ScamsOnline

Man has camera stolen, buys one off eBay, it’s HIS camera!

A 44-year-old German businessman whose digital camera was stolen at a restaurant was relieved when he managed to buy exactly the same model on the eBay Internet auction site to match his accessories.

Crackdown on spam scam sites

Police have shut down eight overseas websites after tens of thousands of people received bogus emails purporting to be from their bank asking for updated account details.

Consumers have been warned to ignore emails asking for personal information after it emerged that Westpac, Commonwealth and National Bank customers had been targeted. The sites in China, Turkey, Korea and Germany were put out of action during the past four days after some customers received several copies of the emails.

Victorian Consumer Affairs Minister Marsha Thomson said yesterday she was concerned that some people might fall for the scam, as the emails contained the bank's logo and a web link, making them look legitimate.

Full story

2005's Top Spam Subject Lines

Remember this scam? In the 1990s, e-mail hoaxers commonly claimed to be passing along a method for getting easy money from Bill Gates. While that particular fraud has faded, the spam-fighting team at Stock scams, phony transaction records and cheap offers says celebrity-based variations continue, even as spammers get more sophisticated.

According to AOL, one of the most prevalent spam subject lines in 2005 was "Donald Trump Wants You _ Please Respond." Another frequent pitch played on the belief that the tech world just gives stuff away to people in the know: "Get an Apple iPod Nano, PS3 or Xbox360 for Free."

Full story

Avoiding Internet Scams

Last year hundreds of people reported Internet fraud in Idaho. The majority of cases included auction website fraud such as eBay or Yahoo! Shopping.

One Idaho Falls man wants to warn against a specific scam that's been attempted on him six times in the last four months. Under any other circumstances, Jerry Sinkovich would be rich!

Full story

Hacker pleads guilty to computer attack on eBay

An Oregon man pleaded guilty to using a "worm" program to take control of 20,000 computers via the Internet and launch an attack on auction website eBay in 2003, US prosecutors said. Anthony Clark, 21, faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of at least 250,000 dollars, according to Luke Macaulay of the US Attorney's Office.

Clark and accomplices unleashed a "worm" program that burrowed into computers with Microsoft Windows operating systems and turned the machines into obedient "bots", Macaulay said.

Full story

Fraud Alleged at Red Cross Call Centers

Nearly 50 people have been indicted in connection with a scheme that bilked hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Red Cross program to put cash into the hands of Hurricane Katrina victims, according to federal authorities.

Seventeen of the accused worked at the Red Cross claim center in Bakersfield, Calif., which handled calls from storm victims across the country and authorized cash payments to them. The others were the workers' relatives and friends, prosecutors said last week.

Full story

Businessman wins e-mail spam case

A Channel Island businessman has won damages from a company which sent him internet e-mail spam. Nigel Roberts, who lives in Alderney, took action against Media Logistics UK after he had junk e-mails sent to his personal account.

Identity Theft

Many people think that identity theft is a crime committed by professional thieves who operate large scams. These same people think the only way to stop identity theft is to pass laws. (As if we didn't have enough laws already that are not being enforced today.)

In fact, most identity theft is local; committed by a friend, a relative or someone else as a one-on-one crime. Laws won't stop 99% of identity theft, the only defense is common sense.

Chris Pirillo of the GnomeReport discovered the real cause of one typical identity theft and wrote about it in the GnomeReport. You have to read this one! Click here.

Terrorists clone phones - but customers expected to foot the bill

Canadian telecom service provider Rogers Communications has been the victim of numerous number-cloning operations by the terrorist group Hezbollah -- in which even the phone number of CEO Ted Rogers was "borrowed" -- but steadfastly refused to address consumer complaints about the problem, insisting that customers were liable for outsized bills.

Read these Articles in Google's Gmail

Anyone with a free e-mail account on Google's Gmail service can now read this web site's articles as regular e-mail messages. Each article will appear in your Gmail in-box shortly after it is published on this web site; there is no need to wait for a once-a-week e-mail message.