Items tagged with scam
Last week, cybersecurity researchers discovered an open Elasticsearch database that exposed an extensive fake Amazon reviews scam ring. The database contained millions of direct messages between Amazon vendors and upwards of 200,000 customers willing to provide fake reviews in exchange for free products. It is presently unknown who owns the database, but it shows the nasty underbelly of some Amazon vendors and online retail. The SafetyDetectives cybersecurity team’s discovery of this Elasticsearch database proved to be incredibly interesting and valuable as it outlined how Amazon vendors went about getting the fake reviews. The team reported that Amazon vendors send to reviewers, or an...
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Academic textbooks must be one of the biggest shams out there, as math and science do not change enough to warrant a new edition of a book multiple times under ten-year spans. With the advent of eBooks, creating new editions of books became even easier as they did not require printing. Now, with the COVID-19 pandemic, publishers are increasing the prices of eBooks for reasons unknown. Across the pond, librarians and students at U.K. universities have been experiencing outrageous eBook prices this term, and it scarily appears that is becoming the norm. Now more than ever, students need easy, and low-cost access to books as the pandemic rages on, yet school continues in a modified remote-learning...
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A 5G "blocking" device called 5GBioShield is being sold in Europe for £339, which is about $418 here in the United States. The device claims to block 5G signals that some people fear contribute to the spread of COVID-19, among other things. The bizarre device claims to use a "holographic nano-layer catalyzer" to block the alleged dangers of 5G using mysterious quantum technology. If your BS detector isn't completely pegged, it should be. Stephen Knight, operations director for an organization called London Trading Standards, recently told the BBC that "we consider it to be a scam." Knight is currently working with the city of London Police's Action Fraud squad and is seeking a court order...
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Fraudsters are always looking for new ways to cheat someone out of money. A report claims that a company CEO was tricked by scammers who faked the voice of the parent company CEO to get the executive to transfer $243,000 to an external account. The story claims that in March, criminals used commercially available voice-generating AI software to impersonate the CEO of a German energy company with a division based in the UK. The thieves and their deepfake corporate CEO tricked the real CEO of the British energy company into transmitting funds into the claimed account of a Hungarian supplier. Guarantees were given that transfer would be reimbursed immediately. The unwitting company CEO says that...
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Voice assistants can be great for looking up the weather, playing music, and answering inquiries. However, consumers should use caution before asking their voice assistant to call a business or customer service line. The Better Business Bureau (BBB) recently reported that voice assistants are accidentally dialing scammer phone numbers. According to the BBB, several consumers have recently used voice search to dial the numbers of customer service lines, but were taken instead to scammers. For example, one consumer asked their voice assistant to dial an airline’s customer service phone number. The scammer attempted to convince the consumer to purchase $400 in prepaid gift cards. Why are consumers...
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Buyer beware, it has come to our attention that there are several websites advertised on Facebook that are scamming people into paying for merchandise that they will never receive. These scams appear to have started to show up about a month ago on Facebook, and there have been hundreds of comments from people reporting on various websites that they have bought into one of these scams and never received the intended merchandise. The advertisement that brought these scams to our attention is hosted by an online retailer called BTMD Online, which claims to offer a high-end curved display for the low price of $69.98. At first, we assumed that this would likely be some sort of bait-and-switch deal,...
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If you're well-seasoned internet user, surely you have seen scams over the years that revolved around a Nigerian prince who needs your help to move money out of the country. We all know that it is a scam, yet for a long time, people have fallen for it. That Nigerian Prince scam is now back and has a new twist while spreading via Twitter. The scam sees nefarious users making Twitter handles that are very close to legitimate and well-known Twitter users. The scammer then responds to one of the real poster's tweets to give the appearance that they started the thread. The scammer then puts up a tweet offering to provide a Bitcoin "reward" to anyone who sends a smaller amount of cryptocurrency...
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Most of you reading this have probably at some point been contacted by someone claiming you are the beneficiary in a will of a Nigerian prince. As the scam goes, all you have to do is submit your personal information and Western Union some funds to process the necessary paperwork, and in return you will receive hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. One of the people behind the popular scam, Michael Neu, has been arrested by police in Slidell, Louisiana. This may come as a shocker, but Neu is not a prince, nor is he Nigerian. He is a 67-year-old male possibly of German descent (based on his last name) who is facing 269 counts of wire fraud and money laundering for his alleged role...
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Many have touted mobile payments and digital wallets like Apple Pay and Android Pay as being more secure and convenient than regular plastic credit cards. It turns out these mobile methods can be just as vulnerable to scams as more traditional payment methods. In fact, Samsung recently confirmed that Samsung Pay is susceptible to wireless credit card skimming. How does Samsung Pay work? Samsung Pay actually utilizes several methods to keep customer information secure. Unlike some other mobile payment options, Samsung Pay can also use a magnet in order to transmit information. Magnetic Secure Transmission or MST essentially shoots out a magnetic code from a small coil in the phone that...
