Dr Mehmet Oz and the Holy Grail

Well, it appears that a hacker is making the rounds and even managed to compromise my email account. I managed to change my password before too much damage was done. At least, I hope so.

Anyway, this asswipe compromises accounts for the purpose of mass-mailing people in an attempt to get them to visit a website. SInce they went through the trouble to get my attention, I decided to spend a few minutes looking them over.

The initial link that is sent out is
http://www.alivenews.com/blah/krllw.html
which redirects to this website
http://com-challenge.net/diet/GarciniaCambogiaDiet/index.html

The site alivenews.com is  registered in the United States to
Brendan Reville

800 5th Ave, ste 101-396
Seattle, WA 98104
Telephone: (206) 228-2307
Email:  postmaster@alivenews.com

The site where the actual advertisement is posted com-challenge.net is also registered in The USA to
Edward Johnson
top ave 19-06
los angeles, 12345
UNITED STATES
Telephone: (738) 357-4736
Email:  edwardjohnson1908734@ymail.com

Edward Johnson also owns numerous other websites, most of which seem to be related to weight loss products.

So, what is so earth-shaterring that they wanted to hack my email account in order to advertise it to everyone in my address books?

The product is called Garcinia Cambogia, a plant native to southeastern Asia and is closely related to the purple mangosteen, which is another plant being marketed for its alleged weight loss properties. The fruit is used in preparations of curries and is also used in traditional medicine as a purgative (i.e. it makes you defecate) so it isn't an uncommonly-used plant in its native habitat.

As far as its use as a weight loss supplement, it has been tested and the results were not encouraging. The chief evangelist of this latest bullshit product is Dr Mehmet Oz, who has been taken to task for his use of flimsy evidence or no evidence in his never-ending quest to separate people from their money.

In one meta-analysis, the extract did no better than a placebo. So, save your money. You'll also be saving your liver, since liver toxicity from garcinia products has been reported. Quoting from the abstract

There is a growing number of case reports of hepatoxicity from the widely marketed weight-loss supplement Hydroxycut, which contains the botanical ingredient Garcinia cambogia. These case reports may substantially undercount the true magnitude of harm. Based on the past experience with harmful dietary supplements, US regulators should assume the more precautionary approach favored by Canada and Europe. Lacking effective adverse event surveillance for supplements, or the requirements to prove safety prior to coming to the market, case reports such as those summarized here assume added importance.

Dr Mehmet Oz makes his living by shilling for various products that claim to help people lose weight. However, despite actually being a physician, his specialty is cardiothoracic surgery,  the medical field  involving surgical treatment of diseases affecting organs inside the thorax (i.e. your chest) such as treatment of conditions of the heart and lungs.Despite his lack of specialty-specific qualifications, Dr Oz gives advice relating to diet and weight loss. People interested in weight loss should be consulting a dietician, not a thoracic surgeon.

Sadly, he also gets other medical doctors in on the game, having them as guests on his infomercials. Personally, I'd rather not have anything to do with any physician who appears on one of Mehmet Oz's programs, because I'd be wondering if they would be trying to sell me something I didn't need, rather than trying to really help me get better.

In my opinion, Dr Oz takes advantage of some people's desire to lose weight without watching what they eat or exercising. Essentially, marketing products to the lazy and uninformed.

Duane Browning

Help Wanted Scam Letter

I saw a Help Wanted ad posted multiple times on a classified ads website seeking a personal assistant. It was posted so often that I became curious about it and sent a reply. I wish that I had saved a copy of the ad itself, but I post the reply I received here:

From: Brian Parker rayhughesgallery@gmail.com
Reply-To: brianparker@rayhughegallery.com

Subject: Personal Assistant Position PT

I'm looking for someone who can handle my business & personal errands at his/her spare time. Someone who can offer me these services:

* Mail services (Receive my mails and drop them off at UPS)
* Shop for Gifts
* Bill payment (pay my bills on my behalf)
* Sit for delivery (at your home) or pick items up at nearby post office at your convenience.

Let me know if you will be able to offer me any or all of these services.

I will love to meet up with you to talk about this job but I am currently away on business. I am in Australia so there will be no interview and that is why i stated that I need a trustworthy individual . I will pay you in advance to do my shopping and will also have my mails and packages forwarded to your address. If you will be unable to stay at your house to get my mails, I can have it shipped to a post office near you and then you can pick it up at your convenience.

When you get my mails/packages, you are required to mail them to where I want them mailed to. You don't have to use money out of your pocket. All you have to do is have the package(s) shipped to wherever I want and do my shopping. You are allowed to open the packages to reveal its content.

The content of the packages are Art Materials and Paintings, clothing, business and personal letters. All expenses and taxes will be covered by me. You will work between 15 to 20hrs a month.

