Avoiding Nigerian scams – Facebook and classified ads

It’s no secret that Nigeria is a well documented source of scams.  Everywhere you look, there’s another batch of Nigerian scams.  So-called lotteries, “victim compensation”, dead relatives, the list is absolutely endless.  Now they’ve turned to Facebook and classified ads.

Facebook scams

With the popularity of Facebook, it’s no surprise the Nigerian scammers targetted it.  They hack the accounts, then send messages to your friends telling them they’ve been robbed and are stranded.  They take details of your account to try and make their claims sound legitimate.   They claim to be stuck in another country, with no money and no plane tickets to get home.

In his blog, Meng Wong provides a transcript of an attempted Nigerian scam where he fools the scammer into visiting a particular web page so that he can grab the IP address and track him down.  Sure enough, the IP address was from Nigeria. 

Rakesh Agrawal also published a transcript of a Nigerian scam in action on his blog.  I encourage you to read the entry so that you can familiarize yourself with how these scammers work and avoid the same trap.

More information:

Nigerian 419 scams on Network World

Nigerian 419 scams on C|net

Nigerian 419 scams on Red Tape Chronicles (MSN)

Classified ads

Another favorite Nigerian scam is replying to classified ads.  In this scam, they try to tell you they’re out of the country (UK seems to be a favorite destination) and asking you to either accept certified cheques (which turn out to be counterfeit), payment by stolen credit cards or offering you much more than a product is worth, plus a large sum for shipping, through Paypal if you’ll only ship to Africa. 

By the time you catch on, it’s too late.  Your product is gone and you’re out the money.  I’ve even seen these scammers tell you that they have a product, ready to ship, that will be shipped once they get their payment.  Of course they disappear and your promised product never arrives.

To protect yourself, unless you’re buying off Ebay never pay for an item or service without seeing it or receiving it.  The old rule “if it sounds too good to be true it probably is” certainly applies.  My favorite response after a brief email exchange to a scammer was “a payment is pending on proof of shipment”.  A scammer was advertising a car that was supposedly in a crate in Edmonton.  Needless to say, the scammer never responded.

Familiarizing yourself with how Nigerian scammers work will help protect you when you are finally a victim yourself.

To protect yourself:

• Change your Facebook password regularly
• Make sure your password is not obvious, posted in any form in your profile.
• Make sure your password contains a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols.
• If you’re a victim of a scammer, notify Facebook immediately to have the account disabled.
• Make phone contact with the supposed friend or relative.  Ask for their phone number to contact them for confirmation.
• Never, ever send money over Western Union.  Scammers use this vehicle because it’s virtually untraceable and pretty much impossible to get your money back.

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Windows 7 is coming!

Many of our clients have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of Windows 7.  Microsoft is getting ready to “go gold” with it’s newest operating system.  If you’d like to see it in action, we currently have it running on a machine at our office for you to experience it hands on.

Windows 7 is essentially Vista refined.  It addresses a lot of issues and complaints people had with Vista, including Apple’s infamous “allow or deny” digs.  Windows 7 now has option to make the User Access Control much less invasive.

Also included are interesting features such as connecting you to your wireless network before it even finishes installing for the first time, various themes which include wallpaper changers in various themes, 64 bit and 32 bit Internet Explorer 8 with more advanced security features and much more.

The interface is smooth and fluid.  Programs respond quickly.  It takes up less than half the physical resources of Vista and requires far less overall computer power.  Microsoft’s released minimum system requirements are as follows:

As you can see, the specifications are minimal by today’s standards.  Computers that are just chugging along with Windows Vista are much more likely to run smoothly with Windows 7.

Many ask why they couldn’t do this with Vista.  The reason is simply that they over-engineered the product.  People were complaining about security in XP, so Microsoft went too far in the other direction to protect the user from themselves.  Fortunately in Windows 7 Microsoft had the foresight to take a step backward and loosen up a little bit.

Some Suggested Retail Pricing has also been released, promising to bring Windows 7 in cheaper than the equivalent version of Windows Vista.  All around we believe this product will be a big win, both for the consumer and Microsoft.

These two videos are a Microsoft presentation of the user interface at a 2008 exhibition:

For more information, visit Microsoft’s Windows 7 website.

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What makes for a quality job or product..and what doesn’t?

When it comes to building a computer, there is a lot more to it than simply using good quality parts.  The software installation and even the way the computer is assembled makes a huge difference.  We recently had a computer come in that is a great example of what I’m referring to.

