Reports of frauds, deceptions and scams keep appearing, weekly even daily, on
major news channels and newspapers. Some of these frauds seem just too big and remote to be of immediate, direct relevance to our daily lives. But, we will eventually pay for the consequences and damages, in taxes, costs of goods and services, regulations, copy-cats etc.

I hope we can collect, in one thread, frauds and scams, reported or heard. We must become more aware and more educated to guard against frauds and scams
which impact upon the health, well being, and wealth of ourselves and our families.

Thanks for that ExecLine

Have I ever been 'done' with a scam?

Yes.

I was in the middle of ordering up a product for my wife from an online 'too good to be true' Free Trial ladies make-up deal, when she shouted to me,

"Come on! Your dinners getting cold!"

So I rushed things through and completed the transaction and duly did as she ordered.

Later, I found out, how I'd actually signed up for a monthly subscription scam. It was an utter bugger to get out of! What I should have done at the time, was notice the Terms and Conditions of the Trial which told you on a pop-up page how to cancel the Trial and which had to be done within just a few days. I missed the cancellation opportunity and got hit for 2 months of subscription fees, costing a little over £400.

Was it actually a scam?

Definitely. However the Terms and Conditions were there to be read, albeit somewhat hidden away. This meant, I had only myself to blame and the Credit Card wouldn't refund my money becasue I hadn't returned the goods and cancelled the subscription all according to the T&Cs. The refund would have cost the credit card company the £400. I guess they just didn't feel confident enough to deduct the money from the other amounts due to the merchant.

There are reams of stuff on internet forums about subscription scams.

Heres' a typical story in the Daily Mail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2945236/Bank-warns-free-skin-cream-costs-80-month-Thousands-mistakenly-signing-subscriptions-registering-free-samples-online.html

Does anybody know anything about a company called International Mergers? I have been contacted by them regards compensation regarding rubbish shares I invested in many moons ago. The offer sounds too good to be true hence I'm very wary. Any information would be gratefully received.

I've not heard of them maggie but whatever you do, don't give them any of your bank details or send them money. If they are genuine they will send you a cheque if you are entitled to anything!

Thanks for that. Have already told them I will only accept a cheque . They seemed happy with that but are sending me documents I am meant to complete via e-mail and I don't think I should open the e-mail despite the fact I am curious to see what's on them.

.

Just had an email purporting to be from MoneyAM, regarding a change of price plans. It has all the hallmarks of a phishing email so beware if you get the same!

Seems that the Moneyam membership list has been compromised!!!! email received as below:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MoneyAM Customer support / sender was: marco844 @ alice it

This is to inform you about a change in tariff plans. Now you have access to
more progressive level of services. Please see attach file for detailed
depiction of new feature as well as access to full package of new options.



With best regards, MoneyAM Team

09/21/2016

Some comment from MoneyAM on the above would be helpful.
2517

Yes, that's the one! Delete it.

They are looking into it George, it is a phishing email.

Cheers Kim.
2517

Inadvertently I opened this on my iPad, any advice as to what i should do please? I've never used it for banking or anything financial, so think it should be alright.

GJ

As you can see, The Hepcat also opened the e-mail too, otherwise he wouldn't have been able to tell us it had the same message as previously posted in the prior posting.

It's usually not too dangerous to open the e-mail.

It's the opening of the 'attachment' which comes with it, that's the problem. When you open this, that's when you actually spring the malware or virus into execution for it to do its dirty work.

Hope that helps.

Comments from others are welcomed please, if you feel my take on this incorrect.

groovyjean, did you open the attachment?

I blame the Internet browsers, the software, for having such a weak "attachments" facility which should never be able to do anything other than be read - probably with only low-level HTML facilities...ie a picture-page.... which your PC cannot access further. ( like a blocked siding?)

also the stupidity of internet browsers to make the address so small that it is very easy for a misspelled address to be accessed. The basic address " MyWensite.Com" should be Bold and large enough so you can see the mistake ( 5th letter ) easily.
This would be assisted by forcing spaces and WWW should permit spaces, perhaps by transmitting a pale-grey character that can help us read the address.
I quite like the "pipe" symbol, because it's easy to write...|... there it is...and on the Keyboard next to Z.
Also, Public companies should be able to have an emboldened option, so their origin can be see clearly . . . and by clicking on the website name it should perform much the same as suggested first - an information page that cannot be accessed by the PC.

The solution to this may be to have a dedicated processor for the internet - one that cannot take commands - it's Program is Read-Only and built into the chip, so whatever criminals get up to, they cannot get round the internet chip's circuitry . . . . this would mean rearranging the PC, but since the Internet needs changing - so what !
It might be a good time to change the Chips.
The Internet-Chips can be classed according to their speed / power consumption /etc and the effect they can allow ( so a high-end PC might contain the best chips which could ( for example) allow animation of the picture in full 4K motion, whereas the basic chips would only allow a more-modest video experience.
The internet is running out of addresses because the space after the dot is too short - three characters is too few IMHO but they must be easily read, perhaps separated by a symbol, so we can leave the existing system's addresses alone but allow others to be added . . . so we could have geographic-locations (perhaps?) Thus:- .com|West||| - there I've used "pipe" three times to show the end of the address - although the Internet chips would know this, we "users" might not.

Finally a change that needs international co-operation . . . built into servers and our PC's when you "Copy" something it becomes 'greyer' so if I send you a picture it is weaker than the original I have . . . if you send it on it will be weaker still, until after six copies it's so weak it no-longer is viewable - this should stop reverse-porne ( IS that the word?) . . . no it's Revenge, but you get the idea. It might also stop personal events becoming mainstream, if after every year the pale copies lost another level . . . so friends pictures would have a "life".... Not sure how this can be implemented . . . possibly another PC-Chip dedicated to pictures/video.

Note that these chops would have to have a return-code so it might be possible to determine if an "Honest-Chip" was being used....but therein lies yet another layer of potential problems if chip-makers became corrupted, themselves.

Other changes . . . let's be having them.

The email itself was an obvious ( at least to me) scam, not least because the attachment was a javascript ( .js) file, plus the From address was clearly not from here. None of my email clients are stupid enough to automatically open attachments, and I'm naturally suspicious of most email, but I guess some people could have been caught out.


I am concerned that clearly moneyam's servers have been compromised as the email address the message was sent to has only ever been used to sign up on their site. Fortunately they don't have any useful information about me, so the worst that can happen is I might have to drop the email address if it starts receiving more spam.
It does of course mean this site will never receive any income from me as they have demonstrated that they are incapable of protecting my data.

You have point there cat. Can MAM please reassure us that our card details are safe and secure or failing that can we pay our subs using DD facility which is a far safer method of payment? Once our card details are compromised those scamming vermin can clear our accounts

Hi everyone,

I can assure you that we don't store your payment card details other than the 4 digits we use to allow you to recognise the card you have paid with. The card details are never stored anywhere within our systems. Repeat payments are managed without us storing your details.


Thanks
George

good stuff George..obliged