Don’t spam with comments this way

I just got this comment:

Submitted on 2009/12/09 at 12:18am

Meanwhile she indiana oxycontin attorneys the verdict nasacort aq flonase levitra prescription drugs… [] …will pick synthroid pravachol zyrtec amaryl synalar they think estradiol injections abdominal pain you blame sumycin and hepatitis wonder she elston.

It was long nonsense - no even attempt to be English or make any sense. It had about fifty links. So I deleted it.

There’s no way that a comment like that will be accepted at a reputable site. If there was a reasonable comment which related to the post in question, I would have approved it. Also the links were no follow which makes no sense. But then the spammer was rather dumb to begin with to spam so much.

Not all bloggers will allow comments on their blogs to begin with. nd most have their comments be no follow. The spammers of all kind (email, comments, and so on) make all of our lives more difficult.

Property Tax Reassessment Scams Rising

With property prices going down you can ask for your property to be reassessed (at least in California) if the assessed price is higher than the current value. Because of prop 13 in California this only applies if you bought it recently at the height of the real estate bubble.

Here’s the scam and your rights from the Los Angles County Assessors web site:

Various private companies are sending mailings to property owners offering their services to pursue a reduction in their property taxes. These companies may charge hundreds of dollars to file for a reduction in value on behalf of the property owner. Some companies are even imposing late fees if the application is received after an arbitrary deadline.

Be aware that solicitations from private companies offering to pursue a reduction in property taxes must clearly indicate that they are NOT a government agency and that their services are NOT approved or endorsed by any government agency.

Failure to provide such notice is a violation of California law. If you or someone you know receives an illegal solicitation, please contact the Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs by phone at (800) 973-3370 or visit their website.

Read the whole article at the Los Angles County Assessor’s site.

Sheriff’s charity scam

Don’t get me wrong. I love sheriffs, the police, highway petrol, firemen, and so on. I even love them when they give me a ticket (I wish I had not been caught speeding but that’s the risk you take).

It is because most of us feel the same way about our public servants who put their lives on the line for us on a daily basis that the Sheriff’s charity scam works so well. You get a phone call from a boiler rom telemarketing company.

Say your name is Joe:

“Hello, Joe. This is John from the injured Sheriff’s retirement fund. I see you have contributed to us for the last three years. How much would you like to contribute today.”

There’s only one answer to give: “I do not accept phone solicitations. Please send me information about the charity so I can decide if I’m interested to contribute.”

I don’t want to prejudge. It has never happened to me. A genuine bona fide charity will gladly send you information or will at least guide you to their websites. The boiler room “charities” will stay on script using every manipulative techniques to persuade you to donate money and will send a courier to collect the check or cash immediately.

My guess is that they phone every person in a street and have their “courier” handy to collect the money. I was gullible enough to donate once about twenty years ago and immediately afterward I started thinking about the fact that they sent a courier to collect my cash within fifteen minutes.

I did some research and yes most of these telemarketters do work for so called charities but ninty five cents out of a dollar goes to the marketing company.

How to use WHOIS to see who is spamming you

This post starts with the following HubPage - read it first and then come back here for the full reveal:

Using whois to find out who is spamming you

OK if you didn’t go there you notice that the domain they are trying to send you to is different from the one they pretend you would go to. For example if you click on the yahoo link blow you’ll go to google:

http://yahoo.com

The code for those who understand HTML is:

<a title=”Pretends to be one site while sending you to another.” href=”http://google.com” target=”_blank”>http://yahoo.com</a>

The href=”xxxx” will send you to xxxx domain. whatever comes before</a> is what is displayed.

Anyway, so I received this spam pretending to be from an Australian media firm. It was not phishing
and I assume it sends you shopping (but it could be something real dangerous - worms, viruses or anything is possible.

