This email appeared in my inbox overnight. It’s a scam, of course, but sadly many people will be taken in by it.
Why is this a scam?
First of all, I haven’t ordered anything from Walmart, ever.
Next, the mail was sent from “8020salestraining.com,” not “walmart.com.”
Third, notice the secondary text “Wallmart,” an obvious mis-spelling.
Fourth, notice the lousy English: “you must fill this form,” “you will be paid your money back.”
Lastly, if you happen to click the “this form” link, you are downloading a zip file called “WalmartForm_Richfield_84701.zip” – and if you unpack that, you get “WalmartForm_Richfield_84701.exe“
That last one is the biggest red flag of all: the first rule of safe computing is NEVER RUN ATTACHED EXE FILES. That’s a program, and it will either gather financial details and forward it to scammers, or install malware/adware/viruses/trojans on your system, or something else, or all of the above. Many people don’t enable the display of file extensions, so they would never know they’re opening a malicious program.
There are more scams out there than you can shake a stick at. Practice safe computing – never download or open attachments unless you are sure you know from whom they are coming. Be careful with your financial details. Never send banking or credit card information via email. Avoid sending money to anyone unknown via Western Union or Money Card. And never pay money to collect a prize, especially from a contest you have not entered.
Previously I wrote about Le Robinson, a resort in Patterson, NY just north of New York City. It was owned by my father’s first wife, Miriam, and her second husband, André Lavielle.
Recently I’ve been scanning a collection of slides and negatives that I inherited from my father, and encountered some shots of the resort taken from the air. My dad was an amateur pilot, among other things, and these are some pictures he took on one of his flights. They make an interesting addition to the history of the locale.
Le Robinson, showing the main house that burned, as well as the cottages. Visible are the tennis court and the bocce court to its right.
The beginning of the pond can be seen at right.
It’s too bad the career of Le Robinson was cut short by the fire, but time was moving on and the popularity of these resorts was waning. I’m just glad the land was preserved and serves a useful community function.
For your gratuitous enjoyment, here’s a shot of the plane that these pictures were taken from. According to Miriam’s son David, Joe had rented this plane at Danbury airport to fly around the farm. He was almost shot down by the previous owner of Le Robinson, who had been fined $1,000 (a princely sum in that day) for jacklighting deer using lights and salt. Apparently he thought my dad was the game warden and was going to shoot him down for revenge.
Executive Summary: Do not pay this company a dime. They are charging an outrageous fee for something any business can get for nothing, and using scare tactics to imply that you are at risk of fines up to $17,000 for being out of compliance.
You can click the thumbnails above for larger images. Note that the “invoice” is designed to intimidate and frighten; the disclaimers and additional information on the back side are printed in very light gray type, difficult to read (I’ve enhanced the contrast and gamma for readability.) Note that they admit you are under no obligation to pay for their services, and what are you getting? A poster. A very, very, very expensive poster, plus three years of their “monitoring service,” which is worth precisely zip. Zilch. Nada. Cypher. Nothing.
Federal Labor posters are available for free. Utah provides a complete list of posters and where to obtain them. Unless you’re a company that’s rolling in so much money that you feel like it’s worth three hundred Benjamins to save the hassle of gathering these individually, save your cash.
And, in the rare case that your business is audited and you fail to meet the standards, most inspectors will simply let you know what’s missing and give you a chance to post whatever is needed. They are not draconian inquisitors, and fines are usually levied only in case of willful non-compliance.
I’ve written about sweepstakes fraud before – a number of times, actually, since greater exposure means more people protected. But it’s difficult to reach everyone, and especially those who are most vulnerable to being victimized are also least likely to be surfing around on the internet.
Now comes serial entrepreneur Kai Stinchcombe, whose grandmother was being victimized by all sorts of fraudulent operators, and who wanted to do something about it. I can’t tell you in practice whether this works as well as the marketing materials promise, but the idea looks very good, and I would definitely recommend that anyone who had vulnerable elders who are financially autonomous or semi-autonomous check out True Link, a specialized debit card that comes built-in with customizable fraud protection.
The True Link Prepaid Visa card works like a regular Visa Card. What’s different is that you can prevent purchases at specific stores and types of merchants using a personalized fraud blocker. Plus, it alerts you immediately if any suspicious charges do occur. If you need help resolving these charges, our free customer service is on your side.
There is no fee for the first year, and subsequent years involve a very minimal $20.00 annual fee. I wish something like this had existed when my own mother was in her declining years – it would have saved her thousands of dollars, and given her family priceless peace of mind.
