Telephone / Internet Scams

Mike Poole,

Have news for you and anyone else who thinks they're 'safe' within EX-D landline. A neighbour living some way along the road ,often chats to me if our paths cross whilst he walks his dog, but at that time I didn't know exactly which house around corner, and of road. One day, I had a package small enough to easily go thro my letterbox but the address label was damaged which I think was the reason for mis-delivery. The wife/partner of the dog Walker looked up my name on the internet, got my EX-D no and left message on my answerphone to come down to no. xx to collect it. Imagine my surprise when the dog Walker opened the door!

Guess that was down to Google's grabbing every bit of info it can. Just goes to prove that scammers could do the same.

John

Keep your ears to the ground. Someone is going to spill the beans about my nefarious activities on certain porn sites unless I pay him US$630 in bit coin. To prove my system has genuinely been compromised, he says. he sent me the email from my own address .... not that that's what the headers say which indicate an origin in Brazil (probably fake) sent via an ip in Mexico.

Oh dear, what to do, what to do.

Utter nonsense, I'm afraid.

If it wasn't for a virtual private network, you wouldn't get your magazines.

A VPN is how I am able to connect securely to MyTimeMedia's server and, with colleagues, share the folders containing all the files for each issue of MEW.

In short it allows the internet to provide the connections to MTM's network so I don't have to work remotely.

Almost every business operating from more than one location depends on VPNs to operate.

Yes, like many other things they can be abused, but that doesn't make them fundamentally bad.

Neil

This morning's eMail included one apparently from Flickr [smugmug]

I don't know if it is a scam, or just evidence of incompetence, but I don't like the look of it:

[quote]

The Flickr Pro account you received through a partnership deal with Yahoo has expired. Because of an error we discovered in our system, you were unable to upgrade to Flickr Pro following our recent announcements regarding changes to Flickr accounts.

[/quote]

... it goes on to offer me a 30% discount on an upgrade to Pro.

.

MichaelG.

It is a scam Michael so don't respond. The return email address has been spoofed. Flickr know about it.

Thanks for the confirmation, Chris

MichaelG.

A couple of days ago I had a phone call claiming to be from BT. They first call was from 01807603475 which I ended as it sounded like a scam. They then rang back from 02085876419 and spent about half an hour trying to convince me it wasn't a scam. They wanted me to go to this url "www.btsecurityservice.weebly.com". The fact that the format was very similar to my weebly website (www.lesjhobbies.weebly.com) convinced me it was a weebly website made to look like it was a BT website so I ended the call.

Les.

Les, if you ever get something like that, just go to the genuine website of whatever company it's supposed to be and navigate from there or contact them about whatever the issue is (if any), or ask them to write to you.

Hi Chris,
That's what I would normally do. I tried asking for an extension number so I could phone BT back from a number that I could find on their website. I have contacted my ISP and also Weebly so they can look at the user of that website address but I have not yet had a reply from them.

Les.

Strange! Yesterday, I had a prerecorded call "Forwarded from BT" saying that my internet connection would be terminated in 24 hours "Press 1 to prevent this, or press 2 to terminate immediately"

And the day before, I had an E mail sent "on behalf of" a lady who lives on the other side of town. But she didn't know anyone called Duan, or the E mail address, either!

Even stranger, my Internet still works!

"4/3 Pi R^3", two off, seems to be the correct response to of these chancers and all like them.

I refrain from offering them a job that involves a lot of travel with benefits. One day I will!

Howard

Update on the scam call I had on 13/02/19.
I reported the problem to "Weebly". Several hours later I received an email from them saying that they had closed that website down.

Les.

Les, it’s good to see internet providers responding in that way but I suspect not all would respond as quickly or positively, worst experience I had with a provider was BT.

Dave W

Normally its not worth the effort to report to any organisation, you will not be thanked unless phone it through.

Considering the amount of scams daily i would be at it 3hrs a day reporting.

