The "Agro America" Scam and why Inertial Zen Designs won’t be dealing with you if your communications are anything like this

One of the things Web Designers end up dealing with a lot of the time is scam and spam type situations. Inertial Zen Designs has on no less than 10 occasions ended up dealing with variants of a scam called the Agro America Scam.

Now, before I continue let me first state that this is nothing against Agro America and their website, but they seem to be being used as the “example” site for this scam. So let us go over just how the scam itself works.

Taking into accounts variations like who is sending the enquiry and how initial contact is made, the basic concept here is that someone makes contact with a Web Designer and asks if We make Websites and do we take credit cards as payments. Neither of these should set off alarm bells because, as a Web Designer, of course My company makes Websites and does have methods to process Credit Card Payment.

Upon first contact being confirmed, the person making the enquiry will respond with something along the lines of the following

(Screen capture of an actual email sent after this person first made contact via iMessage)

Firstly, word for word, this email has actually been sent to others, as evident by this link here

 https://www.market2all.com/security-tips/spam-scam-phishing-email-kola-nut-gacillia-nut-and-cocoa/

Secondly, you might notice a few red flags here, like for example the requested Website domain they want. In this case running a Whois on the website shows that it’s actually a domain owned by  7-Eleven, which means being able to acquire said domain name is going to be high cost to buy it off the current owners.

Next problem is that this contact person is not THE contact they expect you to work with, as they have referred to a as of yet unnamed 3rd party who will be “providing the images, logos and content” and they expect the Web Designer to do all this for a top end budget of $8,500 which one can presume is supposed to include securing them hosting and the desired domain name.

Now the most recent round of this scam that crossed my communications inbox, “Wilson Tandy” was actually declined by Myself on the ground that for what was asking the budget was lower than what I, as a contracted Web Designer, was willing to do the job for. As you can see, when this amount was not enough to entice Me to take on what I already know was a sketchy project, the user instantly attempted to sweeten the deal by claiming that his numbers was a “reference budget” and then when I declined that, you can see that this person went to accusing that I was being rude towards him 

(Screen captures of iMessage communications with "Wilson Tandy")

As this most recent attempt at this scam has failed, Inertial Zen Designs has implemented a strict policy that we will refuse any, and I do mean ANY client who uses Agro America as their reference site when it comes to a website project. 

Apple's March 2019 Press Event- Bring on the Services

This morning's Apple Event opened with a Movie like trailer, done in the style of the old iPod ads,.

First up: Apple News+

Apple News+, which is folding the texture magazine service into a paid tier of Apple News at a cost of $9.99 per month with Family Sharing included.. Included in this is Magazines, which will bring 300 magazine titles to the end user. Features will include the ability to have specific magazines auto downloaded to your device so you have them available for offline reading.

The News+ tier will include digital subscriptions including the Los Angles Times and the Wall Street Journal. Privacy will be protected because there is no Advertising tracking and recommendations are done via downloading a selection of articles to the device and using an on device algorithm to figure out what to recommend.

Available today including access in Canada.

Up next: Apple Pay: 10 billion transactions surpassed is the target for 2019. 70% acceptance of Apple Pay in the US, and higher in other countries, with more that 40 countries estimated to have the service available.  Transit has now been added to Apple Wallet in 3 cities in the United States.

Apple is now also going into the Credit Card game with Apple Card, a digital credit card that can be used globally and can be accessed via Apple devices. Customer service for Apple Card be accessed by sending a message through the messages app. Apple Card will give specific details as to locations of where transactions are made and will be color coded in a spending tracker feature. 

Reward program is “Daily Cash” which will give the user cash back on a daily basis and added to the Apple Cash Card. Reward rate is 2% everywhere and 3% when purchases are with Apple. Payment schedules can be set to weekly or biweekly and the card has no fees. 

The Credit Card is partnered with Goldman-Sachs and Master card. Transactions are protected using the on-device enclave chip and must be authenticated with either Touch ID or Face ID. 

Apple has even created a physical card for when a person is somewhere that Apple Pay is not available, it’s made out of titanium with laser etching, no card number CVV, expiration date of signature is on the card but can be accessed via the app. Physical card transactions will give the user 1% daily cash back.

Up next: The App Store:

With over half a billion users per week, the largest category on the App Store is Gaming. Over 1 Billion people have downloaded games on the App Store. 

Apple Arcade has been announced as a Mobile, Desktop and Living room subscription service. Over 100 games at launch with a monthly subscription cost not announced, but  included Family Sharing. Games will play across Mac, iPad, iPhone and Apple TV and all games will be playable offline. No ads, no additional purchases for future content. All game tracking data is user opt in

Apple TV:

The TV app is getting a redesign, Movies are now built into for easy access from the TV app. Cable Bundles can now be accessed from the central location of the TV app and will allow users to use their Cable login to pay for what they want in a on demand, ad-free ,offline optional ,family sharing feature called TV Channels that will include HBO, Starz, epic and CBS All Access.