“Berlin rests in the shadow of a monstrously tall steel tower with a hydra head of spinning fans, each about 500 feet in diameter. A medium-sized town’s population climbs over the 1,400-foot-high structure, noshing in a cavernous cafeteria and peering off a cloud-shrouded viewing deck. The city is aglow with great gouts of energy pouring out of the windmill – as much as 130,000,000 kilowatt hours a year – illuminating the anguished faces of once-profitable oil barons now crying into their beer.
This was the ambitious 1930s-era vision of Hermann Honnef, a German engineer with a lifelong obsession with high towers and wind power.”
On the other end of the scale, scientists are working on windmills so tiny that 10 of them could fit on a grain of rice, with a view toward using such small devices to recharge cell phones and such.
While some ideas are phantasmagorical and others are yet futuristic, thinking out of the box and along these lines is both admirable and necessary. Anything we can do to get the oil industry crying into their beer steins is a good thing.
Lately I’ve been encountering websites with text on them or flash popups (which can usually bypass standard popup blockers) which say something like this:
“This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you consent to these cookies.”
This is about as ridiculous as the End User License Agreements (EULA’s) which you always have to click to install a piece of software you have purchased or downloaded.
The simple fact is that nobody reads these, and this can have both positive and negative consequences. Click through for a great article on 10 Ridiculous Eula Clauses, one of which was fairly lucrative for a few fortunate readers of PC Pitstop’s EULA.)
Also included in the above article is the following XKCD, which points out how risky these “agreements” can be:
As a result, I would say that as the world’s most frequent lie, “I have read and agree to these terms” seriously trumps “I love you” or “The Check’s in the Mail.”
In the early days of its existence, Dell Computer used to include humorous bits in their magazine disclaimers. I haven’t been able to score a live example, but they looked something like this:
These are limited time offers from DELL that are subject to change without notice. Pricing, specifications, availability, and terms of offers may change without notice and are not transferable and are valid only for new purchases from Dell Small Business for delivery in the 50 United States. Taxes and shipping charges extra, vary and are not subject to discount. The Small Business site and offers contained herein valid only for end users and not for resellers and/or online auctions. Dell cannot be responsible for errors, omissions, or consequences of misuse of site and its functions. Offers not necessarily combinable. Discounts cannot be retroactively applied. Orders subject to cancellation by Dell. Software and peripherals offers do not apply to software and peripherals in the online system configuration pages, you must purchase eligible items through the separate software and peripherals online store. Shake before opening. Take only with food. Limit 5 systems and 5 discounted or promotional products per customer. If items purchased under these promotions are leased, items leased will be subject to applicable end of lease options or requirements. All sales are subject to Dell’s Terms and Conditions of Sale located at http://www.dell.com/terms unless you have a separate agreement with Dell.
Apparently someone finally decided that these were not dignified, and they quietly vanished, much to the disappointment of those who didn’t take themselves too seriously.
Despite the rare possiblity of benefiting financially or otherwise from reading a EULA, the vanishingly small possibility doesn’t offset the incredible hassle and loss of time involved. Software companies may be depending on this, but I’m not about to change my practices.
Thank you very much for your mail. I am Mrs. Gogna Mridula a nationality of Indian and bank officer with the International bank of Taipei ( Bank SinoPac) Taiwan. Let me give you a detailed description of what is in this transaction for us. In June 2003, My late client Osman Peltek, Turkish Businessman, who is a nationality of Iraq, made a numbered fixed deposit of One Billion Five hundred Million Taiwanese New Dollars ($1,500,000,000.00 TWD) for 18 calendar months, this is valued to Forty Four million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars($44.5 Million USD) only in my branch. Upon maturity several notices were sent to him, even during the war (U.S and Iraqi war) Nine years ago (2004). Again after the war another notification was sent and still no response came from him. We later found out that Osman Peltek is dead, sources confirmed that he was strangled in Bagdat (Baghdad). According to the Turkish Embassy in Baghdad, Peltek’s body was found in a deserted area in the neighborhood of Zafiraniye. No one has heard from Osman Peltek since 4th November 2003 when he had been vanished.
After further investigation it was also discovered that Osman Peltek did not declare any next of kin in his official papers including the paper work of his bank deposit. And he also confided in me the last time he was at my office that no one except me knew of his deposit in my bank. So the Forty Four million Five Hundred Thousand United State Dollars is still lying in my bank and no one will ever come forward to claim it. What bothers me most is that according to the laws of Taiwan, at the expiration of Ten years Six months the funds will revert to the ownership of the Taiwan Government if nobody applies to claim the funds.