I ran the whois on one of the sites the email was trying to send me too and here’s the result:

Domain ID:D3579342-AFIN
Domain Name:THELIKELIVE.IN
Created On:24-Apr-2009 13:48:48 UTC
Last Updated On:24-Apr-2009 13:48:49 UTC
Expiration Date:24-Apr-2010 13:48:48 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Visesh Infotecnics Ltd. (R42-AFIN)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:DI_9759019
Registrant Name:Anton Nikiforov
Registrant Organization:Anton Nikiforov
Registrant Street1:Smolnaya str. d.21 kv.360
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:Moscow
Registrant State/Province:Moscow
Registrant Postal Code:125445
Registrant Country:RU
Registrant Phone:+7.4957412992
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:+7.4957412992
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email:
Admin ID:DI_9759019
Admin Name:Anton Nikiforov
Admin Organization:Anton Nikiforov
Admin Street1:Smolnaya str. d.21 kv.360
Admin Street2:
Admin Street3:
Admin City:Moscow
Admin State/Province:Moscow
Admin Postal Code:125445
Admin Country:RU
Admin Phone:+7.4957412992
Admin Phone Ext.:
Admin FAX:+7.4957412992
Admin FAX Ext.:
Admin Email:
Tech ID:DI_9759019
Tech Name:Anton Nikiforov
Tech Organization:Anton Nikiforov
Tech Street1:Smolnaya str. d.21 kv.360
Tech Street2:
Tech Street3:
Tech City:Moscow
Tech State/Province:Moscow
Tech Postal Code:125445
Tech Country:RU
Tech Phone:+7.4957412992
Tech Phone Ext.:
Tech FAX:+7.4957412992
Tech FAX Ext.:
Tech Email:
Name Server:NS1.11DNSAVAILABLE.COM
Name Server:NS2.HOSTAPOTHECARY.COM

So where they are pretending to send you is Australia, they try to send you was an Indian domain, the spammer lives in Moscow, Russia with an email in Autria. By the way the email itself pretended to come from Leopoldo Mayes [etoopi@bowjazz.com] note bowjazz.com is a perfectly reasonable domain registered by godaddy.

So basically note the spammers and email scammers do it all with smoke and mirrors and you just have to be careful. Do not click on links in emails unless you know who they come from and you know you are not redirected.

You can actually use javascript to make the status show the wrong pretend site. So use good anti-phishing and anti-virus software.

AlertPay Scam

I was examining an offer from an Internet marketing program and I noticed that they would pay you with AlerPay. Since I had never heard of AlertPay. I did a little research and discovered that it is like Paypal but charges you more. Also it has a bad name and many people use it to start scams.

I don’t want to waste my time to register with yet another company. As far as I’m concerned there are enough reputable companies which deal with Paypal who are excellent in protecting the consumer’s rights, that I would not deal with a company which wants to pay my affiliate fees with AlertPay.

Note I’m not saying there’s anything necessarily wrong with AlertPay, only that it has been used by some scammers and I don’t want to join yet another Internet banking institution.

Out of time scam

“Baby, baby, baby, you’re out of time….” The Rolling Stones.

So many scams start with offering you a free sample or CDs. DVDs or something. When you ask for the free sample the charge you a shipping and handling and then they put you on an autoship program.

Autoship is where every month you are shipped something and are charged for it. The non-scam programs give you plenty of time to cancel.

Here’s the scam: And, I’ll mention at least one company’s product. A freind ordered some acai berry pills which were supposed to be for weight loss. She had fourteen days before the autoship was to start but the test pills did not arrive until the thirteenth day.

My friend was wise enough to cancel in time but this ploy often works in you getting at least one months of the product at a great price. I was recently caught by this when I did not realize what I had ordered.

As I have written elsewhere always read the contract. But in some cases I did not read and the out of time ploy got me.

The ultimate out of time ploy is when you have three days to cancel and the password does not arrive in time for you to cancel. Anyway it would take you way longer to test the software.

Go with my host only scam

Last night there was a free Internet offer which looked too good to be true. So I tested it to see where the scam was. The claim was to join their affiliate program. Get a free websiht and you are guaranteed $125 the first day you qualified.

I saw a scam comming so I went forward as much as possible without paying a dime. The first part was to become affiliates at three different places. So far no cost.

