IT & Communications

One of the most persistent forms of fraud, now well over 100 years old, is directory fraud. In a recent iteration, there is at least something a little different.

That's it. We've had enough. Until internet domain name registrars start to adopt responsible practices over who they sell domains to, especially the plethora of top level domains that criminals habitually use for the nefarious activities, it's time to block them entirely.

Even by the standards of spammers, we have to be impressed with the targeting of this outfit. antimoneylaundering.net has, this spammer claims, sent an e-mail to antimoneylaundering.net. That's our sister domain. That's not clever - lots of criminals do that. It's not even clever to put the name in the "from " - criminals and sales people do that. But to tie it to something that might actually be of genuine interest? That is clever or, at least, devious.

Public thanks: TechWarehouse in Kuala Lumpur. I bricked my primary PC and nothing else in the house was capable of handling its workload. I needed something urgently until I get the big box to ASUS so they can work out why the BIOS isn't working out and fix it.

They say, at the end "this is not invoice." But by the time you get that far, you've already been sucked in.

A business using, almost inevitably, an e-mail address at one of the large US based anonymous e-mail services (in this case harry.vangundy@msn.com ) claims to be operating out of Luxumbourg. In fact, the form advertises arguably illegal services and promotes it by wilfully committing unlawful access to websites.

If you are concerned about the amount of information about you and your company and its people that Facebook collects through its various methods, there are a number of methods to control e.g. trackers.

But now FireFox from the Mozilla Foundation has approved a method of ring-fencing not only Facebook itself but other services, such as Instagram, that it offers.

If you are issuing a notice about technology, the least you can do is make sure your own tech works when recipients click on a link in the notice.

Russian criminals are offering a service of downloading entire websites and breaching the intellectual property rights of website content owners.

But that's not the only fascinating thing about the criminals' approach.

Basically, they are selling the rod and line to phishermen.

Want to create a fake bank website complete with contact forms? Here's how....

A warning from Vortex Centrum Limited, publisher of PleaseBeInformed.com and its various publications.

"We discovered that our data source was modified by an unauthorized agent" says the e-mail that purports to be from LinkedIn. But it isn't. And there's even a little hint at the end to prove it.

IMPORTANT UPDATE

If it's got lies in it, it's got to be a fraud. And this one is stupid even by the low standards we often see.

A Russian national who runs Evil Corp has been indicted in the United States following unprecedented collaboration between the NCA, the FBI and the National Cyber Security Centre.

Do you know this man?

In the past few days, the US Immigration and Customs has had the third major IT failure in two years. When you read of a "US government shut-down," this is not what one expects. It's not the only US Government department to go dark. And it carries lessons for all of those rushing to bring NewTech online before it is proven.

Is this how malware gets onto your mobile?

One of our rarely used e-mail addresses has been miraculously spam-free. Literally, no spam at all. Until about two weeks ago. Then something weird started to happen. And there's a pattern. Given the recent attacks on mobiles via WhatsApp, one has to ask: is this recent format spam directed at mobile users? Nigel Morris-Cotterill adopts a risk-averse approach while encouraging risk awareness.

If you've ever visited a UK government website to make any kind of application, you've been met with the worst example of both process and design. But the UK Government is not alone - any process is designed by people who already know how to use it, so they assume everyone knows the same. Wouldn't it be nice if someone spent time looking at both the process and the forms and made them work for people who are visiting for the first time and know nothing except the objective they hope to achieve.

Well, someone did: Turkey's eVisa scheme is a model that, every company and government process and form designer should visit and learn from.