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.

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

Kim, yes that's the point, I did open the attachment without meaning to. A .js file means nothing to me, being a technophobe.
I pride myself on spotting the 'bank' phishing emails a mile off, but I thought this one was genuine.
Unlike other posters I don't pay any money to MAM, and I don't have any financial info on my iPad, so here's hoping

When you've opened a duff attachment, a virus scan of your machine(s) obviously wouldn't be a bad idea.

On a PC a scan with ADW Cleaner is one of the best ways of getting rid of Malware, Adware and the like.

I use the following site for my download of it:

https://adwcleaner.en.uptodown.com/windows

Hilary first introduced me to this program and it is truly excellent.

Where is she, by the way?

groovyjean, hopefully, as you are using an iPad, you should be ok, but don't attach it to anything else, like a MacBook or other computers for the time being; if it starts to act strangely or runs slowly then you have a problem. Apple are very good at squashing viruses! I have Sophos running on my MacBook Pro, it is a little annoying sometimes but has caught the only 2 viruses that have tried to hop aboard!

Exec, yes your/Hilary's ADW Cleaner is a good 'un!

I got it sent to both of my email address'. and downloaded it but my security prevented it being opened.

Why didn't MoneyAM send out emails to warn us ?

Good point aldwickk anyone not coming to site would be unaware of the problem.

Thanks for your advice Kim and Exec. It seems that opening it on my iPad will not cause a problem, but I've learnt such a useful lesson!

George and Money AM team... will you be letting us know how the user data was taken, when and what is being done to stop it happening again?

I also agree with Aldwickk's point about a warning email to all affected users.

I did not open this (arrived this morning so this is still ongoing) but my email list shows the first few words of the message which began "Dear xx" where xx is my Christian name, not the screen name which you will see on this post.

Looking at 'my account' - 'contact details' I see both name and address are there (compulsory) as is a space for telephone numbers (not mine as this bit is not compulsory).

So whoever hacked the MoneyAM server obviously got that far. George and Money AM team - you should tell us exactly what data has been stolen.

I have just received this email that everyone is talking about and it has been deleted straight away,not good news these days.Any updates on how much data was breached ??

When I pressed the edit button on my earlier post a file dcadvert.php was downloaded onto my computer. Pressing the edit button again to check, it downloaded it again as dcadvert(1).php. What is going on? There have also been problems this week with the N buttons on the stockwatch page (first showing previous day now showing several days at once). I am beginning to wonder whether whoever hacked in and extracted the list of users left a few gremlins behind.

MoneyAM - you should call in NCC. (Disclosure - I hold shares in NCC!).

Perhaps the hackers can improve the site so it works!!!!!