They are persistent

I checked an email account for the first time since late last week. In it I found the following two emails:

Geek-Squ Renewal (actual address: adammuche1959@)
May 29,2021

Dear Customer,
Thank you for subscribing Defender Firewall Protection From us .
Today the Service Will Renewed Automatically with $349.89 on the same account provided to us.
Order ID: DFP1476608 Date: 29-05-2021

Description Amount

Geek Protection $349.89

(Inclusive Tax)

Total $ 349.89

Note :- Charges will appear on your statement after 8 hours once debited.
If you want to cancel the charges for $349.89 Auto Renew This time.
Get in touch with us :- +1 (800) (674)

Thanks Regards,
Account Dept.
Defender Firewall Protection
+1 (800) (674) Geek Squad (actual address: felixdolphin060@)
May 31. 2021

We Are Renewing It For You

Dear Customer,
Thank you for choosing Geek Squad Pc Support with us.
Today Subscription Will Be Auto Renewed automatically
with $ 399.99 on the same account provided to us.

Customer Support- +1(800) 274
Order #16589GS-59856
Details are giving below –
Account Type:- Personal Home Subscription
Product :- Geek Squad PC Protection
Quantity :- 1
Tenure :- 3 Years
Payment Mode:- Auto Debit
Renewal Amount – $ 399.99

This Email Confirms That You’ve Renewed Your 1 Year Subscription To Geek Squad For $ 399.99 On May 31 2021

To Cancel The Subscription You Can reach Us at +1(800) 274
Regards
Geek Squad Team
Contact +1(800) 274

To keep myself out of trouble with WordPress (again) I’ve left off part of both the actual email addresses and the phone numbers.
I believe Geek Squad is the tech support team at Best Buy, which presents the scammers with their first problem. The last thing I bought from Best Buy was about 3 years ago, and that was a copy of TurboTax. I paid $20 cash for it, so there is no reason I’d have signed up for tech support. If I can’t put a disk in the drive and follow instructions, I shouldn’t be allowed near a computer. And since I paid cash, there is no record of either a debit or credit card number.

These emails came from different addresses, both gmail and both phone numbers are different. Note also the amounts differ. The first is for $349.89 tax included and the second for 399.99 with no mention of taxes. If the scammers are working together, and I find it hard to believe two separate people came up with the idea of a Geek Squad scam at the same time, you’d think they’d at least stick with the same price. Also notice the awkward sentence structure.

One other possibility just came to mind. Somewhere in western Canada is a woman who seems unable to remember her email address and frequently gives out mine in error. I say “in error” because I’ve received family newsletters and vacation plans from her friends. I’ve also received emails regarding orders from legitimate businesses in western Canada. I know because I’ve phoned a couple of these firms upon receipt of their messages.

If you have bought goods from Best Buy and signed up for support, if you get one of these emails, check with Best Buy then delete the message.

Summer is almost here. Stay safe, wear a mask when and where required and remember to give an artist a socially distant hug – we need love too.

Cat.

Bring him to justice – reset

Following requests from victims, I’ve deleted “Bring him to justice – justice served” of November 8, 2018. Among the comments were this posting made them uncomfortable and the last thing I wanted to do was cause them any more stress.

What I can say for certain is that George Flowers is still in jail and the Crown and defence are still talking. As more confirmed information becomes available, I’ll pass it along.

Cat.

The Nigerian prince has moved

I received the following email in a junk file this morning. I’ve removed the email address to keep myself out of trouble with WordPress (again).

From: MrDanielMminele

FROM THE DESK OF MR.DANIEL MMINELE
Direct Phone No: + 27 82 4026 229
Private Email: contact.danielmminel@

Dear Sir/Madam,

Peace Be Upon You,

My name is Mr. Daniel Mminele, I am currently working with a Financial Institution based here in South Africa. We offer short and long terms Loans which are tailored to meet important financing needs in the Agricultural, Industrial and Constructional production circle in the whole of the Southern Africa and beyond.

I am contacting you to partner with me to secure the funds US$ 42 Million United States Dollars deposited in the custody of our Bank here in South Africa by LATE MR. ALEXANDER VEREMEEVSKIY, a Russian Businessman and Investor who was involve in the Fly-Dubai Flight 981, a Boeing 737- 800, an International Passenger Flight that crashed during an aborted Landing due to poor weather at Rostov-on-Don Airport, Russia, on 19th of March 2016, resulting in the deaths of all the 62 Passengers and Crew Members on Board, May their souls rest in Peace. The fund was deposited as an Investment fund in 2015 with an open beneficiary. The fund has been with the Bank without anybody coming up for the claims.

