Scalar Enterprises Blog
This page contains news about Scalar Enterprises, work we have been doing for our clients, new features and services etc. From time to time I will also include useful information and articles from myself and from various other sources along with comments, tips and thoughts from myself. Hope you find it useful and why not let me know if you have a question.
Phone scammers
Last October (2012), I wrote a post on my blog about cold calling tech-support scams entitled “Fighting back against the scammers“. I have to say that at that time, I had never experienced it personally however, since I moved into my new office, I have had 3 such calls in the last 2 days ! In actual fact I also had one a few weeks before when I just happened to be having an on-site meeting with builders and I just happened to pick up the phone.
All the callers had Indian accents, the first two were female and the last a male. On all the calls I received, the telephone line quality typically was very poor (maybe that is is another good indicator to set the alarm bells ringing for you). I have to say that they do sound quite credible technically and even when challenged they still persist with their “story” and try to convince you.
Having done some further research on the topic recently, the best advice seems to be don’t give them any information, never let them access your PC and just hang up on them. If you are feeling brave, if you can, ask for their name, the name of their company and a phone number and web address. In most cases, asking such questions will most probably result in the caller hanging up on you but if you can get any information like this, you can pass it on to Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud and internet crime reporting centre. The more information they can get from such occurrences, the more chance there is that they may be able to take some action.
Some useful links to more information about these scams:
- Don’t fall for phony phone tech support (Microsoft)
- Anatomy of a scam: Phone caller warns your PC is infected
Hope this helps.
The EU Cookie Law – a bit of a damp squib ?
If you have been following my blog this year, you will remember that back in May, the new EU Cookie Law came into force and many were getting quite worried about complying with it and the threat of big fines (up to £500,000) from the ICO for non-compliance.
Well, the deadline came and went along with a last minute change to the law which meant that it permitted websites to use “implied consent” which allows the act of continued use of a site to be taken to mean users are happy for cookies to be used.
This seemed to be the popular choice for most website to adopt, i.e. displaying a message warning site users that it makes use of Cookies and pointing them in the right direction if they wish to disable Cookies, otherwise they just continue as normal.
Six months down the line, it all seems to have been a bit of a “damp squib”. The ICO has received just 550 reports from web users about website cookie policies. The number of sites these complaints related to was only in the order of about 200 and after investigation, the ICO only deemed it necessary to write to about 100 of them to ask what plans they had in place for compliance. These sites are generally large, very popular sites. No fines have been issued so far.
To put the issue into context, a recent report by econsultancy.com indicates that the ICO received more than 53,000 complaints relating to unwanted marketing communications, so Cookies seem to pale into insignificance really in comparison and the ICO apparently considers the cookie issue as not being a great threat.
SPAM, SCAM or PHISHING
SPAM, SCAM or PHISHING ?
I don’t know about you, but these days, I am quite careful at looking at all the emails I receive to make sure I am not a victim of spam, scam, phishing or viruses etc. There are increasing numbers of “dodgy” looking, and some increasingly quite genuine looking, emails arriving constantly in my in-box each day so one has to be very careful to look at them before clicking on any links for example to make sure that you don’t end up downloading anything nasty onto your PC.
Some are fairly obvious, such as numerous emails from HSBC (or other banks) telling you there are problems with your account when you don’t even bank with them ! But others can be quite convincing and need much closer scrutiny before you click on any links in them.
If the sender is asking you to fill in any of your personal information, bank details or passwords etc then this should start alarm bells ringing !
A few tips
In order to try and identify if the sender is real and to establish how credible their company is, I would suggest you do the following. Ideally do all of them (and more if possible):
- Look at who sent it ? Do you know, or recognise, them or their company ?
- Have you received emails from this sender before ?
- Were you expecting an email from this sender ?
- Is it from a business email account (e.g. name@abusiness.co.uk) or a free web mail account (e.g. hotmail, gmail, yahoo) ? If it was sent from a legitimate business account, it is less likely to be spam or malicious but you still need to be careful.
