Author: Bristol Dogg

After receiving the following two emails I deceided to look into what the (obvious) scam was here (as it wasn’t really clear what the gain for the sender was, just that it was a scam).

I first received an email that read:

Hi

As a result your application, I would like to invite you to attend an interview.

You will have an interview with the department manager, Jenny Wilson.  The interview will last about 30 min.

Please bring three reference (if available), as well as a copy of your ID, e.g. passport, Driving Licence to the interview.

Please contact me on 0706484736, in order to arrange an interview.

We look forward to seeing you.

Best Regards

Charles Brown

Then (a couple of months later) today I received the following:

Hello

In regards to our previous email inviting you for a job interview.  We realised we had a problem with our telephone line.  Fortunately the vacancy is still open, we are still happy to invite you to an interview.

You will have an interview with the department manager, Edie Wilson.  The interview will last about 30 min.

Please bring three reference (if available), as well as a copy of your ID, e.g. passport, Driving Licence to the interview.

Please contact me on 0706484361, in order to arrange an interview.

We look forward to seeing you and we are sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.

Best Regards

Charles Brown

Apart from the fact that the emails are both obviously scams; note the poor grammar and lack of information regarding the ‘job’.  It was a mystery to me how good old Charlie Brown (hey isn’t that a character out of Peanuts?) was intending to make any money out of it.  Surely if you dial a mobile phone number from a mobile you get inclusive minutes and it won’t cost you a bean.  Right?  Well no, wrong apparently; 0706 numbers are not mobile numbers at all, they are premium rate numbers!

If like me you were genuinely registered as looking for a job with a couple of places, and you receive this email; DON’T CALL THE NUMBER.  It is not a free mobile call; you will get through to a bogus company that will transfer your call around a bit (probably to a more expensive connection) and proceed to keep you on the line as long as they can.

Genuine interview invites normally come from email addresses that are not [email protected] (or .com) they have information regarding the actual job (that you must remember applying for, yes?) and (unless you are really unlucky) not organised by a cartoon character.

Incidentally I think I got the second email because I never responded to the first one, I wonder what email number three will read like?

 

Free iPad anyone?  Come on, give me a break!  It’s been a while since I wrote anything on here but I feel totally compelled to do so about the current insane need for Facebook users to share obvious scam messages.

Believe me when I say there is no way that Apple are giving away a free iPad, or any MacBooks/iPhones (even the iPhone 6, which is not out at the time of writing) because they have opened them and they cannot now be resealed or because they are feeling generous or because they simply want you to have one.

Most of the ‘free’ online giveaways, like the age old free iPad, involve the need to fill out a survey or click on a link to ‘like’ a page.  Knowing that identity theft is a major problem it should be considered that when you fill out that survey you GIVE AWAY personal details to the scammers; they will give you nothing in return (except possibly an empty bank account if you are stupid enough to give them bank details [some people are]).

To be honest this is reminiscent of the ‘you have won £3,000,000 on (some) lottery’, which you have; a) never heard of and b) never entered.  ‘To claim your prize simply send us your completed bank transfer details and a fee for administration and we will transfer all your winnings within 7 days’ (remember those in the post?).

The sad thing about all of these type of scams is they feed on people’s GREED and/or DESPARATION, all of us would like to be multi-millionaires unfortunately it is unlikely to fall in your lap; especially if you never bought a ticket.  The only people getting rich here are the SCAMMERS.

Why not do yourself a favour?  Next time you see one of these, instead of clicking; share, like, or (god forbid) filling out a survey or sending any money why not just open a new tab on the browser go to Google and type; ‘do apple give away free ipad’ or ‘lottery win I never entered’; the results speak for themselves.  Don’t be a mug; if it seems too good to be true IT IS, and there is no such thing as a free lunch (or a free iPad).

BTW don’t even get me started on the dog napper that appears to be able to take dogs in 4 different locations in the UK in the SAME vehicle within 20 minutes….

Shall I Google that for you? http://www.cnet.com/news/apple-and-facebook-have-not-teamed-up-to-give-away-free-ipads/

Free iPad, not likely; think different….

Well what a week, I decided to go on holiday for a few days thinking; thats OK I have the laptop an iPhone and provided I can get a 3G signal I’ll be able to keep an eye on things from wherever, there is some more about the holiday on Neaves site (http://bristolgorillahunt.nateallen.co.uk).  Putting aside the fact that Sandford Holiday Park is actually quite a nice place (great for the kids), it is caravans, but the site is well kept (thanks in the most part to people like the guy that turned up within minutes of reporting a leaking tap to replace the washers) the vans are clean, however, unfortunaltely no 3G signal could be found.  The park did provide free WiFi in the bar, but be honest, how many people will walk into the bar with a full on laptop and start updating their BLOG site?  (Not me thats for sure.)

I did have the iPhone with me so could get on the WiFi in the bar and tweet and post on facebook, so I didnt feel too lost :?.  Which is the point to the post really, while I was away I found that aside from the most sarcastic comment I think I will find on this BLOG (hopefully) I did nothing to the site, but still found I had climbed the rankings in a google search for ‘Nate Allen’.  At the beginning of the week I ranked 33rd for that search and on Thursday I ranked 8th!  Irony being what it is; the sarcastic comment was regarding me mentioning the fact that WordPress is apparently good for SEO (or Search Engine Optimisation, if you didnt know).  The commenter said my BLOG was an actual encyclopedia of SEO information etc. (read it here) but really, if I wanted to write a BLOG about WordPress SEO I would use one word; YOAST.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; I really am not into reinventing the wheel (or rewriting something that someone has already written so well).

