There’s been quite a bit of coverage on the radio about a scam, where people receive a call on their mobile phone, but it rings off quickly, either just before they answer or as they answer.

The scam relies on the victims having a natural, and reasonable inclination to ring the number back.

What the victim hears when they call back is the tone that tells them call is ringing. Many people are very patient and listen for a fair time before they give up. What they are actually listening to is a recording of a ringing tone, on a premium rate number. of course, the longer the victim holds on and the more they call back, the more money they are paying on their phone bill to the scammer.

I’ve recently had a selection of calls to my mobile phone which fit the profile, but I have not wasted my money by ringing them back. In my case they all called on different days between 11:00 and 12:30 GMT, presumably hoping I’d call them back at lunch time.

The numbers which called are :

• 07506738901
• 07791832748
• 07791835658
• 07791841162
• 07908583355
• 07908583385
• 07908583386
• 07908583387
• 07944453453

My advice is not to call back any number you don’t recognise, particularly if it rings off quickly. Genuine callers will wait for you to answer and will try again.

If you know of any other numbers that might be linked with this type of scam, please add your own comments.

Freecycle is an organisation that tries to keep unused objects out of landfill, largely through locally based email groups on yahoo. Unfortunately, as with every good idea, there can be some downsides.

I am a moderator for the Congleton Freecycle group, and as such have to try and keep out the obvious scammers and spammers.

Recently, I’ve seen a surge in a particular type of scam on the freecycle groups.

It starts with someone, who usually has recently joined the freecycle group, advertising a high value item, such as a PS/2 or a Tom Tom Sat Nav.

When people respond to the advert, they get a reply saying the item has gone but directing them to a web site where the goods can be won  or purchase cheaply.

At best victims that fall for it provide referral commission to the scammer, and at worst they provide their identity and credit card details to the scammer for later fraud or identity theft.

A typical scam response read like this:

I’m really sorry, but the Playstation 2 has already been given away to someone else I wish I had more to give away.

However, the least I can do is try and provide with some useful information to grab yourself a free Playstation 3 (which is how I got mine, which arrived in just over a week!)

First of all, you need to head over to <Scam web site> - sign up to the website, and then you need to complete an offer… I’d recommend either doing the the Lovefilm offer or the HSBC Bank Offer (where you just have to open a bank account), as they’re both free! Or, you could complete the Gala Bingo offer which only costs £5!

All of the companies which are offers are really well known so there’s no risk.

I have already received my Playstation 3 through my door! And am awaiting some new games for it too. I was really skeptical about this at first, but my friend showed me what he had received for free, so I thought I may as well try it out, and I’m so glad I did! (I have the new iPhone 3G coming soon too!)

If you have any questions, please reply to this email with the subject as QUESTION.

Once again, I’m so sorry that you missed out on this Playstation 2, but I hope that you will be able to obtain a brand new Playstation 3 just like I did this way.

The website again is:<Scam web site>

Thanks a lot.

<Scammer name>
xxx

At the recent W3C Technical plenary in Cannes, I was discussing issues of literal translation. A Japanese delegate came up with a phrase that was new to me. “緑の黒髪 （みどりのくろいかみ）” The phrase literally means green/black hair, but has an idiomatic meaning that the hair is very dark and lustrous.

Debian release a new version of Linux on 23^rd October 2008.

As I run an Apache testing web server on my Debian box, I installed the most recent updates. Then came the simple question of How can I be sure that I have the most recent version of Debian Linux.

The simplest way is to open the file /etc/debian_version . On a correctly installed Debian System, this has a single line entry showing the version number, as defined by the package base files.

In the article Enabling “Send To” from Microsoft Office to Mozilla Thunderbird I wrote about restoring the Send To email recipient link from within applications.

Microsoft Windows Vista also seems to lose the right click on a file for “Send To mail recipient”. This is another MAPI problem, and appears to be a problem for many mail applications including Outlook, as well as Thunderbird, so conspiracy theorists won’t be able to blame this on Micro$oft protectionism for their own email programs.

I looked at several solutions for restoring the missing link. The best solution that I found was in the article “Restore missing Mail Recipient entry to the Send To menu in Windows Vista“, where Ramesh Srinivasan suggests 3 approaches.

The simplest approach restored the send to link for me on Windows Vista, and used his simple automated tool at: //www.winhelponline.com/fixes/

I still haven’t worked out why I lost my send to link from my file manager in the first place - I assume it’s just a vagary of Vista following one of the many updates.

Having again hosted a pair of Japanese students, who are learning English, it still amazes me how they cope with the vagaries of English spelling.
Just when they were leaving, I remembered a few verses that were designed to try the patience of anyone learning our language.
The verses below have be variously attributed to NATO, in an attempt to get translators to discard an array of accents, to George Bernard Shaw and to a poem written in 1922 entitled “The Chaos” by Gerard Nolst Trenité a.k.a. “Charivarius” 1870 - 1946. I suspect that the version presented here, is an updated edition of “Charivarius” as the original contains some fairly antiquated wording.
Regardless of their original source, it is an amazing achievement for a non-native speaker of English to read these verses intelligibly.

English is tough

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough –
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

I recently received some spam which talked about compensating victims of Nigerian email scams.

This is a particularly noxious scam, as the spammer is targeting people who are already victims of fraud. Presumably the organisers feel that if somebody is gullible and greedy enough to fall for one fraud, they are an ideal candidate for another.

The scammers claim to be from a “Nigerian Government Reimbursement Committee” but host their web site at itgo.com (also known as freeserver.com) who provide free web hosting. The pages that they present are almost plausible, apart from the fact that they carry advertisements from the hosting company and use free gmail addresses.