- Hover your screen cursor (the little arrow or hand) with your mouse over any links in an email (but don’t click) and see what they look like (e.g. you can generally see this in the status bar at the bottom of your email tool window). If the web address is the same as the sender’s email (e.g. email from name@abusiness.co.uk and web address is www.abusiness.co.uk) then it is more credible but typically in dodgy email it will look nothing like it (e.g. it might be something like: http://ux.ed120.net/r/OBVC96H/GJBU/CE9T7/39J/T7E/MG/h). Unfortunately, sometimes the details of the link can be hidden so if you can’t see anything when you hover over the link, this is probably also grounds for suspecting something is not quite right.
- Don’t open any attachments you are sent with the email.
- Look at the senders web site address in their email and type it into a new browser tab (or window) – don’t click on any link to it directly in the email as it might take you somewhere different. Take a look at the information on their website and see how credible they look. For example, do they have their office address included, a landline telephone number rather than just a mobile number? Do they include their company registration details and VAT number (if registered)?
- Google the sender and their company and see what you can find. If it is dodgy, someone else may already have published details about it.
- Give the supposed sender / their company a call and see if they actually sent it.
I realise this can be quite a bit of work to do but think about the implications if you do get scammed or your PC, or even worse your entire network, gets infected.
Hope you find this useful and it helps reduce the likelihood of getting caught out.
A last minute change by the ICO on Cookie law
Having reached the deadline today (24th May) for making websites compliant with the new EU Cookie Laws, it is expected that thousands of UK websites will not meet the new regulations.
A last minute change in the ICO guidelines, released on Friday (23rd May), now permits websites to use “implied consent” which allows the act of continued use of a site to be taken to mean users are happy for cookies to be used. This change puts the onus onto the user rather than the website.
This makes solutions a little easier to implement and appears to be an approach generally taken by some larger, prominent web sites (e.g. BBC, national newspapers) who are making steps towards compliance.
The ICO has said it will write to 50 of the U.K.’s most-trafficked websites to remind them of the rules and give them 28 days to comply hence one presumes that this is why such sites are making this effort to comply because such large sites with high traffic would be the most likely targets for the ICO to make examples of.
It would however seem to be very difficult to think that any direct action could be taken on any sites when the vast majority of Government web sites (including that of the Prime Minister apparently) still do not comply.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said in a recent statement it would offer help to non-compliant sites rather than take legal action against them. They also said that May 27th is not a cut-off date but an attempt to help websites focus on their cookie use so it seems clear that this will be ongoing for some time.
More Cookie news
As expected, there continues to be quite a lot of press on this topic as we get nearer to the final deadline for compliance on the 26th of May.
In an interview with Computer World UK magazine last week, a spokesman from the ICO said that it may give organisations with complex website environments years to comply with new EU cookie laws.
They also indicated that the ICO will pay more attention to websites using what they refer to as ‘intrusive cookies’ used for tracking to generate revenues for advertising based on a users’ prior online behaviour rather than cookies used just for simple analytics.
Deputy Commissioner Smith stated that the ICO is also unlikely to use its ability to fine companies up to £500,000 as it believes a breach of the cookie law is unlikely to meet the requirements it would need to issue such a fine. It is more likely that it will write to companies that aren’t taking steps to comply with the new regulation, providing timeframes to do so.
FT.com and Mirror Online, both rolled out Cookie Law solutions today (23-5-12) and are both using pop-ups to alert visitors to the sites’ use of cookies.
Both are in line with the ICO’s advice given in its guidance document where they suggest setting a cookie and then infer consent from the fact that the user has seen a clear notice and actively indicated that they are comfortable with cookies by clicking through and continuing to use the site.
Sources: computerworlduk.com News 18-5-12 , econsultancy.com 23-5-12
New EU Cookie Law from 26th May – is your website legal ?
From 26th May 2012, new law states that all websites in the UK should ask all site visitors in advance for permission before storing “Cookies” on their PC. Failure to comply could result in a fine of up to a maximum of £500,000 for serious breaches.
The ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office), who are responsible for enforcing the law in the UK, have said they will take a dim view of organisations that fail to act before the deadline. ” Those who choose to do nothing will have their lack of action taken into account when we begin formal enforcement of the rules.” - Information Commissioner, Christopher Graham
The law also requires that you tell your visitors to your website about your use of cookies or other tracking technologies, and how they can delete or control them. Continue reading
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