Did you get an email from ‘Captain Greg Wallace’? I got several of them this past week. I read the first one with some amusement and dismay.
The amusement was because it is just another play on the old Nigerian scam albeit a new version. The dismay because somewhere,
someone, will probably fall for this scam and lose a bunch of money.
The email doesn’t ask for money, that no doubt will come as soon as the unwary victim responds to the email. Probably the request will be for ‘expenses’ or some other falsehood that requires money.
Supposedly the good Captain found a secret hoard while serving in Iraq. Being the good person he is, it was not reported to the
authorities, but was ’secured with a senior United Nation Diplomat in Amsterdam Holland’. He doesn’t explain how he managed to get the box to Amsterdam. He’s counting on greed to overcome omitting that little detail.
The nice little email is so full of spelling and grammar errors you just know he isn’t using a spell check.
I wonder how many people will fall for this scam? I used to think no one would fall for this kind of scam, but I was wrong. PT Barnum
once reportedly said ‘There’s a sucker born every minute’. Unfortunately this is still true. Don’t be one of those suckers, delete those
emails and forget about them.
Martha
I use a laptop like a desktop. I have limited space for a computer and my laptop with a 17 inch display and keypad work just fine, as long as I can use a mouse. I absolutely despise those touchpads that come with laptops. I have a Microsoft wireless mouse and most of the time it works just great. Today it didn’t.
I got the message popup telling me the battery power in my mouse was low. No problem, I just bought a new package of batteries (16) so I proceeded to change the battery. (This mouse uses just one battery.)
It didn’t work. I put in a different battery and it still didn’t work. I was ready to panic, that keypad was giving me fits! I tried another battery, still no mouse! I searched and found an old wired USB mouse and hooked it up. It moved sooooo slooow! The wire kept getting in the way. Ick! Maybe I just need a new mouse.
I decided to see if maybe I should find new drivers. Yep, new updated drivers were available. So I downloaded the new drivers and installed them. I disconnected the old wired mouse and hooked up the wireless mouse. Nothing doing, it didn’t work.
I don’t give up easily as most of my family and friends know. I tried yet another battery and lo and behold it worked.
By now I’m rather unhappy that I have a package of sixteen batteries that seem to be a bit old. Two of them didn’t work and that is not good! These batteries weren’t cheapies either.
So, OK, that’s life. I noticed a new icon on my desktop for Microsoft Mouse and I check it out. Oh boy I can customize this mouse! I decide to click that button on the side of the mouse that will magnify stuff and oh boy, was that ever a mistake!
It magnified all right, big time! And clicking that button was supposed to turn the magnification off, but it didn’t! I am starting to get dizzy trying to manuever around with this big box following my every mouse move.
So I just did the usual fix for stuff like this. I rebooted and was sure hoping it would work.
Everything is back to normal size now and I am going to forget about ‘customizing’ my mouse. Sometimes it’s best to just leave well enough alone.
My son decided to check those batteries that didn’t work. Something fishy going on, the batteries tested OK. I have doubts about that mouse again. I check in the Control Panel, it indicates the battery life is good. But that battery power low message is still poping up, so yes, I think it’s time for a new mouse.
Martha
I have a new mouse! It is a Logitech V320 Cordless Optical mouse for notebooks and I just love this little mouse!
Lately I see more spam like this;
Hi!
I would like to invite you to visit my Refriendz page and see my latest photos.
In order to visit my space, you must go to:
http://www.refriendz.com/?do=Login.Invite&rid=someone&email=Group@yahoogroups.com (This line edited)
(If this link does not work, please copy and paste it into your browser or go to www.refriendz.com and enter ’someon.sm’ (edited)as Invitation ID to Login to the web site.)
P.S. Refriendz is Invitation-Only, so do not miss your chance to visit my page!
Why I would care about visiting a page for someone I don’t know is beyond me. I do know this is one way to gather more information about me to sell to spammers. It could be legit, although it is rather dubious.
