OneGuyFromBarlick

They should get a proper job.....

Any one been getting the b1tc0in stuff lately ?

I was getting a really significant number of them, but since the recent crash in value, this seems to have tailed off.

Like anything similar, straight into the spam and sender blocked.

Couldn't say. If I don't recognise the sender I bin automatically and there aren't many, even of them.

We've never had any emails about bitcoins, scam or otherwise.

One thing that strikes me is that the junk mail filters operated by the ISP are far more efficient these days.

I had this message yesterday sent to my personal email address. I no longer have a business and I've never had any dealings with PwC or with payroll data. A file called Payroll.xls is attached to the message but, of course, I'm not going to risk opening it. Can viruses be sent as .xls files or would it possibly be a malicious file of some other type with the .xls ending simply added?

Well - I like a mystery. Must admit the email looks kosher, but that's the idea isn't it?

The phone number 07843 331234 looks suspiciously as if it is made up, but I rang it, and to my surprise it is a real number. There was no reply - but in the email she did say she was going on annual leave - and I was connected to the BT answerphone service.

Try sending her an email. I am guessing this is a real message that you have received in error. Be fun to work out the connection.

It's spam. Have a peep at this:-

https://myonlinesecurity.co.uk

Thanks Wendy. As you were writing it I was reading the very same web site. Here is the full page for it: LINK

From their site...
`A bit of a change with the Trickbot delivery system this morning in UK. They are using macro enabled XLS spreadsheet files instead of the usual word docs. This example is an email containing the subject of “September 2018 Payroll Timetable” pretending to come from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP but actually coming from “Claire.Rhodes@pwc-payroll.co.uk” which is a look-a-like, typo-squatted or other domain that can easily be misidentified, mistaken or confused with the genuine site, with a malicious office attachment is today’s latest spoof of a well-known company, bank or public authority delivering Trickbot banking Trojan.'

The virus in the false `XLS' file only affects MS Office, not Open Office or Libre Office, and only Windows OS computers.

Wow - that's me almost taken in. Must turn up the volume on my scepticism.

That said - I'd delete any email I wasn't expecting, and never click a link in such a message.

Must keep a watch out for that sort of thing ...

I would probably have rung the pwc Manchester office, after looking up the number in another way.

BT seemed to have upped their game on blocking spam. I've had very little recently, but the new filters at the ervers have blocked some genuine contacts.

"I'd delete any email I wasn't expecting, and never click a link in such a message." I always do that David. I work on the principle that bad news travels fast and if it is genuine the message will get to me by another route that I can trust, like a letter!
A friend of mine went back to work for the BBC after a long absence and after a few months got mail from the IT department that he had hundreds of emails in his BBC account sitting there unanswered. So he deleted the lot on the above grounds. The IT people went berserk but as he said there was not even a ripple in his life.
I had one from Facebook telling me that someone was trying to contact me via my account. I deleted it over a year ago. Guess what I did with the mail.

Lucky me, I got these two messages today...

Greetings
I am Maryma Ali from Apt Pte Ltd. We will like to inquire about your product(s).
Could you please provide information?
1. MOQ and FOB price
2. What is your price + shipping cost for Sample with and without OEM Sample?
3. Payment terms (We prefer 30% Deposit and Balance before shipment)
4. Do you have complete catalogue/price list? pls you can send them to me by return email
Waiting for your early reply,
Best Regards
Maryma Ali
(Purchasing and Marketing Department)
Apt Pte Export. Ltd
# Abi Habib, Chaaya & Azar Building Gemayel Street, Lebanon

--------------------------------------------------

This is Eng. Omar Alsaad Alhamed

I hope this email finds you in good health. In view of my correspondence with you, I unassumingly request for your utmost consideration, as this letter serves as a formal notice of my intent to go into a multinational investments with you in your country.

