John Fairheart
16 December 2005, 00:14
STAYING SAFE ON THE INTERNET
December 2005
By 'The Onlooker (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=126)' for fraudwatchers.org
Introduction
This world of ours can be a dangerous place, you are at risk in just about everything you do. If you cross a busy road, there is a risk that you could be knocked down by a car and killed, but do you decide never to cross a road in your life? The answer of course is no, but you do take precautions. You would not simply walk out into the road and just hope that there is no oncoming traffic, you would look at what is going on around you and decide when it is safe to cross; Keeping your wits about you all the time watching out for that oncoming traffic that could hurt you.
What has got to do with the Internet?
Just like the busy road, the internet can be a dangerous place. However, do we want to all stop using it to be safe from its dangers? I would suspect that the answer is no as you are probably reading this article from an internet page! In addition, just like the busy road, you can remain safe by following some simple precautions.
What are the dangers exactly?
Some you may have heard about some already - Viruses, Trojans and Keyloggers. The risks of these can be very much reduced by the use of Virus Checkers, Firewalls and Spy Checkers etc. There are a number of choices and many articles about the subject already. Although these are important tools in the fight to stay safe on the Internet, they are not the most important.
The most important tools you have to fight with are your own fingers! You are the one in control, and you make the decision on what keys to press on the keyboard and where you click with your mouse!
The other danger we will be discussing is fraud, no virus checker can help you, and this one is down to you!
Things to avoid.
Shared Computers
This includes internet machines found in internet cafes, libraries, at work, or anywhere else where you do not have full control over the computer that you are using.
While these machines are perfectly safe for general browsing, avoid using them to deal with your personal information, for example Internet Banking, making credit card purchases, emailing etc. The reason for this is that you cannot be sure about the security, while the owner of the computer may have the best of intentions; they have little control over what the previous user might have done, intentionally or not.
If a previous user has browsed some questionable sites, and allowed a key logging program to be installed, it could be recording everything that you do. This will include recording the names and passwords for your email, bank accounts, credit card details etc.
If you never type personal information into one of theses machines, then there can be no risk.
Free Software
I am not saying that every piece of free software on the internet is bad, but you need to be sure that it is coming from a reputable source. Does it come from a company that you trust or from somewhere you have never heard of?
Is the software actually free? If you install pirated or other illegal software on your computer, instead of purchasing the legitimate version, then you are really asking for trouble. Often this software is "cracked" to remove copy protection techniques. There is nothing to stop the people doing the cracking from adding some other malicious code. If you install pirated or cracked software, then no firewall software is going to help you.
Using Credit Cards
As long as you know that your computer system is clear of spyware, keyloggers and other such nasties, then using your credit card on line with companies that you trust is quite safe. Using your credit card to buy from unknown sources is to be avoided. The danger of your details being intercepted in mid-flight, on their travels over the internet, is quite remote; There is more danger of the company you send your details to of misusing your information.
Only you can decide if you want to trust the company with your details, you need to use the same common sense that you do in the real world, how well known is the company you are dealing with, how did you get to their website?
If you received an email unexpectedly giving you the website address, then you should really verify that you are using the true website and not a fake one pretending to be real in order to steal your details.
Online Banking
As long as you know that your computer is clean and safe, online banking is safe, the banks go to great lengths to protect you, you should make sure that you have a good logon name and password that will not be guessed easily.
One trick I use is to not to give my real mother’s maiden name on such sites, the same applies to any of their security questions used for logging in. Simply use a password that you associate with mother’s maiden name. This makes it very difficult for anyone to guess your details even if they do know you, so would make it almost impossible for anyone else!
Emails
Do you get emails from your friends asking you to read and then pass on to 10 other people into order to get good luck, or saying that something bad will happen if you do not?
Let me tell you a secret! Nothing bad will happen if you do not send on the email, in fact something bad can happen if you do. Here is what your "friend" has done for you.
Look at the email, who else has that email been sent to? Do you know all these people? Well yes you might, but do you know all of the people that each of them is going to send this email to? This would be improbable. At every stage, your email address will be passed to the next group of people, who will then pass your email on to the next group of people, and so on.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility that your email address will be passed on to a million other people who do not know you. Now out of that million people who get your email address, how many of them do you suppose will be scammers, spammers or hackers?
