
Welcome back to the fifth in our weekly gallimaufry of Frank and Ella Raleigh’s wonderful world of East Devon. Retirement, as before, is anything but dull.

Frank said, “I ate a clock yesterday, it was very time consuming.”

After years of being aware of scams and viruses, of taking great care to not download dubious software, of putting the phone down on dodgy callers, this week we were scammed and so nearly hacked….
We took a phone call from a believable, honest man called Jack who said that we were being scammed on Amazon. He convinced us to install TeamViewer so that he could prove we were victims of a malicious scam attack. He was willing to install some software that would help us out and catch these scammers.
He had transferred some money to our bank account and if we

We are not the only ones to fall for this dishonest practice. TeamViewer issued this statement on their website:
Unfortunately, there have been some instances of malicious use of our software, “TeamViewer”. Scammers attempt to sell their services via phone by claiming that your device is infected by malware.
TeamViewer GmbH is a legitimate software development company. We take the privacy and security of our customers’ and partners’ personal information
We advise TeamViewer users to be careful with unsolicited phone calls and to not grant access to your devices (e.g. PC or mobile) to anyone you do not know or trust. TeamViewer does not provide remote support services of any kind. Our activities are limited to developing and selling the software tools that providers use to offer remote support services.
The whole experience was frightening, scary and made us very angry. We felt stupid that we as reasonably technologically aware people could be caught out so easily.
So we have made a vow to never answer the phone to unknown numbers and never believe in unsolicited offers of help from plausible strangers. Sad old world, isn’t it?


Excerpt from Chapter 5 of The Dudleys of Budleigh
The safe door swung open with quiet ease.
“What’s inside?” asked Ella expectantly.
PC Alf Hydon pulled out a sheaf of paper. He took a look at the top piece and then shuffled through the remainder.
“Well, I never. Looks like letters. They’re all letters. No envelopes, just letters.”
He turned back to the topmost letter and began reading it silently to himself.
“How could I missed these? I just assumed.” He tutted and pointed a finger at himself. “Never assume, Alf, never assume!”
“What does it say?” Ella was getting more than a little exasperated. She was normally a patient person.
“It’s letter of complaint from a Dudley Widworthy.”
“He’s our poisoner, then!” Ella jumped and made as if to leave the room.
“Where are you going?”
“To telephone Frank and WPC Knowle.”
“No. Wait. There’s more.”
“What do you mean?”
“The next letter is from Dudley.”
“Dudley as well?”
“No, Dudley Musbury. It’s a letter of complaint.”
“Check the next one.”
“Another Dudley. This one’s from Dudley Weston.”
“Another one?”
“Yes, except this one is also from Dudley Weston. And this one. And this one. And another.”
PC Hydon continued leafing through the papers. “Ten of them. All from Dudley Weston.” “Fascinating! Our Mr Buckerell was not a popular person with Dudleys!”
“Yes, here’s another Dudley. This one’s called Dudley Gosford-Feniton.”
“Anymore?”
“No, that’s the last one. Four Dudleys.”

Last week’s Mystery Snap was Jacob’s Ladder in Sidmouth. This week? Where is this? Somewhere in East Devon?



Irfanview, pronounced “EarfanView”, should just be a simple image viewer-it supports enough formats. But it’s much more than that! It’s a resizer, a converter, re-scaler, scanner, either singly or as a batch. It supports some excellent plugins and is very easy to use.
The software can “flip images horizontally or vertically, modify their size and sampling method to custom values (with or without keeping the aspect ratio), change the canvas size by setting new dimensions for either the borders or entire canvas, as well as create picture frames with customized sizes and colours, together with numerous styles (e.g. dark gradient, warm, inside fading frame).”
“
According to Softpedia News
It’s free to download from https://www.irfanview.com/ and works with Windows XP,Vista,7,8 and 10 in both 32 and 64 bit version.
Why Irfanview? The software was designed by Irfan Skiljan from Jajce in Bosnia.

Once again, that’s all for this week. See you next Monday.
