Category: information

August 17, 2016

The Official Crime Survey 2015

The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW),is considered to be the best measure of crime trends in the UK. It is created by interviewing sample members of the public about their experiences regarding crime in the past 12 months.

As of 2015, this includes fraud and computer misuse, listed below.

Bank and credit fraud – 2.47 million incidents
Non investment fraud – 1.0 million
Advance fee fraud – 108 thousand
Other fraud – 138 thousand
Computer virus – 1.36 million
Unauthorised access to personal information – 649 thousand

That makes a total of 5.76 million incidents

Analysis of the Crime Survey shows the following:-

Almost two-thirds of fraud incidents involved initial loss of money or goods to the victim (62%). This equates to an estimated 2.3 million offences, compared with 1.4 million incidents of fraud involving no loss of money or goods.
Victims received a full reimbursement in 43% of fraud incidents (1.6 million), typically from their financial provider.
In 49% of non-investment frauds (such as fraud related to online shopping scams or fraudulent computer service calls) and 76% of all other frauds (for example, lottery scams, pyramid or Ponzi schemes or charity fraud) there was no financial loss to the victim. This compares to 30% of incidents of bank and credit account fraud where no financial loss was suffered.
For computer misuse, 22% of incidents involved loss of money or goods, all relating to computer viruses (442,000 incidents)^.

For further information, go to

http://fightbackonline.org/index.php/guidance/12-explanations/29-the-official-crime-survey-2015

August 12, 2016

Roger Annies and the Royal Mail Opt Out

Roger Annies was a good neighbourhood postman in South Wales.

The Royal Mail have an opt out service for people who don’t want unaddressed mail from their postman.

(for how to register – go to https://fightback.ninja/test/royal-mail-opt-out-of-junk-mail-deliveries/).

Royal Mail don’t advertise this service as they make a great deal of money from delivering Marketing mail..

Roger Annies was asked by his customers how to stop the junk mail and he created his own leaflet and distributed it to his customers. Mr Annies was disciplined after Royal Mail bosses discovered he had delivered his own leaflet to houses on his south Wales round highlighting the little-known opt-out clause which can stop unwanted mailshots.

He was suspended on full pay but the subsequent publicity led tens of thousands of people to join the direct mail rebellion. After a national outcry over this, he was reinstated, but was told he would not get his old round back and was relegated to a sorting office job.

The Direct Marketing Association said 200,000 extra people had signed up to the Mailing Preference Service, which removes people’s details from companies’ mailing lists, in the month after Mr Annies delivered his leaflet.

Royal Mail said it did not have specific figures but its switchboard had been jammed with callers wanting to find out how to stop so-called “door to door” items.

Mr Annies drafted his leaflet after being inundated with complaints about junk mail. The note read: “You may have noticed your postman now has to deliver anonymous advertising material called door to door items. This means a lot more unwanted post in your letterbox. “You might be interested in reducing your unwanted mail and reduce paper usage in order to help save the environment. If you complete the slip below and send it to the Royal Mail delivery office you will no longer receive door to door advertising items.”

Bad Royal Mail.

[source: www.guardian.com]

August 3, 2016

The Rip-Off Report Website

The website www.ripoffreport.com is about scams, reviews, complaints, lawsuits and frauds.
It says it is consumers educating consumers and the tagline is

“Don’t let them get away with it. Let the truth be known”.

This site has been going since 1998 and claims to have more than two million reports i.e. complaints, reviews etc.
The basic idea is that anyone can enter a “rip-off report” about any organisation and it will be published unchanged on the site.
This sounds a good idea in principle – giving aggrieved people somewhere to post their comment in order to warn others and it’s free to use.

Ripoffreport.com has a corporate advocacy programme, whereby they will visit companies and verify that they are good places to work, produce good products and treat their customers well. So it’s like a certificate for good business.
Although the site includes worldwide reports, it does seem to be mostly American. I typed in BT in the search box as BT is one of the most complained about companies in the UK and it found 90 entries but they are little local companies – transport, cakes, real estate. Not the BT we know in the UK.

The website has a legal resources section and a business directory amongst other things.

