Hacks

I was amused the other day by the news that the Twitter accounts for many famous and solvent people had been hacked: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-53445090

The scam was: send us some Bitcoin money and we will double it and send it back. Except, of course, they wouldn’t.

Why was I amused?

Here are some people who had accounts affected: Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates…

But who is the most famous user of Twitter in the world? Donald Trump.

Was his account attacked? No. Why not?

Because no-one would ever believe he would generously send anyone free money. Ever.

Scams

I am deliberately not writing about the big topics of the day: Trump, Johnson, racism, police brutality, Dominic Cummings, Brexit and the virus. They are important topics, of course, but we need a break from these, and I have nothing to add that has not been said and better by others.

However, rather sadly, there are people, always, wanting to exploit any situation to relieve you of your money, and the virus gives a great opportunity. It also gives extra exposure to the conspiracy theorists and the flat earthers.

Scams

It’s very sad, though not surprising, that people are trying to take extra advantage of the virus lockdown with scams etc.

I am usually careful. The scam e-mail does not get opened. There was an attempt to fraudulently use my credit card details, but my bank blocked that.

I ordered a hard disk drive at nearly £200 through Amazon, not from them but from a marketplace seller. He (or maybe she) sent me a huge box with a piece of tat in. Seeing the reviews, in the past few days, plenty of others have been victims of the same scam.

Amazon are usually very good in dealing with these problems, and it is not their fault at all, but it is annoying. Don’t believe the good reviews – they could easily be fake.

Spam etc

You can comment on the posts I make. Sensible comments are appreciated.

But all comments need to be approved before they appear, and spam will never be accepted.

So don’t waste your time…

Scams

I am pretty good at avoiding scams and spam.

I set up a spam filter on my e-mails and nearly all the crap gets filtered out. The stupid telephone calls of “your e-mail is compromised”, “you owe income tax” etc just get ignored. No, I wasn’t mis-sold PPI, thanks.

But I got one the other day that could not have been avoided:

On my cellphone/mobile I got a message offering some kind of promotion. I ignored it, just deleted it and thought no more about it.

Until I looked at my bill, and saw it had cost me £4. For an SMS message I didn’t want, hadn’t asked for. And, it appeared, there was nothing I could do.

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