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.

To enter your email address and click on the subscribe button on top right to keep up to date with new posts.

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 .

Do click on the Facebook or Twitter icons on top right to follow Fight Back Ninja.

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.

May 26, 2021

Digital Vigilantism

Digital vigilantism is where citizens become activists and use the power of social media to share comments, demands for action, information, rallying calls etc. to counter what they see as offensive or injurious or damaging comment and behaviour.

This is not just about posting comments online but about taking actions online that have more serious consequences.

This is happening as social media has become an outlet for people angry or dissatisfied with the behaviour of other groups and institutions. This is increasingly used – sometimes for good but not always – to highlight behaviours and consequences.

An example occurred in the town of Charlottesville where a rally over plans to remove a Confederate statue were met by counter-protesters, leading Virginia’s governor to declare a state of emergency.

This led to violence that was witnessed by many local people.

Some Twitter users in the Charlottesville incident accessed private information to identify and publicly shame any and every white nationalist who took part in the rally, whether they committed a crime or not. Others, however, focused on identifying only the white nationalists seen in photos and videos committing violent acts. The digital evidence was then turned over to the Charlottesville Police Department.

In 2011 the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots broke out after the Boston Bruins ice hockey team defeated the Vancouver Canucks. Facebook vigilantes named and shamed individuals, including several young offenders, who took part in the riots. A 17-year-old, Nathan Kotylak, was named in response to an image posted online, and this led to him and his family having to flee their home.

‘Naming and shaming’, that is sharing the target’s personal details by publishing them on public sites is also known as ‘doxing’. This is quite extreme and can be very damaging for the individual concerned.

Sometimes this digital vigilantism helps the Police apprehend criminals, but it can easily backfire and damage innocent people.

May 24, 2021

Re-Shipping Scam

This scam takes advantage of the many people desperate to find a job working from home.

You search online and find what appears to be an ideal opportunity.

It involves accepting parcels from an overseas company then putting a new delivery label on and sending the parcel off to its intended destination. Sounds straightforward.

There is a convoluted story about why this is necessary rather than the company shipping the items to the desired destination themselves. The story makes no real sense but you are so keen to get a job working at home that you accept the premise.

The scammer promises to pay per item or maybe a flat monthly salary.

You are then happy to accept the incoming items, attach pre-paid postage labels and send them off to a new destination – likely to be in a different country.

For some victims, things progress smoothly receiving and sending out packages. For others things go wrong straightaway. The problems can start with the first delivery you receive. Seems a normal small package and you add the delivery label you’ve been sent and drop the package off at the Post Office.

But then it is returned you to because the delivery label was a fake.

You email the scammer and are told it was a mistake and she sends you another label to use. Maybe that works or is another fake and so on until one does work.

Sometimes the package receiving and sending goes on for a month then you expect to be paid but of course that doesn’t happen – the scammer has disappeared.

The worrying part is that the packages may well be illegal and the Police may get around to investigating your part in this re-shipping scam which is of course illegal.

The package may contain anything from drugs to weapons.

You then have to prove you were duped or face being prosecuted for a criminal offence.

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