This is Eng. Omar Alsaad Alhamed, Chief Financial Officer of KPC Group (Kuwait National Petroleum Corporation) In an open minded manner, I purposefully contact you to negotiate my proposition for investment of multinational companies and industries with you in your country. However, if you willingly accept my proffer I shall provide you with the relevant details for the investment fund and our procedures in sequence.

Furthermore, I want every of my dealings with you to be carried out legally, genuinely and transparent to establish medium to long-term investment and credible business relationship.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Warm regards,
Eng. Omar Alsaad Alhamed

Quality

Better than anything I get. Last was the cold call from Talktalk informing me that there was a technical problem with my connection and it would be terminated if I didn't log on to their website...... As if........

I still have a letter from the 1990s that was sent to my father-in-law. It's a classic of the `Nigerian scam' genre. Perhaps I ought to frame it!

They tell me they are still about. Remember when the favourite was penis enlargement? I haven't seen one of them for yonks.

This is scam rather than spam. It starts off by stating: `Fraudsters scammed nearly 49,000 older people across the UK in the past year, equivalent to almost six reports every hour' but then `The total number of reports has nearly doubled in the past three years. But one expert said the true number of elderly victims was likely to be in the millions....Prof Keith Brown, of Bournemouth University, an expert who studies scams, claimed these reports represented as few as 5% of the true total. "It's hugely under-reported - we're talking about millions of victims," he said. "If this were burglary or street crime there would be a huge outcry, but it's hidden behind closed doors. "Over the next few years this will become the next big scandal like the dawning realisation of the scale of child abuse."

`Reports of frauds on the elderly are 'tip of iceberg' LINK

Received an E-mail the other day. At first it looked very plausible. Full name and address as the header. followed by ... Your order date 9/11/2018 ,
..1T...........Z has been dispatched. which had been highlighted with . To review your order click here. This was followed by two paragraphs on how to return the order if it was unsatisfactory.

Just two major problems 1) we had never placed any orders anywhere round this date. All our internet purchases are carefully monitored and saved when completed. 2) there was no firm stated from which it was supposed to be purchased. Straight in the delete in.

9/11/2018? Perhaps you are a lucky recipient of a message from the future, Plaques.

9/11/2018. An American calender date. If the package does arrive I may have to drop it in a bucket of water just to be on the safe side.

I'm sure you're right Tiz, I too believe that many more have been scammed and some won't even know it.
P the operative trigger is 'click here for details', that will take you to the source of the code they want to insert in your programme which will be something nasty. Simply receiving the mail is harmless, there has to be an action by the recipient beyond opening the mail to let the nasties in. If I had no current order and got mail from Amazon I would delete without opening. If they have something to tell me they will find a way!

After writing my post on Sunday about how fraudsters are now scamming millions of older people across the UK I see another report from a different source: "More than £500m was stolen from customers of British banks in the first half of 2018, figures have shown. Industry group UK Finance said £145m of that was due to authorised push payment (APP) scams, in which people are conned into sending money to another account. But £358m was lost to unauthorised fraud, which includes transactions made without account holders' knowledge." LINK

I saw that report as well Tiz. I wonder if there was a problem under the old system of non-computerised banking and transactions?
Thinking along the lines of another response I made this morning when I pointed out the advantages of snail mail giving an audit trail. Just suppose that using the ability to process massive amounts of data as evidenced by the way the major internet users manipulate their data on customers, wouldn't it be nice if every phone had an automatic recording facility on it and a button you could press after receiving a bogus call. Pressing this button could send all the data from the call to a central monitoring facility which would analyse it and take any possible necessary action to track the originators down. I wouldn't mind taking a small bet that this is not impossible, it just requires the will to do it. (Same could apply to scam and spam email as well......)

You can record conversations on smart phones, Colin does it for anything that might be controversial! He also sets the phone to record at appointments with doctors and specialists. It works fine tucked away in a pocket and it's surprising how much you don't take in when you are in the doc's surgery.