Community Interest

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Mrs ESTHER ROBERTS - is a scammer!

Published

on 15/7/2005

. 1 Comment

I received the following 419 scam email yesterday:

From:Mrs ESTHER ROBERTS
Address:Avenue 44 Rue 12 Treichtown
Lot 87 Marcory Cocody 1863
Abidjan,Cote D’Ivoire,West Africa

Respectfull one,

Good a thing to write you. I have a proposal for you-this however is not mandatory nor will I in any manner compel you to honour against your will.

I am MRS.ESTHER ROBERTS,46 years old and the wife of late MR.ROBERTS MARTINS. My late husband was a highly reputable and respectful business magnet in our country and other West African countries during his days.

It is sad to say that he had passed away last year.I had my first and only son Elvis when i was 26 years old and as at then we were happily married.Before his death on September 22 2004, he called me before he died and told me that he had a sum of 19.700,000 US DOLLARS (NINETEEN. SEVEN MILLION USA DOLLARS)kept in a security company in (AFRICA) for safe keeping for me and my son for us not to suffer after his death.

He also said that the security company does not know the content in the safe Box.He decleared it to the company as family treasure and used my son’s name ELVIS to Deposit the Box as his only child for next of kin. He also explained to me that I should seek for a foreign partner in a country of my choice where I will transfer this money to and use it for investment purposes,so that me and my son will not suffer in the near future.

I want you to assist me in retrieving this box from the security company and then transfering the box to your country or any country of your choiceand act as a beneficiary of the fund in the said box, and also to make use of the fund in the box for an investment purpose on a very lucrative and profitable business ventures in your country or any country of your choice.
I am just a widow and a refugee in a country i don’t have family nor friend and i really don’t know what to do.Now I want you to assist me in retrieving this box that contains this fund and transfering it to you in your country. This is because I have suffered a lot of set backs as a result of incessant political crisis in my country LIBERIA and even here in Ivory coast.The death of my husband actually brought sorrow to my son and i.

Dearest one,I am in a sincere desire of your humble assistance in this regards .Your suggestions and ideas will be highly regarded.

Now permit me to ask these few questions:-
1. Can you honestly help me as your sister or partner?
2. Can I completely trust you?
3. What percentage of the total amount in question will be good for you after the money in the box is in your possesion?

Please,Consider this and get back to me as soon as possible on this my private e-mail

Thank you so much.And God bless you

Best regards,
Mrs.ESTHER ROBERTS& SON,ELVIS.

& son Elvis? - I love it! Now we know where he has gone to.

Esther’s email address is esther_robert0021@yahoo.com in case anyone wants to scambait her.

BBC puts Beethovan’s symphonies online

Published

Tom Raftery

on 10/6/2005

in Community Interest

. 0 Comments

Thanks to Jeremy - I spotted that the BBC are going to put all nine of Beethovan’s symphonies online in mp3 format for free download.

All the symphonies are performed by BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda.

Currently the first five symphonies are online here with the next four being put online between now and July 1st.

Senior Irish civil servant starts blog

Published

Tom Raftery

on 10/6/2005

in Blogging and Community Interest

. 4 Comments

Brendan Tuohy is Secretary General of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources here in Ireland. This would make him one of Ireland’s most senior civil servants.

Furthermore, the Communications section of the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources has responsibility for e-Commerce, the Group Broadband Scheme, and Communication Development.

Interestingly, I read today that Brendan has started a blog (called Sliabh Luachra)!

Brendan started this blog a few days ago so there are, as yet, only four entries in the blog. The blog doesn’t appear to be work related - the topics covered vary from the Developmental Welfare State to a debate Brendan attended in Trinity College’s Philosophical Society. It is great to see someone at this level looking into blogging.

Welcome to the blogosphere Brendan - and to paraphrase Fr. Ted “Up with this kind of thing!”