The owners get death threats and frequent lawsuits against them but they stand up for consumers. Good for them

That’s ripoffreports.com

July 29, 2016

Doorstep Cold Caller Warning Signs

Doorstep or cold calling is the act of making uninvited visits to your home with the intention of selling goods or services. It is not illegal and does not require a licence.
Door step cold caller sticker scheme.

Are you fed up with receiving visits to your home from cold calling traders?

Are you concerned about rogue traders calling on your elderly or vulnerable neighbours, seeking work?

If so, say “no” to cold calling doorstep traders with a Trading Standards door sticker.

This sticker initiative is designed to empower residents, giving them the confidence to deal with cold calling traders. Traders should respect your wishes but if they don’t, they may be liable to prosecution for ignoring your request to leave and not return.

How do you get a sticker?

Sticker packs can be collected from your local district council, police station or library. If you have any trouble getting a sticker pack, please contact Trading Standards. You can find details of your nearest Trading Standards office by entering your postcode at https://www.gov.uk/find-local-trading-standards-office

Register your sticker

You can register your stickers online.

Registering your sticker pack enables the council to gauge their popularity and success at deterring cold callers and identify neighbourhoods where stickers are not being displayed and attempt to increase take up in those areas.

Trading Standards Newsletter

Many Trading Standards offices publish regular newsletter including information on scams and rogue traders.

Check the online details for your nearest Trading Standards office.

Q. What should you do if my sticker is ignored?

Unfortunately, not all cold calling traders will respect your wishes and some will ignore your sticker. If this happens, try complaining to the company and ask them not to visit you again in the future.

Also send a copy of the letter to Trading Standards.

July 27, 2016

Zones Where Cold Calling is Banned

Doorstep or cold calling is the act of making uninvited visits to your home with the intention of selling goods or services. It is not illegal and does not require a licence.

Certain parts of Walton-on-Thames and other areas are classed by the local council as “no cold calling zones”.

In these areas, all of the houses have warning signs on their front door or nearby that cold calling is not allowed and that cold callers should leave immediately. There are also signs on lampposts etc. to warn potential cold callers to stay away. Walton is in Elmbridge which is not setting up any new zones but other councils are still doing so.

A number of other councils around the UK have set up some of these no cold calling zones in response to requests from citizens to do something about the nuisance of unwanted callers.

The councils work in conjunction with Trading Standards and the local police and information can be found at http://www.tradingstandards.uk/policy/doorstopperswelcome.cfm

Do these zones work?

The evidence is that there is a marked reduction in cold calling in the zones , so Yes it works.

July 15, 2016

Twitter Fights Back Against Scammers

Twitter is enormously successful, but this has meant that a whole community of people create and sell dummy Twitter accounts by the thousands, largely to scammers and spammers .

This is a problem for Twitter as they prohibit use of automation to create accounts and the selling of accounts.

Twitter is always looking for better ways to identify these dummy accounts before they are used for sending scams and spam messages.

A group of researchers approached Twitter asking for permission to purchase credentials from a variety of Twitter account merchants. They got their permission and spent $5,000 over ten months buying accounts from at least 27 different underground sellers.

This totalled some 121,000 Twitter accounts at prices from $10 to $200 per thousand.

When you crate a new Twitter account there are two barriers that should stop scammers but they don’t.

First is the Capcha –which is the picture containing numbers and you have to key in the numbers. Computers are very poor at doing these so it prevents an automatic system from making accounts. However, the scammer pay workshops in China, India or eastern Europe to solve the Capchas.

Second is the need for a valid email address but these can be created automatically on services such as Hotmail, so problem solved for the scammers.

The researchers bought a lot of Accounts from the merchants and identified key qualities that were consistently present. This then enabled the creation of profiles for each merchant.

Twitter then used those profiles to delete large numbers of dummy accounts that had been created.

As the merchants typically built up a bank of thousands of accounts before selling, they then hit problems as most of their accounts had become worthless. The 27 merchants concerned lost a lot of money and their reputations.

The project was a big success. However checks some months later showed that the merchants were changing their methods and the profiles no longer worked so well in identifying the dummy accounts.

It’s a constant battle for Twitter but they are fighting the good fight.