Brain Hemorrhage by High Frequency Call on Mobile Phones -- Rebirth of an Hoax in Form of Text Messages

I received a text message on my cellphone yesterday from an unknown number in which sender warned me not to attend a call from a specific number because it could cause brain hemorrhage to the listener due to high frequency. 

Brain Hemorrhage by High Frequency Call on Mobile Phones

The message further claims that the suspected number appears on the mobile phone screen in ‘red color’. Referring to a reliable news source ‘Daily Dawn’, the sender also claimed that 27 people have died just because of receiving the call from this number.

The message reads like this:

‘Don’t attend any call from 0346344446 this number comes in red colour. U may get brainhamrage due to high frequency. 27 persons died just receiving the call. Watch Daily Dawn News to confirm. Please inform all your friends and relatives soon – its urgent..’

Rationally thinking, I never believed on the contents of this message and searched for the reality behind this message. 

I found that this kind of hoax messages started back in 2007 in the form of email and similar text messages/SMS; but the hoax was debunked by Urban Legends. 

Same type of evidence found on several other websites like snopes.com, hoax-slayer.com that clearly proves the message in context as a ‘Reborn Hoax’.

Despite of no hard evidence that where these alleged deaths occurred, the rumor continue to persist in different forms.

Urban Legends described it as “Don't panic, it's a hoax. Variants of the so-called "red number," "cursed phone number," or "death call" hoax first appeared on April 13, 2007 (Friday the 13th) in Pakistan, where they caused widespread panic and inspired a slew of ancillary rumors, including the claim that the phone calls, if listened to, could also trigger impotence in men and pregnancy in women. According to news reports, Pakistanis were heard trading secondhand stories of actual deaths that had supposedly occurred, with some claiming the fatalities were the handiwork of ancestral spirits enraged by the construction of a cell phone tower over a graveyard.”

SOURCES:

 http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/medical/a/death_calls.htm.

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/techno/cellcalls.asp

http://www.hoax-slayer.com/killer-mobile-phone-calls-hoax.shtml

Phishing Scam: Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Tax Refund Notification via Emails

Beware! Its a Cyber World -- Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Tax Refund Notification: Summary

A mail is circulating purportedly from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) United States Department of the Treasury enticing the recipients to use the attachment for applying to apply for tax refunds, calculated recently by the Department. 

The mail is a scam and has no grounds as identity theft tops the IRS's list of common scams that taxpayers can encounter at any point during the year.

See the contents of the mail below before heading towards further explanation:

=====================================================
From: Internal Revenue Service (message07621@34234.irs.gov)
To: (Omitted by Author of this article)
Sent: Wednesday, 29 February 2012 8:39 AM
Subject: Tax notification for (Omitted by Author of this article)

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
United States Department of the Treasury

After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have
determined that you are eligible to receive your tax return.

Due to invalid account records we were unable to credit your account.
Please submit a verified tax return request as soon as possible.

Your tax return request form is attached to this email.

After you  submit the tax return request, please allow us
4 to 12 working days in order to process it.


Regards,
Internal Revenue Service

February 28th, 2012 (10:39:11 p.m.)
Document Reference: (1442361382).
====================================================

Beware! Its a Cyber World -- Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Tax Refund Notification: Explanation

The mail message asking recipients to use the attached form for submitting tax refund request actually leads to a look-alike IRS website showing the form to be filled up by the recipient to submit tax return. The form on the fake IRS website is shown below:

SCAM: Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Tax Refund Notification

 

If you're still waiting to file for your tax refund, you better act quick- or someone else could get it instead.

The IRS is dealing with a surge of reports in identity tax fraud, and web based convenience isn't helping.

"Anytime something's very easy for you to do it's also easy for someone else to exploit," says David Powell of Teklinks.

He warns it's not hard for these web thieves to exploit their victims.