How to get positive results from calls to support hotlines/callcentres

Published

Tom Raftery

on 3/6/2005

in Community Interest, Personal and Technology

. 6 Comments

I have a method I use when calling support hotlines which rarely fails to get me a positive outcome from the call - I call it the Squeaky Wheel method (remember the squeaky wheel is the one which gets the attention). At all times using this method I ensure that I remain completely polite but firm.

What I do when I call the hotline number is:

I immediately ask the person who answers for their name and the call reference number (most reputable call centres track calls using a reference number - asking this establishes your seriousness and shows that you know your way around hotlines!)
Then keep asking questions until you get what it is you want to know - do not hang up until you found out what you called to find out
If the person in the call centre can’t answer your question, appears to be fobbing you off, or gives an unsatisfactory answer - ask to speak to their supervisor immediately
If the supervisor is busy or on another call, offer to wait until (s)he is free. Do not hang up and under no circumstances accept an offer to call you back - they won’t!
If you are on hold waiting for the supervisor, they will get to you as soon as they can generally because most call centres monitor call times and while you are waiting on hold you are driving up their average call times - this drives them crazy so they will try to deal with you quickly
If the supervisor is unable to answer your question, ask to speak to their supervisor, etc. You will eventually by not hanging up and insisting on speaking to superiors, get to someone who can answer your question, or annoy them enough that they will tell you what it is you want to know.

At all times while using the squeaky wheel method, keep a note of times and dates of calls, the names of the people you dealt with (and what they said) and the call reference number.

This method will work in almost all situations to get you the information you require from a call centre/support hotline. The only time it failed for me was with Bank of Ireland Credit Card Services. I was complaining to them about a cock-up on their part with my credit card details. I moved up the chain with my complaint until I got to David Glennon (Mr. Glennon’s title was Support Manager, Customer Service, Credit Operations) - Mr Glennon was less than helpful, refusing to answer my questions and cutting off communications when I asked to speak with his supervisor. Well I guess as a manager in the Customer Services division of a multi-million euro organisation he obviously knows more about customer service than I do - treat them like dirt and ignore them and they will go away!

I have applied for a credit card with another bank. And I’m moving house shortly but I’m not applying to Bank of Ireland for my mortgage.

Seatbelts on school buses?

Published

Tom Raftery

on 25/5/2005

in Community Interest

. 5 Comments

We have had a terrible tragedy here - a school bus swerved while apparantly trying to avoid a previous crash, went out of control, overturned and five schoolgirl passengers were killed (and 46 passengers were injured).

Since the crash, there has been a lot of debate around the fact that there were no seat belts fitted on the bus which crashed. There is little doubt that if seat belts were fitted on the bus and if they were used by the pupils on the bus then the death and injury toll would have lower.

However, there has been almost no mention of the lack of Anti-Lock Brake System (ABS) on the bus. If the bus had been fitted with ABS then the bus would not have skidded out of control, the bus would have been brought to a stop safely and the lack of seat belts would not have been an issue.

Definitely all school buses should have seat belts but more importantly, all school buses should have ABS fitted.

How to pick any lock in seconds

Published

Tom Raftery

on 20/5/2005

in Community Interest and Security

. 7 Comments

Lockpicking is the art of opening a lock without damaging it or using a key - and recently lockpicking has become a sport with clubs and championships. Who knew?

One such club is TOOOL (The Open Organisation of Lockpickers). One of the founding members of this organisation is Barry Wels whose video on how to open a Kensington laptop lock with a toilet roll and a pen have gained him a lot of notoriety lately.

In a similar vein, Barry gave a talk at the Physical Security Workshop at 21st Chaos Communication Congress (21C3) in Berlin where he demonstrates a new technique for opening just about any physical lock in seconds. The technique is called the bump key method and a pdf explaining the bump key method is available here.

The talk is now available online and makes for scary viewing - be warned though, it is over 600mb so if you want to view it you will need a decent Internet connection.

Hat tip to Eric Marvets on whose blog I first saw a reference to this video.