The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[cromag]

I have been experiencing a significant increase in email SPAM and scams lately, but one (of the three) that I got today is worthy of notice!


First, the "from" address is spoofed to look like it came from Chase Bank, but the "reply to" address is crafted to look like PayPal.

From the body of the email:

"... We have detected irregular activity on your account. So we have limited your Account.

For your protection you have to verify this activity. Before you can continue using Your Credit/Debit Card and online access.

We noticed that your account security is outdated, you need to update your information to guarantee safe online banking by these easy steps:

Login to your account using the button below

In the second step, we authenticate with your email provider, so you must enter the correct password for your email.

Please complete all steps
..."


The demand to provide my email password is a new one for me. Ambitious, but I guess it only has to work a few times to be worthwhile.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by cromag

I have been experiencing a significant increase in email SPAM and scams lately, but one (of the three) that I got today is worthy of notice!

First, the "from" address is spoofed to look like it came from Chase Bank, but the "reply to" address is crafted to look like PayPal.

The demand to provide my email password is a new one for me. Ambitious, but I guess it only has to work a few times to be worthwhile.

Sounds rather similar to one I got today purporting to be from Amazon.ca. I had a certain amount of difficulty believing "Amazon.ca <lkjsfl9087@example.zeligz.com>" was a valid Amazon from: address so I did the rest of my playing in a Linux VM.

The body of the message, in part, read:

Dear Valued Customer,
When signing up for a free trial, we require a valid credit card to ensure that your free trial can upgrade to a paid membership at the conclusion of the 30-day period. Since your card is invalid, your free trial has been suspended. Please update your payment information.

plus some additional copy/paste from Amazon's Prime advertising.

I opened Firefox in the VM and then opened the link in the message and was led off to https://docs.google.com. There I got another link to https://trebogea.ch/amazonCA. That link wanted my Amazon login and then asked for my credit card information plus a few bits of other personal information so "Amazon.ca" could verity that I was the person who owned the account.

You'd think they would take the time to make the message at least look real enough that someone might potentially be tempted to open the link.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

Running Home, unfortunately—cost of Professional is a bit much for me when I can just use a batch file to enable the GPE.

Fair enough. I won't use Home, but the current desktop came with Win10 Pro and I was spared the need to pay for an upgrade.

(My preferred vendor is Micro Center, who has an outlet in NYC. They offer deals on refurbished, off lease, ex-corporate PC. Mine is one of them. HP Small Form Factor box, quad core i5 Intel CPU ru ning at 3.5 ghz with a turbo mode up to 3.85, Onboard Intel HD 4600 graphics, 16GB RAM, USB3, and a 256GB Panasonic SSD as boot drive. No SATA HD, but it made sense when I though about it. In its proir life it was a corporate workstation. It would be attached to a network and access corporate servers it wud see as drives. It didn't need local storage - just a fast boot drive to hold the OS and corporate applications. One reason I like HP is that their kit is designed for easy service, so easy to add unused drives I had. It cost me $250. I've been quite pleased. I am not a gamer or a developer trying to9 build applications from source, so9 what I have is more than adequate for what I do.)

The issue turned out to be an incompatibility between KB5003637's "news and interests" and a shell extension I use. Updating the shell extension fixed things.

I use taskbar tweaker here. I get informed what a new version is out and upgrade. I don't use News and Interests. That's getting flak elsewhere as half-baked, with some surprise MS released it in its current state. (I doubt I would use it even in a polished version. I have other ways to handle what it does.)
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by cromag

I have been experiencing a significant increase in email SPAM and scams lately, but one (of the three) that I got today is worthy of notice!

I use Gmail as my primary account, and it polls others. I very seldom see spam in my Inbox, and on the odd occasion I do, Report Spam insures I won't see stuff from that source again. Gmail uses Bayesian filtering, and does the4 best job I've seen. I get a fair bit of spam, but it gets labelled spam, archived, and only visible if I specifically look at is labelled spam

I'm currently getting a lot of Swedish sex spam, with womed wanting to to look at their show all videos.

Previously I was getting Turkish spam, which might not have been spam if spoke Turkish. It was stuff like invitations to business and economics conferences.

In both cases, I just didn't understand why I was getting it.

I do keep 419 spam, just to see what new wrinkles the scammers have come up with to hook suckers. Some of them are grimly amusing.