It certainly was an interesting experience.  None of the drivers were installed, including the VGA and even the network driver.  There was no way to connect this computer to the internet, no way to adjust the display settings from the ugly Windows default settings.  There were no updates installed for XP.  It was a plain, out-of-the-box install. 

Build quality was another matter.  A decent board, but wires hanging everywhere.  It had SATA capabilities, but an IDE hard drive was used.  The power supply, while it had pretty lights, was a very cheap off-shore brand unit that had burned out by the time it arrived here.  The computer did have some good quality parts, but an exceptionally poor build quality.

For software, it was loaded up with Spybot (which hasn’t been effective in three years, nor maintained very well), Ad-aware and Norton.  All with only 512MB of RAM.  It’s not difficult to envision just how slow this machine was.

Clearly advertising “quality” does not ensure you, the end user, a good value for your money, or even the quality promised to you.  It takes a lot of knowledge and effort on the part of the vendor to ensure that a user gets a great computer and great value.  Advertising the use of brand name parts and software, without knowing how to effectively implement simply makes for a painful experience for the user.   In this case, the user brought it to us because it was dreadfully slow. 

So what makes what we do different? 

First, it’s important to listen to the client.  Understand exactly what they would like to do with the computer.  Understand perfectly what their environment is like.  It’s important to be able to ensure the client will receive the benefits they’re looking for and not fill them full with a bunch of meaningless jargon.

It’s then important to understand how to build a machine based on the requirements made of it.  We don’t recommend Norton, never have (and have indeed actively advocated against it at times).  With that said, when we recommend software with similar requirements, or leave Norton on the machine by request, we ensure there are enough resources to make it run effectively.

When we do our builds, extra care is put into the wiring job.  Wires hanging all over the place impedes air flow through the system, which will cause issues of it’s own (such as overheating).  Wire management is a very important part of the build process and is the reason major vendors like Dell and HP put so much thought into it.  It’s often overlooked by independent vendors.  We ensure the wiring is done right.

Our Windows installs include all the updates, all the latest drivers, some software to get you rolling again, all your backups and a free antivirus that does a really good job but doesn’t beat up your computer.

Finally, we fully guarantee our work.  We give free support, free in house warranty that other’s charge you extra for and we’ll diligently do whatever it takes to make sure you’re satisfied that you received good value for your money.

There may be a cheaper price out there, but there won’t be a better value.  There’s a huge difference between claiming quality and actually delivering it.  Let us show you the difference.

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Problems opening webpages with AVG 8.5 installed

We’ve been noticing several people complaining about having to open and close their browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox, before they were able to open a web page.  Typically they get “The page can not be displayed” errors several times before a successful page load.

After some investigation we discovered that the Link Scanner in AVG 8.5 is causing issues.  The Link Scanner compares the page you are trying to load against AVG’s online database to warn of potential problems, such as phishing or loading viruses.

Internet Explorer 8 now does this on it’s own, making AVG’s version redundant.  As there seems to be no known fix for it, the best way around it is to disable the AVG Link Scanner.  To do this, follow these steps:

Internet Explorer:
- Run Internet Explorer.
- Choose the Internet Options from the Tools menu.
- Click on the Programs tab.
- Click on the Manage add-ons button.
- Select the AVG Safe Search add-on.
- Click the Disable option at the bottom of this window.
- Confirm changes by clicking on the OK button.
- Close Internet Explorer and run it again.

Mozilla Firefox:
- Run Firefox.
- Choose the Add-ons option from the Tools menu.
- Select the AVG Safe Search add-on and click on the Disable button.
- Close Firefox and run it again.

Once this is done, open the AVG control panel:

- Click on LinkScanner
- Uncheck all the boxes you see
- Click Apply
- At the top click Tools
- Click Advanced Options
- Click Ignore Faulty Conditions in the menu on the left
- Place a check mark beside LinkScanner
- Click OK.

This last step ensures that it’s not running in AVG either.  We’ve tested this solution several times and found it to resolve the issue.  Finally, ensure that you are running the latest version of your browser by clicking on the following links:

Internet Explorer
Firefox
Opera
Safari

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I can’t open this Microsoft Office 2007 document!

As Microsoft Office 2007 becomes more prominent and widely used, this problem is coming up more and more often.  Many people are quite happy with their older versions of Microsoft Office and don’t want to upgrade.

The reason you can’t open Word, Excel or Powerpoint 2007 documents is because by default they save in what’s called an OpenXML format (docx, xlsx, etc) when the user clicks “save”.  There are two ways to get around this.  You can ask the user to “save as” a Word 97-2003 document instead, or you can download an Office 2007 compatibility pack, freely available from Microsoft.