If you have pc on and caller display if phoned tap in **LINK**
Last number above unreported. Bare in mind for the last 18 months (eg India) have been using UK phone numbers.

Register with TPS its free and legit. This means its illegal for any UK company to contact you (recently came in) Now if they are phoning unsolicited, they are up to no good!

Play that rule almost every time even if its some Indian using a UK legit number trying to scam or sell a multitude of supposed products.
Had such yesterday from 01953 205680 an Indian portraying calling from UK asking for Mr ........ , greeted with a sigh Whos calling. Mr ....... , Now have had this dozens of times before so hit the roof mentioning TPS etc and foul language closed them down and blocked the number.
They immediately rang back on another phone 02886 000411 threatening to report me, so what theyre breaking the law. After a slanging match caller then changes tone and resorts foul language when realises he has been caught and wont get any money. **LINK**

Worst provider i ever had was Talk Talk. I paid to get away after 6 weeks and they still owe me dosh after stealing phone line.

If someone phones you, emails, texts, dodgy letterbox mail, door knockers, they want something from you, your money, loads of it!

A very tempting offer? Just think, "what's in it for me v. what's in it for them?"

Just turn the lot away and go direct to the company of interest to you. Careful use of Google or others should get you to the genuine website of that company and not a spoofed one.

Certainly don't click links in emails. The scum are getting craftier, so look and think before you open an email; doing so could automatically load malware.

You have to be in it to win it, so if you haven't taken part in some strange named lottery, how on earth could you possibly be a winner? I have personally known an acquaintance who fell for that one. I also knew of someone renewing their annual Kaspersky subs where a screen popped up claiming to be part of K in Australia, giving instructions to send the money there. That mistake cost the victim £150.

John

I will frequently tell a salesman I don't want to do something and when he asks why, I say because you want me to. It's never about for your benefit. It's for the seller.

Maybe a little explanation about what a VPN is would not go amiss.

It stands for virtual private network. It is a technique where you can set up a link between two machines so that traffic between them is encrypted. So nobody in between can read the traffic. (Except maybe the NSA, GCSB and the like)

There are a couple of common situations where they may be used. One typical one is when you want to access your employers network from at home or while travelling. By setting up a secure link from your machine to the work network you can access all the things you would usually get to from your desk at work, without anyone in the public network being able to eavesdrop. This is the sort of thing Neil was referring to above, he can access company fileservers and so on without any fear of anyone being able to read it.

The other common situation where they are used is by people who are worried about the fact that their ISP can see everything that they are doing, in much the same way that the telephone company can easily listen to your phone calls. So various private companies will provide a service where all your Internet traffic goes via a VPN to their server. This means that you ISP cannot see what you are doing. Sounds very tempting if you are doing something dodgy...except that now, instead of your ISP knowing everything you are doing, the VPN provider knows everything that you are doing. Who are you going to trust? Who is the VPN provider and where are they based?

Also, using a VPN like that is pretty much the same as calling your ISP and saying "I am doing dodgy stuff." You might well attract just the kind of attention that you didn't want.

It can also potentially be used to make it look as if you are in a different country, which may make it possible to access movies that are not available in your own. eg netflix might have something available in the USA but nowhere else, so if you set up a VPN tunnel that has its far end in the USA you might be able to access it. That of course assumes that Netflix are not onto that trick, they can easily block the VPN provider if they wish.

Obviously this is only a light introduction to the topic.

John

As a simple point of interest the Opera browser includes a built-in VPN option

pgk

I had a call the other day re stopping unwanted calls.

the Indian sounding woman was most insistent that I was responsible for the landline bill and I was a homeowner and younger than 85.

i responded with well I’m 87

call ended immediately

whats the method in only targeting under 85 year Olds?

Perhaps they have a morality limit to their scam... or the tick box doesn't go high enough

(or they have a special scam for the 85+ group hoping they're demented and gullible)