It’s called PC Antispyware 2010, a name that sounds a bit serious (and misleading). The screen looks pretty fancy, maybe people trust things that look nice or shiny – don’t be fooled by it.

If you see the screen above then don’t click on the download link, don’t install it. You can see a larger screenshot by clicking here. Only use antivirus products from known and trusted vendors.

Scammers have been knocking on people’s doors and claiming to be officials from the Australian Tax Office. They ask the resident to sign up to a program in return for reduced taxes. This is the bait part of the scam, offering you a way to pay less tax.

The scammers just need your credit card or bank details in return for their generous offer of reduced taxes. This is confidential information that you shouldn’t be giving out to strangers.

The Australian Tax Office has said that they’ll never initiate unsolicited house calls, if they do ever visit your home they’ll make an appointment first. And they will always show some ID on arrival. If this happens to you and you’re unsure what to do, the ATO’s phone number is 1300 686 636, they’ll be able to verify the situation.

This scam was also happening earlier this year using phone calls – the scammer calls random people and gives them the same story about reducing their tax and claiming to be from the Australian Tax Office.

If you have any comments on how this works in other countries please post below in the comments.

There are a few variations but the basic idea is the same:

• The criminal will often steal a phone to make a call
• A criminal calls someone’s phone (often a child)  and tells them maintenance needs to be done on their phone and to turn it off for an hour
• They then call that person’s parents or relatives
• They tell the parents that they’ve kidnapped their child
• They demand a ransom to be dropped off at some location cash or jewelery

It’s not a small problem either. In Mexico, in a 3 month period 30,000 complaints were made to the police regarding this scam. In a 6 month period (also in Mexico) it’s estimated that US$20m was collected from worried parents. So it’s not a small problem, it’s rampant.

There’s another variation: instead of making fake ransom requests people are told they’ve won a car or some other prize, and that they need to deposit some money to be able to collect their prize. We’ve seen this before in email scams, I guess people are starting to not believe emails and criminals have moved back to phones.

So keep this scam in mind and plan accordingly on how you contact your family members.

More information here.

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.