Against this backdrop, we still have about Eight (8) more months left for someone to come up and claim the funds as next of kin to this fund. My suggestion to you is that I will like you as a foreigner to stand as the next of kin to Osman Peltek so that you will be able to receive his funds and for the money to be pulled out from my bank and out from Taiwan.
WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
I want you to know that I have had everything planned out so that we shall come out successful. I have contacted an attorney that will prepare the necessary documents that will back you up as the next of kin to Osman Peltek, all that is required from you at this stage is for you to provide me with your details as below:
Full Name:
Contact Address:
Occupation:
After you have been made the next of kin, the attorney will also file in for claims on your behalf and secure the necessary approval and letter of probate in your favour for the transfer of the funds to an account that will be provided by you.
There is no risk involved at all in this matter as we are going to adopt a legalized method and the attorney will prepare all the necessary documents. Please endeavour to observe utmost discretion in all matters concerning this issue. Once the funds have been transferred to your nominated bank account we shall share in the ratio of 70% for me and 30% for you. Should you be interested please send me your full names and current residential address.
Finally after that I shall provide you with more details of this operation. Your earliest response to this letter will be appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Mrs. Gogna Mridula
As usual, the take-away here is NEVER send money via Western Union or Money Card to someone you do not know. NEVER pay money to collect a “prize”. What follows below is an account from the Windsor Star in 2009, about a victim of this kind of scam:
A Leamington man has fallen prey to international scam artists who strung him along for more than a year with the promise of millions in cash, but ultimately bilked him and his family of $150,000.
John Rempel said he quit his truck driving job, lost friends, borrowed money and crossed the globe in pursuit of a non-existent inheritance, after he was contacted by e-mail in what is known as a Nigerian 419 scam.
Rempel said he borrowed $55,000 from an uncle in Mexico and his parents gave him $60,000 on credit to cover fees for transferring $12.8 million into his name.
“They’re in it now because of me,” said Rempel, 22, breaking into sobs. “If it wasn’t for me, nobody would be in this mess. You think things will work out, but it doesn’t. It’s a very bad feeling. I had lots of friends.
“I never get calls anymore from my friends. You know, a bad reputation.”
His troubles began in July 2007. He said he got an e-mail from someone claiming to be a lawyer with a client named David Rempel who died in a 2005 bomb attack in London, England, and left behind $12.8 million.
“They used to come in the mail,” said Leamington police Const. Kevin O’Neil. “Now the majority of these are sent through e-mail. Keeping up with the times, using all the wonderful technology that’s available to them.”
“I was told once that they send out 30,000 e-mails a day, around the world, and they hope for just one or two responses. Once you return a phone call or return an e-mail, these people now have their hooks into you.”
The lawyer said his client had no family but wanted to leave the money to a Rempel. It was his lucky day.
“It sounded all good so I called him,” said Rempel. “He sounded very happy and said God bless you.”
The man then told him he had to pay $2,500 to transfer the money into his name. Then there were several more documents. Some cost $5,000.
He was told to open an account at a bank in London. That required a $5,000 minimum deposit. The crooks later sent him an e-mail with a link to what he was told were details of his new account. Some money had been transferred there for “safe keeping.”
“Everything was good,” said Rempel.
Then he got an e-mail from a government department — he’s not sure which country — saying he owed $250,000 on tax on his inheritance. Rempel spoke to his contact, who told him they negotiated the fee down to $25,000.
Rempel went to Mexico where his uncle owns a farm. His uncle gave him $10,000 cash and money for a plane ticket. He was going to London to make sure it was legitimate.
“I had $10,000 in cash in my pocket and my uncle sent another $25,000 when I was over there.”
In London, Rempel met some people and handed over the $10,000.
They met Rempel the next day with a suitcase. They said it had $10.6 million in shrink-wrapped U.S. bills. Rempel wanted more proof. His new friends pulled out one bill and “cleansed” it with a liquid “formula,” which washed off some kind of stamp. Rempel was told that process made the money “legal tender.”
“I was like holy crap, is that mine?” he said. “They said ‘yes sir, it’s yours.’ It all sounded legit.”
Rempel returned to his hotel room clutching the formula and waited for the others so they could cleanse all his money. They never showed, and later told him they got held up. In the meantime, Rempel dropped the formula. The bottle broke. He called his contact who said he’d get more. Rempel returned to Leamington and waited.
