Lottery Method Scam

A nameless moron keeps emailing that she has won the lottery (unnamed lottery) multiple times and so can everybody else if they follow her method.

The email is from winfantasy5 so that should tell you she has a sense of humour as methods for winning the lottery are obviously in the realm of fantasy.

The email message starts off with

“I gotta tell you … it makes me SO MAD when people say I’m lucky because I’ve won the lottery grand prize 7 times.

No, you don’t win 7 lottery Grand Prizes by luck. That would be like saying I’m going to get struck by lightning 7 times in my life.”

She claims to have cracked the code for how to win the lottery and will share it with you.

Unusually for this kind of scam email, there is some detail on how the method works.

The method is that you make a list of all of the winning numbers (at least the last 7 winners) and feed them into her calculation and that uses statistical analysis to predict the winners.

And this method applies to all lotteries supposedly.

Lottery machines are designed to be random, so no amount of analysing winning numbers has any meaning.

Plus if the method did actually work then you’d find everybody picking the same numbers and that would not end well.

You may remember the scene in the Jim Carey film ‘Bruce Almighty’ where he gets sick of hearing prayers and says yes to everything. A lot of people asked to win the lottery so he let them win – and instead of hundreds of thousands of dollars for the win they each got a few cents because so many people had won.

Lotteries are random chance – there is no way to increase your chance of winning beyond buying more tickets.

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May 9, 2021

Stupidest Spam of the Week Lost Remedies

This one is about herbal remedies.

Sounds a boring topic for scammers and spammers but it does attract enough attention for them to use in scams and spam.

The title is ‘All The Medicinal Plants of North America’.

There’s a picture of a map of the U.S. showing the states and a photo of a woman holding up her book.

So, what makes me think it’s a scam, rather than just someone trying to sell a reference book?

The email is from “improveurhealth.work” – the associated website does exist and is marked as malicious by multiple website scanners. That’s dangerous. No genuine author would have a malware website.
The message says “We’ve just printed 100 copies – this isn’t available to the public, but there’s one with your name on”. The email was sent out to a large number of email addresses on a spam list and the sender does not know the owner’s names so this is a lie.
The book is also called ‘The Lost Book of Herbal remedies’. That makes no sense as it’s a newly written book claimed to be based on years of research – not a lost book that has been found.
Just on Amazon there are hundreds of book of herbal remedies and medicinal plants in America so the message claiming the book is unique – is very wrong.

All together – a scam.

Buy books from bookshops or online at reputable stores – never buy from unsolicited emails.

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May 8, 2021

Time-Wasters Update

Mrs Katherine whose actual email address is khali.mohammed tells me she has something important to discuss and I should contact her for details. She doesn’t know my name and doesn’t seem to know her own name so it’s a very obvious scam. I won’t be contacting her or him.

Gary Cohen claims to be an International Consumer Retailer in America and wants to take our products to sell through his distributorship in America. The email is quite detailed and perhaps convincing but is obviously a scam. He clearly has no idea what we do or he would have realised that a community radio station does not have products to sell in other countries.

Yet another short email claiming someone has interest in our products and wants a catalogue. Again, the sender has no idea who we are which means the email has been sent to a large number of random addresses. Pathetic. Never reply to such rubbish.

Next email says its from Stephania Pessina who is an Italian business tycoon and philanthropist who wants to donate 2.3. million Euros to me. Not for any particular reason – but hey free money is good. However, her email sender address doesn’t match her name and she doesn’t know who I am. This one is actually based on a real person, but that’s not who sent the email.

“Have you heard of the 1 minute memory ritual?” is the catch line of this email. The one minute trick will solve all of your memory problems. Yeah right! Just the usual rubbish from a moron trying to get people to click to watch her video which no doubt is either a scam or she gets paid for each person who clicks it. Either way – you lose and the scammer wins.

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May 7, 2021

Rightly Data

Rightly is all about the privacy of your data and how to get copies of your data from the myriad of companies that hold such data on you.

They say that

“Our mission is to make data fairer, for everyone.

We believe that what happens to your data should be up to you.

With Rightly, you can make sure that you’re in control of your data, and keep it that way.”