TV update will arrive in May, TV app is also coming to Mac OS and Samsung, LG and Vizio Smart TV’s and Roku and Amazon streaming sticks this fall.

Apple TV+ announced, Steven Spielberg is brought on stage to announce the creation of a series based off the magazine “Amazing Stories”. The Morning Show with Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell, is next announced as an exclusive to the TV+ service. Other shows include a Jason Mamoa backed show called See where a few million survivors of a devastated earth are all left blind due to a virus,  a new show, produced with Sesame Workshop, called Helpers. Helpers is a preschool aged introduction to coding.

JJ Abrams and Sara Bareilles announce a new series called Little Voice, focusing on an upstart young musician in New York City. Oprah joins the platform with 3 new projects, including a series on depression and one that highlights her love of books through her book club.

TV+ will launch this fall with a subscription price to be announced through the Apple TV app.

MacOS and iOS updates are live today

It's been a while since the last update

Many of you who follow the Inertial Zen Designs blog may have noticed that it has been quite a while since an entry has been made, The reason for that is actually very simple.

Inertial Zen Designs is a one person company, with a focus on creating Responsive Website Design. As this is the case, creating new content for this blog has been a bit of a challenge because many of the potential clients who would seek out services from Inertial Zen Designs might not be interested in the ins and outs of the back end of Web Design, to paraphrase from a tag line of Apple's, they simply want their website to Just Work.

Now, there is nothing at all wrong with this mind set, in fact as a Web Designer, I can fully understand. After all, not everyone who buys a new car wants to know how the car was put together or the tools used in the process, they simply want a car that will do what they desire it to do, and that is getting them to their goal.

Website design is much the same way, I can go into the details of how I get your image placed where you want it placed, but the important element is that it is in fact placed. Same goes for content, links and all the other aspects of a Website. So long as it looks like the client expects it to look and does what they need it to do and users are interacting with it once they know it exists, that is all that matters.

So, with that being the case, I am actually turning to you, My loyal followers and any new visitors who stumble upon this blog, for feed back. What would you like to see covered in future blog posts?

Please let Me know in the comments section of where ever you happen to come across this posting, and thank you in advance for  your feedback

Sincerely,

David Peters
Owner and Web Technologist, Inertial Zen Designs

Social Media Tip: Why You should never tag a friend in the comments of a News Report on Facebook.

We’ve all seen them cross our feeds from time to time, especially if you follow News Stations, The post with a headline like

“4 Arrested in Police Raid”

And sure enough, the next thing you are likely to find in the comments section is someone, let’s call them Joe Smith, making a comment like this


Joe Smith:  Jane Doe is this the event you saw?

Seems like a fairly simple enquiry about something that you were discussing with a friend, but actually, without thinking about it Joe Smith may very well have put Jane Doe in danger.  Here’s why.

Police activities are rarely a one and done situation, as after the fact there is always the chance of bail or associates to those who were involved being factored in. In the case of Jane Doe, Joe Smith just commented a tagged link to her profile on a PUBLIC PAGE!

This means that parties involved who may be looking to quiet witnesses now have a Name, a Face and quite possibly a physical address to track Jane down at.

Fortunately for all of Us, Facebook has a way that you can enquire about these type of posts with friends without going through the act of a public tagging that can put a friend at risk.

On every post, the Share option gives a user the chance to do the following choices

1. Share Now (Friends)
2. Share
3. Send as Message
4. Share on a friend’s timeline
5. Share to a Page

The key to Joe keeping Jane safe in this situation is to use option 3 “Send as Message”

By sending the post as a Message, Joe can enquire to Jane if this is indeed the event that was experienced WITHOUT the public tagging of Jane in a post that anyone with computer access can read. 
So, the next time you find yourself wondering if your friend was talking about having seen an event that just got posted on that News page, Do them a favour and message it, the lives you might be saving are both your own and theirs.

Oct 2017 Update from the Inertial Zen Designs Office

With this post, Inertial Zen Designs is starting something new, a Newsletter like monthly post to tell you what has been happening around the office.

Firstly, you may have noticed that the Inertial Zen Designs Website  was out of commission for about a week's time. This was due to an issue on Our server host's end. The Site is back up and working. 

In the next while, you will also notice that the Website has added a small bit of on screen advertising. Inertial Zen Designs has decided to partner with Google's Adsense platform in hopes of reducing some of the costs associated with running the Website and, hopefully be able to serve the end user ads that are relevant to their visit without running into issues with questionable content being served via a non trustworthy Advertising platform.  Information in opting out of Google's Adsense tracking can be found on the privacy policy page of the Website.

