Category: information

Call Blocking Phones for Dementia Sufferers

In 2015, the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) received almost 170,000 complaints about nuisance calls

Cold callers are a nuisance to most of us. But to someone suffering from dementia, they can be a scourge.

This is also the case for many people with mental disabilities, the very elderly and people not used to callers pretending to be helpful but just seeking to defraud them.

Many of the large charity organisations until recently used to exchange caller lists so anyone who was generous to one charity would find themselves bombarded with calls from other charities and many paid over far more money than they should have.

Prime Minister Theresa May said “We want to create a fairer society by cracking down on unscrupulous practices which target the most vulnerable”. She has announced plan to give elderly and vulnerable people hi-tech devices to block these nuisance calls.

The call blocking devices will be installed in the homes of some of the most vulnerable people across the UK who have been identified by doctors, Trading Standards officials and local councils as being at risk from nuisance callers.

These trueCall devices will block all recorded messages, silent calls and calls from numbers not already pre-identified by the home owner – offering particular protection to those with dementia.

The project, which is being co-ordinated by the National Trading Standards Scams Team and supported by local Trading Standards departments, is the latest of a series of government crackdowns on nuisance callers

The chief executive of Dementia UK, Hilda Hayo, said: We welcome this project as some people living with dementia are vulnerable to nuisance callers who offer bogus services and financial schemes. These calls can not only have a negative financial impact but can also lead to psychological effects such as anxiety, depression and a loss of self-esteem. We frequently receive calls to our national helpline from family members who are concerned that their relative with dementia has fallen prey to rogue traders.

The funding for this scheme includes £300,000 to supply call blocking machines with the remaining budget spent on the management of the service and raising public awareness of scam and nuisance calls

The only problem is that the money will run out long before everyone who needs one of the phones gets it. Let’s hope more money can be found.

To report a nuisance go to the Information Commissioners Office online at www.ico.org.uk

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Identity Theft

Identity theft has always been a problem as fraudsters take out loans in someone else’s name or use a false name and address when arrested or take out credit cards in the victim’s name.

Nowadays, identity theft is prevalent as it has become much easier in the electronic age. Every day, millions of phishing emails are sent out by scammers trying to get your confidential information so they can defraud you.

A phishing email is one that pretends to be from some trusted organisation and seeks to get you to provide your confidential information e.g. credit card details, banking details, passwords etc.

The key information they want is of course name, date of birth and financial information. But whatever the criminal starts with, they may seek further information to make their fraud easier to commit. They may call you claiming to be from the council or the authorities or your bank etc. and use the information they have to convince you of their authenticity and then gain more from you in the guise of confirming your ID etc.

Or they may send you phishing emails – seeking under various guises to get more details from you.

To access your Amazon account, the scammer just needs your login and password.

To set-up a new bank account in your name they need proof of ID (passport or drivers licence being the most common) plus proof of address, date of birth etc.

Protect Yourself

Watch out for suspicious emails or phone calls that try to trick you into disclosing personal information, based on already having some information about you.

Check out http://www.fightbackonline.org/index.php/guidance/12-explanations/50-the-mechanics-of-identity-theft for more information.

Stay cautious.

If you have any experiences with scammers, spammers or time-waster do let me know, by email.

Russian Mass Spammer Arrested

An alleged Russian hacker has been arrested in Spain at the request of the American authorities.

Pyotr Levashov should have realised that going on holiday to a country that has extradition with America was a bad idea. He knew the Americans wanted him as he is responsible for the Kelihos botnet and has been on the top ten list of the world’s biggest spammers for years.

The Kelhios botnet is a huge array of computers setup to send out vast quantities of scam emails.

He was arrested on a U.S. computer crimes warrant and will be extradited.

Levashov’s arrest drew immediate attention after his wife told the Russian network  RT that he was linked to America’s 2016 election hacking. She said when she spoke to her husband on the phone from the police station, he told her he was told he had created a computer virus that was linked to Trump’s election win. This may be a red herring designed to attract attention to his case.

According to the cybersecurity site KrebsOnSecurity, Levashov was allegedly responsible for “running multiple criminal operations that paid virus writers and spammers to install fake antivirus’ software. “There is a lot of  evidence that he is the cybercriminal behind the Waledac spam botnet, which infected more than 70,000 computers and was capable of sending up to  1.5 billion spam messages a day.”

The U.S. authorities announced that they are working to dismantle a global computer network that sent hundreds of millions of spam emails worldwide each year.  The U.S. Justice Department said it was working to take down the sprawling Kelihos botnet, which at times was made up of more than 100,000 compromised computers that sent phony emails advertising counterfeit drugs and work-at-home scams, harvested users’ logins and installed malware that captured their bank account passwords.

Controlling the vast network since 2010 was Pyotr Levashov, a 36-year-old described in U.S. court documents as “one of the world’s most notorious criminal spammers.”

The investigators’ efforts are showing early signs of success in disrupting the botnet.

It is a huge global problem combatting these operations  that are well organised and well equipped and few governments can do much to stop them.

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Review of Malwarebytes Anti Malware

Malware is any piece of software that can cause problems on your computer. This includes viruses, trojans, ransomware, spyware and PUPS.

Malwarebytes is an anti-malware package, not an anti-virus package. It’s designed to find and eliminate the other elements of malware.

