Identify a Scam

There are more online scams than ever before and we must take care in all online activities.

If you come across a scam – a strange text message from someone you knew years ago or an email about a fortune waiting for you or an official letter you’re not sure about or you wonder if that holiday offer too good to be true – how do you identify whether it’s a scam or not.

If it is a scam, then how does that work and what you should you do if you’ve been scammed or someone tried to con you?

The website at https://identify.fightbackonline.org has the answer for you.

It offers a list of descriptions of scams and you select the one that is the closest match to the one you’ve come across.

It then tells you about how the scam operates and what you should do and can offer further help if needed or a list of recommended experts and more.

Give it a try https://identify.fightbackonline.org

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

May 31, 2021

The Wangiri Phone Scam

This is the call back scam, which rose to epidemic levels in Ireland a few years ago but is still around now.

The calls, often have international prefixes including +231 (Liberia), +269 (The Comoros Islands), or +43 (Austria) and are intended to trick people into phoning back at premium rates.

The numbers are high cost international numbers and the fraudsters will get paid for each call back. The fraudsters will try to keep you on the line for as long as possible as they get paid by the minute.

The scam is known as a ‘wangiri’ call, (means one ring) because the mobile phone typically rings just once or twice.

The scammers hope that people will automatically call back without looking too closely at the number.

The telecoms watchdog admits there is no easy way to identify such calls but advise not calling back unless you know the number that called you and certainly do not call back if left a blank message.

Some mobile operators do block these scam numbers as they are identified and that stops them from calling their customers and blocks their customers from returning the call.

If you receive such calls, then notify your phone company of the calling numbers.

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

May 30, 2021

Stupidest Spam of the Week Power Innovator

Scammers often target Americans with stories about free electric power, even though the price of electricity across the USA is generally around 20% -50% cheaper than in Europe.

So, there must be a big demand for even cheaper electricity judging by the number of scam messages offering free electricity.

This latest one says it’s from ‘Power Innovator System’.

The starter to grab your attention is ‘Rumours say Joe Biden called a secret emergency meeting at the White House after learning about this weirdo device.’

That line has been used frequently with the name of every president in the last 20 years.

The comes the conspiracy element much beloved by so many Americans.

‘Electric companies have already gathered an army of lawyers to take it down.’

It goes on with the usual meaningless statements making random promises and wants you to click to watch a video.

And finally, it claims that you can be among the 2% already benefiting from this magic gizmo.

2% of the population of the USA is about six and a half million people, so it’s not exactly a secret.

But of course there is no such device – just a scammer wanting you to click a link which could lead to a stupid video or to a fake website delivering malware.

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May 29, 2021

Time-Wasters Update

Another of the very common email phishing messages arrived. Claiming to be from an address at the radio station, warning us that the mailbox quota has been exceeded for that email address, so it is unable to send any further messages. It is obviously a rubbish message from a scammer, plus the scammer doesn’t know we set that email address on the website to attract morons and it does just that. No one legitimate would pick that email address. The link to click is to a fake login box looking to steal our login and password. Never click on the links in such messages.

An email from Sgt Lauren Nowak tells me she is in the US army stationed in Afghanistan and wants to discuss a business proposition with me concerning $28.5 million which she can share with me. It is hard to imagine anyone could seriously believe this kind of message and reply to it, but someone must do or the scammers would find a better approach. Pathetic.

Many people use the WETRANSFER service for sending large files to people that email would struggle with or reject. So, it is common to get Wetransfer messages saying something is ready to download. But it pays to be vigilant as scammers often send out messages that look like they are from Wetransfer but contain malware files. No thanks.

An evil blackmailer sent a series of messages trying to force the radio station to pay a ransom or have personal information released on the Internet. Ninety nine percent of these type of messages are fake – just scammers chancing it. This one was dumb enough to pick an email address he claims was used to hack the radio station systems but it’s a fake email address invented by a spammer selling spam email addresses. All fake and all lies.

Some scammers like to target businesses and try to get them interested in more sales. This latest one is from Williams Opuki and says he is looking for suppliers of hand sanitiser, gowns, vitamins and anything else that government agencies buy to fight Covid. He wants to buy such products from us in large quantities. Even the small number of companies that actually sell this kind of product would have to be very dumb not to recognise this simple scam. No reputable business would send out mass mailings to random email addresses .

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May 28, 2021

How to Understand Website Addresses

Some Internet addresses (also known as URLs) are straightforward e .g www. Amazon.com is Amazon.

But many addresses are more complex and scammers often try to hide their Internet address, by making it look like the organisation they are pretending to be from.

e.g. www.amazon.truesite.com is not Amazon, it is truesite (a made-up name for this example).

Internet addresses are made up of parts (sometimes called labels) as follows:

[Left Hand Side] . top level domain / [Right Hand Side]

The top level domain is – .com or .co.uk or .pl or .biz etc.

This is the country code (e.g. uk for United Kingdom) or generic name such as .biz or .com for businesses or .org for organisations or .taxi for taxi companies or .net for Internet operations etc.

The right hand side after the slash which is after the top level domain is to specify which page of the website and pass parameters to that page e.g. the user name
The left hand side is the part of most interest as it contains the organisations domain name e.g. the FBI in fbi.gov or Barclays in www.barclays.co.uk
The http:// and https:// at the front of an Internet address just specifies that it is a website rather than something else and the ‘s’ means secure although you cannot trust that sites with the ‘s’ are actually secure unless you make further checks.

That left hand side is where scammers try to disguise the real domain name. This is possible because anything that comes before the organisation’s domain name can be ignored (for the [purpose of assessing the security of an address) so scammers can put in whatever they want.

e.g. www.microsoft.support.trusite.com is nothing to do with Microsoft – it’s just truesite.com in fact.

And https://login.office.microsoft.com.truesite.com/microsoft-support/ is just truesite.com again.

So, do look carefully at website addresses before you click on a link and do identify the company’s domain name and not be distracted by the left hand side stuff before the domain name or anything after that slash following the domain name.

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

May 27, 2021

Shopify Scams

Shopify is an online service that enables people to create online shops and conduct ecommerce. It is one of the biggest on the Internet with more than 1 million stores in 175 countries.

These stores are generally very safe to purchase from, but there are scammers targeting this market and the most common scams are:

Scammer Drop Shipping (a.k.a The Triangulation Scam)

The scammers create a Shopify store, apparently selling real products. However, if you place an order they then buy the actual items from a genuine Shopify store using stolen credit cards and the items are shipped to you.

This way the customers get the products and will keep buying. However, the genuine Shopify stores that supply the goods get nothing but trouble when the credit card payments are reversed. They lose on the product and the payment.

Duplicate Shopify Stores

Scammers find recently created Shopify Stores that appear to sell new products and are successful and they create one with a similar domain name, claiming to sell the same original product. They copy the images and descriptions etc. The scammers either sell cheap copies of the real products or just take the money and disappear.

Fake Payments

A customer makes a purchase on a Shopify store and requests an invoice from PayPal (i.e. outside of Shopify). They claim to be unable to complete the payment because of technical problems on the Shopify store.

The seller sends them a PayPal invoice and receives a notification from PayPal that payment has completed. However the notification is fake – payment has not been made. The seller ships the goods then finds out there was no payment.

Fake Returns

The scammer buys a product from a genuine store then buys a counterfeit or poor quality copy from an illegal seller. She then returns the fake goods to the genuine store using the genuine purchase documents, claiming the quality is not as advertised and demands a refund.

The scammer then has the genuine product and her money back and can repeat the process.

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