The pay is $500 weekly. That is not a bad offer is it? I need your service because I am constantly out of town. I just bought into an Art Gallery here in Australia and would be here finalizing the buy and smoothing rough edges but I will be returning to the US as soon as this is done so this process will be on going till then and I will meet up with you when I return and then we can talk about the possibility of making this long term.

I will email you the list and pictures of what to shop for when I am ready. No heavy package is involved! You  can do the shopping at any nearby store. You will be shopping for Electronics and clothing.

I will provide you my personal UPS account number for Shipping. All you have to do is provide my account number to UPS and shipping charges will be billed to the account.

I will provide clear set of instructions for each task I need done as well as the funds to cover them.

If I were to mail you money to do my shopping plus upfront payment for your services, where will you want it mailed to? How should your name appear on the payment?If you are interested,Kindly provide me with the following details listed below to :

Full Name:
Full Address:
City:
State:
Zip Code:
Home Phone:
Cell Phone: For SMS alerts Only
Age:

Well, let me know if you are able to handle the position and I hope to hear from you soon.

Thank you,

Brian Parker

I think that this is a scam and here's why:

1. the reply was sent to me with the "To" field empty, as is often done when a scammer sends an email to multiple recipients while not wanting them to realize that they are just one of many getting the same message. Likewise, the email did not address me by name;
2. the domain rayhughegallery.com is anonymously-registered website with servers based in the United States. Attempting to go to that site takes you to http://hsgshjklsj.webs.com and not to a legitimate website. The webs.com address in an undeveloped website which has been created solely for a scammer to use @rayhughegallery.com as an email address to give the appearance of legitimacy;
3. However, there is a legitimate website rayhughesgallery.com and that URL takes you to a website registered in Australia with servers located in that country.It's obvious that the scammer set-up the fake domain in an attempt to impersonate the legitimate one.

The Help Wanted ad is obviously part of a scam, most likely attempting to steal your personal information.

Duane Browning

711ipad.com Looks Suspicious

UPDATE!!! The website 711ipad.com is apparently down. Whether this is permanent or temporary is impossible to know at this time. 

One of my Facebook friends posted this on his timeline. Since I was tagged on the photo, I was informed of it via private message.

Have you heard? this site is glitching. They forgot to insert their payment page. I got an Ipad and didnt have to pay! This is the 2nd I place an order. The first one came in the mail already. Hurry before they fix it. Go to: 711iPad ....com

The accompanying picture that I was tagged on was this

 I decided to do a WHOIS check on 711iPad.com before I went to the site. As you can see, the site was only recently created as of the date of this blogpost being written. The email address associated with this website is not affiliated with any other site that I am aware of right now. The street address appears to be fake and I seriously doubt if the owner has the unfortunate name "Willie Stroker". The phone number given - 612-548-7398 - is actually a landline in Minneapolis, Minnesota, not a New York City number.

I decided to take a shot and go directly to the site. What I found there really surprised me. Have a look

Your eyes aren't deceiving you. The entire webpage is made to look exactly like a Facebook page. If it wasn't for the link in the address bar, I would not have known that I wasn't simply visiting a Facebook page set-up for 711iPad.com by the site owner.

Normally, profile names have a link directly to the person whose page it is. But on this one, every single link - including the "ads" to the right - links back to 711iPad.com.

Pretty slick, I must admit.

Clicking on the link you'll find at "To participate in our iPad-3 quality test please Click here." takes you to another site run by branddealonline.com and it looks like any scam site that offers you a "free" anything. The owner of branddealonline can also be discovered via WHOIS

Domain-name:     branddealonline.com
Similar-domains:     branddealonline.net     branddealonline.org   
Domain-ip:     IP173.193.167.170     United States
Domain-tld:    COM (Top Level Domain)
Domain-locked:     Locked
Creation date:     2011-10-19   (1 year)
Last update:     2012PM1026
Expiration date:     2013-10-19
Nameservers:    
NSNS0.DIRECTNIC.COM         IP74.117.217.20 Cayman Islands
NSNS1.DIRECTNIC.COM         IP74.117.222.20 Cayman Islands
Domain record:    Domain Name: BRANDDEALONLINE.COM
Registrar: DNC HOLDINGS, INC.
Whois Server: whois.directnic.com
Referral URL: http://www.directnic.com
Name Server: NS0.DIRECTNIC.COM
Name Server: NS1.DIRECTNIC.COM
Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 19-oct-2012
Creation Date: 19-oct-2011
Expiration Date: 19-oct-2013
    
Whois data:
   
Registrant:
Graceton Media Group gracetonmg@gmail.com
10475 East Park Meadows
STE 600
Littleton, CO 80124
US
3035224443

Domain Name: BRANDDEALONLINE.COM

Administrative Contact:
Carrington, John email gracetonmg@gmail.com
10475 East Park Meadows
STE 600
Littleton, CO 80124
US
3035224443

Technical Contact:
Carrington, John email gracetonmg@gmail.com
10475 East Park Meadows
STE 600
Littleton, CO 80124
US
3035224443

Record last updated 10-26-2012 02:12:28 PM
Record expires on 10-19-2013
Record created on 10-19-2011

Domain servers in listed order:
NS0.DIRECTNIC.COM 74.117.217.20
NS1.DIRECTNIC.COM 74.117.222.20

Graceton Media Group owns branddealonline.com and also owns fanwoographics.com, but branddealonline is their more popular site. They appear to be a real company registered in Littleton, Colorado.

