THE SERIOUSLY
REALLY USEFUL PAGE

           A SERIOUS WARNING TO UK MOBILE PHONE USERS
February 2010
   Receiving a 60440 text message will cost you money !!

A warning for all Mobile users in the UK - this scam DOES cost you money, even though you have done nothing to encourage or invite this text message:

    Due to technical problems your purchase of 10/2009 has not been charged.

    You are now being billed 4GBP.

    Apologies for the delay.Help?02032863990.

    Nextcard Ltd.
    Caller ID: 60440
    Caller: nextcard Ltd
    _____________________________

I received exactly the same message on the 28th January … and, as one does with spam e-mails … ignored it, but this time did not delete it and decided to look up the sender when I had the time. Today I looked it up on the Internet and found many hundreds of similar postings about this message and genuine alarm that the receiver actually does get charged £4 on their next bills from their phone provider or, if they are Pay as You Go subscribers, £4 instantly gets deducted from their credit.

One such forum where you can read as much as you like about it is here: http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/02032863990 

I immediately checked my Vodafone account online to see that I had indeed been charged for receiving this text and this charge would show up on my next statement from them. So I telephoned Vodafone and have been refunded £5 as compensation for something which was totally outside my control.

This is a terrible scam … and should be widely publicised and the authorities spurred into action to track down where these payments are ending up and arrest the perpetrators. To know that thieves can text your mobile phone without invitation and immediately extract money from your account is really frightening !!

Many account customers across all the UK phone networks will have deleted the message and not even notice that they have been charged £4 for it, when their next phone bill comes in.

All the UK mobile phone suppliers know about this scam from the amount of complaints from people who have bothered to look into where these texts came from, but no one seems to be doing anything about it. Some, not all of these suppliers are giving refunds … but only when they have been asked for, or in some cases, necessarily demanded by their irate but innocent subscribers !!

Vodafone deserve credit for offering a refund without quibbling.

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  Blood Clots / Stroke - They Now Have a Fourth Indicator: The Tongue


STROKE: Remember the 1st Three Letters....S.T.R.

A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke ... totally . He said the trick was getting a stroke recognised, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.

RECOGNISING A STROKE

Thank God for the sense to remember the '3' steps, STR . Read and Learn!

Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognise the symptoms of a stroke.

Now doctors say a bystander can recognise a stroke by asking three simple questions:

S *Ask the individual to SMILE.
T *Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently)
(i.e. It is sunny out today)
R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.

If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call emergency number immediately and describe the symptoms to the operator.

New Sign of a Stroke -------- Stick out Your Tongue

NOTE: Another sign of a stroke is this: Ask the person to stick out his tongue.
If the tongue is crooked, if it goes to one side or the other, that is also an indication of a stroke.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this e-mail sends it to 10 people; you can bet that at least one life will be saved.

I have done my part. Have you?

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Very interesting Newspaper Website


 One of the most interesting sites I have ever seen.

Just put your mouse on a city anywhere in the world
and the newspaper headlines pop up.

Double click and the page gets larger.

Then you can either read the pdf version or click through to the paper itself
in the upper right corner.

It is interesting to see what concerns the other parts of the world.

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/flash/

This site changes everyday with the publication of new editions of the paper.

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SENSIBLE E-MAILING

A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from a system administrator for a corporation.  It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails.  Please read the short letter below, even if you're sure you already follow proper procedures.     

Do you really know how to forward e-mails?   50% of us do .. 50% DO NOT.

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail ?  Do you hate it ? 
Every time you forward an e-mail, there is information left over from the people who got the message before you--- their e-mail addresses and names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list builds and builds and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus and his or her computer can send that virus to every E-mail address that has come across his computer.

Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them, or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and that person will make five cents for each hit. 

HOW DO YOU STOP IT ?  There are several easy steps: 

1.  When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top).  That's right, DELETE them.  Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do.  It only takes a second.  You MUST click the "Forward" button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message.  If you don't click on "Forward" first, you won't be able to edit the message at all. 

2.  Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the "To" or "Cc" fields for adding e-mail addresses. Always use the "BCC" (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. This way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address.  If you don't see your "BCC," option click on "To" and your address list will appear.  Highlight the address and choose "BCC."   It's that easy.  When you send to "BCC" your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients" in the "To" field of the ones who receive it.

3.  Remove any "FW" in the subject line.  You can re-name the subject or even fix spelling.

4.  ALWAYS hit your "Forward" button from the actual e-mail you are reading, not from the one who sent it to you !!  Ever get e-mails where you have to open ten pages first to read the one page with the wanted information on it ?  By Forwarding from the actual page you wish to be viewed, it eliminates extra e-mails people have to wade through.

5.  Have you ever received an e-mail that is a petition?  It states a position, asks you to add your name and address and then requests that you forward it to ten or 15 people or your entire address book. As it is forwarded on and on it can collect thousands of names and e-mail addresses.

 FACT:  That petition is worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and e-mail addresses on it.  If you want to support the intent of the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the most effective source.  Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter, than does a laundry list of names and e-mail address on a petition. And think about this: Who is supposed to actually send the petition in after the names are collected ?
And don't believe the ones that say that the e-mail is being traced.  It just ain't so!  

6.  One of the emails I hate is the one that says something like, "Send this e-mail to ten people and you'll see something cute run across your screen," or sometimes they just tease you by saying something really good will happen soon.  IT AIN'T GONNA !!!!!  Trust me, some of the same ones went around ten years ago !  I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed.

7.  Before you forward an Amber Alert or a Virus Alert, or some of the other ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them.  Most of them are junk mail that have been circling the net for YEARS !  Is it real or not ?  Almost everything that is questionable can easily be checked out at Snopes.com.  Take that moment.  If it's not real, don't pass it on. 

Please, let's stop the junk mail and the viruses and help to protect each other's E-mail addresses.