I've had a novel scam recently, and so has Mrs. Rag. I received a text message purporting to be from Halifax asking if I had recently set up a Direct Debit to a Mr. Rajhani. I have a joint account with Mrs. Rag at Halifax but it is generally what I would term a 'dormant account' – the text asked me to click on a link to 'Halifaxdirectdebitblocker' – as a precaution I put this link into my laptop and lo and behold it came up with a 'Dangerous site' warning from my security software. This confirmed it was a scam. Probably phishing for account details.

A few days later Mrs. Rag had the same or a similar text message saying that there had been 'unusual access activity' on her Halifax account. Again the link given (different this time) when put into the laptop came up with 'Dangerous site' warning.

The bar stewards do not stop for Christmas do they?!

Another interesting 'hit' I had was after looking at one of the forum 'partner' websites I later went onto the Times newspaper (I have a sub with them for my daily news) and whilst reading one of the articles the website 'popped up' again in the middle of the article! – hardly the thing one expects to see in the middle of the Times, an offer of cheap milling cutters!! My question is then addressed to Media Time as to whether there are tracking cookies being loaded onto my laptop whenever I log on or look at some of the forum 'partners'? This may be the first time I've seen this as I normally 'wipe' the cookies after browsing and before changing sites.

All very strange.

About two weeks before Christmas I received a call on my mobile phone, from a UK number I did not know, so I declined to answer it. Fast forward to a few days ago, when I received a text to tell me that my Littlewoods parcel would be delivered that day. All very nice, you might say ,except that I never heard of Littlewoods sending parcels to anyone and I was not expecting anything from anyone !

A scam ? sounds like one, just dont know where they got my number from ???

Neil – I don’t doubt that but it forces a request to facebook thus facebook can track a user (it gets current IP address, browser type + additional info which can finger print a user + can check if that user already has a facebook cookie likewise it also tracks users who have javascript turned off by inserting a request to facebook thus allowing tracking of such awkward customers who refuse to allow other people to run arbitary code on their machine.

This scheme satisfies both parties in informing MTM that its advertising has worked and facebook gets info on the interest of its user as well as that of a non-facebook user which allows it to build a profile of such – one mistake by that user in allowing a farcebook cookie places them with a now known profile – remember all this is under US law to avoid the EU privacy problems – quite what will happen to UK privacy law in future is open to doubt but facebook is assuming it will keep EU style regs which are set to tighten

Edited By Frances IoM on 27/12/2020 12:29:37

O.R. It could have been a Google reference to the advertiser within this site thus google also get to know you – the Times page is most likely to have a advert slot supplied by google who as you seem to be wise to wipe cookies fairly quickly probably only had that advertiser’s reference on which to base an advert to you

This is part of the modern tracking which makes Google + Facebook rich as you are more likely to click thru a relevant advert than a random one – Google et al can build up a profile – then as seen in the USA assume from your interests certain political views then send you targeted adverts psychologically biased to influence you or if you use google as a source of news it selects news stories in like vein – what Google + facebook want is for you to use them for longer and thus see more adverts

ad blockers work basically by blocking adverts supplied by 3rd parties – ie not hosted on the site – the approach of many sites who don’t want to explicitly sell individual adverts, is to ‘sell’, or get a cut from, a google supplied advert – given the speed of modern networks this slot then selects the best advert for you based on what it thinks it knows about you (obviously if you have google email or have signed up to one of the many google services or even google search, it probably knows more about you than you do yourself. Adblockers damage this approach and as part of Neil’s pittance comes from MTM revenue he has skin in the game.

The do not track is often ignored tho I have seen in obeyed by for example Adafruit (RaspPi etc) who block inserted youtube adverts based on it

Edited By Frances IoM on 27/12/2020 19:02:29

No service is actually free – the cost of most is paid by an intrusion into your privacy usually by sharing an email address now known to be a ‘good’ one – can be made even more expensive by those sites who ask for birthdate etc – this additional info can considerably add to the value of the information especially in the hands of the less than honest companies or individuals

I have just had a text from the DVLA saying I'm due a refund. DVLA.refund017.com so it looks like a new round of scams.

Date of Birth is used by some legitimate operators as a way of confirming your identity if you ring them up. The thing to do is have a standard fake date that you use for when it is not an important site where it is legitimate and relevant – like DVLA.