Category: Idiots

Truth through Wikipedia

~ Inquisitor

Here’s Labour’s criticism of the Tory “build lots of unnecessary but ideologically-correct ‘independent’ state schools” policy, as seen regularly on News 24 today:

[Lord Andrew] Adonis claimed the Tories were merely copying Labour policy…

[“Tory plan to make schools follow academy model“, Education Guardian, 19th November 2007]

Look up Wikipedia for “City Academy“, however, and

The city academy programme was originally based on the programme of City Technology Colleges (CTCs) created by the Conservative government in the 1980s, which were also business-sponsored.

City Academies were a rebranding of a Tory policy, and as such Labour should really be very careful in criticising on this area. They aren’t, of course; fools.

The rumour mill: Nintendo may not be your friend

~ Inquisitor

This might not be true and I have no way of checking since I don’t need a Wii, but apparently Amazon France and Germany have stopped selling said consoles to the UK (but will allow shipping of other consoles, even the PS3). The source is the Wii thread on the DVD Forums. Since there aren’t any Wiis in the UK but there are in France and Germany, and since we’re meant to have a single market, can one see the problem with this?

Obviously if it’s not true and just Amazon deciding not to sell electronics beyond their local store then this won’t be a problem, but if Nintendo has threatened Amazon into stopping shipping then they’re just as bad as SCEE (who of course threatened Lik-Sang out of business, amongst other things, for selling PSPs at a fair price.) Worrying.

Poor “wi-fi security” BBC News article

~ Inquisitor

Not entirely accurate:

More holes have been picked in the security measure designed to protect the privacy and data of wi-fi users.

Of course, when you actually read the article, it turns out to be yet another attack on WEP.

WEP is not the security measure. WEP is a security measure, and it’s an extremely poor one. WPA, which is on pretty much every ADSL router that people in the UK actually own because it’s been around for about as long as WEP’s been useless, is the security measure that people should be using, but this article only actually mentions that close to the end and then adds a bunch of confusion about WPA2.

It’s also incorrect on operating systems: since Windows 2000, for example, has no native wireless support, everything depends on the driver. Therefore the Ralink-chipset PCI card my brother uses on his Win2K-running room PC can connect to the home WPA network with absolutely no difficulty.

If you have Windows XP, you can update to SP2 unless it’s a pirate copy; and even then, you should be able to find a mate with a copy that will. If you have Vista, Linux or a Mac running recent OS X there’s no difficulty with WPA or WPA2. And the only current, mainstream device I can think of which isn’t WPA by default is the Nintendo DS; the 360 through its wireless adapter, the PSP (above firmware 2.0, which you’ll have had to update to play any games anyway), PS3 and Wii all support it fine. And yet the guy from BT who they question says:

A spokesman for BT said that it used WEP on its home hub products because of the compatibility issues.

“We use WEP for a very sensible reason,” said the spokesman, “there are a number of devices out there in the marketplace that do not use WPA.”

So why not supply it WPA as default (as Sky and Be Unlimited do) and then tell people in the manual or on an information sheet how to scale it down using an Ethernet cable and a web browser if they actually have some of the ancient crap they worry about? By supplying WEP you are supplying a product that is broken and gives a false sense of security – WEP is about as secure as covering a broken window with tin foil.

A better way to go about this from a consumer protection point of view would be an article talking about how WPA improves your security, how to put it on and at the end say that if there’s any difficulty with it, update your devices and if that doesn’t work, WEP might have to be your least worst option if you can’t put an Ethernet cable out to them. At least the ISPs have stopped supplying routers which default to unencrypted now, but there’s still a long way to go and articles like this one are not helping.

Giving with one hand, taking with another

~ Inquisitor

Sony have cut the price of the PS3 in the UK to something a little more reasonable, months after they did so in the States. Previous to this price cut, the £425 60GB PS3, which excluding VAT (the right way to compare these things) is £361.70, was the only model in the UK. In the US, this model is $499, which when converted to pounds is £244.65 – so an entire £115 (a little over $230) was going directly into Sony’s pockets as a stupidity tax on Brits. Now the 60GB is £349, £297.02 excluding VAT, meaning the ripoff is now only £50.

Never give Sony an even break however – they’ve also introduced the 40GB cut-down PS3 we’ve been hearing about, for £299 (removing VAT and converting, $520), but it’s a serious ripoff – they’ve reduced the number of USB ports, removed the SD card etc. slots and even worse than that, they’ve removed PS1/PS2 backwards compatibility.

