is often not the case and the charges continue.

Google has announced that it will tighten the rules on how introductory free subscriptions work and other ongoing costs and that cancellation must be simple and actioned by the APP supplier.

Apple’s guidelines for developers explicitly prohibit unreasonable pricing, bait-and-switch subscriptions, and scams. Apple also say that they will reject expensive apps that try to cheat users with irrationally high prices.

How to Avoid Fleeceware

First thing is to only download apps from the Android or APPLE shop and not from elsewhere unless it is guaranteed to be safe.

Before choosing any APP with costs, check around to see if it is the right price and whether there are better options available.

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