scams

We've all received e-mails from deposed Nigerian princes asking for help in getting lots of money out of their country. But that's just one of several scams that made Panda Security's list of the most frequent online cons of a decade.

As 2010 starts to wind down, the security vendor on Thursday unveiled its rankings of the most widespread Internet scams from the past 10 years. Though the cons themselves may vary, the pattern is typically the same, according to Panda. Cybercriminals initially contact their victims through e-mail or a social network, asking them to respond back … Read more

Security firm Sophos has highlighted yet another scam that's zipping around Facebook in the form of a third-party application, this one spreading in the form of links claiming to be from friends that encourage members to install a Facebook "dislike button."

Sophos wrote about the scam in a blog post Monday, pointing out that a link to it tends to appear in wall posts that appear to be from the user's friends ("I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts lol!!") but which are actually automated … Read more

After reading a recent article about places to sell unwanted consumer electronics online, I decided to look through my semivintage gear for items to recycle for some spare cash.

I located my original 16GB first-generation iPod Touch, purchased via Apple's Web site the week it was announced in 2007. Having barely been used in at least the past two years, it was in mint condition, and after carefully resetting it to the factory state (thereby wiping my apps and data), it was time to find a new home for my iPod Touch.

After checking out various resale sites such as Gazelle.com, which offered my $43 for my device, I snapped a couple of photos and put it up on eBay, with a minimum bid of around $95 and a Buy it Now price of $150. That seemed in line with what other similar units were selling for, which made sense, considering the least expensive current new model was an 8GB one for $199.

Until the last day of my auction, I had only a single bid, but I knew from previous experience most bidders jumped in at the last minute (as I did several years ago when purchasing my prized JVC Videosphere TVs). The hour before my auction ended, the bids started coming in, first past $100, then $125, to finally settle at $147.50.

Even though I was out socializing after work, I quickly dropped the winning bidder (who had a decent amount of positive feedback) a note, and directed him to my PayPal account. (Actually trying to get anything done through PayPal is an entire story by itself--if eBay looks like a Web site five years out of date, than sister company PayPal's Web site is like a medieval torture device.)

I quickly got a response from by winning bidder, and I was ready to declare this an almost entirely positive experience. But, several things about my winning bidder's response gave me pause. … Read more

After federal lawmakers concluded that Affinion Group preyed on the public, the post-transaction marketer is now asking the public to become an investor. Last month, Stamford, Conn.,-based Affinion filed for an initial public offering.

Affinion said in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it is seeking to raise $400 million. According to The Wall Street Journal, Affinion has yet to set a price range or date for its IPO.

Last year, U.S. lawmakers launched an extensive investigation and found that the practices employed by Affinion--as well as … Read more

Another clickjacking scam has hit Facebook, tricking hundreds of thousands of users to post messages to their pages saying that they like the malicious link, security firm Sophos said on Tuesday.

Like most of these scams, this one relies on social engineering and piques the interest of prospective victims with messages like:

• "LOL This girl gets OWNED after a POLICE OFFICER reads her STATUS MESSAGE."

• "This man takes a picture of himself EVERYDAY for 8 YEARS!!"

• "The Prom Dress That Got This Girl Suspended From School."

• "This Girl Has An Interesting Way Of … Read more

The U.S. Senate is moving to put an end to one of the biggest scandals ever to shake online retail.

Sen. John (Jay) Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, introduced a bill on Wednesday designed to prevent post-transaction marketers from duping consumers into enrolling into monthly memberships.

Rockefeller's committee has said marketers Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue were responsible for mysterious credit card charges that millions of Americans, including elderly citizens and wounded Iraqi veterans, have complained about for years. Rockefeller's bill, called "Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act," is the result of a yearlong investigation … Read more

Visa, one of the world's largest credit card companies, is taking aim at "scam" marketing practices that were quietly used by some of the Internet's largest retailers in recent years.

Retailers will no longer be able to allow third parties to charge a customer's card without the card owner re-entering credit card information, Visa said Tuesday. This is Visa's response to one of the biggest scandals to rock online retailing in years.

Last year, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation launched an investigation after learning that thousands of consumers had … Read more

The 9.6 million players of the Facebook game Farm Town are being warned about fake security warnings popping up that are designed to mislead people into paying for antivirus protection they don't need.

"We are aware and have reported to the developers that many of our players have encountered the malware/spyware while on the Farm Town site," the moderator of a user forum for Farm Town maker SlashKey warned over the weekend. "We believe at this time that it is harmless to your computer and a result of one or more of the ads … Read more

Upscale grocery conglomerate Whole Foods Market said Friday that it is continuing to clamp down on a series of Facebook-based scams that entice users with a purported $500 gift card from the Austin, Texas-based supermarket chain.

The scam has been spreading virally through Facebook via "fan pages" with names like "Whole Foods Market Free $500 Gift Card Limited - first 12,000 fans only" and "Whole Foods FREE $500 Gift Card! Only Available for 36 hours!" The fan page asks Facebook users to add it as a fan, thus pushing awareness of the page … Read more