Which was in software anyway so doesn’t cost them anything to include whatsoever. And of course this crocked model is going to be the only PS3 in Europe in the future. Always give it to Sony to mess things up big time – the US’s only PS3 in the future will be a $600 80GB model with the same backwards compatibility and sockets as the original Euromodel.

And there still aren’t any games. If you want a console, buy a 360 and/or a Wii. If you want to play PS2 games, buy a PS2 – you can buy it very cheaply. If you want a Blu-Ray player, buy a Blu-Ray player. Do not buy the PS3; if you must, buy the 60GB, but it only encourages them.

Another “clever” 419 in my mailbox

~ Inquisitor ~ 9 Comments

This one is new to me – it’s all done in Jesus’ name! So of course I had to do another deconstruction.

Dear in Christ,

Well, I’m not “in Christ”, so there’s a hit right away. Hell, I even link to Pharyngula on my linkbar. Obviously has just bought a mailing list from one of the other scumbags in the area.

Calvary greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I am Deacon George Useh, a member of Day Spring Ministry, basically a Prayer and deliverance Ministry.During a Prayer and fasting session in my Ministry, I asked our Lord Jesus Christ to give me the opportunity to redeem my life and purify what remains of my wealth, God delivery revealed to me to Invest in His Kingdom through you and your
 Ministry.

Jesus told me to, uh, “Invest in His Kingdom” by scamming the unbelievers out of their savings! Wow, how cynical.

As the bible says\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"Go to the world,preach the gospel,spread his words,heal the sick............\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\"

…and scam all the mugus? Oh, not there in my copy, but maybe Nigeria’s translation is different. I have no idea.

I got your email when i was lead by the spirit to be in search of the man of god on Christan search on the Internet.Like i have told you earlier in my last email that the lord minister to me to give to charity.

Well, except for the inconvenient fact that I’m somewhat lacking in religon and I’ve never seen any email from this known 419er before…

The first link on Google for the name, by the way, is a police blotter in Chatanooga which features someone who’d received fake money orders from the exact same scammer earlier this year – this particular variant has been operating for a while. You’d have thought a spammer would make sure that he was using names that couldn’t be zeroed out by a run on Google, but there you go.

I am not interested in the Earthly commissions as my rewards is from the Heaven above.I and my institution are blessed to help the needy and not after the rewards of the world as the bible says if not the lord that buideth the house the laborer labour but in vain...........

…and then the labourer sent out a mass spam campaign to a bought-in list of email addresses and rolled in it for a few years.

Nice spelling issue there – “laborer labour”. It does look like there’s more than one hand in this letter from the fluctuations in spelling and capitalisation, one American English speaker and one UK English speaker at least.

I will like to donate to you/ministry and i will like to donate through a money order of 6,500 dollars for him to cash.Better still,i have some other charities which i wants to donate funds to and i will wants oncashing the cheque to help me donate some part of the money to the other charities or needies as well.

And now we get the money order element of the scam. $6500 seems awfully small for a scammer to use, but it would be big money in Lagos.

I am giving you 2,000 dollars out of the money and i wants you on cashing the cheque to help me donate the remaining 4,500 dollars to some other charities or needies whose in formations i will give you when the cheque is cashed in the cash stores.I will want you to furnish me with the following in formations below:
(1)Name which you wants the check to be addressed
(2)Address where you wants me to send the cheque to(NOT P.O BOXES)
(3)Your Mobile telephone number for prompt communication.

Wow, nice way to have enough information to steal someone’s identity. This scam could be extremely lethal:

  • “I want your bank account number for security” or
  • “Can you send me a photocopy of something with your address on it so I can verify?”
  • Hence, identity theft for credit card applications/loans/bank accounts/passport applications/so on and so forth

But because the scammers are thick, this is probably just a cheque cashing scam (and notice this uses both British and US spellings in different parts of the email again). You cash the cheque, the scammers receive $4500 in the post and then the local cheque cashing place calls up demanding all their money back when it comes through as fraudulent.

That NOT PO BOXES thing is probably to catch out scambaiters, but I’m not entirely sure on that one. Maybe there is an ID theft element here of some sort, but I can’t be certain.

The ending is quite something:

As soon as i received this informations,i will go ahead to send you the check.After the successful completion of this first phase of the lords works with you then i can go ahead to send you another cheque and hence the continuous works of the lord.

