Scam Artist

The setup

If someone you admire and respect sends you an email or text message and asks you to send money by Western Union, they are likely an impostor. They go online to Facebook or anywhere else where they can get an idea of the person’s lingo, interests you have in common, etc.

Then they contact you using that information, saying wonderful things about you and saying that for whatever reason, you have a large amount of money waiting for you. All you have to do is send them about $800 USD to cover whatever expenses they think up.

These people are likely from a foreign nation with a few helpers other countries. They do it so slickly that it is virtually impossible to ever catch them.

Below is one example of this type of scam.

Text messages from scam artist are in italics.

On August 16 someone saying he/she was well-know television personality Patricia King contacted my wife using Facebook messaging. She/he ask if my wife was going to a particular 10-day conference in North Battleford.

My wife said that we could not afford it. He/she said that he/she would help pay for it.

We finally decided that we would pay the first $500 and Patricia would pay the rest. He/she went along with that.

We booked accommodations paying $500 down.

Aug.18, 8:20 am — He/she send us her personal assistant’s email address (meredithharperr@gmail.com) and said we should contact Meredith.

Later we got an email from someone claiming to be Meredith, Patricia’s personal assistant. One thing that stood out was that she had very poor communication skills. We were totally unimpressed with her personal assistant skills.

She wanted us to send Patricia $500 so that she could pay for all of our accommodation bill. That was sort of weird but we brushed it off to Meredith’s incompetence. We did not send the money.

Sept.8 @ 9:07 am — Reopened contact. He/she said has something to share and my wife should give here email. Said she has something to share “woman to woman.”

Scam continues Sept. 11 @ 9:25 am

Message from scam artist at 914-348-1981:

Monday, 5:46 pm — Text back if this gets through to you. This is Patricia King.

Am happy for you as you can’t imagine what a fortune has come into your life now until money gets to you or in your bank account. Did I mention how much was involved in this?

Don’t let that blow your mind, Linda. God has seen all you have been regarding his kingdom building and has this a medium of showing you his blessings.

A whooping sum of $630,001 is what we talk about here and less I forget I will like you to give to orphans and widows 10% of total money when it gets to you finally okay.

Yes at all time God has been faithful to his people who serve him diligently and in obedience to his words.

God knows your heart and his willing and able to make all things new again okay.

You should be giving the email to reach that banker who is in charge of all my personal belongings with the bank Linda.

No I mean contact Hakan my bank officer.

He will be throne to help you facilitate transaction so that money could be deposited in your personal account.

I will let you have his email that’s what I said sister.

Been trying to lay hands on his office email.

But you could reach him over private email.

hakansandler@gmail.com.

6:37 pm: You can just text him. Hopefully he will reply by morning.

I will need to rest okay love, feel free for I will let Hakan know that you are the one person that God picked for this and that takes care of everything am sure. Verification not an issue okay.

Around this point Hakan said that he needed some identification. He wanted her passport photo. So, my wife emailed him a photo of the inside of her passport including her passport photo and her passport number.

I will like you to pray in thanksgiving and be with a heart of expectation okay, God bless you.

Tue., 8:47 am — Morning beloved and feels good to hear from you this hour. Holy is the Lord.

9:09 am — Am here beloved.

Please do not let anyone see this apart from you and John okay.  He/she got husband’s name wrong. We did not pick up on that until later. We suspect a particular person named John may be involved with the scam.

9:25 am — You have a good heart that’s why it attracts this magnitude of blessings.

10:40 am — Let me speak with Hakan beloved. I will get back to you soonest.

Hakan said you could buy bitcoin if sending courier money is a stress.

11:50 am — But if bitcoin is confusing you could just send money for courier down and have your money sent to you.

Just send money to Hakan and let him courier full amount to you ASAP.

THE $840 I am talking about.

He already gave me his aids name for you to send money to via Western Union.

Here is Faith’s details. Faith is Hanan’s assistant.

First name: Nozipho
Middle name: faith
Last name:sibiya
City: Waterbury State
Connecticut, USA

11:59 am — Amen beloved, yes this is a blessing and must come to pass in Jesus name.

12:15 pm —Send me slip so I can forward to Hakan after payments.

1:09 pm — Linda sent photo of Western Union receipt by text message.

[$1140.47 CAD was sent via Western Union at 1:02 pm PDT.]

