Category: Fight Back

Resolver Your Complaint

www.resolver.co.uk

Resolver is a website designed to make it easy for people to complain and it’s free to use. Resolver say their goal is to help make complaining quick and straightforward.

Resolver works with MoneySavingExpert.com which is the UK’s biggest consumer advice website.

Resolver was started by James Walker, after his energy company ignored a complaint of his. James realised that complaining was complex and hard work and that there was no service that proactively helped consumers resolve their issues.

For some years there have been complaint templates available on the Internet and these make life easier for making a complaint.  But Resolver has gone further to automate the process online.

Resolver drafts the letter, sends it, monitors replies and then escalates it to an Ombudsman or key complaint body if the complainant is not satisfied with the outcome.

Resolver says it guides and supports you throughout the complaint process. The system makes recommendations on next steps and when to take them, helps you keep track of your complaint and enables you to store all relevant information securely in one place.

James Walker is very clear that Resolver was not set up to attack businesses or give them a hard time but to streamline the whole complaints process and reputable companies prefer this approach and work with Resolver.  Resolver say they work with tens of thousands of companies.

To use Resolver, you select the company you wish to complain to. If it’s on their list then you are presented with information about the company, their rules on the complaint procedure and any other relevant information. Then you start your ‘case’ which means to enter all of the relevant information and it is sent electronically to the company concerned.

Resolver tracks your case and any progress or fresh messages.

If you have a complaint to make to a large UK business – www.resolver.co.uk is a good place to start.

If you’ve enjoyed this post or found it useful then do share – click on the post title then scroll down to the social media share buttons.

Fightback Ninja Signature

Scam Hunter Website Review

http:// scamhunter.org

Exposing Internet Scams and Frauds Worldwide

Scamhunter.org was setup some years ago and its purpose is to help people recognize and avoid many of the common advance fee frauds, lottery scams, and scams on the Internet. Educate yourself on ScamHunter.org so you won’t get caught in the con artists’ traps. Their philosophy is “Sunlight is the best disinfectant”.

Scamhunter  focus on Advance Fee scams, Penny Stock scams, Lottery scams and Phishing scams but they do also publish about other types of scams.

The site has been very successful in helping people and was in the past targeted by scammers who managed to bring down the site through a DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack. The site was rebuilt with its new name scamhunter.org.

There is a search facility that lets you try a company name or a scammers names to see if there is anything published about them on Scamhunter.

This is a very useful site with a considerable breadth of information about scammers and their methods. It covers the most common scams and has information going back to before 2009.

The site includes random advertising and that can be annoying when accessing with a mobile phone.

Recent Alerts Section on the Home page

This is the recent items that have come to the notice of the Scamhunter.

e.g. Mrs. Jovann Mafra (scam warning), YOUR PAYMENT IS IN SERIOUS DANGER (Scam Alert), Re-profiling Funds (Scam Warning), Lt. General Susan J. Helms (scam alert), Harley Wang Mystery Scam, German Scam Messages, Sr. Diego De Martinez of Portugal (scam alert) Cancelled: Contact MoneyGram director, Ebrahim Talib, Bahrain Petroleum , company (scam warning), Qatar Foundation (scam alert), Mr. Frank Moses, JFK Airport (scam warning), Mr. Deneys James, Attorney (scam warning), Abandoned Bank Account Scam, Susanne Klatten Charity Foundation (scam alert)

Scammers never stop.

If you’ve enjoyed this post or found it useful then do share – click on the post title then scroll down to the social media share buttons.

Fightback Ninja Signature

Disposable Email Addresses

Using disposable email addresses can be a good way to deal with people who send you lots of spam emails.

You create a new disposable email address each time you need to sign up for some online service or to download a document etc. – any time where you don’t really want to use that service more than a few times or suspect they may sell your email address to spammers.

Any messages sent to the disposable email address will be automatically forwarded to your proper email address. The big advantage is that if that service starts sending you unwanted spam messages then you simply delete the disposable address.

Yahoo

With Yahoo you can create endless disposable address based on your real address, but hiding it.

e.g. if my email address is fred.flintstone @yahoo.com then I can choose to create, for example

fredff900golfclub @yahoo.com and fredff900subscriptions @yahoo.com and fredff900sales @yahoo.com and so on without limit.

Other Email Service Providers

Guerrilla Mail  (https://www.guerrillamail.com/)

They say “Avoid spam and stay safe – use a disposable email address! So far we’ve processed 12,634,091,283 emails keeping your real inbox safe and clean (59400 emails going in / hour)”.

It is a well used service and protects a lot email users against spam and it’s free.

 

TrashMail (https://www.trash-mail.com/)

  • Disposable email service with all conventional mailbox functions!
  • NEW: Write email, forward and reply to any address!
  • SECURE: All data is encrypted with SSL!
  • FREE: All features still stay completely free!

Trashmail is a good free service.

