Scam Detectives is a brand new website with one single aim. To reduce the number of people taken in by online scams every year and stop YOU from losing your hard earned money.

We’ll be bringing you news and advice from around the world, alerting you to new scams as soon as we become aware of them.

We’ve also put together a great range of online security games to help you test your current awareness of scams and fraudulent activity and identify the sorts of scams you need to research a little further to protect yourselves.

You can sign up for our newsletter to keep up to date as well.

Remember that most online retailers are safe, and with a few precautions you can make online shopping a fun, safe and reliable experience. Check out our Safe Shopping tips for more information.

Stay safe online, and don’t have nightmares!

We now have a great range of PC and Home Security products available in the Scam Detectives Security Supplies online store (powered by Amazon).

We’ve just been reading the full, horrifying details of young Ashleigh Hall, a 17 year old girl who was groomed online by predator Peter Chapman, before being kidnapped and murdered after Chapman convinced her to meet him by posing as a teenage DJ.

As details emerged of Chapman’s online life it became clear that he was an accomplished and successful liar, convincing literally dozens of girls to send him sexually explicit photographs and to answer questionnaires detailing their sexual experiences and fantasies for his sick gratification.

The full terrifying story is documented in many places both on and off-line, so we’re not going to go into more detail here. What we’d like to do is to ask you, no, beg you, to talk to your kids about who they’re talking to online.

We’ve published our own e-book about doing just that and you can download it Here

Key points:
Keep your computer where your kids know that you could walk past at any time – avoid letting them go online in their bedroom or where you can’t see what they’re doing

Remember that most mobile phones now offer access to the internet – your kids may be going online without you knowing. Do regular searches for your child’s name, nickname, classmates names on social networking sites and look out for profiles that may belong to your child

Learn to use the websites your kids are using – become their friend on Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Twitter etc. and keep an eye on their friend lists

Talk to your kids about the anonymous nature of the Internet – Anyone can pretend to be anybody online and pictures are not proof of ID

Be approachable – Encourage your children to talk about the people they talk to online and let them know that if they are uncomfortable with any conversations they can talk to you about it

Don’t try and ban your kids from using social networking sites – They’ll find other ways of getting online if you do and you will lose ANY control

NEVER let your kids meet up with someone they’ve met online

Use parental controls to monitor your children’s online activities – it’s not snooping, it’s keeping them safe

Remember: You wouldn’t let your child invite perfect strangers into your home. When they’re on Facebook, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

We’re getting reports of another scam doing the rounds on Facebook & Twitter. This time, scammers are trying to recruit “iPad testers” to receive Apple’s latest gadget free of charge, in return for reporting on its useability and functionality.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Here’s how the scam works

The scammers create a page called “iPad Researchers Wanted – Get An iPad Early And Keep It!”, “The Mega iPad Giveaway” or similar. They recruit fans, who are then encouraged to recruit other fans from their facebook friends.

When you sign up, you’re taken to a quiz, and asked to enter your mobile number to receive the results.

You (and all the friends you invited…) will then be signed up for a premium rate subscription service which will cost you in the region of $10 (£6.70) every week until you unsubscribe.

Graham Cluely, senior analyst at Internet Security firm Sophos said “”Not all of them pretend to offer an iPad, so be on your guard for other scams too. The most important thing to remember is to not invite your friends to any Facebook page or application until you have thoroughly researched what it’s about. Furthermore, you should never be tempted to hand over your mobile phone number to some daft internet quiz.”"

Sophos have released a useful video explaining how the scam works:

We’re receiving reports of a number of different “cold calling” telephone scams which are doing the rounds right now.

In one, telephone users have been contacted by a “representative of BT” demanding payment of an outstanding balance to avoid having their service cut off. The caller then offers to prove their “bona fides” by disconnecting the line temporarily, which they appear to do, before calling back and further demanding payment.

“The man was very persistent and convincing” said a victim who wished to remain anonymous. “He said that I owed £100 and if I didn’t pay, then my line would be cut off. He said that he could prove he was from BT by temporarily disconnecting my line. He told me to hang up and then try making a call out. When I did, I couldn’t call out. No dialing tone, nothing. He then called back and took my credit card details to pay the outstanding balance.”

What actually happened was that the caller simply muted the call and let the victim hang up, ensuring that the call would not be disconnected. Only the person initiating the call can actually disconnect it, if they don’t hang up then the call remains live. When the victim then tries to make an outgoing call, they can’t, because the line is engaged.

Stop cold calls for £9 per month

In another scam, telephone users are contacted by scammers claiming to represent either BT or the Telephone Preference Service and told that they can subscribe to a service to stop sales calls for only £9 per month, payable by credit or debit card. In actuality, both BT and the TPS offer this service for free.

Points to remember:

• NEVER give your credit/debit card or bank details over the telephone unless you are making a purchase from a supplier you know and trust AND you have initiated the contact
• NEVER allow a caller to pressure you into giving them money
• ALWAYS ask anyone who calls you claiming to be collecting an outstanding debt to contact you in writing to confirm the existence of the debt before even thinking about paying them

We’ve been scrutinising our visitor statistics here at Scam-Detectives HQ and we’ve found that our visitors are coming from literally all over the world. Just today we’ve had visitors from North America, Canada, North & South Africa, most countries of Europe, India, China, Indonesia, and Australia.

We’ve been really pleased to see that our articles have been translated and reproduced on blogs Worldwide too, and we’re grateful to those webmasters and bloggers who’ve chosen to share our scam news and warnings with their readership.

