fraud

In recent weeks, we've seen a significant number of spam-scams from a domain that is remarkably similar to an official UK government domain, showing that registrars and hosts are failing to identify obviously fraudulent customers. The fraudulent domain name is close enough to the real thing to fool many targets.

The benefits that flow to Google, Bing, etc. from linking to illegal websites are substantial. So are the benefits gained by internet hosts, especially those providing anonymous or anonymising services for a fee (e.g. Cloudflare) and the internet domain registrars that facilitate the purchase and anonymisation of domains by criminals. In this article, we start the list of domains and those who benefit from providing services to them. Registered users can add their own examples of genuinely illegal websites in the comments.

In the UK, there is an epidemic of advertising and other forms of marketing by companies who then pass leads to firms ( which, these days, are often companies not firms) of solicitors. Their advertising is annoying and sometimes misleading; but there are practices that are downright unethical and borderline (or perhaps over the border) illegal. Can the practice be prevented? Perhaps it's time to wind back the clock on fee sharing.

Fraudsters rely on illusion. They depend on showing you something so that you do not recognise a truth that they want to obscure.

Many fraudsters are clever, many are well prepared, but the vast majority are opportunists ..

An email purporting to come from Apple's iTunes frightens victims into clicking on a malicious link - it tells them their credit card has just been hit with a large charge.

Users who downloaded copies of Angry Birds and other software for their mobile phones from websites other than Google's Play (formerly Android Market) have in some cases found themselves being charged GBP15 every time the open the app on a phone.

A lawyer, formerly with Baker & McKenzie in New York has pleaded guilty to money laundering and conspiracy to commit securities fraud while with the firm.