I honestly seek your assistance to move these funds into your custody for safe keeping and investment purposes as the depositor has no known Next of kin. I have all the Legal documents necessary to claim the funds as I am directly involved in the deposits. All I need to do is to make you the beneficiary of the fund by filling your name in the appropriate documents and immediately move the funds out of its present place in your name to your account for safe keeping. The funds will be used for Investment purposes in your country as i have planned on investing my own share in a lucrative business venture and settling with my family.

I decided to this as i know all the circumstances surrounding the deposits and knowing very well that the depositor of the fund will not come back to claim the funds since he is deceased. I will send to you all the documents relating to this deposit and direct you on how to apply for the fund. I will give you further details when I receive a positive response from you on this issue. I will ensure all procedures to see the successful completion of this project.

I assure you that this transaction is 100% Risk Free .Be rest assured that we will not encounter any difficulty as the person directly involved in approving the release of the fund is also participating in this transaction. This transaction is Legal and we propose a 60-30% sharing pattern once the fund is transferred to your Account while the remaining 10% will be for all the expensive we might incur during the cause of the transfer.

Please keep this transaction very confidential and let me know if you will be of any assistance.

Best Regards,
Mr. Daniel Mminele.
Direct Phone No: + 27 82 4026 229
Private Email: contact.danielmminele@

******************************************************************************************************************************************************
The information in the Email and/or attachment(s) is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2510-2521. It may be confidential and/or privileged and is intended solely for the person or entity to which it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient or an agent responsible for delivering it to the intended recipient, you have received it in error. The review, dissemination, copying, or taking of any action based on the contents thereof is strictly prohibited. If you have received this Email in error, please advise the sender by reply Email and then delete it and any attachment(s) from your system immediately. Thank you. *********************************************************************************************************************************************************

Interesting, isn’t it? First, this wasn’t sent to me personally. The “Dear Sir/Madam” is a good indicator this is a shotgun style scam. The generic salutation is designed to rope in anyone gullible enough to fall for it. Another sign this is intended to rope in as many people as possible is the “Peace Be Upon You”, which is a common salutation for those who follow Islam. Again, make the mark feel comfortable.

Notice this person doesn’t name the “bank” which employs him, nor does he use an email address that would appear to be that of a financial institution. The amount of $42 million US is certainly attractive. Based on the offered split, the recipient would be looking at a $12.6 million windfall. If this were real. The specific details of the crash are intended to encourage the mark to check to see if such a crash actually took place. I didn’t check it myself but presume the sender used an actual accident to show the veracity of the balance of his claims. But to my mind, the details are too specific, almost as if they were taken directly from a crash report.

The disclaimer at the bottom of the email is a nice touch but, if this is purportedly being sent from South Africa (no city – just a generic “South Africa”), why is he quoting US law and not the corresponding South African legislation?

Consider this as well: If someone is investing over forty million in any currency, chances are this is not an individual’s own funds, but if from a company. And you can be certain a company would know where $42,000,000 of their money is at any given time.

And now, the kicker in this: The email showed as being sent from: “Mr.DanielMminele” with a return email address at gmail. The actual sender turned out to be someone using the address “m_h_bruce834″ with a Yahoo address.

So, if you were to fall for this and send Mr Bruce the requested information, you wouldn’t find twelve point six million magically appearing in your account. It is much more likely you’d find your own balance diminishing at an astounding rate.

If you get this, or anything like this, don’t fall for it. As I said in the title, the Nigerian prince has moved, but it’s still the same scam.

Cat.

Don’t call me that

I did not set out intending to become a spokeswoman for anything or anyone. But over the past couple of months I’ve been involved in two separate events in which I’ve been called an advocate.

In both cases, my doctor asked me to take part in these events, and I agreed, so I knew what was coming. The first of these was a “health equity boot camp” put on by St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto. My doctor thought I’d be perfect for this one since I am both a senior and trans. As usual at these things, everyone wears a name tag. Mine also contained the notation “patient advocate”. The second, again through St Mike’s, was a study on cancer detection in trans people. I met with them and was once again identified as an advocate.

Here’s the thing: I don’t consider myself an advocate of any kind. In each case I made it clear at the outset that I spoke only for myself and did not represent any group or organisation. I’m in my mid-seventies, trans as I said above, and have strong opinions which I don’t mind sharing, usually in my blogs. But how can one person speaking strictly from a personal perspective be considered an advocate?

Here’s the definition of “advocate” from the Oxford University Press dictionary: advocate >noun 1 a person who publicly supports or recommends a particular cause or policy. 2 a person who pleads a case on someone else’s behalf. 3 Scottish term for barrister. Obviously that third definition is not me. As for the other two, I suppose if you squint really, really hard, you could fit my participation in those two events into one or both of those definitions. Even if you could, you’d have a hard time convincing me.

