Chronic Pain Daily and Scammers

Some know that I suffer from chronic pain. There’s physical damage to my lower back, and it has been getting worse. I’m currently waiting on a call back from a surgeon, who hopefully might be able to fix things.

The pain inspired me to start the Chronic Pain Daily both so I could keep up with what is happening, and to help others. It was a good idea but…

Do you know how many scammers are out there preying on people with Chronic Pain? There’s millions of them. I keep blocking them, and more keep popping up.

Scammers are a sick and perverted life form. I’d really like to do something about them. And I probably will. When the pain level drops far enough that I can concentrate.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Sunday May 10, 2015

More Spam

This one is hilarious. The address line reads:

Australian Taxation Office <tax_refund@aqualyze.co.uk>

An Australian tax office with a UK email address? How droll. Then there’s the fact that I don’t live in Australia! The email says:

NOTICE OF TAX RETURN FOR YEAR 2012 I am sending this email to announce: After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax return of: $ 271.95

To receive your return, you need to complete the form.

Click here to complete the form.

© 2013 – Australian Taxation Office. All rights reserved.

I strongly suggest that everyone click on the link, and fill out the form with made up information. Do it two or three times. If three or four thousand people were to spam them back, it might kill their business model.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Saturday July 20, 2013

The Newest Spam Trick

I hate SPAMMERS. Spam itself is rather amusing. Back when UseNet was still popular, I used to hang out in ALT.SEX.CTHULHU with the other crazies, and we’d parody spam posts. Never forget the one where some poor sod posted a survey about sex, and I answered back…

Now all Spammers are interested in is money, and they are BORING. Here’s the latest to hit the comment moderation software.

Twitter Spam and Scrivener

I hate spam. I really do.

A while back I volunteered to run a Twitter newsletter, using the Paper.li web software. I thought it was easy to set up, but the other person involved couldn’t make it work, so I did. I ended up volunteering to run several other community newsletters, all of them about writing.

Recently I noticed some weird stuff. I was getting the same article as the number one article day after day. After a week, I got annoyed, so I blocked that Twitter user.

Then it popped up again, different Twitter user, same article. So I blocked the article.

Then it popped up again. Different Twitter user, different article… Seriously. It just doesn’t stop.

I don’t have all off the old information. I didn’t realize what was happening at first, and didn’t keep it. Several people, who either work for Scrivener, for a Scrivener reseller, or for an affiliate, are spamming Twitter with Scrivener links. This has been going on for at least several weeks now. It may have gone on far longer. I don’t know.

I do know that I’m damned annoyed. So annoyed that I’ve stopped using Scrivener, which had been my favorite tool for writing. Let’s take a look at what happened.

The Daily Writers Compendium – first pass today – here’s where I noticed the same article, appearing again. So I blocked the person who’d tweeted the article from appearing, and looked at the paper again.

The Daily Writers Compendium – second pass today – Much to my surprise the article was still there. This time around I decided to block the site.

The Daily Writers Compendium – third pass today – Oh joy – another Scrivener advertisement. Block this one too.

The Daily Writers Compendium – fourth pass today – Finally it’s gone.

I decided to look at some other newsletters. I found the same thing, involving the same websites.

The Writer Daily

The Write Now Daily

The Publishing Weekly

The Michelle Birbeck Weekly

The Digital Writer

Res Aliens Spec Fic Daily

Last but not least, here are the two websites which are being used:

Scrivener Discount Coupon Codes – 20% Discount Off Scrivener

Love Letter to my favorite writing tool – Scrivener

There’s nothing wrong with writing about what you like. There’s nothing wrong tweeting about what you’ve written.

When you are still tweeting about a blog post four months later, you are spamming.

Too bad that Scrivener’s reputation is going to take a hit because of these jerks.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Saturday May 5, 2012

 

Why Should We Trust W. H. Dean?

Me and my junior editor, Kleopatra

W. H. Dean wrote an article titled Cut Amazon some Slack over the Slush in response to Seth Godin’s article Shovelware–it’s time to rate publishers. Seth thinks that Amazon isn’t doing enough to clean out the spam publishers. W. H. Dean thinks that Amazon is already working too hard, the poor dears, and shouldn’t have to do anything else.

Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011a – Hephaestus Books – Follow Up

C.J. Cherryh

On October 31, 2011, I wrote about the Hephaestus Books scam, following a blog post by award-winning writer C. J. Cherryh. Since CJ spotted the problem, a variety of things have happened.

TimeTrex Payroll and Time Management – Lying to Potentional Customers

Me and my junior editor, Kleopatra

I’m a Canadian Publisher. Originally I got into this to publish family. Originally.

Since people found out that I’m doing this, I’ve had a lot of requests from people who I know to expand. They are want me to do their publishing for them. So count this as an official announcement.

I’m expanding, and have already signed some writers.

But that’s not why I’m writing.

Corporate Copyright Scofflaws 0011 – Hephaestus Books

The largest copyright pirates are the large corporations, particularly in the content distribution business. Yes, those companies who scream the loudest that their customers are ‘pirating’ movies, songs, books, etc. In this series, we are going to look at cases where these companies have engaged in large scale copyright infringement, or in other ways have been ripping off artists.

be advised that according to the United State Law together with the FBI rules…

 

Wow! The FBI wants to talk to me. They are holding money sent to me, and as a good American citizen, I’m supposed to contact them, and head over to their office…

At which point every is probably smelling a rat, since everyone knows that I’m not an American citizen, and I don’t live in the United States. Yes, the Scammers are at it again. They want to scare the recipient into sending them money, after which they will take the money and run.

Once again, warn your friends. Most readers of this blog aren’t like to fall for those sort of thing, but what about your parents, aunts, uncles, and friends?

A copy of the scammers message is below the break.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Wednesday September 7, 2011

Dear G-mail User Scam

I hate scams. Here’s another one from my spam box. This one isn’t as well done as the World of Warcraft one. The grammar makes me cringe. But we know that these things work, or they wouldn’t be sending them out. Warn your friends and family about this.

Regards

Wayne Borean

Tuesday August 9, 2011