More on internet frauds/scams

Today we are going to look at wireless security. I am sure most of you with laptop/notebook have brought it to internet cafes. You might even have a wireless access point at home. By using wireless technology you are often more targeted by hackers. Yes; I am referring to black hat hacker; those illegal kind. And I do position them as internet scammers. And it’s not really hard to do these things if you have some kind of computer knowledge, and know a bit about what kind of software is out there. The attacks you are most exposed for by scammers are of course packet sniffing, false DHCP servers and key loggers. It’s easy to assume you are safe using wireless networks around; hi; they are even have encryption protocols like WEP etc. Well; don’t feel too safe. Scammers know how to easily sniff up to packages to encrypt the package steam. Once the data steam is decrypted it’s not too hard to attack you computer. Neither is it really hard to set up a fake access point, and steal your cookies. Of course I am not referring to does sweet cookies you are eating; but the cookies you use when you log into places. They could easily use them to access any sites you are using without needing your password at all. So how do you secure yourself from these scammers? I only have one answer that might help you some; of course there are no definitive answers to protect yourself from internet scammers, but do some research on Virtual Private Networks (VPN). I am not using windows all the time; and know maybe more about openVPN; but I think it’s fairly simple to put up a VPN network on windows these days too. If you set up a decent VPN server, or even pay some trusted VPN services you will have all your internet traffic encrypted. Meaning; even the ISP provider for the internet café know your actions. The traffic between the VPN server and the ISP server will still be decrypted. VPN basically creates a “tunnel” between your computer and the VPN server. All internet traffic will be encrypted and safer from internet scammers. To buy VPN servers in other countries can even let you surf normal sites in your country. Turkey is an good example here; some court blocked Turkish access to YouTube and various other sites; If a citizen in Turkey were to use a Dutch or British VPN sever they could avoid the blockings similar as they would with a proxy server; except VPN encrypt all internet traffic; not just the browser. I hope this article thought you a bit on how to avoid internet scammers and surf a bit more safely.

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Internet fraud/scams, part I

I am sure everyone using internet are aware of email and internet scam. If you haven’t heard of internet scams I hope you will make some time to check out this phenomenon. First of all we will look a bit at different types of scams. What kind of scams are there out there? I will take a short look at the most common and we will look at others later.

Nigerian Scams – I am sure most of you have heard of this type of scams. It’s also referred to as 411 scams. Basically you get an email notifying you that you have won a great amount of money on a lottery (wouldn’t you be calling out in joy and celebrating if all the lotteries you won by email were true, I would for sure be happy); or they might present you with a business proposition to share money from some deceased person. All of these look great; they invite you to get lots of money for nothing. But after sending them some information about yourself or accepting a business proposal they will start informing you about some clauses involving you to have to pay some kind of amount to get the money. This of course the heart of the scam; you pay them money for expenses and never get the millions you were promised. A surprisingly high number of people have been victims to these scams. Do never ever try to reply these scammers. I know a lot of people are responding them to steal their time from finding real victims, but please; do not do this. If they somehow learn you are playing them and learn who you are you might get a lot of trouble. Let those who are specialized to replying their mails and stealing their time have this fun. Just browse Nigerian scam and I am sure you will find get a laugh of all the fun they have with those behind the scams.

Phishing – This is a scam that is a bit more problematic to discover. Basically you get an email from your bank, paypal, or some other places you might have money. They might also try to pretend to be from your email administrator. This mail seems real. It seems they are truly from whom they pretend to be. Most often they ask you to press a link to confirm your password, or change password or something. But when you press this link you really just go to premade site pretending to be the real deal. When you access those pages you are only providing the scammers with your real password and username.

Internet dating – Scammers also know how to make advantage of dating services. Having a lady/man interested in you. This is sad for real dating sites giving people an opportunity to meet other people. However some pretend to be searching for you; but in reality they will start asking you to send them money for various reasons. Please be a bit skeptical if someone starts asking you to send money for flights to meet etc. This is a scam taking advantage of real emotions of the victim.

We have now seen on some of the internet and email scams you might find. There are a many more we will look at through these blogs.