SCAMS!

By: Ang Biondo

 

Although scams are a thing to be wary of any time of the year, it seams this time of year is most prevalent.  We all get the usual scams and phishing e-mails that keep us on out toes constantly, the official looking supposedly legitimate looking notices.  They may appear to come from Microsoft or eBay, Pay-pal, etc.  Lotteries from the UK, and pleas for help from disposed Nigerian royalty to help move or hide funds, etc.  

 

I for one have received so many legitimately looking phishing e-mails from official looking Paypal scammers in an attempt to get me to divulge personal information that I have become weary of all e-mail from paypal legit’ or not. 

Of coarse, legitimate companies like Pay-Pal, eBay, Banks, Insurance, Investment companies, etc. do not ask for personal information in an email.  They also will not ask you to click on a link, because it may link you back to the scammers site which my appear to be the companies legitimate home page.  Creditable companies will always ask you to contact them directly, or type the URL address into your browser address bar directly. 

 

Should you get such an e-mail, always take the time to investigate it. Your identity may be at risk.  It is one of the major sources of identity theft today.  If an e-mail is asking you to update your account, and states you must update your account information by filling in the area’s marked, etc.  Contact the vendor or account holder directly: 

• Do Not: click on a link to contact them.  Type the address into the address bar yourself 
• Do Not: Cut and paste the link into your browsers address bar.  To do so you will copy the scammers link info along with it. 
• Do Not: Answer any questions on the e-mail, especially pertaining to personal information 
• DO Contact Your Account Holder and: 
  • Verify no unauthorized charges have been made to your account. 
  • Change your password. 
  • Contact the credit card company listed on that account and notify them to watch for suspicious or unauthorized activity from that vendor or have them cancel the card and issue a new card, giving you a new number. 
  • Limit the credit card line of credit to a reasonable limit, for the card you use to shop on line.  Credit card companies have a tendency to raise the card limit automatically without your approval.  (read my previous article “Do You Feel Safe Shopping On-line”, which tells of the sinawall virus.) 

Except for those new to e-mail, and the hazards the Electronic Communications Era has brought along with it, most of are wise to such scams and devious attempts to take everything from us that we have worked so hard for.  Electronics has truly taken us out of the Dark Ages of simplicity.  A secure and comfortable life we once led, when we communicated by paper or telephone with our inner circle of friends and only those businesses we actually did or were seeking to do business with. 

 

The computer has moved us into the global arena, and all of the vulnerabilities it exposes us to.  Our lives are no longer private.  If you have an e-mail address, you are known world wide, thus the e-mail scams from Nigeria, the UK, and all points north, south, east and west.  Every time we boot the computer and go online to browse the internet.  You’re life has been exposed. 

 

You might think you beat the system by using an obscure e-mail address, but you haven’t.  You see, in order to have an online service, you must register with a valid address and credit card.  To use a public computer, most require valid identification, like a credit card, library card, etc.  All communications from a computer can be traced back to that computer, so even without having to enter information into the public computer, the time you are signed into that computer is recorded and more than likely be traced back to you via record or surveillance camera.  

 

In many instants, e-mail has served to be a teacher, a tool, for the good, the devious and the evil.  It has served as a tool to deliver happy and friendly messages to frightening and devious messages designed to scare the be-gee-bee’s out of the average e-mail recipient.  

 

The originators of these seemingly true but bogus scams, frauds, and actions are designed to get the recipient to forward warnings to everyone in their e-mail address book.  The original e-mail usually contains a virus or worm in the form of a “spyware” cookie, which embeds itself on the recipients computer, which in turn opens a line to a waiting server which steels information, address books, etc., stored on the recipients computer.  This information is transferred at the speed of light to the waiting server or an un-suspecting server which may have been hacked.  It might be stored on that server until it is later gleaned by the hacker.  So, if you were wondering why these false scams are sent out in e-mails you now know why. 

 

Even though many of these warnings received in the form of email are bogus or legitimate, do we need to be concerned?  The problem is, that many of the bogus are quite clever, and although they are fictitious they provide an outline or blueprint to become or developed into a very real threat.  

 

Many of them start out with I have checked this on Snope’s and it is true, when it is in fact false.  It may have the link to “Snope’s” embedded in it, but the perpetrator is gambling that you have so many e-mails to go through that you won’t bother to check, and just forward it.  In fact, it may appear to come from someone in your e-mail list when it did not. 

 

I received this e-mail this morning, which Snope’s reports as “undetermined”, meaning they don’t know if it is true or not.  However, it doesn’t matter if it is true or not, it has planted the seed in a devious twisted mind.  The contents says: 

 

“ALL FAMILY MEMBERS SHOULD READ THIS ESPECIALLY CHILDREN!

These crooks are getting very good!

A lady has changed her habit of how she lists her names in her cell phone directory after her handbag was stolen.

Her handbag, which contained her cell phone, credit card, purse, etc.., was stolen.  Twenty minutes later she called her husband, from a pay telephone telling him what had happened.

 

Her husband said, ‘I have just received your text message asking about our pin number and I have replied a little while ago.’ 

 

When they rushed down to the bank, the staff told them all the money was already withdrawn.  The thief had actually used the stolen cell phone to text her husband listed in the directory and got hold of their pin number.

 

Within twenty minutes he had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.

 

Moral of the lesson:

 

Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people on your call list.

 

Avoid using names like Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Mom, Dad, etc.,
And very importantly, when sensitive information is being asked for through
text messages, CONFIRM by calling back. 

 

Also, when you are being text by friends or family to meet them somewhere, be sure to call back to confirm that the message came from them.

 

If you do not reach them, be very careful about going places to meet ‘family and friends’ who text you.”  

 

Since Snope’s reports this as “undetermined” it’s not known if it is true or not.  However the seed is planted and can become very real and we now have to be wary and take precautions to keep it from happening to us. 

 

If you are new to search engines here are a few tips.  Although all search engines are similar some work better than others.  I prefer to use search engines such as “Google”, “Yahoo” or “Dogpile”, etc., that are dedicated to searching for information and not multi-purpose. Many browsers have a default search engine located in the header, but may not return the results you are looking for.  For our example to search for the above mentioned incident we’ll use one of these, (your choice), and enter the following to check for the true or false result, simply: 

• Type:  stolen purse+pin into the search header and see what it comes up with. 
• The use of quotation marks (“), (,), (+), are all legal tools to simplify and narrow your search 
• The fewer the words to describe the item or text you are searching for the better. 
• Placing your query between quotation marks will limit your search to look for the exact phase you have typed.  Use this only if you are looking for something specific. 
• If you are looking for a list of items, place a comma (no spaces)after each item, and the query will return everything it finds on all of the items.  This could return hundreds of pages to go through, so I wouldn’t list to many items at a time. 
• If you are looking to validate a specific article to see if it is true or false, you can enter the query directly into the sites search engine, I.e.: go to Snopes,  or Urban Legends, and search the site directly.

There are many good hoax reporting sites available, as well as search engines,  I don’t mean to slight any of them and I don’t endorse one over the other.  If you are using a preferred search engine now, stick with it. 

 

There are hundreds of thousands of scams out there waiting for an unsuspecting victim  We can mention many more here, but I believe I have made my point.  I hope this information will help to protect you and yours from all the deviants of the world.  

 

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