Some times the invitation is to update some one’s ‘Birthday list. (My birthday has been the same all my life, don’t think anyone who has needs to ‘Update’) or it could be some other type of invite.
I guess this is a result of all those ’social’ websites that are poping up everywhere trying to cash in on the MySpace craze. I can’t imagine anyone with a lick of sense actually clicking those links. With all of the malware, phishing and other types of scummy stuff out there, it’s a far better thing to just delete this junk.
I suppose this type of stuff appeals to some folks, but no one I know would want it, at least I hope they wouldn’t. I hope you won’t click it!
Martha
A lot of people are afraid these days. The reasons are many and real.
Car jackers and road rage are just a few of the things people fear and for good reason. Not a day goes by that someone or maybe several folks are victims of these crimes.
Home Invasions are on the rise, burglars want to take your property bought with your hard earned money and the list goes on and on.
The economy is in the dumper and people are fearful of losing their jobs. Easy credit is now gone and thanks to some really greedy brokers/lenders and some really dumb folks who knew they couldn’t afford that expensive new house, the Nation is experiencing a mortgage meltdown and folks are losing their homes. The stock market is in yo yo mode and people are afraid of losing the value in their 401 k funds and other investments. (They have a right to be nervous.)
Health care and medical insurance is way too expensive. If you are lucky enough to have it and there are a lot of folks who don’t, your co-payments are higher and the cost of prescription drugs is out of sight.
Enter the fear mongers. Everyday my mailbox is full of this stuff. (Snail mail spam) These are the folks who advertise they can save you by preying on our irrational and sometimes justified fears! They can tell you how to protect your investments, how to play the stock market, which stocks to buy, how to beat the IRS, yada, yada, yada.
They can tell you how to beat cancer and other awful diseases. They can tell you the ’secrets’ that will keep you from growing old and keep you looking young.
They will tell you all of their secrets, but not for free. You can buy their expensive (and useless) books! Subscribe to their newsletters! (Not free!) When you receive the books and/or newsletters, read them very carefully. Do they deliver on their promise to give you all those secrets?
Right. The secrets are mostly stuff you should have learned a long time ago, or else the advice given is so ridiculous as to be downright scary!
Along with your paid newsletter subscription will come a lot of other ‘free’ advice. Just order this stuff and you will really be ’safe’. The only folks really benefiting from all of this extra stuff will be the fear mongers selling it.
The next time you see an offer from someone selling this stuff, read it with a skeptical eye. Do you see any of these phrases? Free Reports! (They aren’t free if you have to buy something else to get them.) Super Health Cures! Lose weight fast! Free Cash! Invest with no risk! On and on go the big headlines promising miracles for money, life and who knows what else.
If there really were cures for cancer and diabetes it would be wonderful. It would be all over the news, now wouldn’t it? I am rather skeptical about trusting the drug companies, but I don’t believe they are hiding cures because they are ‘free’. I don’t believe the oil companies hid, paid off, or killed to prevent the wonderful invention that got a hundred miles to the gallon from seeing the light of day.
If I were you, I’d throw that stuff where it belongs, in the recycle tub to place on the curb. Tell the fear mongers where to go.
Martha
Thieves are everywhere, including the Internet.
By now most of us know about identity theft and are aware of all the scams out there. But there is another form of thievery as well, stealing a website or website content.
Webmasters work hard to make their websites. The really good webmasters learn how to program with HTML and write Cascading Style Sheets, commonly know as CSS. They take pictures of the products they sell. They take care to see if the pictures don’t take too long to load so their pages will load quickly. They make sure the pages are viewed the same way in all browsers, not just Internet Explorer. This process doesn’t happen over night. It takes many days and sometimes nights. Content is king on the Internet and some of us have to really struggle to get that content written. Content needs to be original and not everyone really likes to write. Trial and error is the name of the game until one day they finally get it right. All the hard work pays off at last.