I’m reasonably intelligent and keep up with events in general and especially those that affect the trans community for they could, and often do, affect me. But the only policy I support or recommend is one that will make my life easier (I know, that sounds selfish of me.). Did I plead on behalf of someone else? Not intentionally, but if something I said in either of these events can benefit someone else, great.

Perhaps I’m being wilfully blind, but I fail to see how speaking up for myself can be considered being an advocate. Yes, my doctor recommended me for these two events because, to use her words, I hold strong opinions and I’m well-spoken. And yes, my best friend tells me I’m an advocate because I’m not afraid to speak out and she wishes I’d do it more often.

If my actions make me an advocate, well that’s your opinion.   But please, please, don’t call me that. I’ll probably laugh at you.

Enjoy your day and remember to hug an artist – we need love too.

Cat.

Netflix phishing expedition

Received the following email in one of my accounts:

From:

NETFLIX

External images are not displayed. Display Images
Always display images sent from

We recently failed to validate your payment information we hold on record for your account,
therefore we need to ask you to complete a brief validation process in order to verify your billing and payment details.

Failure to complete the validation process will result in a suspension of your netflix membership.

We take every step needed to automatically validate our users, unfortunately in this case we were unable to verify your details.

This process will take a couple of minutes
and will allow us to maintain our high standard of account security.

Netflix Support Team

This message was mailed automatically by Netflix during routine security checks. We are not completely satisfied with your account information and required you to update your account to continue using our services uniterrupted.

I removed the email addresses to keep myself out of trouble with WordPress (again).
This is obviously an attempt to get me to provide them with personal and/or banking information. The first indicator of that is that it wasn’t addressed to me personally. If they want to verify my account information, surely they’d have my name at least. The second indicator this is a scam is quite simple really. I don’t have a Netflix account, so there is no information to be verified.

Also, the English is not what you would expect to find from a company such as Netflix. The mixture of tenses and the misspelling of “uninterrupted” are a dead giveaway this is not from their corporate account.

If you have a Netflix account and you get on of these emails, before you do anything, please, please, check it some other way before giving out any information.

Happy viewing and remember to hug an artist, we need love too.

Cat.

Nice try but not even close update

About a week ago I posted a blog about a threat I received that said they had hacked my computer and unless I sent $810 in bitcoin to a certain purse within 48 hours, my computer would be frozen. If I didn’t, the person issuing the threat would release screen grabs of some of the more questionable sites I’d visited to my contacts list. And to “prove” their claim, they told me what password I’d used. Wrong. They further stated that they had installed a trojan horse that would advise them if I changed my password and would also automatically delete itself once I had made the payment. Well, I laughed at it, wrote a blog about it and deleted it. Of course, nothing happened because they had their facts wrong, mainly the screen grab claim since I don’t have a webcam. Here’s the actual claim: I made screenshot with using my program from your camera of yours device.

If people were taken in and actually paid the $810 and then nothing happened to their computer, they would assume they had satisfied the demand and the malware had indeed been removed. What really has happened though is that they paid over eight hundred dollars to a scam artist and nothing was going to happen anyway.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Do not be taken in by these scams and threats. Keep everything backed up on regular basis and remember that in the event such a demand for money is real, it will be cheaper just to take the computer to a technician and have the hard drive replaced than pay the ransom. That, and change your passwords.

Stay safe online and remember to hug an artist – we need love too.

Cat.

Nice try, but not even close

I received the following email in an address I rarely use:

Hello!

I’m a hacker who cracked your email and device a few months ago.
You entered a password on one of the sites you visited, and I intercepted it.
This is your password from ghoward@shaw.ca on moment of hack: watson

Of course you can will change it, or already changed it.
But it doesn’t matter, my malware updated it every time.

Do not try to contact me or find me, it is impossible, since I sent you an email from your account.

Through your email, I uploaded malicious code to your Operation System.
I saved all of your contacts with friends, colleagues, relatives and a complete history of visits to the Internet resources.
Also I installed a Trojan on your device and long tome spying for you.

You are not my only victim, I usually lock computers and ask for a ransom.
But I was struck by the sites of intimate content that you often visit.

I am in shock of your fantasies! I’ve never seen anything like this!

So, when you had fun on piquant sites (you know what I mean!)
I made screenshot with using my program from your camera of yours device.
After that, I combined them to the content of the currently viewed site.

There will be laughter when I send these photos to your contacts!
BUT I’m sure you don’t want it.

Therefore, I expect payment from you for my silence.
I think $810 is an acceptable price for it!

Pay with Bitcoin.
My BTC wallet: 1JTtwbvmM7ymByxPYCByVYCwasjH49J3Vj

If you do not know how to do this – enter into Google “how to transfer money to a bitcoin wallet”. It is not difficult.
After receiving the specified amount, all your data will be immediately destroyed automatically. My virus will also remove itself from your operating system.

My Trojan have auto alert, after this email is read, I will be know it!