Firstly you should NOT pass the email on to ANYONE else, let it stop right now before any more damage is done, the next thing to do is to inform the person who sent you the mail. I recently had to do this for a second time to the same person, I replied with the following (Names changed to protect the guilty)
You have YET AGAIN sent my email address to everyone else, encouraging each of them to send it on to 10 other people. If those 10 people do as you ask, there are now 100 copies of the email, each of those 100 people send out 10 copies, now there are 1000 emails and so on. After only 6 times round the loop, there are 1 MILLION emails, and you wonder why the internet is slow sometimes, it's because it has to cope will MILLIONS of emails like this!
Not only that, but MY PRIVATE EMAIL ADDRESS is given away at each step. You are also exposing everyone else’s private email addresses to the global internet.
EVERYBODY SEES THIS LIST: To: blah@blah.com; blah@blah.com; blah@blah.com; blah@blah.com; blah@blah.com; etc...
You should not send this to ANYBODY asking him or her to pass on to 10 friends or whatever or else they might die as this mail suggests.
Now what happens when one of these mails ends up in the hands of a spamming marketing company, you guessed it, they use it to send you SPAM.
PLEASE STOP IT
Making Money Fast
If it were so easy, we would all be doing it...
These things do not happen in real life:
Someone you do not know giving you millions of pounds / dollars / for safekeeping or winning the lottery when you have not bought a ticket.
We all know this, so why do people believe it will happen if they see something similar in an email?
I will explain how it works:
First, you receive an email similar to the following:
DEAR;Sir,madam;
I know that this message will come to you as a surprise since we don’t know each other before,but for purpose of introduction, I am MR.Frank Ursama,the Bank Manager of AMALGAMATED BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA ABSA). There is an account opened in this bank in 1980 and since 1990 nobody has operated on this account again. After going through some old files in the records, I discovered that if I do not remit this money out urgently it would be forfeited for nothing.
The owner of this account is Mr. Smith Andreas, a foreigner,and a miner at Kruger gold co., a geologist by profession and he died since 1990. No other person knows about this account or any thing concerning it,the account has no other beneficiary and my investigation proved to me as well that his company does not know anything about this account and the amount involved is (USD 26M) TWENTY six million United States Dollars million dollars.
<..snip..>
The mail then goes on to ask for your personal details so that money can be transferred to you. At this point you do not realise it is a scam, and send your details, you will get a reply which is usually just more information about the money that you are going to receive. There will also be some general chat where you will be asked for more information about yourself. These chatty emails are designed to lure you into a false sense of security and build up a trust relationship between you and the person you are communicating with.
Sometimes these mail messages can go on for several weeks, building up your hopes; sometimes the next stage happens within a couple of emails, depending on who you are dealing with, when it happens does not matter, but it WILL happen!
The Next Stage
Now that your trust has been gained, you are going to be asked for some help in completing the transaction, there will be a lawyer to pay or some other release fees, and as you are going to be receiving a share of millions, what is a few thousand dollars?
There is no easy way to say this, but that is the last you will see of your money if you send it, there are no millions of dollars, you have been scammed out of your money and no one will ever get it back. Sad, but true.
Now what happens if you still do not believe this is a scam, and you keep going. The scammer says thank you and the scam continues. You are told that your money has gone to pay whatever it was supposed to do, and then there will be another request for money for some other fees to be paid. These fees will never end until you finally wake up to the fact that you have been a victim of fraud.
Now that you have finally realised that you are a victim, you are angry and you want your money back, of course you do, but what can you do, probably nothing..., but what is this email you have just received :
[I]There is hope (isn’t there?)
You get an email from someone else you do not know offering to get your money back; you want your money back so you write asking for help. At which point you will be asked for fees to pay for the recovery of your money.
Send them your money if you want, but take a good look at the money, memorise it well, it’s colour, smell, texture, as once you send it away, those memories will be all you have left, you are still in the scam!
The only way out is to stop writing, stop sending your money, the damage has been done, chalk it down to experience and try to move on. If you stop writing, they will eventually give up and move on to their next victim. It may be worth your while to change your email address so that they can no longer contact you.
If you have given any personal information at all during the course of your communications, such as your real address, real bank details etc, then you should simply stop writing and go to the police. Take all of the details of the fraud with you, but you should not panic, you are a victim and you should seek professional help.
Websites, such as FraudWatchers.org can and will give you as much help as they can in your particular circumstances.
Summary
We hope that by making people aware of these scams that there will be less victims, the best thing to do is to simply delete any emails that you receive promising you untold riches. The money does not exist, it is a figment of a scammer’s imagination.
