I normally log into British Filipino with advertising disabled but I just did a quick log-in, without disabling adverts and immediately spotted an advert for an immigration company. The advert is headed UK Marriage Visas but, on clicking the link, it takes you to the website of Global Immigration Consultants Ltd, who trade as UK Immigration Barristers. The website gives the company number as: 07600630. Nadeem Akhtar is director of this company and here is a BBC News report... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-20004900
Howerd mate, you are a good man and you've had a hard time, you've contributed greatly to this place and I am sure we all appreciate it, but honestly sir you are reading too much into these adverts. Sean is not doing anything to attract ads like this, I do not see anything like this on this site even remotely like what you are describing, modern advertising is personal and individual they are showing you stuff based on your own browsing history, you might have done your best to keep that private but I would suggest it has not worked mate.
I think it more likely that the advert appeared, not due to my browsing history, but due to the fact this site contains the word VISA, FIANCÉ, FIANCÉE, MARRIAGE, SETTLEMENT, VISITOR etc, many many times!
That is hardly Sean's fault mate, the site is here to help people with exactly those issues. And you've just added 'Marriage' and 'Visas' one more time in the title of this thread
Good gracious, this is getting just ridiculous. I posted on here, in genuine concern for users of this forum. I would do the same whether I have seen adverts here or elsewhere. It just so happens that I saw the advert here, that is all. No criticism of this forum whatsoever. Can you not understand that?
Ok fair enough Howerd, sorry if I missed your context. However I still think the chances are that no one else is seeing these ads, I've got Travelex, Western Union and Fasthosts being shoved at me by Google so far today, I have rarely if ever seen anything related to Visas. Also these ads follow me around wherever I happen to browse, the issue of dodgy ads is basically to never click on any of them and I never ever do. Awareness of advertising issues and dangers is a bit of self education that people really need to pick up on their own, should probably be a part of the school curriculum.
Originally, I thought the same as you, Howerd. I thought Sir Keef was creaming it in with adverts on the other forum. Eventually I realised it wasnt the case. I had quoted the content of an advert that I could see, in a thread on flights to the Philippines, i cant remember the companys name. Upon referring to it, nobody else knew what i was talking about, they couldnt see what I was seeing as the advertising was, evidently, specific to me. The prices were good ones and I had to copy and paste them into the thread so that others could see what I was referring to, however the prices or the advert, wern,t ones they could see at that point in time.
Switching to InPrivate browsing, I get WorldRemit ads a 'Bad Idea T Shirts' ad and a 'More Fun in the Philippines' promotion. With all the things you do to protect your privacy Howerd you might be creating the environment where Google is just guessing based on the particular site what to push to you, the vast majority of people will not be seeing what you are seeing. I've now got 'BT Sport' and Fasthosts being pushed at me on this site when signed in as me on a normal identifiable connection That's probably because I paid my phone bill two days ago, Fasthosts is just because I am an ex customer but still have accounts on their site and occasionally visit them.
And now on a page refresh on InPrivate I get this [image removed by oss] Is this the one you think is the problem? I'm not about to click on it
It has nothing to do with earning monies from adverts, I have no problem with that. Without advertising revenue the site would not exist. But this site is here to support people and that includes those looking for Visas. Imagine if that as a result of these attacks on me by forum members, someone chose to use these 'immigration advisors'? How would that look when that person comes back and posts on this site saying, hey I saw that advert on your site and I got conned? If you read another thread on this scam forum You will note that I had a little problem with Global Visas. I had used their website - very informative it was too! But when I called them they were clearly only after my money. I smelled 'scam'. Kuya quickly removed the advert. Not sure he now suggest that I should complain to Google instead - there is no way I can convince Google to do that!. Within minutes what I found shocked me about Global Visas. Since that original report, Global Visas offices in Cebu have been raided by Police and there were talks of Estafa charges in the SunStar. Not sure if that ever happened though. If you look at the number of visits that my Global Visas report has had you will see many search engine keywords leading to that very article and it has been one of the most visited threads. Maybe not by Forum members, but certainly by people doing internet searches. I have even been in contact with the one person who posted her phone number on that thread. By all accounts, UK Immigration Barristers is much much worse. In the year up to June 2012, 25% of the complaints received by OISC for OISC-registered companies, was for the forerunner to UK Immigration Barristers called UK Visa and Immigration. As a result, OISC withdrew the companies licence so the individuals involved in that company set up UK Immigration Barristers. However, there are no barristers at that company though they do act as agent for Kings Court Chambers. But the complaints being made are that advice on Visa application is being done by call