Firefox has many advantages over the competition, The main one being the toolbar add-in. The first one you should install is Google. The really really great thing about the Google toolbar is the builtin antip-phishing detection/protection system.
The way this works is as follows: You read an email (eg. Purportedly from PayPal) that tells you your account needs updating. You click on the link and are taken to a PayPal login page. Before you can say ‘Hey – Since when has Paypal used freescamwebsites.com for it’s website!’ an overlay: 
locks the whole webpage and a suitable warning comes up. (see image)
If you are in any way concerned about Phishing scams (I have been hit myself by a spoof eBay email), get Firefox now.
As you may have guessed, my design skills are not my best feature. Since I launched Scamdex in 2004, the logo I designed using the excellent (and simple) ‘Banner Maker Pro‘ product has remained. I recently bought a copy of Xara3D (v5) and got to work. Here’s what I came up with: 
– Not bad eh?
I got a bit silly and tried out some of the animated functions but they made me feel dizzy after a while:
Anyway, here’s the deal: if someone with design skills can make me a decent logo/template design (no shockwave please!), I’ll give out a major reward.
See – really exciting prizes and all completely bone-a-fido.
Send your lovely submissions to webmaster_of_scamdex(a)Scamdex.com.
A former Michigan county treasurer was arrested last week for allegedly embezzling more than US$1.2 million in public funds, which he sent to a Nigerian fraud scam.
Thomas Katona, 56, the former treasurer of Alcona County, was arraigned in a district court on 17 January on eight counts of embezzlement by a public official and one count of forgery, according to a report in the Oscoda Press.
Held in lieu of US$1 million bond, Katona faces a maximum of 14 years in prison. He is scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on 31 January.
An audit of county finances by the Michigan Treasury Department revealed a shortage of more than US$1.2 million, state Attorney General Mike Cox told the Press.
County employees were notified last November by National City Bank that Katona had allegedly made unauthorized wire transfers of county funds, according to the press report.
Katona was first elected Alcona County treasurer in 1993. He was removed from the position two months ago by the Alcona County Board of Commissioners.
 Nordea says it has refunded the affected account holders |
Internet fraudsters have stolen around 8m kronor ($1.1m; £576,000) from account holders at Swedish bank Nordea. The theft, described by Swedish media as the world’s biggest online fraud, took place over three months.
The criminals siphoned money from customer’s accounts after obtaining login details using a malicious program that claimed to be anti-spam software.
Nordea said it had now refunded the lost money to all 250 customers affected by the scam.
“What is important is that none of our customers will have lost their money,” said a bank spokesman.
“We are doing all we can to stop this.”
A Forum has been created that you really, really shouldnt post on. That’s because it’s a so-called ‘honeypot’ forum. It’s designed to attract those bots and individuals who pepper legitimate forums (fora?) withe simple spam, often of the most eggregiously scammy, scummy and nasty. The owner of o7E.net is compiling a database of all the postings and will use it to maintain lists of those who should be shunned, whether by email address, ip address, spamvertized website or anything else
Remember – if you dont want to be ostracized by decent society, DONT POST on www.o7E.net
Experts at SophosLabs™, Sophos’s spam analysis centers, have warned of a spam email that pretends to come from a professional hitman, hired to kill the recipient, but are really interested in stealing money.The emails claim that the recipient has been stalked by a hired assassin for 10 days, but that the hitman is prepared to drop the contract if he is paid a total of $80,000. Upon receiving an initial advance payment of $20,000 the hitman claims that he will produce taped evidence of the contract to kill the reader of the email.
Part of the email, which start with a cheery greeting of “Good day” and can have a subject line of “Read this to be safe and a new life in this new year”, reads:
According to Sophos experts, once a victim has been drawn into the scam, requests can be made from the fraudster for private information which may lead to requests for money, stolen identities, and financial theft.
Read Story on Sophos Site
FRAUDSTERS are targeting Ireland’s biggest bank, AIB, in a virtually undetectable internet scam. The bank admits it does not know and cannot find out how many of its customers are affected by the fraud.
If you have an account at AIB, click here for Important Information
Cheats have found a way of overcoming security measures on AIB’s genuine website to fool customers into divulging their account details and passwords.
They are infecting customers’ computers with a “parasite” virus which activates the moment they visit AIB’s secure internet banking site and go to the “log-in” page.
t the log-in stage they are presented with a “ghost” AIB page asking them for their registration number, full security code, mobile phone number and credit card details.
However, customers cannot immediately tell the page is bogus as the website address in their browser is exactly the same as AIB’s security-assured website.
(more…)
This is great! It’s a series on British Television that shows how to avoid getting scammed, conned, cheated, robbed by those out to take what’s yours.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgBHjZUKW54[/youtube]