Then one day, someone steals their site. Literally. They steal it by using something called a ’scraper’. It seems there are some folks who decided it would be neat to write a program (which probably consists mainly of scripts) that could capture everything on a website and then post it to another site or blog. These folks offer their site stealing programs for sale and then the inevitable happens.
Someone decided to use a ’scrapper’ or something similar on a Yahoo computer help Group with a lot of members, so there is a lot of ‘posting’ going on. While trying to find a solution to stop this streaming of posts to a blog with the very horrible name of http://how-to-make-a-computer-virus.blogspot.com/ (named no doubt to catch evil surfers). That’s when I found out about scrappers or site stealers. Some time back someone on one of my Groups had their site stolen and the wonder was how they managed to do it so completely. Wondering no more, a scrapper was used!
When this article is posted to my blog I am hoping the blog with the scrapper is gone. Complaints have been filed with the bloggers host, BlogSpot, so we will see what happens. In the meantime, everyone of us that has a website/blog has to wonder, ‘Will a thief target my site?’
Martha
Read the fine print, always!
Sometimes I get the feeling that ‘they are out to get us’, ‘they’ meaning retail or service companies. The old saying ‘you get what you pay for’ is not always true any more. Sometimes you get a lot less of what you pay for, and I have been reading instances of folks not getting anything they paid for. (I love The Consumerist!)
Recently a major department store had an ad in my newspaper for a mattress sale. (Mattresses are always on sale somewhere.) I don’t need a new mattress, but the markdown was big enough to catch my eye. The mattresses were for a major brand and the prices were good, even for this retailer. And of course there was the ‘hook’, free delivery, setup and haul away of the old mattress listed in large print.
Except one little thing. There was a minimum purchase of $699 for the free delivery, set up and haul away. I found that very interesting. The sale price of a queen size set was $599, double set was $589 and twin sets $549. If you bought a queen set, which is probably the most purchased these days, the delivery was $65 and haul away $40. The only set that would qualify for the free delivery and haul away was a king size set for $999.
I wonder how many people bought one of these sets using a credit card and didn’t notice the delivery and haul away charges. I am quite sure the retailer was hoping this would happen. If those folks are like a number of my friends, they carry a balance on their cards and probably just pay the required payments when they are due.
There are a number of retail department stores experiencing low sales these days. I don’t suppose they have any idea that legal but deceptive practices like these may just cost them future business.
Martha
I generally try to stay away from subjects like religion or politics when writing for my website, blog or posting to a list. You can’t change people’s opinions on these subjects and it is foolish to try. You can also offend some people by a remark that goes against their beliefs.
But this is just too much for me to keep quiet about. I am talking about the poor woman who was humiliated by having to remove her ‘nipple’ rings before she could board a flight. I have heard a number of stories about bottles being taken away from babies, old ladies being strip searched and a number of other absolutely ridiculous things the TSA has done to hapless passengers, but this one took the cake. If I am wrong, please let me know how a nipple ring can be a security hazard. I really want to know so if there is a nipple ring anywhere in my vicinity I can report it to Homeland Security.
All of this just emphasizes what can happen when you give power to a certain segment of the population. They do these things because they can get away with it. They enjoy humiliating and intimidating people. I think these are the characters that were once school-yard bullies. Now they are airport screener bullies. I believe most of the people who work at being screeners are just doing their jobs as best they can and the few who are bullies are giving all the rest a bad name.
I think the things that we have done to prevent nipple rings, baby bottles and the like from being allowed on commercial flights must have the terrorists laughing.
I am so happy I am not required to fly anymore. I don’t go anywhere that I can’t go by car. I just hope that one day I don’t have to submit to a body search to get in my car to go to the market.
Martha
Once in a while someone I trust will post something in a Yahoo Group or blog and I take it for gospel. I shouldn’t do that, because some things they post are really not what a user should do.