If you happen to follow Inertial Zen Designs on Facebook you might have noticed that We recently shared up the following two photos

These images represent the advertisement for Inertial Zen Designs's Artisan Portfolio Package. The Artisan Package includes up to 5 pages of Web Design that will allow local talent to showcase their creations at a reasonably priced $360.00 tax included fee.

These packages are great for the home based Artist, Upstart Musician, Aspiring Actor and any other types of creative types wishing for an inexpensive showcase of their talents online.

Speaking of Artists and showcasing their talents, I will be checking out the UNBC hosted Artisans of the North Fair this weekend and will have business cards and promotional postcards with information about the Artisans Package with Me. I am looking forward to discussing options with the local talent in the area.

Well, that's it for this update. Don't forget you can follow Inertial Zen Designs on Facebook , and Twitter or check out the Website at inertialzendesigns.com


See you all Next Month right here

David Peters
Certified Web Technologist and Owner Inertial Zen Designs

Steps to help filter out “Fake News”

This blog post is a bit different than the normal posts here. In this one I have taken the time to point out some of the ways We, as end users, can help to filter out Fake News and Hoaxes in the Social Media World We all live in. No specific sites in the examples have been linked to in order to all you the reader to make up your own mind.

The TL:DR for those who just feel they don't have time to read this entire post is simple Think before you post.

Step 1: STOP RELYING ON FACEBOOK AND TWITTER AS SOURCES

Facebook and Twitter are wonderful ways to keep up to date on activities and events in your social circle, but when it comes to being a source of News the “What’s Trending” section is not without it’s issues.

Both Facebook and Twitter’s Trending topics are simply a ranking of data tracked in the stream. It’s an indication of what the masses are discussing.  There in lies the problem, with the speed that a Fake News story or hoax can be introduced into the stream and shared through invoking an emotional reaction, a story can become the most talked about topic on the globe and never actually happened.

Step 2: REALIZE THAT THE BEST LIES ARE BASED IN TRUTH

One of the key elements to a good lie is that, in most cases, it has to be believed to be effective. In many a situation, this means that there needs to be elements of truth involved. 

Lacking a believable basis means a story falls apart, and the more players involved in the story the larger the chance is that details wont always add up. In the caee of Fake News and Hoaxes, checking for this starts right at the headline of the piece by asking yourself the simple question of 

“Is this something that could believably happen? Remember you can’t even spell Believe without the word lie, see it’s right there in the middle beLIEve

Step 3: USE THE 5W’s BEFORE SHARING

We should all remember these from our school current event studies, the 5 W’s known as Who,What,When,Where and Why, which were used to help us employ critical thought. 

In fact, let us use an example to try to break down how the 5W’s can be used. The other day, I got this message via Facebook from a family member

Hi I'm mark The Director of facebook 

Hello everyone, it seems that all the warnings were real, facebook use will cost money

If you send this string to 18 different from your list, your icon will be blue and it will be free for you.

If you do not believe me tomorrow at 6 pm that facebook will be closed and to open it you will have to pay, this is all by law.

This message is to inform all our users, that our servers have recently been very congested, so we are asking for your help to solve this problem. We require that our active users forward this message to each of the people in your contact list in order to confirm our active facebook users if you do not send this message to all your facebook contacts then your account will remain inactive with the consequence of Lose all your cont the transmission of this message. Your SmartPhone will be updated within the next 24 hours, will have a new design and a new color for the chat. Dear Facebook users, we are going to do an update for facebook from 23:00 p.m. until 05:00 a.m. on this day. If you do not send this to all your contacts the update will be canceled and you will not have the possibility to chat with your facebook messages

Will go to pay rate unless you are a frequent user. If you have at least 10 contacts

 Send this sms and the logo will turn red to indicate that you are a user

Confirmed ... We finish it for free Tomorrow they start to collect the messages for facebook at 0.37 cents Forward this message to more than 9 people of your contacts and it will be free of life for you to watch and it will turn green the ball of above do it and you will see

This looks pretty scary at first even though on close inspection it looks like two different messages have been mashed together (notice half way along where after it mentioned the change in color for your chat windows it goes into "Dear Facebook Users..." as it has people wondering if they could end up paying for Facebook unless they do a specific action, but lets apply the 5W’s to this

Who? This message appears to be from mark The Director of facebook. Ok, We’re supposed to assume that is meaning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg right? so that brings us to 

What? Forward this message (how, via Facebook Messenger or SMS?, both are instructed) to 18 people. and we are all supposed to do this, 

When? By 6pm on an unspecified date, and We are supposed to do this

Where? On our Smart phones  

Why? Because if We Don’t Facebook’s iconic blue icon will turn red and We get charged for using Facebook, If We don’t We’ll be locked out of Facebook.