A few weeks later Rempel got a call. They found more formula. It would cost $120,000.
“I thought, ‘let’s work on it, nothing is impossible,’” said Rempel.
His contacts were willing to meet associates in different countries to get cash for the formula. It would require several plane tickets, worth $6,000 each.
Rempel was told they collected $100,000, but still needed $20,000. There was a guy in Nigeria who had it, but another plane ticket was required. The contact later told him he could only get $15,000 and “begged” Rempel for the last $5,000.
Rempel borrowed money. He stopped making Visa and car payments.
They called a week later and said the money was ready to go. They just needed $6,900 for travel costs and to rent trunks to ship the money.
Later, the men called to say they were at the airport in New York. Security stopped them and they needed $12,500 for a bribe. Finally, Rempel had enough.
“I said, ‘no way I’m cleaned out.’”
Rempel, his parents and 10-year-old brother Ike drove to New York. They spent a day searching the airport for the men, with no luck. They returned home and called police.
“I really thought in my heart this was true,” said Rempel.
To my eternal discredit, I smoked heavily when I was a kid. I thought it was cool, and six years of it left lasting scars on my lungs. But when I started smoking, a pack of Luckies cost 33¢. Yes, that was more in 1965 than it is today, but let’s look at current prices in Europe and environs today (all prices are in Euro.)
For the United States, the following list will suffice (found at The Awl). Notice that some states appear on the same line if their prices were identical.
To help with the comparison, here’s a map as of 1/1/2014 showing state tax prices on tobacco:
If you want to know how much smoking has cost you or will continue to cost you in terms of raw dollars, you can use the American Cancer Society’s Smoking Cost Calculator.
Back in the days of the PalmOS, I became enamored with a little time-waster called “Bejeweled.” Apparently I was late to the party, because PopCap had introduced the game long before the Palm became popular.
Since then, I’ve played both PC versions and online versions, and this last year they introduced “Bejeweled Blitz” for the Android platform. I decided to try it about 5 weeks ago.
Big mistake.
Today I looked at my stats, and added up the number of games I had played based on how many scores at various levels I had achieved. Turns out it was close to 1500. At a minute apiece, that’s around 25 hours of frantic gem-swapping.
Every choice has prices and benefits; it was amusing and fun, but I realized that I could throw away weeks of my life if I followed this game to its logical conclusion, and – as I did with Angry Birds – I decided it was time to delete it.
I’m not sure what makes this game so attractive, but the first thing I recognize about myself is that I have an addictive personality. If I get hooked on something, it’s very hard to quit. And PopCap (or EA, if you prefer) makes this game very hard to let go of. They employ multiple strategies to keep you playing.
The basic play is addictive enough – find groups of 3, 4, or 5 jewels that match and slide them around to create a row. They disappear, and others take their place. Very similar to Tetris in that regard. But then things get more complicated. Matching more than one combination can result in gems that explode, doing damage to the surrounding area, or gems that take out two intersecting rows; matching 5 gems in a row will give you a special cube that will explode all gems of whatever color you swap with.
Exploding “fire gems”
A super fire gem takes out intersecting rows
The “hypercube” taking out all purple gems.
As you play, you earn “coins” depending on the complexity of patterns matched and subsequent combinations that are unleashed by falling jewels. Of course, each “coin” is actually worth 100 coins, so your store increases more rapidly. For downloading the game, they start you out with 100,000 “free” coins. (That sounds like a lot, but as I mentioned below, it’s enough to activate the Phoenix Pyramid once.)
But as you play, you discover that you get awards for various point levels, from 25,000 all the way up to 500,000… and it’s really hard to achieve those higher levels without buying “boosts” – seen in the first image above. Each of those cost coins, and are good for 3 games only. But using them can be fun, because you can set off all sorts of additional explosions, earn point multipliers more quickly, and hope for a big finish with the “last hurrah,” when any bonuses or unused combinations left on the board explodes and gives you more points and more coins. If you swap gems fast enough, you can earn “blazing speed,” which doubles the reaction time of the game for 8 seconds.
But wait, there’s more.
Every now and then, the game offers you a “rare” (there’s the scarcity principle at work) special gem for a certain price:
The Phoenix Crystal, Cat’s Eye gem (which, for some strange reason, stopped appearing for me over the last two weeks), the Blazing Steed, the Moon Crystal, and the Kanga Ruby all have different effects, and cost between 15,000 and 75,000 coins to purchase – single game use only. But they can have some powerful effects in terms of score and coins earned, and in combination with other boosts, they can elevate your tally to serious levels – my all-time high was 642,550.