Then came part two where I had to supply them with a hosting company. Here’s was the scam. You had to go with their expensive hosting company. Now, I already have three excellent paid hosting companies and one free one (more about that later).

So OK I pay them $130 (the cost of a domain plus hosting for one year) and I’ll get $125 in the first twenty four hours. Now having been burnt by an alleged scam artist, Adam Ginsberg, I read the contract.

Now this contract was not as unconscionable as Adam Ginsberg’s contract where they said they would not warranty their product’s “FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.”

I did notice that you could not get a payout until you had earned $200. So their $125 in twenty four hours was just a come on. Unless you did a huge amount of work yourself to send visitors to your site you would nevr get any pay out.

There was a third section too, which I could not reach since I stopped there. My guess is that you would have to pay even more nefore you would get their non-existent $125.

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Mathematics of multi-level marketing

Multi-level marketing or network marketing is a form of business where you sell products and make a commission - so far so good. Moreover, and this is where the potential scam comes in, you make part of the commission in your downline.

Your downline is all the people you have recruited to join the MLM (in the form of a pyramid - hence the idea that all MLMs are pyramid schemes - most legal). So the MLM promises you huge amounts of money based not on your sales but on the sales of your downline.

You end up with a portion of your downline’s commission as I mentioned. Now, for the mathematics of multi-level marketing. Say you recruite two and they each recruite two and so on. Let’s see how many levels before we get the seven billion people on the whole planet:

You
2
4
8
16
32
64
128
256
512
1024

Most MLMs stop at this level. No lets look at the way most MLMs talk aboit your downline. They talk about getting six to ten people at each level:

You
6
36
216
1,296
7,776
45,656
279,976
1,679,616
10,077,696
60,466,176
362,797,056
2,176,782,336
13,060,694,016

OK by now all the people on Earth are members of the MLM and more than exist in the world. Now, all the above assumes you started the MLM and were at the top but assuming you are already at level seven:

Now, most MLM companies you may join already have more than 50,000 members so if you were to have a downline of seven more levles every human being on Earth would have to be part of the company. That’s why pyramid schemes (legal or not) cannot work and in reality a few peopl in MLM schemes make a lot of money and most lose their shirts and more…..

Genesis of don’t be scammed

Over the years my wife and I have been scammed by contractors, consultants, seminar leaders, Realtors, mortgage brokers, car sales persons and so on. My guess is that most people all over the world have experienced some of what we have.

Last December 12-15 I went to a seminar given by a self described Internet guru. He was good at selling. He sold us a bill of goods and I foolishly bought an Internet software which was supposed to build me internet stores instantly.

The software cost $4,000. This was quite reasonable if the software had delivered. It also came with a free bonus which the company had valued at $3,000. It took me a month to realize that the software had not been tested, kept going wrong and caused more loss of time than it saved.

The company support was atrocious and rude. They refused to deliver the free bonus unless I spent more money to go with their hosting company even though they had never mentioned that. I asked for a refund and got the proverbial one fingered (or two fingered in Britain where I grew up) salute.

I disputed the charge with my credit card company which did not back me up and kept asking for more information. Eventually last week I reached the end of the line with the credit card company and realized that the scamming company had written their contract in such a way that I was screwed and there was no suing them or anything.

Basically in the contract I gave up all my rights.

So I decided to start this site to help people from getting scammed. What I learned from this experience is:

Read any contract you sign from the beginning to the end.
Note that no body can con you without your help. You need to participate in the con yourself.
Typically there is an element of greed involved in any scam. In this case my greed was to save time. The software was going to save me so much time that $4,000 was cheap if it had worked.
Most importantly: if it looks too good to be true, the chances are it is not true. In this case, I told my wife, “I don’t get it.If what the seminar leader claims is true, the software is worth $100,000 not just $4,000.” That should have been enough of a warning that I would have left it alone.

Don’t be scammed

» Find the relevant defensive information against the scammers

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Don’t spam with comments this way

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