I Am Yours In Christ,
Deacon George Useh
E-MAIL: Gospelpromoters001@yahoomail.fr

Look! A promise for more! And a disposable Yahoo France email address! Look at the confidence engendered by this guy.

And the ‘Lord’ has “continuous works”! Well, this scammer certainly does, that’s for sure. At the very least, however, we can be assured that if the Christian God, or for that matter a Jewish or Muslim God really does exist he’s going to hell – that’s at least four commandments right there (the third and eight through ten), and you could push for six (one and two, because as a 419er and as a scammer he obviously idolises Mammon.) I think nothingness is probably better, but who’s to say?

Adverts from hell

~ Inquisitor

I’m back in a Location Up North and thus back in the world of four channels, no Freeview and unskippable adverts, and there’s a few that have been annoying me repeatedly – Peugeot’s Rugby World Cup bumpers are major annoyances already and we’re only two games in (shame about that Italian non-try), and I want to seriously inhibit whoever made the talking animal technology from Babe cheap enough for insurance hawkers to use in their advertising.

(I am also, as you can see from this, somewhat lacking in good blog post ideas, hence this.)

The point here is: why do adverts seek to annoy? It is of course hard to make a piece of film that, shown repeatedly every fifteen minutes, that won’t annoy, but a lot of them seem to want to do it deliberately. Why do people buy stuff that seeks to annoy them into doing so? It’s perplexing.

I really do not get why people would want to use a Shiela’s Wheels type business from the image that they put out. I suppose this goes in the same questions bin as “why do people phone 090 numbers”, really, a question that I would also have trouble answering. I suppose I must think differently in some way, although I cannot think how.

Gervais’ PR meets BBC Scotland, has lunch

~ Inquisitor

This is some story, isn’t it…

  • Ricky Gervais does really expensive show, crows about it (the nastily smug “Ricky Gervais at Edinburgh Castle is sold out” poster promoting his ‘Fame’ DVD taking up most of the West End of Princes Street has been up for weeks now).
  • Needless to say, he gets criticised for it by people – not least because he’s not the greatest stand-up in the world, as anyone who suffered through his ten minutes of the Diana concert – which came after he sold all these tickets – will happily back up.
  • Also, it’s the same show as he’s been doing on tour for a long time, only at Edinburgh Castle.
  • To deflect this, he’s giving some cash to Macmillan. Which would be fine, except…
  • …he’s not telling how much money Macmillan are getting until next week, when it’s obvious that BBC Scotland won’t report it.
  • Also, this has only been given after the gig. Hmm.

So in other words this is a fluff story planted by Gervais’ PR to try and put out some goodwill until he actually does give the money. Eight thousand tickets at £37.50 is £300,000; minus staging costs, I’d expect any good donation for this to be in the mid-to-high five-figure range and I doubt very much it’ll be that high. Prove me wrong, Ricky, prove me wrong.

World’s dumbest scammers #2, and a rant

~ Inquisitor ~ 1 Comment

My inboxes seem to be magnets for new viruses, 419 scams, stock spam with images or .pdfs and occasional phishing attempts for banks I don’t even belong to. I seem to get all the dumb ones; or at least, only the dumb ones get through my regularly updated Bayesian-trained SpamAssassin setup to my main inbox folders.

The lotto scam is of course a variant of the traditional 419: the main difference is that people who get taken in should be treated a bit more sympathetically (but only a bit more) than those who get done by the standard 419 as they don’t think they’re doing anything illegal. This one ticks all the moron boxes, however.

It was sent from another hacked/dodgy American Linux webserver, which means I think it’s from the same or a related gang to the one that sent the phishing scam I mentioned a few days ago. The domain name resolves to “host4seo.com”, which appears to be a spam nest. Looking at the webserver mentioned, it’s a default Apache with cpanel.

FROM: THE LOTTERY DIRECTORINTERNATIONAL PRIZE AWARD DEPT NL.21 NIN NAMARAL SRAATWEG 5009 GL.
GL.GTI 1815GA AMSTERDAM,
Amsterdam,Netherlans.

Hmm, “Netherlans”. That sure sounds legitimate.

PRIZE AWARD DEPT. REF No: 9590 ES 9414BATCH No: 573881545-NL/2007TICKET No:PP 3502 /8707-01
SERIAL No: 05908 LUCKY No: 9-43-97
[FOR CATEGORY "A" WINNER ONLY]

See the random numbers! SEE THEM! They mean.. Uh. What do they mean?