 

How to Make a Website Secure with SSL

Let people buy securely from your website

SSLWhen people buy from your website, they will be looking for signs to make sure that their credit card and other personal information is protected. They’ll be looking for a URL beginning with HTTPS to make sure their data is encrypted. They’ll be looking for assurance such as the image above. In other words, they’ll be looking for an SSL certificate.

How to buy an SSL certificate

To buy an SSL certificate, go to your web host’s website to see if it is possible to buy one there. Otherwise you will have to make an online search.

SSLI use LiquidNet Ltd Hosting. To buy my latest certificate, I clicked on My Domains > Order SSL Certificate and then clicked on the drop down menu to choose the domain name that needed securing. After that it was just a matter of filling in the blanks. After that I had to get tech support to help me make it active so that the “S” would show up after HTTP. Then I made sure an SSL certificate logo showed up.

What an SSL certificate does

SSLWhen people buy things from your website, they obviously submit personal information such as a credit card number. This information must travel through several computers.  An identity thief could be using software that makes his computer appear to be your computer.

If you have an SSL certificate installed in your website, the identity thief will be unable to capture your encrypted data.

Advantages of having a certificate

One advantage of buying your certificate is that the money will go to you rather than some hacker. However, the main advantage is peace of mind for your customers. When they see your HTTPS or see your certificate logo, they are much more likely to feel secure enough to buy from you.

 

 

Don’t Get Hacked on Free Wifi — Affordable Secure VPN

Free wifi is everywhere

VPN

You don’t want to shell out the monthly expense of a data plan. So, you stand outside a coffee shop, hair salon or any place that has free wifi — but you have no VPN.

VPN

 

Perhaps you are at an airport waiting for your flight. You want to catch up on some business. So, you log into the free wifi.

 

 

Hacking Risk

VPN

What you may not realize is that you are at a definite risk of being hacked. A hacker could be sitting nearby with a laptop using a program that mimics the legitimate free wifi.

 

 

VPNVPNThe mimicking wifi has a name similar to the free wifi. If the free wifi is Paris Airport, the mimicking wifi could be called Airport Paris.  The hacker can see whatever you are doing online. He can steal passwords, credit card numbers and any other things you download or upload.

Click here to learn more.

Eliminating the risk

 

The technology that eliminates the risk is called PrivateVPN (VPN stands for virtual private network). Log into the free wifi. Before doing anything that would expose private information, log into PrivateVPN. (You can get a free 7-day trial VPN now if you wish.)

 

 

When you login, your signal goes through  an encryption tunnel and gives you a completely different IP address.

 

VPNYou log into the free wifi from that new IP address. No hacker will be able to hack into your mobile device.

 

 

Enjoy a secure web experience with PrivateVPN

PrivateVPN, a Swedish-based VPN provider, offers:

  • The highest levels of security and privacy,
  • Stable connections from anywhere in the world
  • Uninterrupted VPN service — 24 hours a day — guaranteed.
  • A reasonable price!
  • First-rate service
  • Customer support that is second to none! They assist customers through live chat, email and remote desktop help through their TeamViewer system. They’re here to help you in any way they can.

PrivateVPN’s extra-secure online servers completely mask your online identity. You will stay anonymous the entire time you’re connected to the internet.

How to buy PrivateVPN

 Click PrivateVPN to buy it now.

 

Using this website

It takes a great deal of time & research to create blogs on this website. So, when you choose a VPN, please buy PrivateVPN from this web page.

I will make a commission each time you do. It will help repay me for my time & effort creating this blog.

Please do me a big favour:  Click PrivateVPN to buy it now.

Thank you very much.

Related pages

Government anti-terrorism actions could go beyond anti-terrorism



How to Avoid the Risks of Free Wifi

Always use protection

free wifiEvidence tells us that working with that free wifi is risky. There also is evidence that protecting yourself using a VPN (virtual private network) is foolproof. PrivateVPN is your answer to protecting yourself.

 

free wifi

You may consider logging into the free wifi from your hotel room. You may never consider that the guy down the hall may be using an evil twin.

 

 

Cybersecurity experts say that there are three types of people in the world:

  • People who have been hacked,
  • People who will be hacked, and
  • People who are being hacked right now but don’t know it yet.

By using the free wifi, you may inadvertently be allowing hackers to get passwords, account numbers, etc.

free wifi

Think about this statistic: The number of identity theft victims in the US rose to 15.4 million in 2016.

Evidence that people are using free wifi

It’s safe to say that delegates who attend political conventions are reasonably intelligent. They could represent a good cross section of the American population

Someone gather statistics from the 2016 Republican and Democratic National Conventions.  Around 70% of delegates connected to the nonsecure Wi-Fi networks at each of the conferences.

