Online tippers – another scam?
Posted on June 2nd, 2007 by Richard Catto 2,093 views
I saw this TipIt site today and of course I immediately wondered why anyone is going to trust them to actually deliver those "small" donations to the promised people?
I mean, come on, are South Africans really this gullible?
I slap up a site, tell you to make donations to third parties via me, and you trust me? Why?
What the heck is a .to domain anyway? I’ll tell you – it’s a SCAM domain! All the scammers register in Tonga!
Why? No extradiction treaty. Your domain is safe as houses.
If you want to be taken seriously, register a dot co dot za. We’re all above board here. Absolutely no scammers at all. Scam free zone here.
Anyway, I thought I’d leave them some helpful suggestions:
How do I know that you guys are trustworthy and won’t just take the money donated and run?
Furthermore, your business process is critically flawed.
Tippers must register and pay something into their account in advance (e.g. $5).
They must tip from their account balance. As they tip, you must immediately transfer the amount from their account balance to the site they are tipping.
Asking for payment after the fact is bogus. That will not work. You will have introduced unreliability into your system and no-one will trust that a tipped amount will in fact be paid.
Your system should provide a method for a person to tip a site which is not linked into your system. The tipper should enter the domain they wish to tip and then you generate some message containing a tipcode which the tipper can then email to the site, or copy and paste into the site’s contact form. The site owner will then need to register with you in order to receive the tip.
You need to charge a commission. None of this "we’re doing it for free bullshit". No-one believes that. It affects your credibility badly. Tippers can recharge in increments of say $5, $10 and $20, and your flat rate commission is 10%.
Accept PayPal.
If you guys can be trusted and you implement a well thought out system, this could become the next big thing. Don’t squander this opportunity you have created for yourselves. Do this thing right and everyone wins.
Good luck!
Filed under donations, Scam, scam warning, tipit, tippers | 1 Comment »
SA free bandwidth campaign launched
Posted on May 31st, 2007 by Richard Catto 3,530 views
These people are spreading a message (by email) that is very dangerous.
They are attempting to persuade people to download some software that they have allegedly written that will do a “network test” of the local South African network.
They say that their software is open source and that the source code will be available for download from their site, along with a self installing program. Big deal. If you install their self installing program, you don’t know whether that program is actually the result of compiling the supplied source code.
What their program is supposed to do is access a list of local sites for about 5 minutes and then uninstall itself.
Fact is, they’re asking you to trust them that all the claims they make are true.
What they describe sounds to me like a DDOS (Distributed Denial Of Service) attack.
Even if they have the best intentions, their “network test” program could quite easily wreak havoc.
Do you really want to risk being part of taking down South Africa’s network?
I think this is madness!
Cool link: Brilliant Bru & Boegie cartoon strip of this story
Filed under bandwidth cap, bandwidth test, DDOS, June 30 2007, network test, SA free bandwidth campaign, Scam | 12 Comments »
SCAM WARNING: Kevin Trudeau’s “Mega Memory System” sold by Glomail is bogus
Posted on May 23rd, 2007 by Richard Catto 16,219 views
Glomail has been advertising (via TV infomercials) a bogus memory enhancement program called Mega Memory.
They have withdrawn the infomercial following a complaint to the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority), but they are still selling this bogus product in their stores.
Way back in 1998 already, Kevin Trudeau paid $500 000 to the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for making false claims about various products, including Mega Memory.
In 2004, Trudeau paid another fine, this time of $2 million to the FTC for making false claims about a cancer cure.
Prior to this, in the early 90s, Trudeau was jailed for almost 2 years for fraud.
Despite all this, Glomail chose to broadcast his infomercial in South Africa, and in fact still sells his Mega Memory product in their stores for R699.
Source:
Advertising watchdog cracks down on ‘memory booster’ : Mail & Guardian Online
Filed under Glomail, Kevin Trudeau, Mega Memory, Scam | 28 Comments »
WARNING: FNB Phish scam web site
Posted on February 21st, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,857 views
I was spammed the following (quoted) phishing scam email into my gmail inbox:
Dear Customers,
At FNB, we take the security of our online banking users very seriously. We have become aware of renewed attempts to encourage customers to provide their personal details in response to ‘phishing’ emails, and so have decided to improve our online banking security to guarantee maximum fraud-free online banking for our online customers.
We have upgraded our security servers with the up-to-date software machineries which will ensure total risk-free online banking for all our online customers. Due to these upgrades, you might experience difficulties logging into your account at this time, and so we strongly advice that you update your account settings through https://www.f nb.co.za/ as soon as possible.
Please be advised that at FNB, we are committed to protecting the privacy of your personal information so you can safely access your accounts and use our website because your security is our greatest priority.
Sincerely,Security and Privacy Department
FNB Bank
Clicking the "fnb.co.za" link DOES NOT take you to First National Bank’s web site.
If GMAIL is what you use to send and receive and store your email, there is a special Report Phishing option that transmits any email phish scam to Google for them to investigate. They then flag that web site as fraudulent, and in conjunction with the FireFox web browser, anyone going to that site will be very VISIBLY warned that they are on a PHISH SCAM web site.
What is the message in this warning?
- Watch out for this email scam
- Sign up for a gmail account – you no longer need an invite to do this www.gmail.com
- Switch to using FireFox web brower – download it here: www.mozilla.com
Filed under Phish, Scam | No Comments »
WARNING: Google submission scam
Posted on February 20th, 2007 by Richard Catto 1,612 views
GOOGLE SUBMISSION can guarantee the inclusion of your site on the most significant and well-known search engine in the world within less than 15 working days.
The GOOGLE SUBMISSION service costs $199
I received spam from this scammer. Do not be taken in by these assholes. Adding your web site to Google is 100% free! No-one can even guarantee that your site will be added to Google’s index at all, nevermind within a given timeframe.
The scammer set up a paypal account to receive monies. I reported this abuse to Paypal and requested that they freeze his account immediately.
Here is the official Google URL for your to submit your web site:
Submit your web site to Google
Filed under Google, Internet, Internet services, Scam | No Comments »
