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theblindtrust.org
The Blind Trust
@theblindtrust.org
55 followers 160 following 24 posts
Investigating scams and establishing trust for the benefit of those using assistive technologies. Social model of disability. SWOT over DNS. A11y.
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theblindtrust.org
@theguardian.com have Confiant look at this and pester Netcraft to improve their detection of these scams. This is a rookie version of this type of crypto scam.
report<.>netcraft<.>com/submission/JkEfAmHT4cNE9IPKhOVDV98bFO75QgBq
Screen shot of a scam Guardian page for a crypto scam. Devtools is open showing that this is not performing complex redirections as most of these scams do. In the bottom left corner is a floating inset showing the ad from MSN that was the source of the scam.
November 21, 2025 at 3:34 PM
theblindtrust.org
@martinlewis.moneysavingexpert.com Here is a live scam using your image being trafficked on MSN, by Xandr for Taboola. The ad is probably running from MediaGo a DSP wich joined the IAB a month ago.
I reported the source site of the scam, which has been flagged:
report.netcraft.com/submission/F...
A screen grab of a scam website using the image of Martin Lewis on a fake BBC News page. Dev tools is open showing the hops from AppNexus (xandr), Taboola, Rocktoon to the site wealthwisecenter The image of the orginal ad is shown over the dev tools, and is a pair of hands holding a bunch of £50 notes in front of a Barclays Bank.
November 18, 2025 at 1:53 PM
theblindtrust.org
I'm quite happy to get to chat to Jimmy Wales at the Reuters Trust Conference 2025. Expressing how the trust model of the internet is inherently breaking equality legislation. "Good luck fixing the internet" signed in his book is nice to get! #TrustConference
A photo of the front cover of a book by Jimmy Wales "The Seven Rules of Trust" signed "To Colin, Good luck fixing the internet - smiley face - Jimmy Wales"
October 21, 2025 at 11:53 AM
theblindtrust.org
Kinda cool, that @moderation.bsky.app flags content immediately upon posting, but the faked 'before and after' image might not be worthy of an suggestive flag! 🤷‍♀️😎
An appeal "sexually suggestive" label dialog placed on a report of a scam advert. The text of the appeal reads: I am reporting a series of scam adverts featuring fake celebrity endorsement by Deborah Meaden which drive traffic to a fake MailOnline page with a scam diet pill pitch. I guess that the faked 'before and after' image triggered this label!
April 16, 2025 at 6:04 PM
theblindtrust.org
@deborahmeaden.bsky.social do you have a team to report fake endorsements to? Seen quite a few variants of these diet pill scams featuring your image today! The info needed by @microsoft.com (advertising) is in alt txt. The intermediary domain is 26 days old & from @namecheap.com.
Six different variants on a scam advert featuring the image of Deborah Meaden. In the bottom corner of the image is a screenshot of a report of one of the instances to srtb.msn.com containing the following data which will allow Microsoft Advertising to identify the serve information and ban the advertiser: rid: ab299f1d05204fab863f90f6ccaa7005 r: infopane i: 2 p: webcompar l: en-gb d: appnexus b: Edg a: 06761c2a-e6dc-4bdd-8205-93926787a94b ii: 1 c: 18298244562584589309 bid: b6ce8d81-0af9-4cfb-a62c-58cc9990db66 tid: webcompar-infopane-2 ptid: webcompar-infopane-2 f: MisleadingAd A screen shot of a fake Mail Online promoting a scam diet pill. The URL hosting this fake page was registered 26 days ago on NameCheap
April 16, 2025 at 5:53 PM
theblindtrust.org
CMPs oft full of 'dark patterns' who's got actual legal capacity to informed consent? Lawyers only? Joan is Awful was fiction, Disney+ not. Assistive tech can't safely read this mix of ToS, EULAs, Privacy & Cookie docs, in HTML or PDFs; clever CSS & dropdowns, buttons & links, on & offsite. 2020⬇️🤷👊
