Further to my column a week ago (sorry, subscription only) on the dialler scam, here’s an update. I’m not sure this is the first time, but it’s a good sign: Ireland’s Eircom has pledged to reimburse consumers who unwittingly fall victim to internet fraudsters that hijack people’s computer modems and run up large telephone bills, … Read more
Wiltshire’s finest are now onto phishing scams, thanks to the head of the county’s fraud squad receiving one himself. World Entertainment News Network (no URL available) Sunday quoted Detective Inspector Paul Ginger of the Wiltshire police as saying : “I was amazed to receive one of these messages on my work email”, adding: “You have to … Read more
Combatting phishing ain’t easy. So how does a new weapon, Inspector Brown, mentioned in a comment to an earlier posting here on phishing, shape up? Inspector Brown is a program that sits between you and your browser (IE, only, I think, but the documentation is minimalist, to put it mildly) and warns you if a … Read more
Here are a couple more tools designed to thwart phishers: EarthLink, a U.S. Internet provider, has today added something called ScamBlocker to its Toolbar, and made it available to all users, not just subscribers. ScamBlocker will “alert you before you enter a Web page that’s on our list of fraudulent sites”. SpoofGuard, from a team … Read more
Here’s how Russians and other scammers are getting their illicit gains back home. The BBC website reports on a scam where (probably Russian) scammers are posting job ads claiming to be charities looking for people to forward donations made by hi-tech firms. Those responding to the job ads — usually for something like a “correspondence … Read more