If that weren’t enough, there are more hooks for the competitive: (Sorry for the lousy screen caps, apparently these don’t save well on the Android)
Your “Stats” screen shows your all-time high score, and various star awards, depending on how many times you have achieved a certain score. My top three are maxed out. It also shows your rank – I made it to “emerald hunter,” which is only 37 out of a total 135 ranks!
If you’re not happy competing against yourself, they post a bogus “leader board” which gets reset every week or so – pitting you against non-existent players like “Zuma Frog” and “Cat Tut.” Most insidious of all, they encourage you to play with friends on Facebook, thus sharing the madness and – at the same time – harvesting all of your friends’ information. This is one option I declined, as I hate getting invitations to things like Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Candy Crush Saga.
Last, but definitely not least, you can buy coins for real cash – anywhere from $1.99 for 100,000, all the way to (Best Deal!) 9,300,000 for $99.99. Yes, folks, for the low, low price of only a single Benjamin you can buy enough coins to boost yourself to stardom. And of course, for EA games, that’s the whole point. They want to monetize this baby, and if you play but don’t pay, they can’t develop new stuff to keep your little fingers busy. That’s the American Way that Superman spent all those years defending.
If I wanted to achieve the rank of Ruby Regent and max out all my stars, I’d be playing this game until Kingdom Come (which, if certain Facebook posts are to be believed, is JUST AROUND THE CORNER!!!11!!)
But like I said, having wasted a day of my life (and probably a bit more, allowing for games that were not up to the 25,000 point cutoff), I decided that enough was enough. It was fun while it lasted, but I need to make sure that my time is spent doing more worthwhile things. As I’m starting a new job next week, my free time will be limited, and I want as much bang for my buck as I can get.
Spam is by its very nature deceptive. Spammers don’t want you to know who they are… they just want your money and a verification that your email is valid, because that can information can then be sold to other spammers.
Here’s an example:
To: (redacted)
From: “Morgan Coins” <elva@language.acmetoy.com>
Subject: Special Release of the Government Morgan Silver Dollars
Notice the first line: If you click that link to report the email as spam (which it most certainly is), you get taken to this address: http://language.acmetoy.com/(redacted)
Despite what they want you to think, this page has nothing to do with Comcast – it’s owned by some outfit in Germany (at least, that’s the official registration – they could be anywhere.) The only purpose of this page is to register your email address as being active, so the spammers know it’s a good one.
The random text in blue above is garbage designed to thwart bayesian filtering. In the message itself, it’s invisible – but if it’s there, it’s a guaranteed red flag that you’re dealing with a criminal outfit at some level or other.
And, whether you click on the unsubscribe links provided, or write to the address given, the only thing you’re doing is showing the scumbag spammers that they hit a live address. In my case, the unsubscribe link sends me to: http://language.acmetoy.com/?e=(my email address).
Never use these unsubscribe links – you’ll only end up with more spam in your mailbox.
The offer itself is trash. Notice that the promise is for coins from “uncirculated to fine.” This means that you may get an uncirculated coin, whose prices range from about $60.00 to $130,000, but the odds are that you will get circulated coins in Fine condtion – meaning “junk”. What you’re buying is bulk silver. A Morgan Dollar contains $16.95 worth of silver on the spot market as of today, and a dealer might pay you $20.00 for each coin. That’s a pretty crappy investment
The last time silver hit $50 an ounce, China was a poor, underdeveloped nation. Now, the Chinese are rich and using three times as much silver! Will this drive the price of silver back to $50 or even higher?
What utter nonsense. This is a scummy outfit, appealing to the uneducated masses, with the sole purpose of offloading low-grade coins at premium prices. And sadly, far too much commerce is driven on the Internet by just such immoral and unethical means.
Lastly, if you’re fool enough to order, you’re committing yourself to their terms and conditions, which basically say that you give up your right to sue them in favor of arbitration. Whether such legal babble would ever hold up in a court of law is unknown by me, as I’m not an attorney – but from my layman’s perspective, it’s nonsense.
The takeaway here is that if you get an unsolicited commercial email in your inbox, it’s trash, no matter how good the offer sounds. Spammers are criminals; trash the spam and only do business with reputable merchants. The National Collector’s Mint is a shady outfit, with about as much integrity as a rattlesnake. Stay far away from them, and any outfit that advertises by spamming.
Playing in the World Game 