ShareCast: FCA warns Google to stop accepting scam adverts . “UK regulator the Financial Conduct Authority has warned tech giant Google that it will take legal action if it continues to accept advertisements for online financial scams.”
WTVD: Instagram scammers copycat popular accounts to access followers, money during giveaways. “As you are scrolling through your social media feed, you need to watch out for scammers impersonating popular businesses and influencers social media pages to try and get access to their followers and even their money. It happened to a popular triangle food and travel blogger, and when her account got shut down, she turned to out Troubleshooter Diane Wilson for help.”
Digit: Booze-delivery scams found running through Google Maps in India. “Google has been working hard in developing Maps as a standalone app that can provide users with a platform for ease of commuting and communication. However, it has been found that people are taking negative advantage of the company’s service. In yet another incident of exploitation of Google Maps, it has been reported that scammers in India are using the service to mint money by offering an option to deliver alcohol at people’s doorsteps.”
Cointelegraph: Researchers Find Thousands of Crypto Pump-and-Dump Groups on Messaging Apps. “There are thousands of pump-and-dump groups on popular messaging apps, a study conducted by the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) revealed Dec. 18. Pump-and-dump is the fraudulent practice of perpetrators encouraging unwitting investors to buy an asset to inflate its price artificially, and then selling it when the price gets high enough.”
Business Insider: Cryptocurrency scams on Twitter are so common, this guy built a tool to help detect fraudsters. “As members of the cryptocurrency community look to curb fraud and exploitation in the emerging community, Harry Denley has come up with a rather old-school solution: JavaScript.”
Quartz: This AI bot trolls email scammers. “A nonprofit organization in New Zealand created an AI bot called Re:scam, which trolls email scammers by asking them endless questions. Here’s how it works.”
CNET: Searching for Amazon? Fake Google ad sends users to scam site. “Some Google users searching for ‘Amazon’ on Thanksgiving were shown a phony ad that redirected to a scam website, one day before the biggest shopping day of the year.” Look at the screenshot with the article. Utterly ridiculous that this got through.
The Next Web: Thieves use Facebook tricks to steal your money and turn it into Bitcoin. “Polish internet swindlers have cooked up an elaborate scam that involves taking over your Facebook profile to ransack your bank account and swiftly transfer the stolen funds to anonymous Bitcoin wallets.”
Fortune: Exclusive: Facebook and Google Were Victims of $100M Payment Scam. “When the Justice Department announced the arrest last month of a man who allegedly swindled more than $100 million from two U.S. tech giants, the news came wrapped in a mystery. The agency didn’t say who was robbed, and nor did it identify the Asian supplier the crook impersonated to pull off the scheme. The mystery is now unraveled. A Fortune investigation, which involved interviews with sources close to law enforcement and other figures, has unearthed the identities of the three unnamed companies plus other details of the case.”
Well, folks, I got snookered. It doesn’t happen often, but hopefully this will allow me to better calibrate my bullstuff radar. The facial recognition software I posted about recently was a hoax. I apologize.