Here’s how it could work: You log on to the free Wi-Fi in the convention hall. You think you’re joining the hotel’s network. Somewhere nearby, a hacker is outputting a Wi-Fi signal off of their laptop. It has a name slightly different from the hotel’s signal. You are tricked into using it because it is labeled with the hotel’s name.

The hacker can see every username, password & credit card number you enter.

Avoiding that hacker

There is a simple way to avoid that hacker in the above scenario.  It’s called PrivateVPN. You install it on your desktop & mobile devices. (Buy it once & you can use it on 6 devices.)

free wifiBefore you log into the free wifi, open PrivateVPN. It will find an encryption tunnel to the country of your choice. In that country you will get a new temporary IP address.

You can use the free wifi at your heart’s content. The hacker will not be able to find you.

A real life example

The Harvard Business Review published an article in which they said:

In 2014 experts from Kaspersky Lab uncovered a very sophisticated hacking campaign called “Dark Hotel.” Operating for more than seven years and believed to be a sophisticated economic espionage campaign by an unknown country, Dark Hotel targeted CEOs, government agencies, U.S. executives, NGOs, and other high-value targets while they were in Asia. When executives connected to their luxury hotel’s Wi-Fi network and downloaded what they believed were regular software updates, their devices were infected with malware. This malware could sit inactive and undetected for several months before being remotely accessed to obtain sensitive information on the device. Read more.

Using this website

It takes a great deal of time & research to create blogs on this website. So, when you choose a VPN, please buy PrivateVPN from this web page.

I will make a commission each time you do. It will help repay me for my time & effort creating this blog.

Besides that, you will have the added benefit of being able to use free wifi with complete peace of mind.

 

Related web pages

Evil twin
Mobile devices & cybersecurity
Online fraud
VPN (virtual private network) overview, online privacy, etc.

YouTube

Watch the short YouTube video about how to avoid the risks of free wifi.

Pinterest





How to Improve Cybersecurity for Mobile Devices

 Cybersecurity and your smartphone

cybersecurityA business person can often work more efficiently if they go online with their smartphones & other mobile devices once in a while. However, that does present a cybersecurity problem.

Links, files, photos, contacts and other company data are often stored in the mobile device. Using an Evil Twin phony hotspot or a Firefox Tamper Data plugin, it may just be too easy for hackers to download these data from the hotspots you are using.

Solution: PrivateVPN

Faithfully using PrivateVPN (virtual private network) can virtually eliminate this threat. PrivateVPN has servers in over 55 different countries. Before exposing any confidential information online, you open up PrivateVPN and select a country.

You are then given an IP address for that particular country. Then you go onto the Internet. PrivateVPN encrypts the data before it passes through the Internet. Then it decrypts it when it reaches your computer.

cybersecurityThis GIF is an illustration of a user in North America getting an IP address from Finland. Even if a hacker was able to decrypt your data (extremely unlikely), he would not know from which country you came.

PrivateVPN

cybersecurityI used PrivateVPN to find an IP address in Finland. Then I used whatismyipaddress.com to find a map and other details that tell where my temporary IP address is located.

I like PrivateVPN because:

  • They have a free 7-day trial VPN
  • They have servers in 55+ countries
    • If their service is too slow, I simply choose another country
  • Unlike some other VPNs, they keep no records about where you surf on the web
  • You pay for ONE account and can use it on a total of 6 devices
  • With PrivateVPN, mobile employees can securely connect to company resources from virtually anywhere in the world. This applies even with insecure Wi-Fi hot spots.

Summary

Cybersecurity will be at a high level when you faithfully use PrivateVPN with your mobile devices. Your company financial, customer and other sensitive information will be kept secure. Your employees can increase their productivity and keep things private at the same time.

Related pages

Evil twin
VPN (virtual private network) overview, online privacy, etc.

YouTube

Watch the video below to learn how to avoid the risks of free wifi.

 

It’s true! Some countries do NOT allow you to access Google, Wikipedia, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube & other common websites from their countries.

You can circumvent this problem by getting PrivateVPN before going to the restricted country.

 



How to Get Scammed from “Free Samples, Just Pay Shipping”

Computer fraud index

Fraud Alert credit card fraudExpect computer fraud to increase.  Below is a list of frauds I’ve come across lately. Click on a term to learn more.

