REPEATED NAME CHANGING, STEALING THE IDENTITY OF COMPANIES OR INDIVIDUALS, NEW WEBSITES, PHONY REGISTRATIONS, ALL THIS TO CONFUSE WHO THEY ARE. MAKE NO MISTAKE WHO THESE FOLKS ARE. THUGS, CROOKS, CRIMINALS, SCUMBAGS TARGETING THOSE WHO ARE COMPUTER ILLITERATE, UNEMPLOYED, ELDERLY, STUDENTS, STAY-AT-HOME MOMS, RETIREES, AND THE INNOCENT. LURING THEM INTO CASHING FRAUDULENT CHECKS

The headline, and the above heading while different, fall into the same area, and since the approach is different, I'll tackle the above in this blog first.
Having received an email that looked interesting, since I'm always on the prowl for a bit of extra work, I thought I'd share it with you.

Now before you read carefully the email below, let me link you to the on-line and reputable site that is its source called .eDirection They post job offerings, as well as a host of other services. Now this company is legit.
If however, we check for http://www.js-integration.co.uk in Google we do not get a return hit for the company?
So chopping off (.UK) from the address we do get Google Search finally a fraud alert..but how may unsuspecting souls would know to do that?
If we try a couple of other listings in Google for this companyEngland Link they look OK. Or if we go to Best Jobs another provided link we also get what looks to be OK.

If we are persistent in our search, we might finally come up with the truth here at Scamdex

In point of fact the company listed in the letter below does exist, and does in fact offer employment...then what's the problem? They are using you as a Money Mule!

We all know a mule (Jackass) is great for carting things, but this Mule is illegal.

What is a money mule? Source Here: Money Mule Explained

As most of the fraudsters behind these scams are located overseas and it is not possible to make cross-border transfers out of UK on-line bank accounts overseas, a "money mule" or "money transfer agent" is required to launder the funds obtained as a result of phishing and Trojan scams. After being recruited by the fraudsters, money mules receive funds into their accounts and they then withdraw the money and send it overseas using a wire transfer service, minus a certain commission payment.

The above is one out of thousands of attempts, and I would be here for six months going through each and every attempt to scam you, or destroy your computer, so I'll direct you to my F-Secure's Daily Dose of what to look for, and your not going to believe it at first.

Is the Internet Safe? In a word...NO! It was at one time, but not any longer.

Now watch another destructive scam, from that fun "You Tube Video" you just couldn't resist. My thanks to F-Secure for this.



The letter below is exactly as I received it in mail, so how many mistakes can you find that are clues to you being scammed?? Looks really good doesn't it!

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are glad to offer you for a job position with our
company.We need someone to work for the company as a
Representative/Book keeper in the USA. This is in view
of our not having an office presently in the USA.You
don't need to have an Office and this certainly won't
disturb any form of work you have going at the
moment.Our Company specialises in the
Sourcing,Outsourcing and Procurement of any commodity
from the Eastern European supply base.

We undertake order placement as a one-off batch and
project management of the transfer of an entire series
of processes and commodities without compromising
quality. We source the following variety of clothing
materials:- batiks,assorted fabrics for interior decor,
silk and traditional costumes which we have clients we
supply weekly in the USA.
Our integrated network of yarn and fabric manufacturing
operations use state-of-the-art textile equipment from
the world's leading suppliers. Order processing,production
monitoring and process flow are seamlessly integrated
through a company-wide computer network.

The average monthly income is about 4000USD(1000USD
salary inclusive).
* No form of investments from you.
* This job takes only 1-3 hours per day

About the job:
We have sales representatives all over the world to
distribute our products.It's a known fact,that it's not
easy to start a business in a new market (being the
US). There are hundreds of competitors, close direct
contacts between suppliers and custo! mers and other
difficulties,which impede our sales promotion.We have
decided to deliver the products upfront, it's very
risky but it would push up sales by 25
percent.Unfortunately we are unable to open Bank
Accounts in the US without first registering the company
name.

Presently with the amount of Orders we have, we cannot
put them on hold for fear of loosing the customers
outrightly. Secondly we cannot cash these payments from
the US soon enough, as international Cheques take about
15-20 working days for cash to be made available.We
lose about 75,000 USD of net income each month because
we have money transfer delays.Your task is to
coordinate payments from customers and help us with the
payment process.You are not involved in any sales or
marketing.Once orders are recieved and sorted we
deliver the product to a customer (usually through
FEDEX).The customer receives and checks the products.

After this has been done the customer has to pay for
the products.About 90 percent of our customers prefer
to pay through Certified Cheques and Travellers Cheques
based on the amount involved.We have decided to open
this new job position for solving this problem.Your
tasks are:

Recieve payment from Customers.
2. Cash Payments at your Bank (Upon my instruction).
3. Deduct 7% which will be your commission/pay on each
Payment processed
4. Forward balance after deduction of commission/pay to
any of the offices you will be contacted to send
payment to.(Payment is to forwarded either by MoneyGram
or Western Union Money Transfer Preferably).

www.westernunion.com ;
www.moneygram.com ;

Local Money transfers takes barely hours, so it will
give us a possibility to get customer's payment almost
immediately.You are entitled to a basic monthly salary
of 1000.00 USD.For Instance,when you process a 3000USD
payment.You deduct your 7% commission: 210.00 USD and
remit: 2790.00USD.First month you will have 15-20
transactions in the range of 3000.00-400! 0.00 USD .18
transactions of 3500.00 USD gives you 4410.00 USD.Plus
your basic monthly salary is 1000.00 USD Total:5410.00
USD per month.After establishing a close co-operation
with us you'll be able to operate with larger orders
and you'll be able to earn more.