ATTN: LOTTERY WINNER.We wish to congratulate you over your email success in our computer balloting sweepstake held in Netherlands.

At least they can spell it right this time.

This is a millennium scientific computer game in which email addresses were used.

A “millennium scientific computer game”. Whew, I feel reassured already.

What are 419 scammers actually on in order to think that people will be taken in by this crap? You’d surely have to be thicker than the spammers themselves to fall for that one.

It is a promotional program aimed at encouraging internet users,therefore you do not need to buy ticket to enter for it. You have been approved for the star prize of $1,500,000.00 (One Million,Five Hundred Thousand Dollars) To claim your winning prize you are to contact the appointed agent as soon as possible for the immediate release of your winnings, with your Full Names, Contact Telephone Numbers (Home, Office and Mobile Number and also Fax Number)and also with your winning informations via email to process the immediate payment of your prize.The Validity period of the winnings is for 7 working days hence you are expected to make your claims immediately, any claim not made before this date will be returned to the MINISTERIO DE ECONOMIA Y HACIENDA.

I assume seven days is the usual length of time it takes Netcollection to cancel email accounts for sub-moronic Dutch 419ers.

I like the fact that this has obviously been edited from a version of the lotto scam relating to the Spanish lottery (notoriously big, hence the original target of the lotto-scam 419 variant) and they’ve forgotten to correct the name of the ministry. Very “professional” work from these losers.

Contact Person
Mr.Leonaert Bramer
Fax: +31-847-368-137
Tel: +31-614-797-465
Email: mail@adminclaimsdeptnl.netcollection.co.uk

Incredibly, these numbers are actually in the Netherlands (although the email is with a UK ISP who should hopefully cancel the bastards). The fax number has been around for months, the telephone number only shows a Google hit on 419eater.

Of course, sending hundreds of large pages of alternating dark greys interspersed with a decent greyscale representation of a certain notorious goat-related shock site image to the fax number via, say, tpc.int and a disposable webmail account in order to clog up their fax machine and stop them receiving messages from victims would somehow be very very wrong. Christ knows why, of course, these are Bad Guys and they need to be taken down, but because I know that vigilantism doesn’t actually work I won’t descend to their level.

(Besides, it’s probably a computer anyway, and the phone is probably voicemail.)

Which of course means letting them get away with scamming people until someone with authority actually does something other than cut off their email dropbox. It’s a great ethical dilemma which exists with regard to scambaiting and scambusting: the law is currently completely ineffective at punishing people like these, whether it’s 419ers, eBay scammers, fake “I’m from the water board” guys doorstepping OAPs, or to be honest most other white collar offences.  The laws are on the books already, there just isn’t the enforcement power. Jail isn’t generally even offered to these people, and the fines given are miniscule – especially for big companies scamming, who can get away with murder (amount earned by ITV scamming X Factor red button voters out of 15p a vote, £250,000; Ofcom fine, nilch – amount earned by the BBC from the Blue Peter screwup, nilch; Ofcom fine £50,000. Should have been the other way round, I think.)

These people must do a tremendous amount of damage. 419ers wreck lives. They’re just like bogus callers; in the case of the lotto scams, there was recently a local news story in my area about a pensioner who got done by a lotto scam, just like this one but handled entirely over the phone. I want to wreck their life for once. Why the hell can’t the Dutch do anything? The Netherlands have been 419 central for years. I simply cannot believe that these aren’t the same people.

Part of the problem why nobody does anything about scammers is local corruption, of course, which works in Nigeria where the kind of money brought in by 419 scamming can shut up even the highest up of prosecutors, but not nearly as much here or in the Netherlands. The main problem is tying them down, and this requires work – worse, the kind of work that is in a very grey legal area, that is sending the scammer an affirmative to see whether he’ll come out in the open. There’s so much 419 spam and so few legal investigators that only a token effort can ever be made, and as a result people will continue to be conned by them.

All we can do without becoming like them is to keep deconstructing their schemes, putting them out in the open,  and occasionally lead them along entertaining garden paths. The more the average person knows about scam-spotting, the less likely they are to be taken in; what is needed is a heavy bout of publicity, which we could have if Panorama or Tonight with Trevor McDonald go back to their consumer protection roots instead of just making up scare stories about Wi-Fi. Hopefully, with a bit of luck, the 419ers, spammers and all the other scumbags who scam over the net will find their mark supply dried up with no possible replacement. That will be a joyous day. In the meantime, we just have to keep working at it.