Yeah, a real company that links to a website made to look exactly like a Facebook page.

I also discovered that, before the distribution of the 711iPad link, the people behind all this were distributing the link 76iPad.com, as you can see from this poor guy whose Myspace page is filled-up by that crap. 76iPad.com is no longer functioning, but it is registered to some guy in China. Why am I not surprised by that?

I advise staying away from these people. I'm guess that my friend's Facebook account was hacked or phished and the advertisement for 711iPad was posted without his permission, so I'm off to warn him.

UPDATE: upon further research I found this link which gave me information on the Kansas City-based servers of 711iPad.com and it's a legitimate company called Joe's Data Center. Their contact information is

 Joe’s Datacenter Office
324 E. 11th St., FL 26
Kansas City, MO 64106
Phone: 816.326.0040
Toll Free: 877.JOE.DATA (877.563.3282)
e-mail Sales: sales@joesdatacenter.com
e-mail Security: security@joesdatacenter.com

I don't think Joe's is aware of the activities of the site they're hosting, so please be polite when/if you contact them.

UPDATE: I have been informed that at least one of the 2000+ people that has read this article since it was posted sent an email to Joe's Data Center, along with a link to this blogpost. No response has been received. Either Joe's hasn't received the message, it got caught in a spam filter or Joe's received and read the message, but decided to take no action.

ANOTHER UPDATE: new websites were setup as a continued effort to keep the scam working. That site was 65iPad.com (WHOIS), 44ipad.com (WHOIS) and 93ipad.com (WHOIS). Though these sites appear to be down, it shows that the scammers aren't going to give this one up without a fight. These site also uses Joe's Data Center as their servers, which makes me wonder why they seem to prefer that company over anyone else.


Duane Browning

Adult Site Text Spam

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Get Paid to Watch Porn? SRSLY?

I'll admit that I've watched some porn. Usually, I'll do this when I'm bored and can't find anything else to watch or do at the time. There are a lot of free porn sites on the Internet, so I don't - and won't - have to pay for any of it. After all, why should I pay for something that I can get for free?

But, my visits to porn sites are few and far between, since porn doesn't really interest me and I can usually find something more entertaining, like watching grass grow or paint dry. Even when I watch online porn, I'll skip-around the video, trying to find the good parts or I'll watch a couple of minutes of it and look for something else. If the video doesn't keep my attention for three minutes, I'll move-on.

I doubt if the people who run the porn business make any money off of guys like me.

Anyway, while clearing-out my Spam folder, I found this email:

From: Paid To Watch
Subject: GET PAID TO WATCH PORN, START NOW!
Watch Porn for Cash, NO BS!
Easy, Fast Sign-up
Unlimited earning potential
http://paid2watchxxx.com Click OR Copy And paste Site Into Your Browser to start making MONEY NOW!

So, I could actually make money watching porn, like a professional reviewer? Wow!

Being rather amused at this, I decided to have a look at the site. When I went there, my anti-virus program gave me a security warning, but I pressed-ahead and found the site. It's pretty well-made, for a porn site.

I found the page which describes how it supposedly pays you to watch porn:

1. You sign-up for an account and verify your age with a valid credit card
2. You purchase videos to review at 99 cents each;
3. You watch the video, write a review and send it in;
4. Once they approve your review, they credit you $1.50;
5. Once you get $10 or more in credit, you can cashout

This looks like a scam on so many levels.

First, the email address it was sent for is Paid2Watch7318E-Card-DeliveryServer6.com@yahoo.com which is the first red flag. Why nothing from a paid2watchxxx.com account?

Second, the website is registered in Romania, not the United States and the website is written in American English, not the Romanian language. Why is that? Porn is legal here, so there wouldn't be any problems starting a real pay-to-review site here, unless this whole thing is a scam where the people behind it all intend to charge all kinds of shit to your credit card and not pay you a fucking thing for any review you send in. Being in a foreign country puts them outside the jurisdiction of American law enforcement, so you'd have no legal recourse in the event of nonpayment. 