Trojans are pieces of software that can infect your computer while appearing to be harmless.  E.g. the Trojan may open a back door through which hackers can access to your computer.    Spyware is anything that makes a record of your actions e.g. websites visited and passes on that information. This can be simply to provide more targeted adverts but is often intrusive and unwelcome. PUPS are pieces of software or cookies that are probably unwelcome but do not fit the category of dangerous.

How Does it Work?

You install Malwarebytes and it has real time protection facilities that guard against for example your browser navigating to a dangerous website. It also needs to run regular scans of your computer to ensure nothing dangerous has got onto your computer.

Malwarebytes used to have an excellent free version but with the advent of version 3 – the free version has been downgraded and now is just the scan facility with no real time protection i.e. it give no protection against malware infecting your computer, browsing on dangerous websites etc.

The premium version  costs £30 per year for full protection.

Malwarebytes is very effective at preventing malware getting onto my computer, but it does slow the machine down noticeably at times.  So that’s a trade-off you have to consider.

Malwarebytes may not be that efficient at finding and removing viruses so a separate anti-virus software package may be needed.

Features of Malwarebytes

  • Anti-malware scans
  • Real time protection
  • Malicious website blocking
  • Developed for PCs but now available on MAC and Android

Main Competitors

  • BitDefender
  • Kaspersky

In conclusion, Malwarebytes is effective in countering malware and it’s worth the annual cost but it’s a shame the free version has been so downgraded.

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Wonga Data Breach

Wonga has announced that customer records including names, addresses and bank account details for up to 250,00 people may have been accessed by hackers.

Wonga said it was urgently investigating illegal and unauthorised access to the personal data of some of its customers in the UK and Poland.

Wonga realised last week there was a problem.  It alerted the authorities and started to contact borrowers on Saturday to make them aware of the problem.

Customers who are thought to have been affected have received a message from Wonga telling them: “We believe there may have been illegal and unauthorised access to some of your personal data on your Wonga.com account.”

The message said that Wonga was working to establish the full details and the data breached may include one or more of the following: name, email address, home address, phone number, the last four digits of your card number (but not the whole number) and/or your bank account number and sort code.

It also said that Wonga believes its  accounts and passwords have not been compromised, but customers were advised to look out for unusual activity across their accounts

Wonga has had a turbulent life since its start 11 years ago and has been trying to repair its reputation (currently considered to be an irresponsible lender). This data breach certainly won’t help and Wonga made pre-tax losses of £80.2 million in 2015.

In a statement, the firm said: “We are working closely with authorities and we are in the process of informing affected customers. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused.”

Wonga also said it did not believe the attackers had gained access to users’ loan accounts, but warned them to be vigilant.

What Should Wonga Customers Do?

The payday lender has set up a help page for affected customers at https://www.wonga.com/help/incident-faq

It advises them to:

Alert their bank and ask them to look out for any suspicious activity. Wonga will also be informing financial institutions about the breach

Watch out for scammers or unusual online activity. In particular, customers are told to be cautious about cold calls and emails asking for personal information

Contact the Wonga helpline on 0207 138 8330 for further information

The Information Commissioner’s Office said: “All organisations have a responsibility to keep customers’ personal information secure. Where we find this has not happened, we can investigate and may take enforcement action.”

Wonga has a reported APR of over 1,500% – so no-one with another choice should consider paying that.

Are you affected by this?  – if so then let me know by email.

How to Report a Bad Website

It can be very simple and quick for people to create websites – good websites and bad websites.

What can you do if you encounter a bad website?

Bad in this case doesn’t mean something you don’t like but a website that is a scam or misleading or steals your personal information or is a copy of someone else’s website etc.

You can report the bad website to the search engines, blacklists, review sites and the Authorities.

Search Engines

Google, Bing and the other search engines want to know about bad websites so they can direct traffic away from them and where relevant will report the sites to the Police or other Authority.

Report to Google https://safebrowsing.google.com/safebrowsing/report_badware/?hl=en

Instructions for Bing  https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/930167/how-to-report-a-phishing-web-site

To report a site Internet Explorer: If you are running IE and are still on the site in question, then  click on the Safety icon, which is on the toolbar go to “SmartScreen Filter” and select “Report unsafe website”.

Blacklists

Many organisations maintain lists of ‘bad’ websites called blacklists. This is to enable services such as Web of Trust, Trustwave, Brightcloud, numerous anti virus and anti malware companies such as McAfee, Sophos and many others to block access to those sites.

When you navigate to a blacklisted  listed website, your anti-virus or other software will warn you and stop the browser opening that site.  Which such software protection you choose is up to you but they all try to offer a good service.

PhishTank is a collaborative clearing house for data and information about phishing on the Internet. It maintains a blacklist used by software services. PhishTank allows developers to integrate anti-phishing data into their applications at no charge. https://www.phishtank.com/

Review Sites

There are various review websites that allow you to enter information, reviews, comments on websites and businesses – to help others make informed choices.

Which one you pick to report a bad website to depends on the nature of the website

e.g. for travel reviews – Trip Advisor

Some of the largest of these review sites are Consumer Report, Four Square, Better Business Bureau, Angie’s List and there are lots more.

The Authorities

You can report websites to Action Fraud if there is evidence of criminal activity.

You can report online scams and rip-offs to Trading Standards via the Citizen’s Advice Consumer Helpline on: 03454 04 05 06

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