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Monday, 24 October 2005 --- Edition #459 AllCovered-NEWS is sent free via email to over 13,000 and all who request it designed to display as html or plain text as your email software requires CONTENTS AllCovered News THIS WEEK Information to help you to manage and grow your logistics business. Links to source Free from Allcovered.net … We have logistics Allcovered stories at end of excerpts Trouble viewing this? See this & past issues online in PDF format at: http://www.allcovered.net/AC-News-PDF.htm SMALL BUSINESS: Old Scams > > SMALL BUSINESS SECTION < < New Victims “Phishing” Scams SMALL BIZ - OLD SCAMS – NEW VICTIMS Protect yourself. TRUCKING: Every year, the US Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Sentinel issues a report on the Trucking Faces top scams of the year, based on the number of complaints filed to watchdog organizations. Major Problems Most all of us have received emails from someone claiming to need to use your bank “Time” Sees account to transfer money… Most of these come from Nigeria. Truck Jobs Schemes that promise “something for nothing” are not new, they just use new technology. Secure Con artists are not creative. They don't have to be. The same tricks work over and over Activists Seek again. Why? HOS Changes --- ANATOMY OF A SCAM --- Doug Shadel, the AARP's Washington state director, and Anthony Pratkanis, a social SECURITY: psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, have been studying cons' IBM Wants to pitches through more than 600 telephone conversations taped by the FBI. (Consumers who Secure Your Cargo were being targeted had their calls forwarded to investigators, who then posed as the victims.) --- SPOT IT TO AVOID IT --- Temp-Logging There are usually four steps to pulling off a scam, says Pratkanis: RFID Tag 1- The cons lure you with something tempting. OCEAN & AIR 2- They gain your trust. FORWARDING: 3- They sweeten the pot to make you really consider biting. PPG Must Pay 4- They close the deal. Everything To do so, they employ any number of strategies at each step. Your Cargo Could Cost You STEP ONE: THE BAIT Distribution Like a fisherman, the scammer promises something wonderful… bait. Changing The Nigerian scam is a great example of this. In exchange for the use of your bank account Delta Expands to move funds out of another country, you're told you'll receive millions of dollars. People Union Says become so distracted by the notion of instant wealth that they're willing to throw their usual NWA caution to the wind. The scam is closed when people fork over money for "incidental fees" to Mechanics move the money to their account or divulge private bank account information that can be used Cannot Vote to move your money out of your account. JUST FOR FUN: STEP TWO: GAINING YOUR TRUST Scammers will often use what Shadel and Pratkanis call the "command of authority" and the Test Your French premise that your help is direly needed. Again, the Nigerian scam utilizes both of these: The scam is in the form of a personal plea for help, often from a supposed former high-ranking IQ Test official from a foreign government. The official-sounding titles and ranks sprinkled throughout Yankee Test are meant to wrap a cloak of legitimacy around the plea. Your Age & Other tactics used to gain your trust include friendly persuasion, and the "expert snare," Golf Math where the con artist tries to make you feel like an expert who should be able to recognize a Mind Game great opportunity when you see one. NEXT STEP THREE: SWEETENING THE SCAM WEEK Making a scam appear too good to pass up is critical. What’s Your There are five tactics generally used here: Business + CREATING THE LANDSCAPE: A scammer will try to limit your use of outside information to Worth? investigate the scam. They may say you are being given a secret opportunity that would be ©2005 Allcovered jeopardized if others found out. All Rights Reserved + COMPARISON: One example is when an old price is scratched out and a new one is listed so that you can clearly see the "deal" you're getting. + SOCIAL PROOF: A scammer will try to make it sound as if lots of people have already benefited from this scheme, so that you might think, "If everyone is doing it, it must be good." + SELF-GENERATED PERSUASION: Arguably a softer sell than some of the other tactics, the perpetrator plants an idea but lets you use your own imagination to fill in the gaps. + SCARCITY: "When something is made scarce, it triggers three processes," Pratkanis says. "1) In our head, we think, if it's rare it must be valuable; 2) it creates panic… 'if I don't get it now I may never get it'; and 3) it