I won’t mention any names, but there was a recent post/blog about getting ready for Vista that said I should go ahead and install the drivers that Windows update says I need. The message went on to say that although the writer ordinarily advised against installing drivers from Windows update, this is an exception.
So, thinking that this must be OK, I installed the driver for my graphics card that Windows update said is available and re-booted.
OMG! I have ruined my computer! The display is (and there is no other word to describe it) horrible! No amount of tweaking, changing settings, helps! This is a disaster! It looks worse than Safe-Mode!
Then I remembered System Restore. So I restored the computer to the day before and now everything is back the way it should be.
If I have to install those drivers that Windows update says I need before I can install Vista SP1, then it just isn’t going to happen. Vista SP1 will not be installed. Besides from what I have read, it will fix things that don’t need fixing on my computer. Hibernation works just fine along with everything else that supposedly needs fixing.
I am hoping that Microsoft will ‘fix’ SP1 to work with my drivers, especially if one day I see the dreaded message on Windows Update “You must have SP1 installed to update Vista”.
In the meantime I’m going to find out what version my video card driver uses, and download it it for safe keeping.
Another lesson learned. I did know better, but I did it anyway. Thank you, Microsoft, for System Restore!
Martha
Last month I wrote about a magazine that keeps nagging me to re-subscribe. If this was just an isolated problem it wouldn’t be so bad, but all my magazines are doing the same thing to a certain extent. Not as bad as Money, but they are wanting me to ‘renew NOW’.
I keep a spreadsheet to let me know just when my subscriptions expire as I do tend to be a tad forgetful. Since I am sorta forgetful, I guess the magazine people must know that, but a reminder eight months before the expire date is a bit much.
The letters, cards and covers are all telling me I need to ‘renew NOW’. If I don’t ‘renew NOW’, I am going to miss out by not receiving every issue. I won’t save money by not renewing ‘NOW’.
News Flash! I will save more money by not renewing at all. (Maybe that will stop the nagging!)
I think every magazine there is wants me to subscribe as I am getting all these offers for ‘Professional’ rates. If I did take them up, I suspect I would start getting the letters to ‘renew NOW’. No thanks, I will pass.
Magazines are not the only businesses that want me to ‘renew NOW’. At least once a month I get a letter from a warranty company wanting me to renew my warranty on my car before it expires. (It actually expired three years ago.) Since my car is now officially five years old it might need some repairs one of these days. But I don’t drive much any more (gas is so expensive!) and the car has less than 40,000 miles on it, so I am not going to renew the warranty ‘NOW’. (Or ever.) If those repairs get too costly, well, I like new cars and they come with a warranty.
I guess all of these ‘renew NOW’ cards and letters are helping the Post Office pay their bills.
I can read just about everything I need to know on the Internet. I will save money and be ‘Green’ at the same time. The recycle bin will be less heavy when I push it to the curb. I am so excited! I can buy more software with all the money I will save by not renewing ‘NOW’!
That will teach those ‘renew NOW’ folks not to be such a nag! (Just think of the postage they will save when they finally quit nagging me!)
Martha
Since Dr. Bombay did his disappearing act, he has been replaced with Mr. Modem. (Catchy name!) Mr. Modem is much nicer than Dr. Bombay, but not as much fun to read.
Mr.Modem has a website with lots of goodies. He has a search-able library full of computer tips, questions and answers. He has a page with his favorite links, lots of links. He has a CD which has “more than 1400 of Mr. Modem’s favorite Web sites — the best the Internet has to offer”.
He also has a weekly newsletter that sounds like a real help for users who need help. It isn’t free, but the sample shows it to be quite comprehensive.
In the column for Mr Modem that appears in the newspaper, he also answers questions and provides a few websites to visit in Mr Modem’s Sites of the Week.
While Mr. Modem’s column is informative for the average user and easier to read, I have to admit, it isn’t as much fun as Dr. Bombay Computer MD. I think sometimes I have an ornery streak!
Martha
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