Taking into account our Global readership, we’ve decided to add the brilliant “Global Translate” tool to our blog.

You can now translate Scam Detectives into your chosen language at the click of a button and ensure that the key messages of our blogs aren’t “lost in translation” and we can truly say – “Welcome”, “Bienvenue”, “Wilkommen”, “Welkom”, “Ha’ándáh”, “Bienveníu”, “Üdvözöljük”….

We’ve talked about employment scams on Scam Detectives before. Scammers prey on the need to find a job quickly and offer great sounding promises of employment, but only if you pay upfront for certification, expenses or placement fees. The US Federal Trade Commission has put together a great video to warn people about these scams.

It’s very much aimed at US citizens, but the message is Global.

Remember:
NEVER pay anybody to find you work. Employers pay agencies to find staff for them and a legitimate job offer never comes with a price tag

I had a call from a client this afternoon. He’d broken his iPhone, and was looking for a good deal on a replacement. Unfortunately, he still has 12 months to run on his current mobile contract, and doesn’t want to commit to another bill, so he had to look for unlocked ones. Amazon has the 16GB 3GS in white for £587.99 but that was a bit on the rich side for him.

He called me because he’d found one for $325 (£212.00) but he wasn’t 100% confident about ordering it.

I checked out the site and immediately called him back to tell him not to touch it with a bargepole.

Why?

• The domain name was a free subdomain with no “whois” info available
• On loading the website, it spawned several popups for poker and ‘adult orientated’ websites
• There was no company logo or header on the site
• The website had only 2 products, both iphones and both vastly underpriced
• The website had no contact details beyond an anonymous “contact” form – no address, no telephone number, no company name, nothing.
• The order form required credit card details yet was not encrypted – although it did try to fake encryption by forcing a small padlock image to appear in the address bar
• There’s loads more “red flags” I could go on about, but I really don’t need to carry on!

When you’re looking for a great deal on electronics, or any other item for that matter, you really need to be sure that the company you’re buying from is legit. Check out our hints for safe shopping and above all remember 2 things:

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is and Use your instincts – If something just doesn’t feel right, walk away.
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We now have a great range of PC and Home Security products available in the Scam Detectives Security Supplies online store (powered by Amazon).

Twitter users have been hit by yet another phishing scam. Messages such as “Lol. this is me??”, “lol, this is funny.”,”Lol. this you??” and “ha ha, u look funny on here”. have been appearing on Twitter profiles and in emails all over the world.

The link contained in the message leads to a fake Twitter login page, which, when you login, transmits your username and password to the scammer, who can then

• NEVER enter your login details on a page that you’ve reached via an email link or DM
• DO NOT use the same password for every web service that you use
• NEVER reveal your username and password to anyone
• TAKE CARE that any applications that you authorise to access your Twitter account is genuine

If you think that your Twitter account has been compromised, Visit the Twitter Support page on compromised accounts here

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We now have a great range of PC and Home Security products available in the Scam Detectives Security Supplies online store (powered by Amazon).



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Sending someone an e-card can be a nice gesture and can be environmentally friendly

There are loads of legitimate e-card sites out there, which will help you to send your e-cards without incident.

Unfortunately, there’s also a load of viruses that are transmitted disguised as e-cards.

We received this email a couple of minutes ago

You have received an e-card

To pick up your eCard, click on the following link (or copy & paste it into your web browser):

http://kamien-grabica.**.**/ecard.exe (LINK DISABLED)

Your card will be aviailable for pick-up beginning for the next 30 days.

This one links to e-card.exe, a nasty little virus which has been reported to cause some machines to display the “Blue screen of Death” and refuse to boot in anything but safe mode.

So how do I tell if someone really has sent me an e-card?

If there’s no name on the email and it just says “Someone sent you an e-card” then delete it. A legitimate e-card site will tell you who has sent the e-card.

Email your friend (using the email address in your contacts, not the one from the email) to ask them if they really did send you an e-card. Explain nicely that you’re wary of opening e-cards because you’ve heard that some of them contain viruses. If you get a response saying “Yes, I sent it”, then you know it’s for real. If they respond “Hey, nice to hear from you, but it wasn’t me” then you can safely delete the email without fear of offending anyone!

This little gem is quite clever. It relies on a few things

• That you will trust an email from Microsoft
• That you will have heard of the “Conficker Worm” which is a real virus
• That you will believe that your ISP will have notified Microsoft that your network is infected, rather than advising you directly

Dear Microsoft Customer,

Starting 12/11/2009 the ‘Conficker’ worm began infecting Microsoft customers unusually rapidly. Microsoft has been advised by your Internet provider that your network is infected.

To counteract further spread we advise removing the infection using an antispyware program. We are supplying all effected Windows Users with a free system scan in order to clean any files infected by the virus.

Please install attached file to start the scan. The process takes under a minute and will prevent your files from being compromised. We appreciate your prompt cooperation.

Regards,
Microsoft Windows Agent #2 (Hollis)
Microsoft Windows Computer Safety Division

Rather than containing software to repair the infection, the attachment itself contains malware which will infect your machine. Delete the email immediately.

Points to remember

• Microsoft would not contact you directly to warn of a virus infection
• Even if they did, they wouldn’t send you the software to delete it
• Your ISP would not advise Microsoft of a virus infection on your network. If they picked it up at all (which is doubtful) they would advise you directly
• You should NEVER open an attachment sent to you by email unless you are expecting it and trust the source

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We now have a great range of PC and Home Security products available in the Scam Detectives Security Supplies online store (powered by Amazon).