IRS's own website mentions it as:

Suspicious e-Mails and Identity Theft

The Internal Revenue Service has issued several recent consumer warnings on the fraudulent use of the IRS name or logo by scamsters trying to gain access to consumers’ financial information in order to steal their identity and assets. When identity theft takes place over the Internet, it is called phishing. Suspicious e-Mail/Phishing Phishing (as in “fishing for information” and “hooking” victims) is a scam where Internet fraudsters send e-mail messages to trick unsuspecting victims into revealing personal and financial information that can be used to steal the victims’ identity. Current scams include phony e-mails which claim to come from the IRS and which lure the victims into the scam by telling them that they are due a tax refund. Phishing and Other Schemes Using the IRS Name The IRS periodically alerts taxpayers to, and maintains a list of, phishing schemes using the IRS name, logo or Web site clone. If you've received an e-mail, phone call or fax claiming to come from the IRS that seemed a little suspicious, you just may find it on this list.

VIDEO: 'Anonymous' intercepted FBI's conference call and uploaded on Youtube

FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) accepted that a group of cyber criminals hacked a conference call on cyber crime between its agents and international law enforcement official.

'Anonymous' intercepted FBI's conference call

The hackers group ‘Anonymous’ claimed the responsibility of breaching into the 16-minute long call, which was released on Internet on last Friday. On the other hand, FBI didn’t name the exact hacking group behind this attempt and announced an inquiry was going to be carried out.

In the mean time, ‘Anonymous’ said that breaching of FBI’s call public was an addition to the series of similar hacks they did against many other law enforcement agencies around the world. Anonymous is a loose collective of hackers & activists having no membership or formal structure.

The latest cyber breach has been proved as an awkward one for the FBI, which is currently fighting out to stop cyber crime that have no boundaries and challenges to cross the international borders. 

A Twitter account holder has claimed to have connection with the Anonymous suggesting that hackers have been keeping FBI’s communications under observation.

Anonymous take down several websites, including FBI and DoJ, reacting to Megaupload crackdown

WASHINGTON (Jan. 20) – Reacting to the Thursday’s federal raid on Megaupload.com - one of the world’s largest file-sharing sites - on account of infringing piracy laws, hackers’ group Anonymous have broken the websites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America and Warner Music Group.

Anonymous take down several websites, including FBI, reacting to Megaupload crackdown

“It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,” Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells Russia Today on Thursday afternoon. 

Only hours after the crackdown on Megaupload the Department of Justice and Universal Music Group sites went down.

As reported earlier, founder of Megaupload, Kim Schmitz aka Kimble and Kim Dotcom, and four others linked to the website were arrested in New Zealand and an international crackdown led agents to serving at least 20 search warrants across the world.

As per RT reports; less than an hour after the DoJ and Universal sites were hacked, the website for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), went offline as well. Later on government's Copyright.gov site and the site for Broadcast Music, Inc (BMI) - the licensing organization that represents some of the biggest names in music – were also went offline.

The latest of sites to fall is FBI.gov, which finally broke at around 7:40 pm EST Thursday evening.

Legalization of Cannabis Story on 'JustPaste.It' Proved to be a Hoax for Invalid Sources

The news of legalization of cannabis and regulation of its marketing in Sweden makes quick inroads into different social networks. The news spread like a jungle fire around the globe through internet and generates mixed kind of reaction.

Hoax Story of Legalization of Cannabis in Sweden

It has been reported on Monday (Dec. 19) that the Swedish Parliament has just approved new legislation which will legalize and regulate the country’s thriving cannabis trade.

The story-cum-news appeared on an Italian website ‘justpaste.it’ indicating that Sweden had bravely forged ahead of its Scandinavian neighbors and legalized cannabis – a source plant of psychoactive chemicals like hashish and hash oil. The news report, referring to Jonas Grönhög on behalf of Health and Social Services of Sweden, said:

“We don't want to make the same mistakes which the USA has done, we do not want to be prohibitionists because the war on drugs has been lost long ago. It is better to prevent marginalization of young people than jail them for soft drugs usage which are comparatively harmless. If we allow the sale of alcohol, there is no reason to ban the soft drugs no longer.”

Cannabis products are going to be available in the pharmacies in Sweden as non-prescription medicine since April 20 in 2012 and customers more than 18-year-old can buy 10 grams at once, the report mentioned further.

However, the story, mentioned its source “420 Dagbladet, Stockholm, December 19, 2011,” can’t not be confirmed anywhere else and apparently have no reality.

Users in the “Sensationalist Headlines” section on the forums of the site FacePunch weren’t fooled for long, and the member who posted the item appeared to have been banned from the site as a result.