makes you special (for owning it)." STEP FOUR: CLOSING THE DEAL The con artist may have given you something of perceived value or done something for you in order to create a feeling of obligation. Pratkanis relates a tale where a scammer found out his potential victim was also being played by another con artist. He reported the other guy to the police and took credit for the good deed with the victim only to later defraud her himself. OTHER CLOSING STRATEGIES: + A DOOR-IN-THE-FACE: This is when a scammer proposes something farfetched, such as sending them a large sum of money, which causes you to turn them down. The scammer will then approach with a much smaller request you're more likely to grant. + REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY: Instead of pressuring you, Shadel says, the con might say something like "it's completely up to you what you want to do" or "I wouldn't blame you at all if you wanted to just say no. A lot of people have trouble with making a lot of money." + COMMITMENT AND CONSISTENCY: With this strategy, a con will ask for a seemingly easy "commitment" up front. It may feel like no more than agreeing with a statement like "You want to make money, don't you?" But when you later try to bail on the deal at hand, the con will bring up your earlier commitment to make you feel you're caught being inconsistent. + FEAR AND INTIMIDATION: If you're still not biting, the scammer may resort to fear and intimidation. Used all too frequently, according to Shadel, this can take the form of personal insults and threats. WHY THESE OLD SCAMS WORK These strategies tend to be successful because we're used to seeing many legitimate businesses use them. "Sales people have known about these tactics for a long time," says Shadel. When McDonald's advertises the number of burgers served, it's using social proof. Click on a cable home-shopping TV channel and you'll see many tactics at work simultaneously, notably scarcity, social proof and comparison. The difference with scammers, though, is that they'll often take things to an ugly level, using fear and outright deception to get you to cave. MORE: http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/Savinganddebt/consumeractionguide/P114426.asp SMALL BIZ - EMAIL SCAMS – ‘PHISHING’ “Phishing” is the practice of sending emails that trick you into clicking on a link and entering your personal details onto a bogus web site. The email and site look very much like the company being emulated. Usually phishing scams look like emails from banks or PayPal. The messages often ask you to confirm your account details, saying that money is waiting for you or use some other ruse to encourage you to act. Fortunately many of these messages use either standard expressions about the need to “verify your account details”, or use poorly written English, so many of them can be detected. In recent times the phishers have spread their traps beyond banks and are now trying other places where, if you give them access, they can get your credit card or other details. --- SOME PHISHING SCAMS --- AMAZON: Amazon is the target of phishing with some very sincere fake messages. Some general spam promoting various products are formatted to look like they are from Amazon but when you click on the link you go to some other online store. YAHOO: Be it Yahoo Photos, Yahoo Games or some other part of the Yahoo group you might get a message pretending to come from there. SOCCER WORLD CUP: Soccer fans might be tempted by emails saying that they’ve won tickets to the 2006 or 2010 World Cups. FIFA has a specific warning about such messages. EBAY: Like Paypal, eBay is a popular phishing target. MSN: Messages warn you about ‘automatic verification procedures’. New scams are appearing all the time. You need to keep an eye out for scams beyond just banks and financial institutions. SMALL BIZ – LEARN MORE ABOUT PHISHING SCAMS: Microsoft has an online streaming video to teach you about the dangers of “phishing” and how to avoid them. MORE: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/email/phishing/video1.mspx SMALL BIZ – HEALTH – SMALLER HEALTH CARE HIKES: Cost increases for health care benefits at US companies next year are expected to rise at their slowest rate in six years. The news is not as good as it first seems, for they will still rise 9.9%. MORE: http://www.kpmginsiders.com/display_reuters.asp?cs_id=143474 SMALL BIZ – HEALTH – TAX PANEL WANTS TO CUT DEDUCTIONS: The nine-member President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform recommended two plans to revise the federal tax code, both of which would cap income tax deductions for employer-sponsored health insurance.