Ten Years of Scamdex!
Yes, Scamdex started ten years ago, in 2004! When I started, it was a very simple site, hand-written in Perl and was purely a database of email scams. Now it includes Scam Tip Off Reports and many more emails. I would like to thank my visitors, who mostly arrive via a search engine (mainly Google) →
Spurious Awards Scam
The “Spurious Award Scam” is a vanity-targetted scam, similar to the “Who’s Who” scam where you are to →
Five Reasons Why Nigeria is the Scamsters’ Safe Haven
You’d think that by now, everybody would know better than to fall for any of the infamous “Nigerian scams,” such as the 419 scams. (The “419” designation comes from the section of the Nigerian Criminal Code that addresses fraud.) Yet Nigerian scams are alive and well. The 419 scams come in several variations, with a →
“Nigerian Scam” is still working – Police Reports show.
I occasionally think to myself; Surely everyone’s heard of the Nigerian Scam (aka Advance Fee Fraud or 419 Scam, after the relevant section of the Nigerian Criminal Code). But, alas, people still continue to fall for these simple scams. The deal is often identical, only the names and places have changed . These places are →
WT Duck is the “Nigerian Scam”
Here’s a funny cartoon take on the “Nigerian” Scam (aka 419 scam, Advance Fee Fraud). →
New Scam Information SIte – infomercialscams.info
I would like to give a shout-out to a new site that I’ve come across – INFOMERCIALSCAMS.INFO. InfomercialScams.info is a website designed to help the public identify all types of scams and schemes on and off the internet. They also try to help people distinguish between scams and actual deals by providing them with information →
Violet and Allen Large – Lottery Windfall Scam
I’ve seen hundreds of spam emails, for a year or more, that reference the Canadian couple, Violet and Allen Large. The Story The elderly couple, who lived in Nova Scotia, won $11.2 million in a Lotto 6/49 jackpot in July 2010. They decided, due to the fact hat they were retired and had plenty of →
RECAP DISTRIBUTION IS A JOB SCAM
A recent Scam Tip Off Report tells me of a Logistics Position for Recap Distribution. Supposedly operating in Finland, all the money seems to flow to Russia. It’s a simple enough scam – You take a job as a ‘Receivables Clerk’. Packages arrive and you send them on to another address. Money comes in to →
Hey buddy, what password are you using?
SplashData.com recently published the following information regarding the most popular 2012 passwords on the web. The ranking was →
Scammers turning your WordPress Website into a Spam/Malware Distributor
So I get an email from Google complaining that several links from my son’s blog (which I will →
dDos attacks on Scamdex – an apology.
Running the Scamdex Website isn’t a full-time job but occasionally I fall foul of the lovable rogues who perpetrate these scams and who get upset when I tell people about their doings. For example, from mid November in 2012, I had a week of distributed denial of service (dDos) attacks which effectively made Scamdex.com stop →
Just how valuable is a Hacked PC?
The massively informative “Krebs on Security” Blog published this graphic which is a startling depiction of just how valuable a compromised PC can be to cyber criminals. Often the owner of such a PC does not even know that this has happened, and there are millions that have. Check your own PC regularly for oddities →
The [domain] names change, but the “Data Conversion Job” Scam remains the same…
“Data Conversion Job Scam”? Yes – this has been running for several months now. This is how it works: A spam email, probably coming via a job seekers website [such as Careerbuilder.com or Dice.com or Monster.com or Craigslist.com] tells the victim about a great employment opportunity he can do at home – all he has →
FTC Kills “MAKE MONEY FROM WEBSITES” Scam
An Own-Your-Own Website Business Opportunity where consumers would make money from links to major retailers was halted by the FTC. An operation that lured consumers into spending thousands of dollars for Internet websites and advertising by misrepresenting that they could make lots of money by linking the sites to major retailers. The court ordered a →
Alleged Image Copyright Theft Scam is a Money Spinner
I got a comment recently on my blog about a scam that I was unaware of but which, after a small amount of research has made me boiling mad. First, some background The Internet is awash with images – mostly pictures of my cat, I admit, but they are everywhere – the World Wide Web →