Scale of Cyber Crime UK

The City of London Police Commissioner Ian Dyson was a victim of credit card fraud some years ago when criminals used his credit card to pay for a hotel stay and tried to pay for their car insurance with his card.

It is estimated that 5.6 million fraud and cyber-crimes are committed each year, of which only about 10% are reported to the Police.   This does include virus attacks etc. and some things that many people would not expect to report to the Police but that still leaves a lot of crimes that are unreported, but should be reported.

Recent statistics show that of the fraud and cyber-crimes reported, only about 10% are investigated by Police.

A lot of online crime is effectively anonymous and there is little anyone can do to track down and stop the perpetrators.

Prevention can be the most practical method for getting to grips with such crimes – warning and educating  people to have proper security for their online accounts and  to behave with common sense in all dealings online.

However, the Police do have a great deal of success in restricting the actions of the criminals.

Each year, the Police are shutting down several hundred thousand websites, bank accounts and phone lines connected to cyber criminals.

The banks and other financial institutions and payment services have a huge role to play in keeping us safe online and paying recompense to victims when necessary.

The authorities are progressively clamping down on online crime, but are always several steps behind the criminals.

Be careful

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Ultra-Processed Foods

There is a growing body of information showing that foods that are heavily processed are probably bad for our health in a variety of ways.

The term ‘ultra-processed’ is used to describe foods where industrial scale processing has affected the nature of the product in a detrimental way.

Typically, ultra-processed foods contain ingredients you wouldn’t find in a home kitchen and have been processed in ways not usually possible at home.

Emails are appearing that may be from well meaning people but contain simple mistakes e.g.

“Ultra-processed such as snack cakes, fast food, frozen meals, canned foods and chips”  Not true.

Many snack cakes are ultra-processed, so is a lot of fast food and frozen meals but by no means all of it.

However, chips from a fast food fish and chip shop are simply cut potato fried in oil – probably unhealthy for other reasons but not ultra-processed. Even oven chips are simply cut potato par boiled and coated with a little flour and spice – again, these are not ultra processed.

Canned vegetables are generally regarded as minimally processed but its worth reading the label to see if anything unexpected has been added in the canning process.

Eat healthily but check on whether items are actually ultra processed and don’t accept lists that are too general and contain entries such as “all canned foods”.

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

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Stupidest Scam of the Week Pepsico

Shamaa Gaber of Pepsico LLC procurement Operations calls us a valued supplier.

She has a request for us. But first she complains that she called the number on the website and got no answer. If we were a trusted supplier then she have the direct phone number of course and know the name of the person she’s sending emails to, but she doesn’t know either.

She wants a quotation on supplying to Pepsico as per our company stated products.

Clearly this is a general purpose scam sent out probably by the million random email addresses. The sender has no idea of what products we sell, if anything.

As a radio station, the request is obviously a scam but hopefully anyone else would also realise it’s fake.

The email has lots of details over several pages but it’s all a bit wrong – written by someone who has little idea what the words mean.

e.g. Categorically the invoice submitted must be completely identical to the supply order. Any differences between the two must be explained.

Two items cannot be both identical and different at the same time.

Shamaa’s job title at the bottom of the email is ‘Execution Professional’ – sounds like an assassin rather than a purchasing manager.

The point of the email is not to get a quotation for some random product but to get the recipients to click the link that says “General Requirements”. That is the link to a malware site.

No thanks.

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

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Don’t Fall For Phishing Scams

Phishing is where the scammers send out messages attempting to trick people into divulging their login and password or other personal details or financial details. Often this is by pretending to be from the government or a trusted retailer or broadband supplier or any trusted organisation.

It is nearly impossible to avoid these people getting your contact information but you can reduce the chances as follows:

Phishing is where the scammers send out messages attempting to trick people into divulging their login and password or other personal details or financial details. Often this is by pretending to be from the government or a trusted retailer or broadband supplier or any trusted organisation.

It is nearly impossible to avoid these people getting your contact information but you can reduce the chances as follows:

  1. Learn to spot the spams

Be careful over any emails that you did expect and check the details for the signs of a scam. These include:

  • The content makes little sense e.g. from a Chinese company trying to sell you replacement valves for your generator.
  • The sender is unknown or anonymous.
  • The email may contain misspelled words and sentences purposely designed to fool spam filters such as Amaz0n for Amazon.
  • Offers that seem too good to be true.
  • A desperate urgency, pushing you to click or respond immediately or lose the chance.
  • Links that when you hover the cursor over them go to somewhere that doesn’t match the link.
  1. Avoid public posts

Anytime you put your email address on the Internet it can be seen and recorded by many people. Be careful where you sue your email address and if necessary create fake temporary email addresses.

  1. Use graphics to disguise your email address. Make it into a graphic – that is more difficult for screen scrapers to make sense of.
  2. Confuse

Scramble, your email address by using HTML and JavaScript in emails. This is harder for screen readers to see the real email address.

Be careful with your email address – you don’t want it to taken over by scammers.

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

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Delisting on Google

In May 2014, the European Court of Justice established the “right to be forgotten,” i.e. the “right to delist,” allowing Europeans to ask search engines to delist information about themselves from search results.

Google must consider if the information in question is “inaccurate, inadequate, irrelevant or excessive”—and whether there is a public interest in the information remaining available in search results.

Understanding how Google make these types of decisions—and how people are using new rights like those granted by the European Court—is important. Since 2014, Google have provided information about “right to be forgotten” delisting requests plus anonymized examples of some of the requests Google have received

Between 2014 and 2017, there have been requests to delist several million URLs.  Roughly 43% of requests to delist have been enacted and the rest refused as not complying with the guidelines for delisting.

Evaluating Requests

Google assess each request on a case-by-case basis. In some cases, Google may ask the individual for more information. After a request is submitted to Google it undergoes a manual review and once a decision has been reached, the individual will receive an email notifying him or her of the decision and, if Google do not delist the URL, a brief explanation.

Reasons Google Don’t Delist

A few common material factors involved in decisions not to delist pages include

  • the existence of alternative solutions
  • technical reasons
  • duplicate URLs

Google may also determine that the page contains information which is strongly in the public interest. Determining whether content is in the public interest is complex and may mean considering many diverse factors, including—but not limited to—whether the content relates to the requester’s professional life, a past crime, political office, position in public life, or whether the content is self-authored content, consists of government documents, or is journalistic in nature.

Google also publish some of the requests in an anonymized manner to allow debate and comment on whether delisting should occur in each example.

Example Request 1: Google received a request from the Austrian Data Protection Authority on behalf of an Austrian businessman and former politician to delist 22 URLs, including reputable news sources and a government record, from Google Search.

Outcome: We did not delist the URLs given his former status as a public figure, his position of prominence in his current profession, and the nature of the URLs in question.

Example Request 2: Google received a request from an individual to delist several URLs from Google Search about his election as leader of a political movement and other political positions he held when he was a minor.

Outcome: Google delisted 13 URLs as he did not appear to be currently engaged in political life and was a minor at the time. Google did not delist 1 URL as the page referred to a different person who had the same name as the requester.

Example Request 3: Google received a court order directed to Google Inc. to delist from Google Search a blog post about a professional who was convicted for threatening people with a weapon on a city street.

Outcome: Google appealed the decision, but lost the appeal. Google delisted the blog post.

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