Burner Mail (https://burnermail.io/)

Shield yourself with Burner Mail

“By using burner email addresses, you will never have to give out your personal email ever again. Instead, Burner Mail generates a unique and anonymous email for every service you sign up with, making it really hard for companies and advertisers to track you online.”

These and other similar services can be useful in the fight against spam emails. Keep your mailbox clear of unwanted messages.

Do enter your email address and click on the subscribe button on top right to keep up to date with new posts.

Fightback Ninja Signature

Lifelock Identity Protection

Identity theft is where fraudsters assume your identity in order to access your bank account, take out new loans in your name, use your credit cards or carry out other criminal activities using your name.

Having your identity stolen can obviously be extremely damaging to your life as you may lose your money and end up in serious debt without any knowledge of what’s happening. By the time you realise that you’ve been attacked in this way, your life could have been wrecked and getting your identity back can be a long and painful process.

Lifelock is an American company that advertises heavily in the field of Identity Protection.

Lifelock say they leverage unique data, science and patented technology and provide identity threat detection, proactive identity alerts, and comprehensive remediation services. They claim to have more than four million members.

Lifelock offers three layers of defence.

1.       DETECT & ALERT

The technology scans millions of transactions every second for threats to your identity, i.e. for unauthorised use of your identity.

2.         RESTORE

If identity theft occurs, then a U.S-based Identity Restoration Specialist will work to resolve your identity theft problem.

3.         STOLEN FUNDS REIMBURSEMENT

They reimburse stolen funds depending on the level of your plan i.e. how much you pay (the 3 limits are $25,000,  $100,000 and $1 million cover)

If identity protection is a serious concern for you, then a service such as Lifelock may be of interest to you.

But, you would still need to be cautious and use common sense as Lifelock doesn’t prevent identity theft – just makes it easier to catch and resolve the problem afterwards.

Do click on the Facebook or Twitter icons on top right to follow Fight Back Ninja.

Fightback Ninja Signature

Tinder Cracks Down on Fake Photos

There is a big problem in Tinder (the dating APP) over fake photos.

It is estimated that hackers have stolen more than 70,000 photos of Tinder users and put them on cyber crime sites to allow criminals to create fake profiles. These are usually for catphishing frauds.

Catphishing is where someone uses another person’s photo and profile and pretends to be that person in order to win the trust of the recipient and often to scam them.

Once the data has been hacked, there is little can be done. However, Tinder faces the problem of fake accounts and is trying to crack down on fake profiles and photos by insisting on photo verification –  to help users tell if the person they are talking to is who they claim to be.

Tinder say they will use human-assisted AI to verify profile photos uploaded on to the dating app by asking people to take a number of real-time selfies.

If a match is made, profiles will be given a blue tick checkmark verifying that the person’s appearance is real.

Tinder is also testing offensive message detection, using machine learning technology to ask users whether they feel bothered by something someone has said and allowing them to report it.

How to Check a Profile is Genuine

  1. Google reverse image search

Copy the photo and paste it or the URL into Google reverse image search at images.google.com.

Google will attempt to check if the image is elsewhere on the Internet.

  1. Check their Social Media Profile

You would expect that anyone using a dating site will have social media accounts – so check them and see if the photos and profile match.

  1. Google Search

As long as the name isn’t too common you might find information about them on standard Google searches.

Do Share this post on social media – click on the post title then scroll down to the social media share buttons.

Fightback Ninja Signature

Web of Trust

https://www.mywot.com/

Web of Trust is a browser extension for your computer and an APP for your smart phone. It works on Chrome, Firefox and Safari browsers.

It has more than 6 million users and has rated more than 56 million websites.

WOT claims to secure you against scams, malware, rogue web stores and dangerous links on the Internet.

The idea behind the Web of Trust is to try to make the Internet a safe place by automatically checking any website before your browser opens it. It does this by having a regularly updated list of dangerous websites. That list comes from its users marking websites as dangerous, so it’s crowdsourced information.  WOT say they also use blacklists compiled by other people, of dangerous websites.

This is a great idea – if you find a dodgy website then you tell WOT and they can then warn other people about it.

But, this approach does have its limitations.  For example, auction sites have been marked dangerous by WOT because of a few bad sellers. It’s also possible that some sites are marked dangerous by members because they don’t like them rather than there being anything dodgy about them.

Reputation icons are also shown next to links on search engine results, social media platforms, webmail, and other popular sites to help you search safely.

When the WOT add-on is installed, you will see a small doughnut shaped icon next to your browser’s address bar. The icon shows you the site’s rating and reputation: green indicates a safe website, yellow tells you to be cautious, and red indicates potential danger.

The Web of Trust website also has an online community with more than 215,000 posts so it is an important community which discusses website ratings, security and online safety.

Alternatives

There are lots of alternatives services that provide a similar warning before you access websites such as Google Safe browsing.

There are also similar services provided by the makers of anti-virus and anti-malware software such as Site Advisor.

If you worried about the safety of browsing, then do look at WOT and its competitors and pick the one that works best for you.

If you have had bad experiences with websites or these protection services – do let me know, by email.

Fightback Ninja Signature