Now, lets apply some critical thought to this, Firstly Mark is too busy overseeing a company with almost half the world as users, plus the fact is He has been off touring the United States with his family when not in the office. Secondly, this can be debunked with asking yourself one question. Do you really think a Multibillion Dollar company would try a ploy of “free for you if you spam your friends, pay if you don’t”?

Step 4: FIND YOUR TRUSTED SOURCES AND DEBUNKING SITES

Trying to work one’s way through Fake News is always going to be a challenge, The 5W’s listed in Step 3 can help, but so can finding credible, unbiased news sources. Which sources are, of course, going to be affected by one’s own personal beliefs and viewpoint, so I won’t make suggestions on which ones you should pick specifically, but using the sources that the News Stations use, like Reuters or the Associated Press are good areas to start.

When it comes to making choices on specific sources, check the ownership, an example of this would be the Washington Post. Owned by Jeff Bezos, Founder and owner of Amazon, an article on the success of an Amazon event could very well have the potential to have a spin on it due to the common factor of the company’s owners. (Disclaimer: I am not saying this is the case, simply using this as an example for educational purposes)

It’s also very handy to keep a collection of debunking sites around to check stories against, but make sure your selected sites are not simply quoting other debunking sites and they do their own investigating. After all, site like Snopes saying something is debunked is not the same as if  Hoax-Slayer said it was debunked just because Snopes said it was. (once again, example used for education purposes only here)

Step 5: THE ABOUT SECTION IS YOUR FRIEND

Pretty much any Website in this modern times has an about section that tells you a bit about those behind the Website. This is important as there are Websites that do News Satire, stories which are clearly written to entertain rather than inform.

A good Satire site will make this clearly known. Some will place a pop up on the site, a banner or other means of letting the user know. With a little detective work on your part this information is usually pretty easy to locate.

Step 6: BE AWARE OF CLONED SITES BY KNOWING YOUR TRUSTED SOURCES

Web Design template setups, like Wordpress, have made the job of cloning a reliable source’s Website easier than ever, all any party has to do is copy a few images, locate the theme and launch a domain and they can have an exact clone of CNN’s look (or to be fair any other Site) right down to a address that looks right.  

This can make knowing the source is a reliable one fairly hard to do, unless one is ready to again do some detective work. The World Wide Web is an extensive catalog of data, and as such is held in a library of indexed links known as Domain Name Servers, or DNS.  What this means is that, as an end user, We have tools to check on a Website. Through a simple google search phrase, WHOIS, coupled with the address of a Website, users can locate where the servers for the site are located, how long the site has been online and, unless a site owner has paid to keep it hidden, who owns the Domain address.

So, since we used CNN before, lets keep with that example. If you ended up on what appeared to be a CNN Website, but the address didn’t seem right and the story didn’t pass the 5W’s, what should you do? That is easy. Take the address up to the inclusion of a Website extension (typically a dot com) and run it through a Whois search. You never know when you will find that the article is actually on a bogus site owned by Boris in Moscow.

This has been, by far, one of the longer blog posts I have written for the Inertial Zen Designs Blog, but I hope it can help you come up with some of your own techniques and ways to help curb hoaxes and Fake News. Thank you for reading.

Dave, inertialzendesigns.com

What Augmented Reality could mean for Website Design.

Imagine you are sitting in your living room looking at a online shopping site. As you are looking around you notice a brand new painting that you would think might look perfect over your electric fireplace. But wait! is that a $1500 price tag on that print?

Suddenly, you start doubting yourself, sure you love the painting, but what if you only love it on the website? Your thumb hovers over that buy it now button as you look back and forth at your wall and your cart. Suddenly the light bulb moment goes off!

YOUR DEVICE HAS AUGMENTED REALITY!

So, you go back to the listing to see if it has support for this, and It Does! Tapping the button, you give the page temporary access to your camera and point your device at the space where you were thinking of hanging the painting.

Thankfully, the site had the fore though to have done a 3D scan of the painting, complete with the frame, and the augmented reality protocols can even tell you the exact distance you need to stand away from the wall to see it placed at a 1 :1 viewing ratio.

The result, you find that the painting is PERFECT  for your room, and you order it. A few weeks later, as you host that cocktail party, your purchase, and how it accents the entire decor of the room is the topic of the night.

All thanks to fact that at the core of things, that Website had the knowledge and fore thought to have their catalog of items scanned for Augmented Reality and coded to allow the user to preview their purchase in the very environment they intend to enjoy it in before they even buy it.