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AT&T and the FCC are butting heads, but for once, it is not over net neutrality. AT&T has been fined $7.75 million USD for indirectly participating in a directory assistance billing scam. Affected customers are expected to receive $6.8 million of these funds while the remaining $950,000 is a fine that will go to the United States Treasury. AT&T essentially allowed third-party scammers to charge customers $9 per month for a non-existent “directory assistance service”. FCC Chief Travis LeBlanc remarked, “Today’s settlement ensures that AT&T customers who were charged for this sham service will get their money back and that all AT&T consumers will enjoy greater protections against...
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It seems certain that we've all managed to wind up on a website at some point in time that had misleading elements, such as fake download buttons. While piracy is going to be the first thing that springs to many minds when this kind of sketchiness is brought up, it's hardly exclusive to that area. Some websites that host completely legitimate software still have misleading advertising, and let's face it: we've been dealing with it for way too long. Well, if Google has its way, we're not going to have to worry about such misleading advertising in the future. Back in November, the company released an update to its Chrome Web browser that helps protect users from deceptive tactics (causing you to...
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And now we cannot even trust critics and reviewers! Jay Gentile, a man based in California who is said to be the operator of a number of sites that sell 4-star and 5-star reviews to Amazon sellers (among them buyazonreviews.com and buyreviewsnow.com) is the target of a lawsuit filed by Amazon in an effort by the mega-retailer to crack down on fake reviews. Other "John Does" also believed to be involved in such practices are alluded to in the suit as well. Filed Wednesday in King County Superior Court in Washington state, the Amazon lawsuit accuses Gentile and the John Does of trademark infringement, false advertising and violations of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act and the Washington...
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There are few markets that are quite as loaded-up with snake oil products as audio / video. I am sure that by me simply saying that, you immediately thought of "Monster", one of the most infamous offenders. But believe it or not, there are some vendors that push the envelope so far that Monster's $100 HDMI cables look like a bargain by comparison. Take AudioQuest's high-end Ethernet cable, for example. Called "Diamond", AudioQuest is promising the world with this $10,500 USD cable, and if you for some reason believe that an Ethernet cable is completely irrelevant for audio, you might want to listen to what the company has to say. AudioQuest's Diamond RJ/E is a directional Ethernet cable made...
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Tech support scammers have been around for a long time and are familiar to just about all of our readers. But last month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it had issued lawsuits against several culprits responsible for tech support scams. Now Microsoft has announced that it too is going after tech support scammers. According to the company, more than 65,000 complaints have been made about tech support scams since May of this year alone. Bogus technicians, pretending to represent Microsoft, call the house offering fake tech support and trick people into paying hundreds of dollars to solve a non-existent issue. If successful in their ruse,...
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Microsoft on Thrusday warned that scammers are now phoning home -- your home -- as one more way to get a fool to part with his money. The scam involves cybercriminals posing as security engineers calling people at home to tell them their PCs could be at risk for malware and offering free security checks, all while claiming to represent legitimate companies. It's a simple scam, and according to Microsoft, the ones who fall for it in English-language markets typically lose $875. This isn't an entirely new scam, but one that is growing in popularity. Microsoft surveyed 7,000 computer users in the U.K., Ireland, U.S., and Canada, and of those surveyed, 15 percent said they had received a call from...
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Sweet Home, Oregon. Janella Spears, a registered nurse by trade, fell victim to one of the oldest tricks on the internet by responding to one of the millions of emails that have long since been outed as scams in the press, and on network television in expose' segments. Everyone with an email account by now has surely seen one of these emails promising large sums of money in exchange for "upfront money" to help free or shift funds around by a citizen, long lost relative, or government official in a politically corrupt and war torn nation. You would think that by now it has become so old-hat that such an email would just be discarded without a second thought or maybe a quick read for a laugh at...
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We've reported twice about the potential routing bottlenecks that the Internet might face in the near future, usually in the 2-3 years time frame. We're not the only ones who are worried about this as an Internet overload could have financial repercussions that would make the post-911 economic slump seem like a stroll in the park.Virtually every part of our daily lives are impacted in some direct or indirect way by the Internet, whether we know it or not. For example the sheer volume of B2B transactions that rely on the web alone could cause major financial stress to companies who rely on just on time delivery of products. That would potentially include companies from ...
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Todd Moeller of New Jersey was sentenced to 27 months for his part in sending 'spam' e-mails to more then 1.2 million AOL subscribers. Sadly it seems that the scheme actually made Moeller, and his partner Adam Vitale quite a fortune: almost $40,000 a month!Their spamming was done via traditional monkeying with open mail servers and header tinkering. Low-tech, but perhaps it doesn't take a lot to fool AOL customers or AOL's mail servers.“Moeller and Adam Vitale of New York pleaded guilty earlier this year to breaking anti-spam laws and defeating AOL's filter system by using a variety of computer servers and changing the header information on e-mails to ensure they could not be traced,...
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InformationWeek is reporting that there's a new e-mail scam to look out for and the gist of it is quite frightening: Pay up or a reluctant assassin will kill you. "According to SecureWorks, the scammer tells the recipient that he has been hired to "terminate" them but for a fee, he is willing to not go through with it."I have being paid a ransom in advance to terminate you with some reasons listed to me by my employer, I have followed you closely for one week and five days now and have seen that you are innocent of the accusation," one e-mail reads. "Do not contact the police or try to send a copy of this to them, because if you do I will know, and might be compelled to do what I have being...
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