SCAM Email – Subject: Western Union Daily Payment of $5600 !!

If you receive the Email posted below you should send it right to your spam folder where it belongs. This is an obvious SCAM Email. The “From” and “Reply-To” indicates that this Email wasn’t sent by Western Union. The Email starts with “Dear Western Union Beneficiary” which means that the sender doesn’t know your name. Entering the phone number into Google showed me that I am not the first who received and posted about this Email and I am afraid I won’t be the last.

This Email has only one purpose to collect your contact details. I am sure if you would answer them they will ask for your SIN or at least Bank account information. I strongly recommend to delete this message right away. If you want to help others not to fall for this scam please feel free to share my post.

SCAM Email – Subject: Invitation to connect on LinkedIn

I received today two Emails pretending to be sent from LinkedIn. Both Emails looked like the invitation you’ll get when a LinkedIn Member wants to connect with you. But when you click on the “Accept” button you will actually get forwarded to a different website.

Also the “View Profile” link is of course connected to a different website, as well as the other links such as the “Unsubscribe” link.

I checked both Emails and the links were different so I did not included them into my post today.

But as always I would like to provide you with some screenshots so you can check out the scam Emails yourself and see that they unfortunately look very legit.

Tip from me. Login to your LinkedIn account and do not use the links in those Emails. Check if someone actually wants to connect with you and also look up their profile.

If you have any questions, concerns or if you had the same experience. Please leave a comment. Also please share this post and help others not to fall for this scam.

Thanks and surf save…

Daylight Saving Time (WTF)

I am living in Vancouver BC, Canada and on Sunday we will need to change our clocks to the so called daylight saving time.

Yes folks, it is this time of the year again and I honestly don’t see the point why we still do this. It is in my opinion not just a waste of time, it is just plain stupid.

Even if you can find any kind of understanding for why we started doing it in the first place, I think in our modern world we don’t need to go over the hassle changing our clocks twice a year anymore.

One of my favorite YouTuber did an excellent video about this topic, which I would like to share with you today. I wish everyone a wonderful weekend and don’t forget to check your clock because you too may or may not have to change your watch.

Daylight Saving Time Explained by CGPGrey

Happy Chanukah (Hanukkah) 5773 (2012)

I would like to wish a Happy Happy Chanukah to everyone. For all of you who don’t know what Chanukah is, here a little part from Wikipedia:

Hanukkah (Hebrew: חֲנֻכָּה‎, Tiberian: Ḥănukkāh, nowadays usually spelled חנוכה pronounced [χanuˈka] in Modern Hebrew, also romanized as Chanukah or Chanuka), also known as the Festival of Lights is an eight-day Jewish holiday commemorating the rededication of the Holy Temple (the Second Temple) in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt of the 2nd century BCE. Hanukkah is observed for eight nights and days, starting on the 25th day of Kislev according to the Hebrew calendar, which may occur at any time from late November to late December in the Gregorian calendar. The festival is observed by the kindling of the lights of a unique candelabrum, the nine-branched Menorah or Hanukiah, one additional light on each night of the holiday, progressing to eight on the final night. The typical Menorah consists of 8 branches with an additional raised branch. The extra light is called a shamash (Hebrew: שמש, “attendant” or “sexton”)^[1] and is also lit each night for the purpose of lighting the others, and is given a distinct location, usually above or below the rest. The “shamash” symbolically supplies light that may be used.

I also would like to add a video, Adam Sandler and his original Chanukah (Hanukkah) Song, enjoy

SCAM SMS – From (202) 735-6532: …claim your free Apple Product

Today I got this text message:

Congratulations, your number has made you Apple’s Winner! Go to http://www.apple.ca.wstw.cc and enter code: 65535 to claim your Free Apple Product!

Screenshot:

I at first saw only apple.ca when I received the text message, because I was very busy when I got it and I really thought I won something. Maybe an iTunes credit or something like that. The reason I thought this might be something real was because I recently went to an Apple store, to get a new Battery for my old MacBook. But when I had time to actually look at the text message I was very disappointed, because this was of course not the real apple url, it was some fake url which will get forwarded to some SCAM website.

To be able to show you the site you can expect I entered the url from the text message and here is a screenshot of the site:

As you can see yourself in the address field the http://www.apple.ca.wstw.cc gets forwarded to http://wstw.cc where you can find a picture of an iPad and a box to fill in the mystic code.

I opened the address again, but this time with a secure browser window. I entered the code which I received via the text message and got this pop up message…

Screenshot:

So I deleted the last number to make it a 4 digit code and got forwarded to this domain (Screenshot):

After I came to this site I went back to the fake apple address and tried another random 4 digit code and landed again on the same site.

Unfortunately I don’t know if this is just a coincidence. It is possible that the owner of the fake apple site maybe signed up for some sort of affiliate program and get paid per visitor they refer to ziinga.

It is also not surprising that searching for the phone number brought up some additional information about this scam as well as WoT ranked the fake apple site very bad. My advise is to ignore this text message. There is on their website a “Unsubscribe” link, but unfortunately I assume this is more to confirm that your phone number / Email is in use and after trying to unsubscribe I am afraid you might get even more scam messages.

I hope this post will help lots of you not to fall for this scam.

Leave a comment and surf safe 🙂