Author: Olly

  • Maison Bianco – Stuart Paskin Latest Scam Site!

    Well, well, well. I got an email from a group of friends that I have formed, who have all been scammed by the infamous Stuart Paskin. The email was telling me about his latest incarnation of website, www.MaisonBianco.com.  It basically means the white house – wonder where that name came from? :/

    NOTE: To anyone unfamiliar with this cretin, I blogged about him here and about his company here.

    Annnnywayyyyy…. It seems Stuart Paskin is at it again and has closed “The White Tent” down in favour of a more posh brand called “Maison Bianco” which is the same name, just in Italian.

    Maison BIanco

    The site is actually really nice, I mean, its theme based but its been put together by someone that knows what they are doing – which in fact saddens me even more. As this professional has no doubt been screwed over by Stuart Paskin aka  Lux Level Ltd AKA 77 Interiors Ltd (Company number 07967774)  to the sum of thousands. Just like we did, and just like the 10+ other digital agencies did – of which we are in contact with them all.

    Stopping the Scammers

    We’re working on finding out who is “working” for him at the moment, and I of course use that term loosely as working for someone usually means you get PAID and this asshat doesn’t pay anyone. When we do find out, we’ll ensure they know the facts and let them make their mind up about whether or not to keep working for them.

    If you are a victim of these scammy b@stards then please contact me and tell your story. We have a group of others who are all victims and we can add you into that group so you can join the discussion.

    And Stuart – if you are reading this, the net is closing in around you. Give up now before an army of pissed off digital agency owners find you and get their revenge.

    Bianco Maison

    Maison Bianco

    Mr S. S, I hear you’re no longer working with Paskin. I’d love a chat. Email me 🙂 

  • Apple iTunes Hulu Plus Email Scam!

    A customer recently forwarded this to me in a bit of a panic, he uses iTunes and this email really stopped him in his tracks… here is how it looks;

    I am not an Apple user, so to me this looks as legit as I would expect. The “To Cancel Transaction…” bit looks a bit out of place but it wouldn’t really jump out at someone as being a red flag.

    He forwarded it to me anyway, and the first thing I checked was the senders address;

    ty1txtb8my0zs.nyppvfaqn2m6@doraemonmassal.cc

    The sender address is obviously wrong – it should be apple related at least.

    The next thing to check would be any links in the email, DO NOT CLICK THEM but hover and look in the bottom right of your screen to see where they go;

    Hmm, not sure that should be where a “Cancel subscription” link should go, do you? 🙂 Interestingly they’ve used the Myspace URL shortener so have either hacked that, or have hacked the place the short URL sent the user to?

    I clicked it (safe, test environment) and the link forwards to a page that has been taken down. So there is zero risk with this thanks to someone giving the hacked end site a heads up. Great work whoever you are 🙂

    All in all, a very convincing email and I dread to think how many novice iPhone users will have fallen for it before it got taken down 🙁

    If you’re not sure if something is real, then forward it to iamolly@bigfoot.com and I will do my best to decipher it and I may blog about it too.

    As always, stay safe peeps 🙂

  • Your online footprint

    This post is going to probably be quite contradictory, as I have posted online about my life for the last 15 years, but ya know…

    Be careful what you post online.

    I know that’s an obvious statement really, but I am blown away daily at how blind some people seem to be in regards to their online privacy. Posting about their every movement, checking-in to every place they visit and generally documenting their entire existence to the public. If you remove the internet from the mix and just wandered about phoning your mates up saying “Hey I just walked into the doctors” and then 30 mins later rang the same mate up and ask them for their opinions about your recent visit to the doctors – you would soon lose friends and get locked in the looney bin. Yet add the internet back into the mix and this is now considered perfectly normal behaviour.

    We all start off life way more trusting than we should be, when we are younger we go through life without thinking about privacy and what people may be able to find out about us online when we’re older – I mean you’ve only got to look in the press to see how an individuals online past can destroy their future. James Gunn is a recent victim of this, and a day doesn’t go by where at least one news outlet is dragging up old Tweets from Donald Trump’s past.

    So what should you do to keep yourself safe?

    Thankfully, most social networks now have half decent privacy controls, mainly due to how much this has all been in the news – but regardless of that, most of them make it fairly easy to review and modify your settings, so follow the steps below and hopefully they will help you stay on top of your online privacy.

    1. Don’t sign up to every social network in the world. Many people have an account on everything, and this is a very easy way to forget what you have and leave huge piles of sensitive data littered all over the internet. If you stop using something, close your account.
    2. Don’t allow anyone and everyone to connect to you. With Facebook you can set it so only friends fo friends can find and add you. Twitter lets you lock down your profile and other networks have similar controls. Be mindful of how you have these settings configured.
    3. Continually review your settings. Make a point of going in once a month to check your settings, as app updates, policy changes and reinstallation of certain apps can wipe these settings and before you realise it, every post you make is publicly searchable again.
    4. THINK before you POST. Why are you posting that image? What is the actual reason? Does the world need to know you visit Costa coffee every morning at 8:37am? The answer is probably “I dunno” or “No”.
    5. Try and think ahead. Some of the stuff Ben Bradley MP posted about may years ago came to bite him on the ass recently, also as I stated earlier – many people are constantly in the news due to things they said a lifetime ago – so when you’re posting your next status update, think “Will this come back to haunt me?” and if the answer is “Yes” or “Maybe” – then walk away from the computer.

    To conclude, dont be a dingbat & think before you post.

    Konichiwa.

    PS I posted this article using Gutenburg, I only actually posted this so I could try it out but I think the article came out ok anyway 🙂

    PPS Gutenburg is pretty cool 🙂

  • WHOIS GDPR – What is going off?

    Urgh. Another GDPR post I hear you cry?

    Well this one is specifically about WHOIS information changes since GDPR came into force.

    (Note: If you’re unsure what GDPR is then go here)

    So in a nutshell, GDPR has been brought in to protect an individual’s right to data privacy. No longer can we be auto opted into newsletters and stuff. Sounds decent and for an individual, its a great move.

    HOWEVER GDPR only applies to B2C – NOT B2B.

    That means that if you sell to the public, then you need to adhere to GDPR. If you sell to other businesses then it doesn’t really change anything.

    You can imagine my surprise when I did a whois lookup and saw this;

    The Data Validation aspect of these reports is new, and its replaced the section that used to list our company details. Useful info if you are trying to find who owns a domain name.

    But, it seems since GDPR NOminet have taken the decision to remove all registrant info from the whois – just in case! This was confirmed by a Nominet employee to me today;

    Thank you for your email. You are correct that you used to be able to hide you details on the WHOIS if the domain name was not being used for commercial purposes, however this option was based on the use of the domain name and not the registrant name itself. With the introduction of GDPR, the decision was made to redact all the registrant data from the WHOIS. This decision was made to redact all details in the first instance to avoid any individual names being disclosed in error. There can be cases where individual's names are incorrectly classified as companies and vice-versa. With this in mind, the same policy was applied across all .uk domain names, irrespective of the registrant type. This policy was taken to consultation in advance of being implemented. It is still possible for all registrants to opt-in to the WHOIS database to display their details if they would like to do so, it is just that we are no longer publishing these details without their explicit consent. This policy may be reviewed periodically going forward. If you need anything further, please do contact us on +44 (0) 1865 332233, or by email at support@nominet.uk.

    Hmmm..

    So “just in case” someone registered a domain wrong, you removed this extremely important and useful piece of info from every UK Whois?

    So now domain squatters are actually protected?

    What do you think of this move from Nominet? Do you feel this gives squatters an advantage?