This is necessary, because too many companies seem to believe that your personal information belongs to them to do with as they wish, including:

Collecting your data without full consent
Sharing with third parties
Selling your information to Marketing companies

The law was changed in 2018 to give everyone the legal right to ask to see what information any company has on them.

You can directly contact any company and make this request and they have 30 days to reply.

But Rightly do make this an easier process as you can fill in their Subject Access Request form free of charge.

Their database of contact details covers more than 10,000 companies.

If you don’t get a reply from the company, then Rightly can also help with that.

A useful service although you can do this for yourself if you wish to and remember that your data belongs to you – not them.

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

May 6, 2021

The Wish.com Marketplace

Wish.com is an online marketplace, well-known for offering unusual, quirky items such as Presidential toilet paper, fake teeth, 12 foot long pool floats etc.

It is very successful and claims to be one of the world’s fastest-growing marketplace apps operating across the world.

As with other marketplaces, it doesn’t make any products, but connects sellers and buyers and takes a percentage on the sales (around 15%).

People sell all sorts of items, from jewellery to shoes, fancy dress to baby nappies to smartphones, and much more.

All marketplaces try to regulate the items sold but it’s difficult for them to keep up, so you may find some counterfeit products, fake items and items that claim to have been reduced by large amounts but when you check elsewhere the exaggerations show up.

Do check around on other sites before buying anything significant.

The prices are generally very low on wish.com but many people find that even with such low prices, the products when they arrive turn out to be not worth the cost.

As with many companies that operate on very tight margins, their customer service is rated as very poor. You can only contact them via a chat app.

On Trustpilot, wish,com is rated as 3.7 out of 5 and on sitejabber as only 2.39 out of 5.

Trustpilot currently has more than a hundred thousand reviews of wish.com and a quarter are very bad.

People complain that orders are full of mistakes and cannot be rectified as Wish.com tell them to accept the order then return them, but that leads to endless attempts to get a refund and many are refused without good reason. Often wish.com tell people to try to get a replacement product or refund from the product supplier despite the customer’s contract being with wish.com

Perhaps you can find the bargain you want on wish.com and will be happy with the product, but for many it’s a disappointing and frustrating process that costs too much.

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

May 5, 2021

How to Pay Online Safely

There are many ways to pay online, depending on which payment providers each retailer chooses to allow.

You can pay by credit or debit card and that has the benefit of a bank to complain to if you are ripped off by a retailer. However, there is also the risk of the retailer having access to your card details and the risk of a data breach at the retailer.

If you choose a service such as PayPal instead then only they have access to your card details and any retailer you buy from using PayPal will not see the details.

1. PayPal

You register with PayPal and connect your card or bank details then use PayPal for online payments. When you make a Purchase with Paypal the service takes the money from your card or bank account.

It is a good idea to use 2 factor authentication with services such as Paypal so that any scammer would need more than a login and password to gain access to your account.

2. Alternatives to Paypal

There are many online payment services similar to PayPal and many are cheaper to use than PayPal.

This is Business News Daily’s choice for the best online credit card processor for online businesses. Stripe is one of the most popular PayPal alternatives, particularly for online businesses. The service is easy to integrate into business systems and to customize using their simple API.
This started as mobile point-of-sale transactions, but can be used for online payments via invoice or website.
This for service-based businesses with a high volume of international transactions. It is known as a cheap way to send money internationally.

3. Prepaid Payment Cards

If an online shop only takes credit or debit cards and you don’t want to use those cards, then a prepaid card can solve that problem. You can buy a prepaid card from a reputable supplier and use that instead.

These cards hide your identity as they are more like cash.

4. Amazon Pay

Amazon Pay is a service that lets you use the payment methods already associated with your Amazon account to make payments for goods or services on third-party websites. This reduces 3^rd party costs.

5. Amazon Cash

Amazon cash is similar to the Paypal cash option and you can buy the cash card and use it just like cash on Amazon.

6. Mobile Phone Payment

Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay are all highly secure and available on your smart phone. Whichever you choose has to be linked to your bank account or card then can be used for pay for a wide variety of goods and services online.

You can also use mobile payments when you’re shopping in-person. Just select the payment method on your device and scan it with the card reader instead of swiping a physical card or using cash. When done properly, there’s no need to touch anything besides your phone, making it a safer way to pay during a pandemic.

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