The Office 2007 compatibility pack offers two advantages.  First, you don’t have to rely on other people saving in the proper format.  Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, you don’t have to rush out and buy a new program that you have to completely relearn how to use.  Bonus!  Less hassle and free is good.  We like less hassle and free.

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Ontario Consumer Beware List – Computer Repair and Sales

I just became aware that the Ministry of Small Business and Consumer Services maintains a Consumer Beware List to warn consumers of problem vendors.

Of course being in the computer repair business I did a search for any company in the computers sales and repair category.  The results may (or may not) suprise you.  Here is the list:

ATS Systems – Toronto
- Late Delivery

Bell Sympatico
- Misrepresentation

Best Buy / Futureshop – Complaint made against headquarters in BC
- Failure to honor warranty / warranties
- Defective product

Dell Canada – North York
- Defective product

MCN Supplies – Toronto
- Failure to deliver what they promised

MDG Computers – numerous locations
- Poor quality of goods (Implied conditions and warranties)
- Cancellation of contracts
- Misrepresentation
- Defective products
- Not honoring contract terms / conditions

The Craze Group Inc. – Petawawa
- Warranty issues

The Source by Circuit City – Toronto
- Defective products

The Techknow Space – Toronto
- Warranty issues

Tigerdirect – Markham
- Failure to provide

Many of these are very well-known names, the allegations are serious and could result in charges under the Consumer Protection Act and all the companies failed to respond to complaints.  Protecting yourself as a consumer means being informed.  Your computer is a significant investment that should stand the test of time.  In all cases the computer repair or sales company should stand behind their products and services.  Know which questions to ask and wherever possible ask for a referral from family, friends or colleagues.

Before you buy your next computer or have your computer repaired, whether in Barrie or elsewhere, make sure to ask the right questions and consider the list provided by the Ontario Government before committing yourself to do business with them.  If the Ontario Government deems them trouble, should you?

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Software “reviews” – Should you trust them?

I ran across a site last night called http://www.thebestspywareremovers.com/.  As one computer repair service we perform daily is spyware removal, this site naturally piqued my interest.  Looking through the three different spyware removal tools that were “recommended” I realized that these tools really weren’t the best out there, certainly not worthy of the “ratings” provided.

I decided to dig a little deeper and click on the links.  Lo and behold, they were affiliate links.  In other words, were you to buy the program, the author of the website and so-called “best spyware removal tools” that were recommended weren’t recommended based on their merits.  They were recommended based on the kick-back the author would get every time someone purchased one.

Why is this a problem?  It’s a problem because you are not getting a recommendation for the best spyware removal tools based on performance, you’re getting a recommendation based on what lines the author’s pockets.  Your best interests aren’t at heart, his are.  There are free tools out there that are far better than what was being recommended on his website, but they weren’t mentioned because they don’t pay affiliates.

Beware of sites like this.  Have you ever heard of the “weekend millionaire” ads on the internet?  They tell you some big story about how the author retired and got rich quick off the internet.  They don’t tell you how unless you pay them a fee.

What they offer is actually very simple.  They tell you to create a site, loaded with affiliate links and keywords, with so-called “reviews” like what this site offers.  The links are cleverly hidden by scripts so that you can’t tell they’re mere affiliate links.  They teach you how to build “credibility”, then sit back as the money supposedly rolls in.  You as an end user may never realize that you’ve been duped.

Just because the site looks official doesn’t make it so.  http://www.thebestspywareremovers.com/ is one prime example of what these sites look like.  They’re created with a basic template, all using the same basic premise.  In other words, once you’ve seen a site like http://www.thebestspywareremovers.com/ you’ll be able to recognize these cons in action.

An informed consumer is a good customer.  The internet is becoming more “money driven”, which means it’s becoming less geared to you as a user, more to lining someone else’s pockets.  Adfarms, affiliate links, fake review sites, pay-per-click services such as Clickbank are all examples of this.

A general rule of thumb to apply is this:  If they spend lots of time telling you how great their software is, how the offer is a limited time offer (insert fake, script created “timer” here), go on for page after page of the virtues of their product with “buy now” every second paragraph, create some fake “price” and then “slash” it for a limited time, or offer “reviews” on products like http://www.thebestspywareremovers.com/ and then feed you to a “buy now” page, avoid them.

There are plenty of great free products out there.  Don’t be duped by the greed.

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