Our payments will be issued out in your name and you
can have them cashed at your bank or other Cashing
Services.Deduct your commission and forward the balance
to the company . If you are interested, N: B, Please
send to me the listed information below:

#Your full name:
#Your full home address,
#Your age,
#Occupation and as well your
#marital status,and your,
#direct contact telephone number:
#Your Bank name Only (only your bank name and nothing
else).

We understand that this job position is very
challenging and you should understand it. We are
looking only for persons who satisfy our requirements
and will be an earnest assistant.We envisage 3-7 work
hours per week.If you feel that you are a serious and
earnest person and you want to work for J.S
INTEGRATIONS LTD,an employment form would be sent to
and you would fill it out and send back via email and
you will receive necessary information in 48 hours.This
will be sent to you from the Agent that contacted you.

ONLY SERIOUS AND INTERESTED PARTICIPANTS SHOULD PLEASE
REPLY.

TO: CEO / JOHN EDGAR
J.S INTEGRATIONS LTD
Units 5 & 6
Park Road
Frome
Somerset
BA11 1EU
United Kingdom
COMPANY WORKING HOUR'S
9:00am to 6:pm all days.
Tel: +44 702 403 0223
Tel: +44-7024030238
Tel: +44-7024030235
Fax: +44-870-490-0524
Email:john_edgar009@yahoo.com
;
- J.S INTEGRATIONS LTD. RECRUITMENT

Quote for today: "A fool and his money are soon parted."

Internet security experts are gathering at a secretive conference later this week to strategize in their fight against cybercriminals.

The meeting on Thursday and Friday at Microsoft's Redmond, Wash. headquarters is slated to bring together representatives from security companies and government and law enforcement officials, as well as others involved in network security. The agenda focuses on botnets and related topics, seen by experts as a prime threat to the Internet.

The two-day event is an effort to let those battling cybercrooks team up and pool their knowledge. Of course vicious hackers have been doing this for years.


Trojans....phishing....and spam...Oh My!

Aside from various talks specifically on botnets, other presentations dive into Trojan horses, new styles of denial-of-service attacks, spam, phishing and weaknesses in protection technologies such as sandboxes and virtual keyboards on banking sites.

Douglas Otis of Trend Micro plans to give a talk on how e-mail authentication technology called Sender ID could be abused to launch denial-of-service attacks, he said. Sender ID is a specification pushed heavily by Microsoft for verifying the authenticity of e-mail by ensuring the validity of the server from which it came.

Jevans of the Anti-Phishing Working Group plans to present a multiyear overview of phishing statistics and discuss new trends in the data-thieving scams, he said. These new trends include use of subdomains, more man-in-the-middle style attacks and changing attack patterns to also focus on smaller banks and payment services, he said.

Alex Shipp, a senior antivirus technologist at e-mail security company MessageLabs, is scheduled to deliver a talk on Trojan horses targeted at a small number of companies or even individual. These targeted Trojan horse attacks are considered dangerous because they could evade traditional protection mechanisms trained to look for known attacks or mass attacks.

"What are the bad guys doing now and how can we stop them? Can we do better than we are currently or do we need a seismic shift in the way we do things now to solve the problems? What kind of co-operative efforts can we put in place that would benefit us all?" are some of those questions, Shipp said.

Among those scheduled to attend are representatives from security firms such as Symantec, Trend Micro and Websense, as well as people from AOL, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Qwest. Government and law enforcement expected to attend include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Secret Service and United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT. Various universities are also expected to send representatives.

"Cooperation at all levels, technical, legal, government, is needed to contain the problem," said Righard Zwienenberg, chief research officer at Norman Data Defense Systems, who is slated to speak on sandboxes at the event Thursday. "Without worldwide laws and cooperation, we might lose the battle in the end."

In the cloak and dagger world, of todays technology, it just gets better and better.

Now it seems Canadian coins: Loonies and Toonies ($1 and $2 coins) may include more than just bronze and metal. Tiny radio frequency transmitters have been found inside the coins, according to a recent U.S. intelligence report.



What's Up Doc?

It seems the report does not say much, except *who* the coins were intended to track. According to the U.S. government, U.S. contractors with classified security clearances unwittingly traveled through Canada with the currency. The Bugs (pun intended) were discovered in several instances between October 2006 and January 2006.

"What's in the report is true," confirmed Martha Deutscher of the U.S. Defense Security Service. However, there's more than meets the eye. "This is indeed a sanitized version, which leaves a lot of questions," she added.

Naturally with all government reports, it's what's not said the creates the mystery, wrapped in a riddle, or is that an Enigma. Well, you get the gist of it.

1. The coins are from Canada, but the U.S. government isn't saying (or doesn't know) who's doing the tracking — or why.

2. How the Pentagon discovered the coins has yet to be revealed.

3. How the transmitters work — or even which Canadian currencies contain them (though Loonies or Toonies seem like the obvious culprits).

China, Russia, and France are the main suspects say experts outside the U.S. government. The three countries are said to run spy operations within Canada.

Ok, this is probably another one of those myths that roam around on the internet, but even the Associated Press gives us a picture of the sneaky coins. Of course according to the Canadian Press (The Star) it's just a plot by Elmer Fudd.
The Star




So check your pockets if you live close to Canada, and whisper sweet nothings into the Bugs ear.


Todays Quote: "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back." Carl Sagan