centre staff not by legal personnel and that is illegal if you are not OISC registered. I have spent a good part of a my spare-time investigating scams. I can honestly say that I single-handedly uncovered Yellow Pages biggest ever fraud. The investigating officer in that case actually called me a one-man vigilante squad! The person who committed that fraud issued death threats against me and even attempted a break-in at my house. He was sent to prison. I uncovered a similar Yellow Pages fraud shortly after that committed by someone with the Christian name 'HOWERD'. Yes spelled that way!. Hence the reason I adopted that name on this forum, as I initially joined this forum after seeing a fraudster posting on what you call 'the other side'. More recently, I have had run-ins with fraudulent solicitors and an ex-fraud squad officer who has just been convicted of money laundering in a £5.7m pound advance fee fraud. That ex-policeman employed someone else (Ian) in his business, but the Trading Standards investigation failed to discover this. Ian used some dodgy solicitors to sue me. Those very solicitors main claim to fame is that they can bring down Trading Standards cases and there was a possibility they were on the defence team in the case against the former Policeman. It was enough to halt the trial for a few days! So, my 'hobby' has caused me quite a few problems over the years and I think was partly the reason why my fiancée left me, though she does not say so, saying that I am too perfect to be true! At least we still communicate and remain friends. She was on-line today. As for adverts 'following me' as OSS implies, this is pretty much an impossibility. I store no cookies and I use an add-on which disable referrers. I also use Adblock (does what it says) and Connect.me which blocks around 2000 trackers. The reason OSS gets adverts geared towards his interest is because he allows this tracking to take place. I don't allow to take place so I get what adverts that pertain to the site I visit. In the case of Europinoy that is, naturally, VISA adverts! The only reason I saw any adverts a few days ago was because Adblock was temporarily paused. I am not a stupid man but I clearly do not have the education or the life experience of the majority who post on here regularly. Most of the intellectual discussions on the forum are beyond me. But please take time to read what I do say (and any links) before jumping to illogical conclusions.
OSS, I always use Incoginto browsing in Google Chrome (same as IE's InPrivate browsing) in addition to that mentioned in my little rant! Oh, I use Click and Clean too (on Chromebook) and CCleaner on Desktop. I save no files on my Chromebook for more than 24 hours but I do upload them to Google Drive (which is not encrypted of course) I even have the desktop locked with heavy duty cable and a U cycle lock!
I take your point sir. As I also stated later having experimented with 'In Private' browsing it's likely the extent of your security measures are the reason you see the ads you do. I don't really care about ad tracking because I will never click on them. I'm also not attacking you Howerd, I really do respect your contribution to this place, but you should have made the context of the thread clearer in my opinion as it came over as a bit of an attack on the site, particularly in light of your other recent thread titles, short of removing ads altogether there is not a lot that the site can do about it. It might be be better to have a general sticky thread available on the site that warns users to be very careful about any adverts and that attempts to illuminate them on the issue of internet adverts in general rather than individual threads as people are either going to arrive here on this thread by a direct search and will still get ads in their own personal context or if they are sitting in an internet cafe in Cebu they will probably be getting ads on every site they visit that are a mishmash of the context of the last 50 users of that terminal. Filipino's are going to generally be pretty used to internet advertising, yes many may be naive and click on them but I would suggest that they face a much wider ocean of adverts than what we see on here when all other context (personal context) is stripped away. Brits, well Brits should know better, I know they don't but they should, again by the time anyone gets to any kind of warning on any site Google will have already be shoving stuff in their face, it's part of the modern world that we cannot really escape. I'm not a moderator here and I don't want to be and maybe I deserve to be rebuked for my comments in this case but I'm just a concerned long term user of this place. I do care about users of this site but I just can't see that there is anything really concrete that any of us can do to to protect people in this instance, Google owns the advertising world and our subject is often largely the Philippines, Marriage and Visa's, what can we do, people will see the adverts long before they see the warnings.
Kuya can and does block individual adverts on this site. If you had read my post that you quoted, you will note he did remove an advert for a similar dodgy visa company when I posted about it out on this very same scam forum. Maybe I should disable Adblock on this domain? That way, I will get the site-specific adverts. I have already seen a questionable advert for a US visa company today on this site. I don't know about the visa company you show the advert for in an earlier post, but is probably not a good idea to post an advert on the scam forum without first assessing if it is a scam!
It's a graphic and the post was a question, it's not easily searchable and it links to nothing. Also the individual sub-forum title is 'Warnings and Dangers' I don't see that implying it's a 'Scam' forum.
