Social Media Eat All You Want Scam

This scam is common on Facebook but also occurs on Twitter and Instagram.

The scammer offers a free All You Can Eat card at McDonalds, KFC, Burger King or any other fast food company.  The supposed reason for the give-away is in celebration of some anniversary and you have been randomly chosen for this gift.

That may sound reasonable but think about these points:-

  1. Unlike a free pass, special offers such as “buy 1 get 1 free” make you purchase the item they are promoting in order to get the freebie.
  2. A lifetime pass would be hugely expensive and for no gain to the company.
  3. If a company was to give away items of such value, you would expect them to promote it heavily before the giveaway and ensure the prize went to a long term customer.
  4. A lifetime pass to free fast food would be a guarantee for the recipient of obesity, diabetes type II, heart conditions and an early death.
  5. Anyone with a brain who won the prize would sell it on eBay for a great deal of money.

Hopefully now you can see the illogic in the whole thing, which points to it necessarily being a scam.

The link to click to register your interest is a fake website of course that tries to get your login details, name, address, mobile number etc.

It’s all fake – these companies do not give-away all you can eat cards to anyone.

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

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Stupidest Spam of the Week Japanese Carbs

The email is from “Shrink Your Belly” and is titled “Shrink old fat with new Japanese carb trick tonight”.

So, it’s yet another magic remedy that lets you lose any amount of weight with no effort.

It’s a shame these are always cons.

This one claims that you simply carry out a simple 30 second trick before dinner each evening and the wight will magically disappear.

Meanwhile you can eat anything you want and don’t need to do any exercise.

As an added benefit – this trick will supposedly relieve any feeling of stress.

Lots of these scam offerings supposedly reduce your belly fat overnight – where does it go?

Perhaps it’s not pleasant to imagine the answer to that.

It’s all fake of course anyway.

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Using a Virtual Private Network (VPN)

A Virtual Private Network (VPN) protects you online by encrypting all data transferring from your device to the Internet and back.

This means that no-one can snoop on your online activities, not even your Internet Service Provider.

Of course, if you login on social media, retail websites etc. they can track you on their sites.

This is especially important if you’re using public Wi-Fi as they can be used by criminals to collect data on you. Using a VPN protects against this.

A VPN will also hide your IP address. Many websites and streaming services use your IP address to control what you can access. Through a VPN you can choose to connect from a different country if you wish.

The Way a VPN Works

Essentially you connect to the VPN, to whichever of their hubs in whichever country you wish and all of your Internet traffic is directed through their servers where the data is encrypted. Likewise any traffic from the Internet returning to your is also encrypted.

You will appear to be connecting to the Internet at one of the VPN provider’s IP addresses.

Most VPN providers also have a ‘no logs’ policy whereby they don’t keep any records of the data through their system and hence even if hacked – nothing except your profile could be found.

Using a VPN may slow down your Internet access marginally but is unlikely to be an issue as VPN providers need to have fast systems to stay in business.

In practice the only noticeable difference for users of VPNs is that when starting up a PC the VPN will connect automatically so you can it.

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

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Cash APP Scams

Cash APP is one of many apps for sending and receiving money, but is only available in the U.K. and the U.S.A. currently.

You can create a free account and then instantly send or receive money from other users within the same country.

 

Common Scams with Cash APP

1.      Fake Cash APP Support

Cash APP does not really offer support to its users, so criminals create false Facebook groups, websites etc. pretending to be Cash App support. They ask for you login details and then use that to take control of your account and siphon off as much money as they can.

Sometimes, these scammers ask you to download a screen sharing APP, so they can have access to your phone, under the guise of “helping you.” Once installed they can steal your confidential information.

2.      Identity Check

Scammers may set up false games, quizzes, competitions etc. If you respond to one of these, the scammer may request that you send them a token amount of money to prove your identity. This approach is only used by scammers. Never send money to an unknown person.

3.      Super Cash APP Friday

A popular event on Twitter and Instagram is Super Cash APP Friday, where the official Cash APP account hosts a sweepstakes to win cash prizes. This sweepstakes encourages users to follow and share a post, and they are entered into a sweepstakes to win money.

However, scammers create fake accounts on these social platforms and then send private messages to users who have shared Cash APPs giveaway social post. The scammers will tell you that you won a cash prize in a separate giveaway, but to get it, you have to give them your full details or just send them a small amount of money first to verify your identity. Once you send them money, the account is blocked you and your cash is gone.

Tips On Using Cash APP Safely

  • Only send funds to people you know
  • Turn on the security features. E.g. using a PIN or fingerprint to make transactions
  • Enable email and text notifications so that you will be notified of any suspicious behaviour

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

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Conti Ransomware

Ransomware is where malware infects a computer system and encrypts the files then demands a ransom for the unlock key.

These criminals typically target larger companies but it can happen to anyone, including private citizens.

The criminal organisers of Conti have created a paid service whereby criminals have access to the relevant malware and means of attack and Conti run the ransomware leak site and extortion.

It is easily identified, as during the encryption process, all files encrypted are changed to a “.conti” file extension.

So, Conti is a set of tools to make it easy for other criminals to run these extortion operations on a large scale.

Once the encryption has completed a file named conti.txt is left on the relevant computer desktops.

The message states that files been encrypted and that payment is required to release them. It also warns the computer users must not try to decrypt the files themselves.

If the victim pays, then sometimes the decryption key is provided and other times nothing further is heard from the criminals, leaving the victim without their files.

If organisations and individuals follow best practice and keep copies elsewhere of their important files, then getting their data back may just be an inconvenience but if there are no other copies of the data then it can be a big loss and this can lead to customer’s losing trust and moving their business elsewhere.

Recently Conti has also moved to the use of leak sites.

In these cases Conti start to publish the victim’s documents publicly – anything that could be damaging to them.

Recently, Conti added the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) to its list of victims and they published various documents from SEPA.

The Conti malware typically gets into the victim’s computers as a PDF document opened by someone on their email. The malware then spreads itself around the organisation and starts to encrypt data.

All organisations and users must backup all important documents and data as that is the safest way to avoid being struck down by such an attack.

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

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