Their pages include wonderful statements such as

As regards these ongoing developmental strive; we have over 210 suspects at hand, 135 in Kirikiri prison here in Nigeria. While many are awaiting trial, we are still in search of others, who think they are wise, and hope that you will assist by giving any vital information that could lead to the apprehension of these hoodlums.

We shall be waiting to hearing from you been certain that you were truly scammed by a Nigerian and you have proves to back your claim.
cyberfraud.department@gmail.com

The text of the scam email is as follows:

Attention:

This email is not in any manner directed to you, but its purposely and specifically directed to Nigeria Scam victims. . However, if you have fallen for Nigerian Scams, do not hesitate to contact us or visit our website for more
details on how we can help.

We shall be waiting to hearing from you been certain that you were truly scammed by a Nigerian and you have proves to back your claims. Please read the full report at our website: http://www.nigeria-scamvictims.itgo.com/

Yours faithfully,
Brian Adams
Nigerian Government Reimbursement Committee

This particular specimen claims to have been sent by Brian Adams at baantinigeriascams@gmail.com, but other examples can be found from somebody calling himself David Bamko.

Isn’t it amazing that the supposed anti-fraud parts of the Nigerian government need to use gmail addresses an free hosting services supported by advertising and pop-ups?

Is it possible that they ask for all the information used in one fraud, to duplicate the fraud?

I recently obtained a copy of a Java IDE that calls itself “J Creator Pro”. Considering that Java has native Unicode support, I was amazed to find that J Creator Pro does not.

It only supports a handful of character sets, such as ASCII, ISO8859-1, ISO8859-2 and a few Mac encodings. Obviously the developers of the product are unaware that there is any non-Latin character set. Since my existing source includes some Japanese, the IDE was completely unable to recognise the characters from UTF-8 files.

This hurdle stopped any possible testing, and has create an impression that the product should be called “JCreator very amateur“.

The “European City Guide” was supposedly shut down in 2003 by the Office of Fair Trading for misleading advertising.

In the post today, I received an unsolicited scam order form from the “European City Guide” asking for confirmation of my company’s details, which of course had a slight error. In the small print was the little line:

Please return this document with a signature in the appropriate box if you would like to place an order

The European City Guide form is laid out so it might appear that you are actually signing that the corrections are valid, not with the expectation that you will be ordering two successive copies of their “European City Guide” at €987 each, nor that you are signing a continuous re-order, which needs 3 months notice to cancel.
There is a web site called “Stop the European City Guide” and Richard Corbbet, a Yorkshire MEP has written extensively about this, and similar practices.
Richard Corbbet’s Blog suggests that several other scam organisations also have the same owner.

• UK Internet Register
• Construct Data
• Novachannel AG

The European City Guide’s web site has a code of conduct document that states:

In accordance with the legislation governing DISTANCE SALES, our
forms incorporate a coupon for termination of the contract, which is located on the
client’s copy of the form. If the client returns this completed, stamped and signed
coupon to us within the mentioned cooling-off period this will result in automatic
cancellation.

Strangely, the form which they sent to Dragon Thoughts, seems to have this cancellation coupon printed in extremely faint grey very small print, together with a raft of other almost unreadable terms and conditions. I wonder if it might be a printing error?

I received a deceptive notice yesterday from Domain Registry of America (DRoA).

It made me so angry that I had to write this post about DRoA. The notice came by snail mail in an envelope with my correct name and address and included a return envelope for payment, although they expecte me to pay the postsage for their scam.

The notice looks like a bill and was written to scare me into changing my domain name registry: “You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the Web, and now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar to the Domain Registry of America. Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identify…”

As should befit the dragon thoughts blog on dragonthoughts.com, a few new pieces of dragon related content have be compiled together as “dragon content“.

I was called today by somebody who gave their web address as w*w.resortvacationsvip.com which is a travel company with no links to enabling booking. I wonder how they could get any legitimate business.
They claimed I was being offered a free holiday from a competition that I or a member of my household had entered.

They couldn’t tell me which competition I had won, but did tell me it was only open to Visa card and Mastercard holder. - I pointed out that this would apply to over 98% of the adult UK population.

They had my correct name and address.

The scammer had a heavy, possibly Indian or Chinese accent.

When I confirmed that I did own appropriate credit cards, they tried to extract my credit card details - when I refused on the basis that this was probably a scam, they kept trying to get my credit card number out of me, assuring me that it was OK - apparently they’re FCCA registered, and because of that the details couldn’t be misused. - I countered that in fact, as my cards are issued on the UK and therefore FSA regulated and that f I was stupid enough to give it to cold callers, they could attempt to misuse it with a card not present transaction.
When I kept asking why they needed the credit card details, at first I was told that it was so that they could verify that I was a credit card holder. I pointed out that they called me so I was the person that needed to verify their credentials. Then he switched tack, and said that the would need my credit card details for a registration fee of around £250. I questioned this, pointing out that I had been offered a completely free holiday competition prize. He said “Nothing is free“.

They gave me a “Toll-free” number that I could call them back on. I pointed out that a phone number in the USA is not toll-free when called from the UK - It is an international call.

When I asked for their FCCA registration number, the caller evaded answering.
I kept leading him on for a while, to keep him from trying to scam others, and to research his web site and comments about the scam company. One particularly enlightening one was on 800notes.com

I asked him if he had heard of Perfect Travel Promotions Orlando - Which appears as the title on w*w.resortvacationsvip.com and has an identical web site at w*w.ptporlando.com. He claimed he hadn’t heard of PTP Orlando. They have the same phone number (1-877-727-7605) and email addresses of CustomerService@PTPorlando.com and sales@PTPorlando.com

When I kept asking him the name of the company he was working for he refused to give it then finally hung up.

In short, it had to be scam. What legitimate company employee would not know their own company’s name?

If you have similar experiences, or wish to comment on this, please do so.