Infographic by visualcapitalist from April 16, 2020: How long it would take to read the terms of service agreements of popular online services. Even the shortest terms and conditions are a few thousand words long. 97% of people aged 18-34 consent without reading. Read @240wpm by readinglength.com - From Insta at 9:43 & 2451 words, to MS at 1:03:30 & 15260 words. Left to right, is FB, Insta, Spotify, Twitter, LI, Tinder, YT, Apple, Amazon, Zoom, TikTok, Netflix and chill for 11 mins while reading their ToS which was then the second shortest. The mega MS! and finally Uber which in 2020 was 23 mins 35 seconds and 5,658 words. Not shown: On Uber today Dec 6th, 2024 I've spent 26 mins skimming around multiple "Privacy check-up, interactive tour of privacy settings" centres, full of clever drop down, external links in an in-app webview requiring cookie consent, with other external content each requiring consent, the consent process spawned another ToS to consent to to read a ToS many of which were 37 min reads each, and each different with more links, many also loading US terms with dropdowns for country pickers that took you back out of one WebView to another in my geo to start the journey again, finding a "Privacy Centre" & a "Legal hub", and quite a few 404s, A "Data tracking" page with a consent tick box which "For more information please see our United States privacy page" which claimed a 2 min read which had a "Proceed to opt-out" button and then I gave up. So I can't give a total, but my skimming around without reading took more that 30 mins and without learning much. There was also a legal section at the bottom of the page that I didn't explore! Maybe time to do a SAR for my analytics data they've collected (with my consent?) to see what % of policy docs I've actually read! Then a SAR on Telium... MS recently asked me to skim a 3 hour 56 min "Privacy" document and consent.
December 6, 2024 at 2:09 AM
theblindtrust.org
From the chat on SightTechGlobal it seems few people know that Google added a 'Google Maps for Wheelchairs' accessibility layer into the app in 2020-ish!
blog.google/products/map...
An image of the header of the Google blog post from 2020 entitled "Find wheelchair accessible places with Google Maps" with a graphic showing three people, a man with a pram, a woman with a 'stroller' walking aid, and a man in a manual wheelchair with his hands on the push rings. The article is dated May 21, 2020 by Sasha Blair-Goldensohn a Software Engineer on Google Maps the article is a 3 min read. An audio version of the blog post is available at the top of the article but is not shown in the image.
December 4, 2024 at 5:20 PM
theblindtrust.org
Nor do I love how Bluesky has hidden most of the URL in my post. Ok, most people don't look at URLs, most people don't understand the structure of URLs, some browsers hide the URLs - Sigh! 🤷
Screen shot of my Bluesky post of a long URL to the Cisco Webex company Slido.com, which is using a URL shortener with the domain name of app.sli.do for the Sight Tech Global event. The original URL is 54 characters long, but Blue Sky has truncated the URL shown to 23 characters and an ellipsis.
December 4, 2024 at 4:44 PM
theblindtrust.org
Just started at 4pm UK time: A free online conference "Sight Tech Global"

sighttechglobal.com/event/

Shaping New Technologies to Create a More Accessible World for People with Blindness and Visual Impairments.
Rapid advances in AI & tech will transforms assistive technology and accessibility.
The image is a screengrab from the sighttechglobal.com website about their online free conference. The text from the image is: December 4-5, 2024 Shaping New Technologies to Create a More Accessible World for People with Blindness and Visual Impairments Sight Tech Global is the first global, virtual conference dedicated to fostering discussion among technology pioneers on how rapid advances in AI and related technologies will fundamentally alter the landscape of assistive technology and accessibility.
December 4, 2024 at 4:18 PM
theblindtrust.org
@martinlewismse.bsky.social You might want to have your team talk with MSN and AppNexus for allowing mediag[.]io to run AI scams The scam site is cloaked behind an insurance lead generation site. Reported to @netcraft.bsky.social
AI generated image of Martin Lewis on a MSN news article. Dev Tools is open showing the creative ID of a scam ad. AI generated image of Martin Lewis on a MSN news article. Dev Tools is open showing the creative ID of a scam ad. The image shows three windows. One shows a fake BirminghamLive page with dev tools open showing the page connections. One the right of the screen is a window showing the source of the BirminghamLive logo https://staypositivetoday[.]info/assets/const/logo.png Below that is an image showing a fake Daily Mirror page on the same URL, displaying the logo as an SVG encoded into the HTML of the page. An image of the same URL however this shows different content "Guaranteed Life Insurance for UK Residents" which is a typical lead generation type of site. This page will be shown to visitors that the scammer has coded to avoid detection of the cloaked scam pages.
November 20, 2024 at 5:47 PM