Online scams, frauds, and other attacks (and how to protect yourself from them)
OSF - 0.00 - Introduction, table of contents, and related postings
I have studied this field for over four decades now, so it's a little bit strange that it's one of the last for which I created a presentation, and which I'm writing up.
You have to understand that I love the Internet. You have to understand how *much* I love the Internet.
When I got on to the Internet, well, we didn't even call it the Internet. (Yet.) We had no particular name for it. We just knew that it was this marvelous system, that allowed us to identify people who had the same interests that we did, and allowed us to communicate with them, all around the world, basically absolutely free of charge.
You have to understand how *old* I am. Cell phones actually did exist, but nobody had one. I had access to one: I worked for the Government Telecommunications Agency, and, because we were dealing with telecommunications, we had a cell phone in the van. It was built into the van, and it consisted of four large boxes of components, which were stuffed out of the way under the seats and so forth. No regular person had a cell phone, nobody had a cell phone at home, nobody did any texting.
Also, long distance phone calls cost the earth. They were extremely expensive. If you wanted to communicate with somebody, in any kind of detail, and you didn't have a company that would pay for the charges of calling them, you had to get an envelope, and a piece of paper, and a stamp, and make sure you have the address of the person to whom you wanted to communicate, and you wrote a letter. And then you went to the post office, and you mailed the letter. And then you waited for the letter to be delivered to them, and for them to get around to writing you an answer. In another letter.
That's how long ago this was.
So, this wonderful, magical thing, that allowed you to communicate with anybody (well, there were only about a thousand of us who were on it at the time), without any charge at all, and not only that, but to identify people who were interested in the same oddball topics that we were interested in, it was just glorious! And all of the people who were on it, knew just how magical it was, and made sure that we all behaved politely when we were communicating with each other. And we made sure that we didn't misuse this wonderful system!
And then came the Green Card Lottery Spam.
Yes, I *am* that old. I saw the Green Card Lottery Spam. I also saw the furor, and absolute outrage, that resulted from it. (And the subsequent discussions that came up with the term "spam.")
Actually, at the time, we didn't know it was spam. We didn't have a word for it. We only knew that it was an egregious breach of etiquette, and a waste of transmission resources, and that the person who had done this evil thing should be thrown off the system that we were only just beginning to call the Internet, and that nobody should ever be allowed to do anything like it again.
But, of course, it had been done for a commercial purpose, and business saw the opportunities, and the Internet has never been the same since.
For me, the dream died very hard. And every time somebody used the Internet for spam, or spreading malware, or attacking people with frauds, or spreading pornography, I almost physically hurt. This thing that I loved so much was being abused. And every time that it was abused, it degraded.
Actually, it was fairly soon after I got on to the Internet, and I think even before the Green Card Lottery Spam, that I started seeing discussions about these new kinds of programs that would copy themselves. And I thought that that was really interesting, and so I started researching them. At first it just seemed interesting, and possibly annoying for the very few people who had encountered them, and then it became a problem. And I became a specialist in malware. And, as it turns out, that meant that I had to become a specialist in spam, and scams, and frauds, and all kinds of really, really painful stuff that was happening on the Internet.
This means that it is *perfectly* safe to scan the QR code that you see here, as long as you remember that I am an expert in malware, and therefore know every possible way to trick people into installing malware on their computers or phones. (Actually, all that the QR code here contains is a bunch of contact information about me, and where I post stuff on the Internet.)
But I didn't do presentations on the frauds and scams, and how you could protect yourself against them. By this time, mostly I was dealing with people who were, in fact, working in security. So, they didn't need to be told that there were dangerous people out there, and dangerous things that you had to watch out for. So it is only been recently, since I haven't been working as much directly with my colleagues in security, that I have started providing seminars to the general public on frauds, and scams, and spam, and people calling you up pretending to be your grandchildren, and people calling you up pretending to be from your credit card company, and trying to attack and defraud you in various ways.
Now, I know that a lot of companies, and banks, and police departments, and all kinds of other people have decided to try and prove how much they care about your safety by providing seminars and workshops and pamphlets frauds on scams and these types of attacks that can come at you, everyday, on your phone, or via your email. The thing is, most of the people who are making up these seminars or pamphlets have other jobs that they are supposed to do, and can't really afford the time to actually study this type of stuff, and, in particular, study it for years and years and years and years.
I have.
So that's what this material is about. It's about people who are trying to attack you, and defraud you, and steal from you, and are doing it the easy way: simply calling you on the phone, or sending you an email, and sitting in the comfort of their own home, or, more likely, sitting in some sweatshop boiler room, and being forced to call you, and lying to you, and tricking you into giving away information that will allow them to steal your money.
As I say, I am old. I am really, really old. So, I tend to give these presentations to old people like myself. Old people who may not have as much experience with fraudsters, confidence men, scammers, and spammers, and all the rest of it.
The thing is, the attacks are not always simply aimed at old people. Sometimes they are specifically aimed at old people, but a lot of times they are just aimed at whoever answers the phone. So, even if you're not old, even if you are a young kid, who thinks that being a TikTok influencer means that you understand the Internet, I can tell you, you do not understand the Internet. I have worked with this technology for more than five decades, and I have a lot of experience and I know an awful lot of things that you don't know. And, believe me, what you don't know can, in fact, hurt you. So, even if you think that you are really up on the latest technology, you should probably pay attention anyway.
An awful lot of the material that I am talking about is stuff that I have personally encountered. For one thing, it allows me to ensure that I am dealing with the latest issues of scams, frauds, spam, and various other attacks. It allows me to tell you, in detail, how these attacks are perpetrated, and how do you identify them, and therefore protect yourself against them. So far, in terms of structuring this stuff, I'm going to start out with specific scams, even starting with a number of them that probably come to you more by telephone, than by email. In a later section, I'll go into how to identify indicators in texts, and an email, that indicate that this is spam, and some kind of attack.
Online Scams and Frauds (OSF) series postings:
https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2026/02/online-scams-frauds-and-other-attacks.html (this one)
Related postings:
Where's the line between "negligence" and "scam"?
Grief scams
Grief fraud
Why do people fall for grief scams?
Friend scams
Discord attacks (Sermon 5 - Heretics)
Online safety and other seminars and presentations
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