FURTHER READING:
Identity Theft/"Phishing" (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=60)
Types of 419 Advance Fee Fraud (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=642)
Money Recovery Scams (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=262)
Copyright © 2005 by 'The Onlooker (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=126)'
For fraudwatchers.org
December 2005
By 'The Onlooker (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=126)' for fraudwatchers.org
Introduction
This world of ours can be a dangerous place, you are at risk in just about everything you do. If you cross a busy road, there is a risk that you could be knocked down by a car and killed, but do you decide never to cross a road in your life? The answer of course is no, but you do take precautions. You would not simply walk out into the road and just hope that there is no oncoming traffic, you would look at what is going on around you and decide when it is safe to cross; Keeping your wits about you all the time watching out for that oncoming traffic that could hurt you.
What has got to do with the Internet?
Just like the busy road, the internet can be a dangerous place. However, do we want to all stop using it to be safe from its dangers? I would suspect that the answer is no as you are probably reading this article from an internet page! In addition, just like the busy road, you can remain safe by following some simple precautions.
What are the dangers exactly?
Some you may have heard about some already - Viruses, Trojans and Keyloggers. The risks of these can be very much reduced by the use of Virus Checkers, Firewalls and Spy Checkers etc. There are a number of choices and many articles about the subject already. Although these are important tools in the fight to stay safe on the Internet, they are not the most important.
The most important tools you have to fight with are your own fingers! You are the one in control, and you make the decision on what keys to press on the keyboard and where you click with your mouse!
The other danger we will be discussing is fraud, no virus checker can help you, and this one is down to you!
Things to avoid.
Shared Computers
This includes internet machines found in internet cafes, libraries, at work, or anywhere else where you do not have full control over the computer that you are using.
While these machines are perfectly safe for general browsing, avoid using them to deal with your personal information, for example Internet Banking, making credit card purchases, emailing etc. The reason for this is that you cannot be sure about the security, while the owner of the computer may have the best of intentions; they have little control over what the previous user might have done, intentionally or not.
If a previous user has browsed some questionable sites, and allowed a key logging program to be installed, it could be recording everything that you do. This will include recording the names and passwords for your email, bank accounts, credit card details etc.
If you never type personal information into one of theses machines, then there can be no risk.
Free Software
I am not saying that every piece of free software on the internet is bad, but you need to be sure that it is coming from a reputable source. Does it come from a company that you trust or from somewhere you have never heard of?
Is the software actually free? If you install pirated or other illegal software on your computer, instead of purchasing the legitimate version, then you are really asking for trouble. Often this software is "cracked" to remove copy protection techniques. There is nothing to stop the people doing the cracking from adding some other malicious code. If you install pirated or cracked software, then no firewall software is going to help you.
Using Credit Cards
As long as you know that your computer system is clear of spyware, keyloggers and other such nasties, then using your credit card on line with companies that you trust is quite safe. Using your credit card to buy from unknown sources is to be avoided. The danger of your details being intercepted in mid-flight, on their travels over the internet, is quite remote; There is more danger of the company you send your details to of misusing your information.
Only you can decide if you want to trust the company with your details, you need to use the same common sense that you do in the real world, how well known is the company you are dealing with, how did you get to their website?
If you received an email unexpectedly giving you the website address, then you should really verify that you are using the true website and not a fake one pretending to be real in order to steal your details.
Online Banking
As long as you know that your computer is clean and safe, online banking is safe, the banks go to great lengths to protect you, you should make sure that you have a good logon name and password that will not be guessed easily.
One trick I use is to not to give my real mother’s maiden name on such sites, the same applies to any of their security questions used for logging in. Simply use a password that you associate with mother’s maiden name. This makes it very difficult for anyone to guess your details even if they do know you, so would make it almost impossible for anyone else!
Emails
Do you get emails from your friends asking you to read and then pass on to 10 other people into order to get good luck, or saying that something bad will happen if you do not?
Let me tell you a secret! Nothing bad will happen if you do not send on the email, in fact something bad can happen if you do. Here is what your "friend" has done for you.
Look at the email, who else has that email been sent to? Do you know all these people? Well yes you might, but do you know all of the people that each of them is going to send this email to? This would be improbable. At every stage, your email address will be passed to the next group of people, who will then pass your email on to the next group of people, and so on.
It is not beyond the realms of possibility that your email address will be passed on to a million other people who do not know you. Now out of that million people who get your email address, how many of them do you suppose will be scammers, spammers or hackers?
Firstly you should NOT pass the email on to ANYONE else, let it stop right now before any more damage is done, the next thing to do is to inform the person who sent you the mail. I recently had to do this for a second time to the same person, I replied with the following (Names changed to protect the guilty)
You have YET AGAIN sent my email address to everyone else, encouraging each of them to send it on to 10 other people. If those 10 people do as you ask, there are now 100 copies of the email, each of those 100 people send out 10 copies, now there are 1000 emails and so on. After only 6 times round the loop, there are 1 MILLION emails, and you wonder why the internet is slow sometimes, it's because it has to cope will MILLIONS of emails like this!
