I changed DNS registrars a couple of days ago, it didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped for so yesterday this site would not have been accessible. My apologies for that. It’s all running smoothly again.

1. Twitter – You can follow us on Twitter by clicking here http://twitter.com/fraudo and clicking on Follow. You’ll need a Twitter account first. You’ll also be able to ask us questions and take part in more interactive conversations.

2. Facebook – We now have a Facebook group you can join, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=85420406438 . You can ask questions here, share articles you come across, and learn more about everything FraudO stands for.

And of course we have all the other ways you can subscribe and follow our news:

3. You can subscribe by email. Near the top right corner of our website is a place to enter your email address. You’ll be sent a confirmation email to confirm your address. And we promise we won’t spam you, you’ll only receive updates of new articles and posts.

4. RSS – If you use an RSS newsreader you can subscribe to our feed at http://fraudo.com/feed/ . If you don’t have an RSS newsreader you can starting using one for free at http://www.google.com/reader . You just need a Google account (also free).

And of course you could refresh our page every day or two. There are now 289 articles on this site. To save you the time and effort of always refreshing this page try out one of the systems shown above.

We also rely heavily on search engines such as Google. Many people receive a scam email and copy & paste it into Google to work out if it’s a scam or not. Google usually puts FraudO articles near the top (Google is showing a bit of faith in us). Then they’ll be able to read our article explaining the scam. In fact we get thousands of enquiries through Google, so that’s thousands of people we’ve helped identify scams.

At the end of every article on FraudO you have the chance to leave comments. Some people like to share their own experiences, or to ask questions. Whatever it is, you’re welcome to add your own comments.

We also have a live chat system. This is hosted by Quayport, our affiliate and IT services provider. You can chat with an engineer about any security or scam concerns you have. It’s available for a few hours a day. The chat system can be found at http://fraudo.com/support/chat/

Then there’s our enquiry form. Replies can be a bit slower but you’re more than welcome to send your enquiries. Please use the form provided at http://fraudo.com/support/contact/

We also tried a forum type system but it hasn’t been very successful. It’s still up but we’ll eventually replace it with something better. It can be found at http://fraudo.com/support/forums/

Well, that’s enough for an admin update. As you can see we’ve made it as easy as possible for you to keep on top of scams. It’s a dangerous world out there on the internet. The best thing you can do is to keep learning about all the scams, fraud, etc, and how to keep your PC safe from malware. Help spread the word and to fight the good fight.

It’s now 2009. I started this site in 2007 with the intention of helping people understand online fraud. Things are coming along nicely.

In 2008:

• I published 174 new articles on this site (for a total of 229 articles). My goal was 200 new articles so I’ve slacked a bit.
• 8493 people used Fraudo.com when looking for information about scams, fraud, etc.
• 576 people wanted to know if it’s ok to give out their bank account details to strangers (I answered this question here)

I also introduced an email subscription service. Enter your email address in the top right corner of this page and you’ll receive an email with all the latest updates.

Fraud, scams, and viruses are bigger problems than ever so I’ll continue my efforts on this site. The best way to overcome these dangers is through education, so continue reading this site and let everyone know about it.

All the best for 2009,

Enrique.

• I upgraded to WordPress 2.6.1 (latest version)
• I moved everything to a new server in USA (old server was in Australia)

There are now over 200 articles on FraudO.com. My goal is still to help you protect yourself from falling victim to scams, fraud, viruses, etc. The best thing you can do is subscribe to the FraudO email (type your email address into the top right of this page), or if you’re more net savvy use an RSS reader. Otherwise just remember to read this site every few days.

• Enter your email address in the form provided near the top of this page (on the right)
• You’ll be asked to verify your subscription
• When new articles are posted on FraudO.com you’ll receive them in your email

It’s that simple.

For those who don’t know, RSS is the technology behind a faster way to read websites such as FraudO. You set yourself up with a news reader and point it at all your favourite web sites. Then whenever something new appears on that website it shows you only the new parts. So instead of checking all your favourite sites each morning you get a real time display of what’s new in your world. It’s great.

If you haven’t used a news reader before head on over to google.com/reader and set yourself up. Then add a subscription to fraudo.com There are hundreds of similar products, below are the more popular ones (they’re all FREE):

• If you use My Yahoo! then look at: my.yahoo.com/s/about/rss
• If you have a Google account then use: google.com/reader
• Bloglines: www.bloglines.com

Microsoft’s Outlook is not free; many people already have this installed so I thought I’d mention it since it has a news reader built in: office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook

The following article explains a lot more about RSS and news readers: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tips_for_making_the_most_of_rss.php . If you haven’t tried it yet I suggest you have a look today.

I was informed about this malicious spam on Monday morning so I wrote about it here. Later that day this site had received a few hundred visits from Australia and New Zealand. This kept up until Thursday when it received over a thousand visitors, mostly from Canada. That was fun, and it’s interesting to see how the spam spread across countries. It’s still getting lots of attention till today.

I beleive the reason this site received so much traffic was because I was the 2nd person to write about it (as far as I could tell by doing a Google search on Monday morning). So when people started to do searches to work out if the threat was real or fake, Google directed them here.

It’s great to see people researching spam instead of blindly believing it. I just hope they had a chance to read this page before they clicked on the malicious link. And I hope everyone learns not to believe everything they read on the internet.

And a special hello to Karen and Stephanie, regular readers of FraudO.com

The previous version (2.3.3) was doing well, it did everything I needed. But as with any piece of software vulnerabilities are eventually found and exploited. The good people at WordPress release new versions not only to add new features that I may or may not need, they fix vulnerabilities.

Recently a vulnerability was found in WordPress 2.3.3 (the previous version of WordPress). At last count there were 21,800 websites in the world using that version and are vulnerable to hacking. And on the 19th of March 2008 a vulnerability was found in WordPress 2.1.3.

The solution as always is to upgrade to the latest version as soon as it becomes available (you still need to test the upgrade and backup your files before doing any upgrade).

So version 2.5 is more secure. The new features it provides are nice but security should be the first priority. Imagine if this website were hacked and visitors’ PCs became infected just by browsing this site!

Notes:

• WordPress is the software that powers this website. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to start a new website.
• I’ve been updating the sidebar on the right, apologies if it doesn’t look right.

IT security is a massive industry. On the surface it’s a battle between people with bad intent and with security professionals working on behalf of all users. The best line of defence is to learn as much as possible and to use that knowledge to avoid being caught in the middle of this battle. Fight fraud with knowledge.

And if there’s one piece of advice I’ve kept repeating it’s to invest in a good anti-virus program.

With that I wish everyone a great new year.