Interesting piece of SPAM

Posted on December 30, 2011 by caseyjohnellis

I got this last night and about 1:00am.

I’m posting it because, despite having what I consider to be a reasonably mature eye for SPAM, I very nearly fell for this one.

TITLE: Your Amazon.com order of “Haier 1PT45G Pulsator 1-Cubic-Foot Portable Washer” has shipped!

Hello,

Shipping Confirmation
Order # 117-4695088-7488809

Your estimated delivery date is:
Tuesday, December 30, 2011

Track your package Thank you for shopping with us. We thought you’d like to know that we shipped this portion of your order separately to give you quicker service. You won’t be charged any extra shipping fees, and the remainder of your order will follow as soon as those items become available. If you need to return an item from this shipment or manage other orders, please visit Your Orders on Amazon.com.

Shipment Details

Haier 1PT45G Pulsator 1-Cubic-Foot Portable Washer $189.95
Item Subtotal: $189.95
Shipping & Handling: $0.00
Total Before Tax: $189.95
Shipment Total: $189.95
Paid by Visa: $189.95

You have only been charged for the items sent in this shipment. Per our policy, you only pay for items when we ship them to you.

Returns are easy. Visit our .
If you need further assistance with your order, please visit Customer Service.

We hope to see you again soon!
Amazon.com

My initial reaction was “Oh, I thought my wife was asleep” followed closely by “What the heck is she doing buying a washing machine…?”.

Granted that I was tired and the are more than a few clues that give this one away (the most telling being that the links, which I’ve removed, got to http://www.carnavaldechiclana.com which appears to be configured for the sole purpose of validating if an email address has a human behind it or not) but I have to say that, give the time of year and the propensity for random purchases, I consider this to be a pretty effective SPAM campaign.

How To Enable The New Version of Twitter 2011

Posted on December 9, 2011 by caseyjohnellis

Here’s the story:

Log out of Twitter on everything you can think of… Computers, iOS devices, Android devices… Deleting cookies from your computer might help too.
Download the Twitter app to your iOS device (iPad, iPhone or iPod) and/or any Android devices you have and sign in under the account you wish to “upgrade”.
Wait for about 10 minutes.
Log in to Twitter’s website and you should be presented with the new improve version on Twitter!

While you’re there… Add @caseyjohnellis and @tallpoppygroup…

Happy weekend!

A Golden Rule Of Avoiding Internet Fraud

Posted on December 4, 2011 by caseyjohnellis

This is a simple one that I told my mother-in-law the other day. It won’t protect you from everything, but it will greatly reduce your exposure.

Don’t comply with any request that you didn’t expect.

Simple right?

Put differently – any time your “computer” is proactive about asking you for personal details, credit card numbers, etc then you should flatly refuse, regardless of the terrible things that “might happen”. The same goes for any emails or social media requests that come in.

Don’t do it.

A Little Warning About Gumtree Fraud

Posted on December 2, 2011 by caseyjohnellis

I’ve been trying out Gumtree to sell some excess junk from around the house lately.

So far it’s been a pretty interesting experience… One thing that has struck me is the volume of fraudulent requests to purchase.

One came in about a laptop that I had for sale asking that I accept a company cheque because “I need the laptop for a job tomorrow, the cheque needs to be co-signed and I need to be onsite by 8am”. Of course the guy was very happy to pay full price without trying to negotiate it.

I proceeded to have a bit of fun with him and in doing so learned that he actually had no idea what he was buying, only that it was valuable and he could resell it. When I flatly refused to release the laptop into the money was cleared and in my bank account he swore and hung up on me.

Here’s the mantra:

If you are selling on a classifieds or ANY online store whatsoever (eBay and other included) NEVER let the goods out of your sight until the CASH is in hand.

This includes cheques, screenshots of bank transfers, Paypal receipts with bizarre explanations about why you may not be able to see it in your account, etc, etc, etc. No cash = no play.

If you do NOT compromise on this and you will greatly reduce you chance of getting scammed.

How To Snipe Successfully On eBay

Posted on December 2, 2011 by caseyjohnellis

This is a quick little how-to that will hopefully save a few people some pain. I’m going to presume you know what eBay is and how their auctions work.

eBay auctions are designed to make potential buyers nervous about the idea of losing the auction to someone else.

The recommendation given to avoid this is to bid as high as you’re prepared to pay as soon as possible. This is, however, the worst possible thing you can do because lets anyone else looking at the same listing that:

They have competition
How much that competition is prepared to spend.

The inevitable outcome is that they will increase their bid until they’ve outbid you (and in doing so worked out how much you’ll pay). You, outbid and now committed to winning the item, increase your bid; they increase theirs; and so on and so on goes the game of one-upmanship until the time runs out.