My Gmail mail store lives on Google's servers, ise a database searchable by standard Google search tools, and is one of my sources when Looking Stuff Up. And Gmail has viewers to look at attachments, so potentially nasty stuff never reached my PC. I have no need to download mail and look at it in a
Linux environment if I curious, and no particular need to download most at all.
______
Dennis

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

My Gmail mail store lives on Google's servers, ise a database searchable by standard Google search tools, and is one of my sources when Looking Stuff Up. And Gmail has viewers to look at attachments, so potentially nasty stuff never reached my PC. I have no need to download mail and look at it in a
Linux environment if I curious, and no particular need to download most at all.

I could as easily have used a Windows or Mac OSX VM as a Linux VM. The advantage to me is that I can snapshot a VM, test whatever I want to test and revert the snapshot if something unpleasant happens. In this case, since I'd been updating my SUSE Tumbleweed VM, it was handy for the test.

[cromag]

I have active mail accounts on Gmail and AOL (it used to be my Verizon account). They both do a good job and SPAM almost never makes it to my computer, but I do like to check the SPAM folders before deleting stuff -- just in case of a false positive. Since everything is disabled I don't worry about reading them before dumping them. And some of them are pretty funny.

[ownedbycats]

I once got a rather amusing scam email. Your basic "blah blah blah Nigerian prince, help me get money out of the country" thing... except that the spammer used a spoofed email header, with my own email, meaning that if I responded I would've just been emailing myself. And yes I checked; it was just a spoof and my account hadn't been compromised.

I also occasionally get emails with old password breaches threatening to release webcam footage of me watching porn videos to all my Facebook contacts. It'd be amusing to see them try, considering I'm asexual and lack either a webcam or a Facebook account.

[PeterT]

My work phone was just upgraded from an old Nokia flip phone to an Android Moto E. All is good apart from my Jabra Bluetooth headset. I used to have it connected to both my personal Pixel 4a and the Nokia and would use the Google assistant button on the phone to initiate calls on the 4a. Now that both phones support Google Assistant the button more often than not activates the Moto E.

I reckon I need to override the Bluetooth profiles that are used when the headset connects but
... so far no luck.

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[timebug]

I sometimes get the 'illegal activity on your computer' one,and a very handy link for me to give away my personal banking details to the scammer on the other end. Sad part of it is, there must be folk who DO respond, which encourages these bandits to continue!

[ownedbycats]

I once spent 10-20 minutes on a phone insisting to a scammer that my windows couldn't have a virus because I used Windex on them every day. They hung up on me.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I once spent 10-20 minutes on a phone insisting to a scammer that my windows couldn't have a virus because I used Windex on them every day. They hung up on me.

Snort, that's hysterical.

Hitch

[gmw]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I once spent 10-20 minutes on a phone insisting to a scammer that my windows couldn't have a virus because I used Windex on them every day. They hung up on me.

When in the mood I recite lyrics from Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb: Hello. Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anyone at home?

I keep hoping I am going to hit someone that recognises the lyrics and will recite them back to me, but so far no luck. Generally they or I get sick of it before I get to "There is no pain, you are receding, a distant ship smoke on the horizon. You are only coming through in waves. Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying", so sometimes I skip ahead just to get those in because I think the lines work so well for such calls.

Of course, these minor amusements are much less amusing now that so many junk calls are using automation rather than people. There have been a couple recently that really caught me off guard: you can only tell they are recordings after having received the same greeting for the umpteenth time.

[John F]

I had an interesting one the other day. Someone called saying they were from All State insurance, they started a pitch, and I had trouble understanding them. We had a couple of iterations with me saying "I can't understand you", and he would repeat the same thing. I gave up and said I was on the do not call list. He says: than why are you wasting my time. I say you called me, you are wasting my time. He says go back to my town. I ask him what that means. He tells me to go F* myself. I hung up.

[Hemmi]

When Mom gets those calls about her computer having a virus, she just tells them her daughter doesn't allow her to touch the computer and they'll need to call back later when I'm home from work.

They never seem to call back.

[silverraven]

I actually had one call back. I told him I wasn't at my computer now because I was going on a 3 hour tour on my yacht. When he called back at the 3 hour mark I explained very nicely that I needed him to call the Coast Guard to rescue me and my friends Gilligan, Ginger, Mary Ann, and The Professor because we were stranded on a deserted island. He was not amused, called me quite a few choice names, and wanted to know if I thought I was funny. I said Yes, yes I do think I'm funny. He said F you and hung up.
Honestly, I can't believe the guy actually called me back!!
I love messing with callers. The other day they called and told me my car warranty was expired. I told them I had a 1988 Yugo and for some reason they didn't want to extend my warranty. Hmm, wonder why.
S