The story rapidly buzzed on the cannabis oriented “Trees” section of social media news sharing site Reddit, but as its vagueness and lack of sources to verify it became evident, users voted the story down in almost equal numbers to the up votes.

According to latest numbers at the time of writing these lines; there are 1498 up votes in comparison of 1373 down votes.

And most importantly the comment from a user on Reddit can be served as valid reason to tag this story as HOAX. The user, whatever_idc, writes there:

“I am sorry but what the fuck? I live in central Stockholm and I haven’t heard shit about this?” commented one Reddit user. “I haven’t even heard if there’s a discussion about legalizing it. Looking at the top 5 Swedish newspaper’s websites I see nothing but Saab and Kim Jong-Il.

I’d be happy if someone proved me wrong but there’s no doubt in my mind that these facts are wrong.”






SOURCES: 


JustPaste.It


Reddit

Health Warning Hoax from Dubai Health Authority -- Skin Cancer Caused by Scratch Card Coating

Beware! Its a Cyber World -- Summary:

A health warning message purportedly from Dubai Health Authority is spreading on different social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. The message, in the form of an image, warned in English and Arabic languages that scratch card coating can cause skin cancer if removed by the nails.

The message is also spreading through email and looks like below:

Health Warning Hoax from Dubai Health Authority

And reads like this ….

“ATTENTION!

Medical research Authority of the US have found that new cancer in human beings caused by Silver Nitro oxide ..

Whenever you buy recharge cards don't scratch it with nails as it contain silver nitro oxide coating and can cause skin cancer ...

Share this message with your loved ones …”

Beware! Its a Cyber World -- Explanation:

This is totally a fake warning and a kind of ‘Hoax Reborn’. The same kind of message made its way on social networks back in July-August this year which proved to be FAKE or HOAX after due research.

Searching the term ‘Skin cancer scratch card’ on Dubai Health Authority just fetched the following results:

DHA Search Result

No results matching your search were found.
1. Check your spelling. Are the words in your query spelled correctly?
2. Try using synonyms. Maybe what you're looking for uses slightly different words.
3. Make your search more general. Try more general terms in place of specific ones.
4. Try your search in a different scope. Different scopes can have different results.

So clearly the message has no validity and should not be given importance more than a HOAX.

Related Articles:

Scratching Recharge Card Coating (Silver Nitro Oxide) with Nails Causes Cancer - - Reality or Hoax ..??

"Alien Skull" Discovered in Peru by Renato Davila Riquelme -- Reality or Hoax..??

Peruvian anthropologist Renato Davila Riquelme has discovered the remains of an unidentified creature with a "triangle shaped" mummified elongated skull nearly as large as its 20-inch-tall body in the city of Andahuaylillas in the southern province of Quispicanchi.

"Alien Skull" Discovered in Peru by Renato Davila Riquelme 

The discovery has been creating quite a buzz, and according to Peruvian news site RPP several anonymous Spanish and Russian anthropologists claiming that it cannot possibly belong to any human ethnic groups on earth and thus has come from another planet.

Similar to most ‘evidence’ of outer space species occurrence on Earth, the ‘alien skull’ is extremely humanoid in its resent looks, with standard human-esque features aside from the elongated shape of the skull; while critics of UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) believers have often suggested that the possibility of alien species resemblance with humans so closely is very small.

"Alien Skull" Discovered in Peru by Renato Davila Riquelme

The claims made by RPP seem totally improbable, even as the discoverer Renato Davila Riquelme has stated that the remains are those of a child. So who are these people celebrating the discovery of an ancient alien?

"It has a non-human appearance," a statement from the scientists read. "The head is triangular and big, almost the same size as the boy... yes, it's an extraterrestrial being."

Critics of the “alien skull” maintain that the skull “could be that of a hydrocephalic child or a tribal member who has undergone tribal rituals involving skull modification”, an ancient practice with thousands of years of history. The ritualistic deformation normally starts just after the birth of a child till the next couple of years until the desired shape has been attained or the child rejects the apparatus used to modify the skull. It was practiced generally to signify group affiliation or to demonstrate social status.

On the other hand; THE INQUISITR, presented another theory about this discovery. According to website: 

“Just like every other time an inexplicable artifact surfaces only to be later discredited in a far less high profile news story, a supposed alien skull has allegedly been located in Peru.”