Net result? You’ve either lost the item to your competition or you’ve won it but in the process spent WAY more then you intended to.

Good for the seller, great for eBay, bad for you.

The other thing I see is people who wait until the last second to place their bid (a good strategy…) but place the bid based on how much the item is selling for (e.g. “it’s at $50 so I’ll bid $55″). This is another good way to miss out.

Here’s how to maximize your success rate when buying on eBay whilst minimizing the effects of getting into an impassioned “bidding war”…

Sign up for a sniping service. The one I’ve used for years is Snip.pl. Snip let’s you set up a “snipe” which is a last-second automatic bid.
Find the item that you want to buy.
Think of the absolute most you would spend for that item. Forget about how much it is starting for, or how much it is up to. Ask yourself “how much is it worth to me?”. Place that amount as your snipe with a 5 second buffer.
Little tip: Make the amount an unusual number like $13 or $57 or $109.
THIS IS THE IMPORTANT PART: Walk away. Don’t watch the auction. Don’t revise your bid. DON’T reduce your bid. Just wait for the email to let you know that the auction has finished and you’ve either won or lost.
That’s it.

If you win the item you’ll have won it without letting others know what you were prepared to pay. If you lose the item it wasn’t yours to win in the first place with your budget.

It might seem a bit scary or a bit clinical, but anything else is playing straight into the hands of the business model eBay have created.

HINT: eBay set it up like this to maximize their profit, so it’s in their interests that you completely ignore my advice.

Hope that helps. Do you have any tricks to you use when you buy on eBay or anywhere else?

Mike Montiero – F*** You. Pay Me.

Posted on November 15, 2011 by caseyjohnellis

Excuse the profanity, but this is really worth watching.

2011/03 Mike Monteiro | F*** You. Pay Me. from San Francisco Creative Mornings on Vimeo.

Mike talks specific to the design industry but it applies really to any professional services or consulting business (tech, security, financial, business, etc…). The upshot of it is that you need to think about the potential fails BEFORE you start work and protect yourself from them with a well-written services contract.

How to Increase Sign-ups by 200%

Posted on November 1, 2011 by caseyjohnellis

From the ThinkVitamin blog:

He said that they tested various phrases on the Highrise homepage for the call-to-action button. They originally had used various permutations of “Free Trial” and “Sign-up for Free Trial”. Then they tested the phrase:

“See Plans and Pricing”

This resulted in a 200% increase in sign-ups. That’s right. 200%.

He believes it’s because people are afraid if they click a link that says “Free Trial” then they’ll somehow automatically signup for something and be trapped. However, “See Plans and Pricing” encouraged them to explore, without the fear of commitment.

If that isn’t a case for conducting A/B Testing, then I don’t know what is.

UPDATE – What Happens When Coles Runs Out Of $500 Gift Cards?

Posted on October 31, 2011 by caseyjohnellis

They are at -34 and counting… Even for a scam website that’s some seriously sloppy code.

SCAM – $500 Gift Card for COLES – FREE

Posted on October 31, 2011 by caseyjohnellis

UPDATE: The purpose of this scam is to get people to fill out a survey. Every time the survey gets filled out the scammer gets paid a small fee. That’s the reason for all of this silliness.

There’s an Australia-specific scam doing the rounds of Facebook at the moment purporting to be giving away a Coles gift card with the text:

$500 Gift Card for COLES – FREE

If you click on the link you are taken to a page with the following text:

Step 1: You must share this page

Step 2:Click “Add Comment” & Type, Thanks! into the comments below

It is 100% certifiably undeniably a scam. Do not fall for it. If you fall for it and I know you don’t be surprised if I make fun of you the next time I see you.

The clues?

The countdown for the giveaway resets itself to 1300 every time you refresh the page.
Look at the punctuation and spelling… Doesn’t seem right does it? Certainly not like the work of a branch of the largest company in Australia.
The URL the link redirects you to when you click it is http://yeyenut.info/ and the link it asks you to share is http://toolapz.info/. Does this look legit to you? If yes, does it look legit AND even vaguely affiliated with Coles?
If you share the link and say “Thanks!” how is Coles going to find you if they aren’t your Facebook friend? Seriously, actually stop and think about it for a second.

There have been a few of these lately – No real purpose, benefit or threat to them which can be seen (although I’m keen to hear from anyone who has a different opinion here) but because of the lure of FREE STUFF they inevitably spread like wildfire.

Please, stop and think.

What’s your way of figuring out if something is a scam or not? Share below!

UPDATE: The purpose of this scam is to get people to fill out a survey. Every time the survey gets filled out the scammer gets paid a small fee. That’s the reason for all of this silliness.