 

Credit card fraud starts with a lie

Bottle neuro eliteSomeone contacted me saying they were promoting a new brain supplement called Neuro Elite.  I was told that I could have it for free if I would pay for the shipping.  It never occurred to me that this might be credit card fraud.

I foolishly agreed and gave them my credit card number.  Later I checked my credit card statement and saw the shipping charge for $2.99. It was from a company called Cphelth.com.

 

The charges increase

A week after that charge was posted there was another charge from Cphelth.com for $89.73.

I phoned the credit card company to complain. They explained that, after getting the product, I had two weeks to cancel.  Otherwise I would be charged for the first bottle and be placed on monthly auto-ship.

The lady at the credit card company said that she had been scammed like this 3 years previously.

Read the fine print

Neuro Elite WebsiteI phoned Chelth.com.  I was told that the terms & conditions explain that I had two weeks to get out of this contract.  Who reads the fine print?

I went to the Chelth.com website.  The ONLY thing on their website was the little box you see reproduced here.  Notice at the bottom how people can cancel their auto-ships for the various scam products this company represents.

Stop the scammers

Yellow Fraud tapeI recently spoke to someone else was similarly scammed with a different product.  She clicked on a Facebook ad saying that all she had to do was pay for shipping.  The weight-loss product never did arrive.  But, she was charged a huge amount a few weeks after the shipping charge.

Stop a scammer today.  Pass this information on.

Domain service notice

Can you figure out what is fraudulent about the message below from a junk email?

As a courtesy to domain name holders, we are sending you this notification for your business Domain name search engine registration. This letter is to inform you that it’s time to send in your registration.

Failure to complete your Domain name search engine registration by the expiration date may result in cancellation of this offer making it difficult for your customers to locate you on the web.

They are just trying to scare you into buying a service you do not need.  Ignore them.

MacKeeper Mac scan

You notice a small window in the upper right of your Mac screen that reads “system scan recommended”. It is accompanied by a little robot-looking icon.

The advice page I found said You must have MacKeeper installed. Get rid of it. If this is a browser pop-up, then it’s a phishing scam and should be ignored.
For the average person MacKeeper is very difficult to remove from a computer. I went to the MacWorld website and read an article entitled How to uninstall MacKeeper from your Mac.

It showed me how to install a legitimate free program called Malwarebytes. It would help me purge MacKeeper from my Mac. I did so and then emptied my trash to make sure it was completely gone.

Expiration notice

I received a fraudulent expiration notice from this email address: newsletters@takecheapgeo.de. I knew it was a scam when I saw they wanted me to renew my domain name for $86/year. The real price is closer to $10/year.

The subject of the email was: freewebdesign.club Final Notice. Then, within the email near the top in red, it said, “expiration notice”.

They had a fake unsubscribe notice at the bottom. It did not work.

To prevent these frauds, always get your domain names from only one or two different domain sellers.

Related Pages

Hotel guests and credit card numbers

The Independent website says Facebook user Jack Sng shared in his Facebook about how scammers are targeting hotel guests and warns them to be extremely careful. Calling it “one of the smartest scams I have heard about,” he went on to describe how the scam works.  Read more.

Identity theft paraphernalia

The DJPowerMixTape website says: The three were taken into custody on Wednesday, July 13, and charged following investigations several follow-up operations which resulted in the seizure of electronic devices suspected to be card readers, card writers, skimmers and other paraphernalia used in identity theftRead more.

Credit card fraud on the rise

The Medicine Hat News says Glock recalls instances where a customer would enter a $75 tip by mistake and ask for cash back, claiming they only meant to enter $7.50, with drivers later learning the card being used was fraudulent. Read more.

Website on how to commit credit card fraud

Credit Card Fraud pinThe Art of Charm website has a telephone conversation with an ex-con. He learned all about how to commit credit card fraud from a website.

The Art of Charm takes a rare glimpse inside the business and mind of a professional credit card fraudster and social engineer.

  • Learn about the internet criminal underworld.
  • Meet one of the former top dogs from the site, and
  • Hear how he started his credit card fraud business.
  • Learn how he went to jail and why.
  • Learn how he made thousands from fraud and how easy it was.
  • Learn about reprograming credit cards
  • Learn how social engineering is crucial to the scam’s success.
  • Find out how he took his credit card factory mobile
  • Learn how he got caught and became an informant for the FBI

Listen to the podcast.

Free wifi problem

To learn more about the hazards of using free wifi, watch the YouTube video below.