Not only that, but MY PRIVATE EMAIL ADDRESS is given away at each step. You are also exposing everyone else’s private email addresses to the global internet.
EVERYBODY SEES THIS LIST: To: blah@blah.com; blah@blah.com; blah@blah.com; blah@blah.com; blah@blah.com; etc...
You should not send this to ANYBODY asking him or her to pass on to 10 friends or whatever or else they might die as this mail suggests.
Now what happens when one of these mails ends up in the hands of a spamming marketing company, you guessed it, they use it to send you SPAM.
PLEASE STOP IT
Making Money Fast
If it were so easy, we would all be doing it...
These things do not happen in real life:
Someone you do not know giving you millions of pounds / dollars / for safekeeping or winning the lottery when you have not bought a ticket.
We all know this, so why do people believe it will happen if they see something similar in an email?
I will explain how it works:
First, you receive an email similar to the following:
DEAR;Sir,madam;
I know that this message will come to you as a surprise since we don’t know each other before,but for purpose of introduction, I am MR.Frank Ursama,the Bank Manager of AMALGAMATED BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA ABSA). There is an account opened in this bank in 1980 and since 1990 nobody has operated on this account again. After going through some old files in the records, I discovered that if I do not remit this money out urgently it would be forfeited for nothing.
The owner of this account is Mr. Smith Andreas, a foreigner,and a miner at Kruger gold co., a geologist by profession and he died since 1990. No other person knows about this account or any thing concerning it,the account has no other beneficiary and my investigation proved to me as well that his company does not know anything about this account and the amount involved is (USD 26M) TWENTY six million United States Dollars million dollars.
<..snip..>
The mail then goes on to ask for your personal details so that money can be transferred to you. At this point you do not realise it is a scam, and send your details, you will get a reply which is usually just more information about the money that you are going to receive. There will also be some general chat where you will be asked for more information about yourself. These chatty emails are designed to lure you into a false sense of security and build up a trust relationship between you and the person you are communicating with.
Sometimes these mail messages can go on for several weeks, building up your hopes; sometimes the next stage happens within a couple of emails, depending on who you are dealing with, when it happens does not matter, but it WILL happen!
The Next Stage
Now that your trust has been gained, you are going to be asked for some help in completing the transaction, there will be a lawyer to pay or some other release fees, and as you are going to be receiving a share of millions, what is a few thousand dollars?
There is no easy way to say this, but that is the last you will see of your money if you send it, there are no millions of dollars, you have been scammed out of your money and no one will ever get it back. Sad, but true.
Now what happens if you still do not believe this is a scam, and you keep going. The scammer says thank you and the scam continues. You are told that your money has gone to pay whatever it was supposed to do, and then there will be another request for money for some other fees to be paid. These fees will never end until you finally wake up to the fact that you have been a victim of fraud.
Now that you have finally realised that you are a victim, you are angry and you want your money back, of course you do, but what can you do, probably nothing..., but what is this email you have just received :
[I]There is hope (isn’t there?)
You get an email from someone else you do not know offering to get your money back; you want your money back so you write asking for help. At which point you will be asked for fees to pay for the recovery of your money.
Send them your money if you want, but take a good look at the money, memorise it well, it’s colour, smell, texture, as once you send it away, those memories will be all you have left, you are still in the scam!
The only way out is to stop writing, stop sending your money, the damage has been done, chalk it down to experience and try to move on. If you stop writing, they will eventually give up and move on to their next victim. It may be worth your while to change your email address so that they can no longer contact you.
If you have given any personal information at all during the course of your communications, such as your real address, real bank details etc, then you should simply stop writing and go to the police. Take all of the details of the fraud with you, but you should not panic, you are a victim and you should seek professional help.
Websites, such as FraudWatchers.org can and will give you as much help as they can in your particular circumstances.
Summary
We hope that by making people aware of these scams that there will be less victims, the best thing to do is to simply delete any emails that you receive promising you untold riches. The money does not exist, it is a figment of a scammer’s imagination.
FURTHER READING:
Identity Theft/"Phishing" (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=60)
Types of 419 Advance Fee Fraud (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=642)
Money Recovery Scams (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/showthread.php?t=262)
Copyright © 2005 by 'The Onlooker (http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/member.php?action=getinfo&userid=126)'
For fraudwatchers.org