scam

An introduction to vishing

This introduction to vishing is offered in the hope that being aware of it makes you less likely to fall for a vishing based scam.

Vishing is short for voice phishing. Voice refers to the fact that the scam is perpetrated over the phone. Phishing is a scam designed to "criminally and fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity..." according to Wikipedia.

As people get less trusting (deservedly so) of email, the bad guys hope victims put more faith in phone numbers.

A recent article by Brian … Read more

Now if only UEFA would give me tickets instead of cash

It's just a scam (see below), but I might have been duped into clicking had they promised me tickets to Arsenal's next Champions League match in Milan.

Clearly spammers need to tailor their messages to their audience a bit better. Promise me football (soccer) tickets and I'll be happy to send my firstborn. :-)… Read more

Appreciating the diligent e-mail scammer

The Globe and Mail's Jack Kapica is one who can sympathize with all those earnest, hardworking e-mail scammers struggling to make a quick buck.

Nigerian-scammer types must be wracking their brains on a daily basis in order to come up with fresh, imaginative ways to mangle the English language while, ahem, promising large sums of money via some fishy business arrangement. So Kapica finds it refreshing when, instead of offering the usual gobs of moolah, the e-mail scammer threatens to whack him unless Kapica pays up.

Read more on Jack Kapica's take at The Globe and Mail: "The scammer's challenge"… Read more

Scamming non-profit organizations leads to Google gripe

Warning of a new scam targeting non-profits comes from Alex Eckelberry of Sunbelt Software, the company behind the anti-Spyware program CounterSpy.

The scam starts out with an email message that seems to be from Barbara Moratek Vice President, Director of Grant Programs at Ivete Foundation. The come-on in the body of the message is:

"Would you have additional information for prospective donors or volunteers other than what is on your website? Thank you in advance."

I've said before, you can never trust the FROM address of an email message. According to the email header from one of … Read more

A new e-mail scam

I get more than my share of unwanted e-mail messages of all types, but a new (to me at least) scam appeared in my in-box today. The subject was "New User Letter" and the message appears below with the ID numbers changed as a precaution.

By the time I looked into it, the IP address seemed to have been taken out of service--it was unreachable both with a browser and the ping command.

One reason to lookout for this sort of thing is that the Web page it sends you to might try to install malicious software on … Read more

Avoiding tween-oriented spyware and scams

Parents may think that their kids are safe online as long as they limit their surfing to topics like squeaky-clean Disney star "Hannah Montana." Unfortunately, new research from McAfee points out that scammers hijack pop culture topics, so that when kids search for popular songs or stars, what they sometimes get is data-stealing spyware or porn-redirects.

McAfee research analyst Shane Keats was interviewed by Entertainment Weekly's PopWatch blog. Keats explains how an innocent search can go awry:

"When [kids] first get to an offer for a Hannah Montana screensaver, they just click yes. Three or four … Read more

News Roundup

-- IE 7 reaches 100 million users. Even with all those users, it still comes in second to Internet Explorer 6, which makes sense considering IE6 is the default browser on nearly every single PC. (News.com)

-- Google plugs account hijack holes. The vulnerabilities in question affected both Google Documents and GMail, giving hackers full access to your e-mail and spreadsheets. (News.com)

-- Report: Apple to charge some Mac users for wireless technologies. 802.11n, the next-generation wireless protocol, has secretly been shipping in Apple's computers for the past several months, but that functionality hasn't been … Read more