So Many Scams! Be Careful

I just read an item about a scam that was right here on Literacybase.   Seems a ‘user’ sent an email to a member saying it was urgent.

I have been in Cyberspace before Jamaica got Commercial Internet Connection in 1995.  America and 1st World nations were connected in 1990.   For those five years (1990-1995) we were on BBS, Bulletin Board Servers, one of which had a kind of connection to the Web.

There were scammers on BBS, and we learned how to find them, and arrive at their door.    We learned about passwords.   For example, Banker used to use Bank as his password.  This wasn’t a problem until someone hacked his account.

We learned to use ‘characters’ instead of letters.   So Banker changed his password to B&nk or used something unconnected; like To@st.

We knew how to capture passwords, ‘social engineering‘ so that when the Internet became commercially available and we were all allowed one free hour a day, we got the password of the guy in charge of the provider, and used that to give us extra time.

We were alert to malware, and many of us used Linux instead of Windows so that we were unhackable.

We knew we didn’t ‘Win’ any contest we hadn’t entered, we knew no one left us money, we weren’t going to help loot the Nigerian treasury,  and because we used non-determinate nick names, no one knew if we were a man or a woman.   And certainly not that we were in Jamaica.

In short, we early hackers knew how to hack, and would warn various agencies.

One day a fourteen year old called us.   He’d gone into a bank and created an account, “Mickey Mouse”.   He took 1c from every single account for Mickey Mouse, then after we all saw it, sent back the 1c to every account, and deleted Mickey Mouse.

The next day I passed by the bank as I sort of knew one of the ‘I.T.’ guys there.

Let me stick a pin.   The majority of I.T. (Internet Technicians)  knew nothing in those days.  They are better adapt at the Windows ‘Help’ key then most people.

So I asked him about the system and he smugly told me that everything was fine.  No problems.

Suffice it to say that Bank no longer exists.

One of the things we know, and pass on, is to Never use your Real name or address.   Never to believe anything you get in an email.   If you receive one from a ‘friend’ (someone you can have coffee with) which doesn’t sound right, you don’t respond by email.   If you can’t phone them, wait.   If it is real they will get in touch with you again and you can test if they are real, as many people will hack an email account,  read the names of contacts and write them.   If you never put anything too personal or descriptive… in other ways;

My friends know the kind of motorcycle I ride because they know me, they’ve seen me.   If Scammer learns I have a motorcycle and writes something, (even using my friend’s account) because it doesn’t sound right, I’ll lie about the brand.   Scammer won’t know, so will continue. My friends will, hence I know the account was hacked and can ring up my friend.

If you get some kind of email which seems ‘important’ from some government, don’t open it.   Sure, if you wrote to the government and this is in response, fine.  If you didn’t, then this is likely to be a scam.  You don’t open the mail, and see what happens.   In 99.99999% of the cases, nothing.  The letter was a scam.

If you’ve been on a site and communicating with someone, you send them a PM, (private message) why ask them to email you?  Why email them?   This is a scam.

If someone leaves a comment at the end of your item which begs you to contact them, alert the Mods.  This is a scam.

Assume everything is a scam until proven wrong.