Having previously spending years trying to get somewhere I have now managed to outrank Destroy Nate Allen in a google search for me (I’m Nate Allen, I was here first), and that really is a milestone for me (as my commenter pointed out).  I have to say I dont think I will give up on this now until I rank first on google for ‘Nate Allen’; unlikely to happen, but if it does I will be sure to write about that.

So this weeks SEO tips; spend a week in a caravan in Dorset (where there seems to be no 3G), enjoy your holiday with the family, get sunburn (seriously don’t forget the suncream), forget about the website for a week and; provied you have followed at least point 1 of YOAST’s SEO BLOG you should find that you will thoroughly enjoy yourself (I did anyway).

After spending some time setting up the wordpress website I decided I would set up email blogging. Apparently all you do is setup a (secret) email address then send email to said address. If this blog is online it will mean I set the system up correctly (not first time though 🙁 )

Anyway enough rubbish it’s a right pain typing on an iPhone. Hopefully s

Update:

It turns out that email blogging isnt as easy as all that in WordPress 😕 I tried in total vain for a couple of attempts to get this to work with my virginmedia email account.  Unfortunately virgin media email NOW (never used to) requires SSL connections.  No problem I thought, I know the server details, just set the port to 995 in the wordpress post via e-mail settings (settings > writing > post via e-mail [port]).  I can catgegorically say this did not work for me.  I did find a few references to the way that PHP is compiled and that PHP.ini may be misconfigured.

I requested (and got) a copy of PHP.ini from my host provider and WAS going to look at making some PHP.ini changes to resolve this (when I do I may post an update, but honestly I think unless you are your own host reconfiguring PHP isnt necessarily an option).

My resolution to this was to use an email address that doesnt require SSL connections to the POP3 server.  Easily achieved really as cPanel included virtual mail hosting for me, so setting up an email address of contact [at] nateallen.co.uk was a good idea really. 

Once I had configured the mail server (literally add an email address of contact in cPanel) I found I could add my secret blogger email address to the server and take details of my virtual mail server and transfer those details into WordPress post via e-mail settings and use the standard port 110 for POP3; worked like a charm first time (for that email address anyway). 

I did consider setting up the nateallen.co.uk email in the beginning, but it was worth (part of) the excersize to see if SSL POP3 would work for me.  It didnt work for me, but it may well do for you if PHP is compiled and configured correctly on your web host and you set the post via e-mail port to 995.

Good luck and happy e-mail blogging.

In the past I did PLENTY of moaning about getting page rankings in Google.  In fact I first started looking at this in 2007 (4 years ago)!  In the space of 72 hours I have managed to register a domain name (this one), write a small amount of rubbish about setting up the site; putting my name in several places on the site, with a few links to help me along.

Unbelievably I already find myself crawled by the Monster Google Bot and my new site appearing in a search for ‘nate allen uk’.  Realistically I would prefer the search for nate (or nathan) allen to feature higher in the page rankings but there are some far bigger doggs out there 😕

It will definitely be a SEO excersize for me now, honestly I am amazed (see this blog); that site NEVER made it into Google searches in 4 years.  I suspect that to be a nuance of the free blueyonder web service (but I really am tight and didnt want to pay Mr Branson any more money).

Since then I have tried DYNDNS NO-IP and home hosting, but that didnt work either (2 years); so thanks Chris it would seem you were right all along, I should have done this 2 years ago when you first suggested it eh?

Well I can say that setting this up was far less painful than I would have imagined it to be.  Excepting the delay from 123-reg.co.uk to register my domain name nateallen.co.uk I have managed to setup what I would say is a pretty good looking set of pages (and this blog) in a few hours.  I managed to easily transfer my site from my home host natedogg.dyndns.org (now switched off), and I didnt really even need that much support getting to terms with the cpanel that comes with the web hosting.  Mind you setting up the DB was, lets say; interesting (not the way I would have expected), easy though.  There has been very little in the way of coding change to the old site (just enough to make it work), plus I will rebrand it the Dogg web.

I have used WordPress (advised, good choice) and a template for now (fastfood, also a good choice).  I think I will take the advice to change the template to toolbox and play with the creative side.  Mind you on that matter I AM NOT creative so I will likely just steal all of someone elses ideas (why not I hear you all cry).

Honestly I aint famed for reinventing the wheel, but I do like to play…  lets see if I do 😕

The thing that interests me the most about doing this is SEO apparently Word Press is fairly good for this, so I may finally see my dream of searching for nate allen in google and getting a high ranking result; I’m sure Destroy Nate Allen wont mind if I manage to outrank him 😀

Well I now have a bit of writing to do.  I have decided to take a look at putting a website together that may actually serve me some purpose.  I intend to write some of the vast array of rubbish that I have in my brain into blog pages, and that might make some interesting reading (but probably only for me). 

I’m Onboard with WordPress and a domain name https://nateallen.co.uk, some nice £rate hosting thanks Chris and a mit full of stupid ideas for widgets and plugins, lets see what happens… Should be fun anyway 🙂