I give you 2 days (48 hours) to make a payment.
If this does not happen – all your contacts will get crazy shots from your dark secret life!
And so that you do not obstruct, your device will be blocked (also after 48 hours)

Do not be silly!
Police or friends won’t help you for sure …

p.s. I can give you advice for the future. Do not enter your passwords on unsafe sites.

I hope for your prudence.
Farewell.

Where do I start? Let’s pick the obvious and that is the atrocious English. Now, the only sites I visit that require passwords are Facebook and WordPress, and neither of them have “watson” as my password.

As for my “sites of intimate content”, well, depending upon your point of view, I suppose you could consider videos of Street Outlaws worth telling others about. Oops! I just did, so there goes that threat.

I use very good antivirus programmes, so I’m not concerned about any trojan horses on my system. Another threat dealt with.

If this person did in fact have access to my contacts on this email, they’d note I have only one – and that’s a Toronto Police detective. I’m sure the sergeant would be fascinated by my interest in street racing, considering I don’t have a vehicle.

As for the claim this person used the camera on my computer to capture screen shots of what I was looking at, well, I don’t have a webcam. As I said, nice try, but so wrong.

If you get this, or something similar, I think it can safely be ignored. DO NOT send anything through Bitcoin. There is no way of retrieving it if this is a fraud.

Cat.

I’d rather do it myself

I found the following in the comments on WordPress this morning. I’ve removed all references and links that could get me in trouble with WordPress (again).

Hi. I see that you don’t update your page too often. I know that writing content is time consuming and boring.
But did you know that there is a tool that allows you to create new articles using existing content (from
article directories or other pages from your niche)?

And it does it very well. The new articles are high quality and
pass the copyscape test. You should try *** tools

Let’s look at this critically. “I see that you don’t update your page too often”. If I didn’t know the message came from a bot, I’d be flattered that someone checked my page so frequently that they’d noticed.

“I know that writing content is time consuming and boring.” Sorry, but I don’t consider writing as either time consuming or boring. If you consider writing such an onerous task, you shouldn’t be doing it.

“But did you know that there is a tool that allows you to create new articles using existing content (from article directories or other pages from your niche)?” Great. So there is a tool that will write articles for me. Articles that won’t scan the way my writing scans (or doesn’t – your choice) and may not be on a topic I would even consider writing about. Or is this really saying “we have this fabulous tool that will plagiarize other articles and mould them into something new for you.”

I write about whatever stirs my interest and arouses some feeling. That’s why I may not update every day, or week. It depends upon what’s wound me up and whether I feel I can get a decent blog from it. The series “Bring him to justice” is a good example of not writing on a daily or weekly basis. This series deals with a man who didn’t tell his partners he was HIV positive – for at least a decade! As I know people he dated, I’m quite passionate about seeing him before the courts, but I only update when I have concrete information. I won’t print rumours for fear they may jeopardise the Crown’s case or possibly give his victims false hope.

Finally, what the hell is the “copyscape test”?

So, thanks for your offer, but I’d rather do it myself.

Cat.

Bring him to justice – one step closer

This is one of those pieces I’ve been waiting to write.

I have confirmed information that the Toronto Police Service will be travelling to Jamaica next Tuesday and returning Wednesday with George Flowers. That brings him nearer to facing justice in a Canadian court.

Once again I admit I’m torn by this. On the one side, I’m glad to see Flowers finally in a court to face his accusers. On the other is the fact that those accusers will have their carefully rebuilt lives torn apart by his legal representative. To be honest, I’m not sure the damage that will done to these people this time around is worth it. He destroyed many lives once and now the legal system gives him a chance to do it again.

If you have had sex with this man, please, please, go to your doctor and get tested for HIV.. And also go to the police for you don’t have to be positive to file a complaint.

I’ll update this as and when more information becomes available.

Cat.

Bring him to justice – Canadian justice pending

He’s coming back. According to an article in today’s Jamaica Observer, George Flowers has lost his final appeal against extradition to Canada. A representative of the Toronto Police Service will be travelling to Jamaica to escort him back to Toronto to face justice in a Canadian courtroom.

I must admit I have mixed feelings writing this. On the one side, I have some concerns for his accusers; that they will have their carefully reconstructed lives ripped apart by his lawyers in court; that the secrets they’ve been hiding for many years will be exposed. On the other side, that George Flowers will finally face the justice he so richly deserves is satisfying. Full disclosure here: I know people he dated, some of whom have tested HIV positive, so I am finding it difficult to remain neutral in this, but I will do my best.

His sexual assaults date back at least twenty years and he has played the Jamaican legal system for at least three years. Finally though, he has run out of options and the Jamaican courts have said to Canada “you can have his ass, just come and get him”.

I’ll write more when I have more details, but in the meantime I ask for your prayers for his victims.

Cat.