But it's viewable by anyone looking at the thread and if they fail to read the thread properly they may assume wrongly. I am happy to unblock adverts on this site (seems Adblock can do that) But looking at adverts does seems to cause problems with flash player which constantly crashes (one reason I use Adblock) and the problem is especially bad on here. I could report any dodgy adverts to Kuya and post a warning here. Another reason I block adverts is because if I see something dodgy, I feel compelled to investigate. You would be amazed at the percentage of doorstep callers who are downright fraudulent and that is why I am going to get an RFID/combination lock on my gate to stop dodgy callers - so I won't then feel compelled to investigate. My problem is restraining myself asking questions of my neighbours about any dodgy visitor! Currently, Trading Standards are pursuing a complaint I made about a visiting salesman. I voice recorded his visit and he has now been sacked by his company (but only when Trading Standards sent the recording to his employers) I now record ALL incoming phone calls and selected outgoing calls too.
I think 'Warnings and Dangers' could be applied to scams. Also, if you read the subtitle to the forum, it specifically mentions scams... Warn others of any scams, dangers or hazards to be found online or in life affecting those of us in long distance relationships.
I have 25 years worth of hard drives that I would hate to lose, I hope that they will still be working when I retire as I want to go back over all my old stuff and write some memoirs when I get the time, they will be boring memoirs but it's my history and my memory is not as good as the disks from my old machines, much of it I have migrated but other stuff has been left behind and I would love to see again one day. If you are really scared about your machine being stolen you should probably move to Truecrypt but you would probably have to move back to Windows for that not sure it is supported on Chrome OS, I use Truecrypt for my intellectual property i.e. my program code but I don't use it for anything else however it is a superb system and will happily encrypt an entire laptop or desktop in ways that supercomputers can't break in any reasonable timespan.
Chromebooks already have encrypted SSDs. That is why I like them. But when you use a Chromebook everything is done on-line. If I create or edit a document that is done on-line, so it is natural to store it on-line too. It means if the Chromebook is stolen I can still access my files from any other device that can access Google Drive. But Google drive files are not encrypted, instead Google (allegedly) divides the file across a number of servers for storage. This allows them to have some form of security for your files, whilst still ensuring that Google can access files, presumably for targeted advertising. One feature that Truecrypt has but which Chromebooks do not have is any form of Plausible Deniability. But even with Truecrypt, unless special measures are taken, it can be determined that there is another encrypted container on the drive. It has even been suggested that if you use Truecrypt then law enforcement could demand that you prove you don't have further data on the drive; that is impossible to prove and, as a consequence, could result in jail! But if you use the Chromebook in the right way you can, in effect get Plausible Deniability, you just need to have a second Google account which is NOT a Chromebook user account. This is what I do. I log into the Chromebook using an old Google account that only has Viagra spam going to it. Once logged-in to the Chromebook I then open a browser window to log into my real Google account. If I should be required to provide log-in details to anyone (criminal or law enforcement) I simply give them my Viagra spam account to log in. I have Chromebook set up so that is the only account which can be used to log-in. That log-in employs 2 factor authentication, but only if I am on-line. If I am off-line there is only single factor authentication, another reason I don't want to save files on the Chromebook. It would be impossible to determine that I have my files stored elsewhere (ie Google drive on another Google account). That is a benefit of cloud storage. My investigations into fraudsters has got me into trouble with the Police more than once and can result in my computer being removed. I need access to the files whilst the Police have my computer. With a Chromebook, they will have no evidence either, since nothing is stored on there. If I wanted a larger capacity drive, I would simply use a self-encrypting USB drive which Chromebooks will happily use, I believe. The big problem with a Chromebook is not being able to print without a cloud printer. I will have to buy one when the laser cartridge runs out! I also have to switch to the Windows PC in order to scan any documents.
Personally I'm not interested in plausible deniability and I think we had this discussion before sorry to bring it up again. Truecrypt hidden volumes can only be suggested due to the lack of null filled space on the disk and lack of activity on the host volume, the host volume appears to be the size of the allocated partition but the internal hidden volume can be implied only through lack of activity on the host volume, apart from that there is no means in existence to prove that there is a hidden volume. However if I were in a foreign country that was smart enough to know about Truecrypt I guess their government agents would just assume that random data on a disk meant hidden volumes existed and would therefore break my fingers knees and elbows one at a time until I confessed to whatever they wanted me to confess to On the other hand if someone nicks my laptop,I don't want my data and intellectual property stolen, a Truecrypt volume is perfect for this as it will never be broken, that for me is my point and the only reason I use Truecrypt.