Third, there's no guarantee that you'll get paid in a timely manner. Remember that you've already given them 99 cents and it'll be up to them to decide whether or not to approve your review. If they don't, they may tell you to rewrite it and I can safely assume that most "reviewers" will get tired of doing rewrites and editing their submissions. I suspect that most of them will give-up and go watch the next video or just quit entirely. In the end, it's money coming in for paid2watchxxx with the real possibility that they won't have to send much of it out. Add to that they fact that they've still got your credit card information.

My favorite part of the email was where it said "Unlimited earning potential".Yeah, like you could make thousands of dollars doing this. Reality check: you'd have to submit 20 reviews and have them all approved before you make your first ten dollars in commission! If the vids are on the short side - say, ten minutes each - that's 200 minutes (almost 3 1/2 hours) of videos you'd have to watch, plus the time you'd have to spend writing the review, waiting for it to be approved and maybe having to do a few rewrites afterwards. If the videos are on the long side, that's even more time. You'd have to "work" the better part of a whole day's time to make ten fucking dollars!

This site is affiliated with ReviewDollars.com and that site is registered in Cyprus, so an American who signs-up for this is completely at the mercy of people who may or may not be acting honestly. They don't give you a postal address, telephone or fax number to contact them with, only an email address. The registered owner is a company called Alacre Trading Ltd, which also owns iballers.com, which is a dating site.

Personally, I wouldn't trust these people.

Besides, since when does the porn industry need reviewers for their videos? There are already extant websites that do this sort of thing. Even if porn review sites didn't post a review for them, they could easily get feedback for their videos much easier than paying some guys to watch them:

1. find a free porn site that allows uploads and sign-up for an account;
2. upload ten minute samples of your videos with information included at the beginning and/or the end where people can purchase the complete video;
3. check back to see how viewers have rated the video clips and read the comments;

Bear in mind that a lot of guys are just like me and don't want to pay for porn when they can watch it for free, so this is not a guaranteed thing.

In a larger sense, there is so much porn available out there that a porn company really has to stand out to be noticed in the first place. The vast majority of porn I've seen in my life couldn't even remotely be considered to be of the same quality as even the most low-budget shit coming out of Hollywood. The acting is usually terrible, the orgasms are faked, the music comes out of a can and the scenery is usually just a room with a bed or somebody's back yard. Porn companies spend as little as they possibly can to make their stuff and sell it with as high a profit margin as the market can bear. There are so many fly-by-night porn operations out there that even the biggest porn producers have to compete in a vigorous market. They're not going to invest money in something so stupid as a review site. They've never needed one in the past, so why bother?

This one looks like a scam and a pretty pathetic one, too.


Duane Browning

Hunger Hits Home Starvation in America

Reporting Graffiti in Hawaii

One of the biggest problems in fighting graffiti in Honolulu is figuring-out who to call. Sure, you could call the police, but it's not their job to clean it up and their involvement may amount to nothing more than filling-out a report. Typically, the police want to be called if someone sees vandals actually defacing a surface, so they can come over and make an arrest.

The difficulty is compounded by the fact that their is no single number to call to make a report. As you can see from the table below, the location of the graffiti makes a difference in who you are supposed to call. The City and the State assume no responsibility for graffiti placed on each other's property and neither one notifies the other is someone mistakenly reports to one body when it actually belong to the other. Meaning: if you report graffiti to the Mayor's office and they find-out it's on State property, they won't pass the word to the State. You'd have to do that, assuming you knew who to call in the first place. I'm not even sure if the Honolulu Police Department would notify the Hawaii State Sheriffs if they were in that situation.

In other words, nobody is talking to anybody else. So, it's up to the people to find-out who to call.

This has not been an easy task. When I called the State Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), they had no idea of who I should call to report graffiti on State property. I had to keep looking around until I found the correct department.

So, the table below contain all the phone numbers that I was able to gather. Some of them may be out-of-date, but it's my best effort. I'm willing to accept any help that may be offered.

It would be a good idea if the City and the State dealt with graffiti the same way they deal with potholes: have one number to call and whoever answers the phone would relay it to whoever's job it is to clean it up.

Duane Browning

GRAFFITI CLEAN-UP ASSISTANCE

Honolulu Police Department Graffiti Hotline: 808-723-3475

Graffiti hot-line [recording] (Mayor's Office): 808-296-9473

Bus shelters (TheBus): 808-848-4500

Drainage canals (Dept of Facilities Maintenance): 808-484-7600

Hawaiian Electric boxes and meters: 808- 548-7311 or email ecustomer@heco.com

Parks (Dept. of Parks and Recreation): 808-768-3001

Sidewalks and streets (Dept. of Facilities Maintenance): 808-484-7600

State highway facilities (Dept. of Transportation): 808-837-8047

State Property (State Central Services Division): 808- 831-6734

Traffic signs and signal boxes (Dept. of Facilities Maintenance): 808-484-7644

Water department facilities (Board of Water Supply): 808-748-5000