In turn of the century Boston, an Italian Immigrant named Carlo "Charles" Ponzi established the Securities Exchange Company. Ponzi offered investors a choice between a fifty percent return on a 45 day investment and a 100% return on a 90 day investment. Ponzi claimed that this return on investment was possible due to his unique understanding of the international postal reply coupon system; by international agreement, postal reply coupons were recognized by all countries but the cost of these coupons varied dramatically from country to country depending upon their economy.

Although true in principal (an IPRC that cost a penny in Germany cost a nickel in the US), Ponzi was fully aware that the scheme did not work in actual practice because of importation restrictions. Nevertheless, the story sounded good.

Ponzi schemes are fraudulent investment operations that work in a similar way to pyramid schemes. The Ponzi scheme usually entices new and well-to-do investors by offering higher returns than other investments in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The schemer usually interacts with all the investors directly, often persuading most of the existing participants to reinvest their money, thereby minimizing the need to bring in new participants as a pyramid scheme will do.

With little or no legitimate earnings, Ponzi schemes require a consistent flow of money from new investors to continue. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when it becomes difficult to recruit new investors or when a large number of investors ask to cash out.

Be cautious, but do not be discouraged from carefully researching business opportunities based on commissions. There are many legitimate multi-level marketing opportunities where you can legally earn an income from selling genuine products or services.

Protect yourself:

• Pyramid and Ponzi schemes may be sent to you from family members and people you trust - they might not know that they could be illegal or that they are involved in a scam.
  
  
• Never commit to anything at high - pressure meetings or seminars.
  
  
• Don’t make any decisions without doing your homework - research the offer being made and seek independent advice before making a decision.
  
  
• Do some research on all business opportunities that interest you.
  
  
• If I am not selling a genuine product or service, is participation in this activity legal?

More information about Ponzi schemes:

• Wikipedia
• Investopedia
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
• About Education
• Frauds and Scams
• FBI
• Seeking Victims In the Stanford Financial Group Case
• Another Ponzi Case And a Warning for Investors
• $80 Million Ponzi Scheme Even Friends Get Fooled
• A Pair of Victims Become a Couple of Cons

A pyramid system - also referred to as franchise fraud or chain referral schemes - is an unsustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public. The real profit is earned, not by the sale of the product, but by the sale of new distributorships.

In a pyramid scheme, an organization compels individuals to make a payment and join. In exchange, the organization promises its new members a share of the money taken from every additional member that they recruit. The directors of the organization (those at the top of the pyramid) also receive a share of these payments. For the directors, the scheme is potentially lucrative - whether or not they do any work, the organization's membership has a strong incentive to continue recruiting and funneling money to the top of the pyramid.

Such organizations seldom involve sales of products or services with real value. Without creating any goods or services, the only ways for a pyramid scheme to generate revenue are to recruit more members or solicit more money from current members. Eventually, recruiting is no longer possible and the plurality of members are unable to profit from the scheme.

Emphasis on selling franchises rather than the product eventually leads to a point where the supply of potential investors is exhausted and the pyramid collapses. At the heart of each pyramid scheme is typically a representation that new participants can recoup their original investments by inducing two or more prospects to make the same investment. Promoters fail to tell prospective participants that this is mathematically impossible for everyone to do, since some participants drop out, while others recoup their original investments and then drop out.

Various forms of pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries including Albania, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Iran, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States. Many other countries will follow by adjusting their law.

These types of schemes have existed for at least a century, some with variations to hide their true nature. Multi Level Marketing plans have also been classified as pyramid schemes.

Tips for Avoiding Pyramid Schemes:

• Be wary of “opportunities” to invest your money in franchises or investments that require you to bring in subsequent investors to increase your profit or recoup your initial investment.
  
  
• Independently verify the legitimacy of any franchise or investment before you invest.

More information about pyramid systems:

• FBI - Federal Bureau of Investigation
• U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
• WikiPedia
• Investopedia
• SCAMwatch
• Frauds and Scams

Still are app developers careless with user data. A study by the Fraunhofer SIT showed that several million records are at risk in the cloud - for a lax handling of authentication.

Developers are still storing unprotected preferred secret keys and tokens for access to the cloud storage in their apps. With little effort it can get read. For this criminals can get access to databases such as the Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Facebook. By this way are up to 56 million records compromised, estimates the Fraunhofer Institute for Security in Information Technology (SIT).

Together with the Technical University of Darmstadt and expert from Intel examined the Fraunhofer SIT in an automated process about two million apps in Google Play Store and Apple's App Store. In many has been the simplest form of authentication for access to cloud providers implemented. The developers are probably not aware of how inadequate the information are protected and getting collected by the Apps Data.

Unrestricted access to customer data

In their experiments, the scientists could not only read highly personal information, such as who are friends with whom Facebook or health information, from some app users. Using the secret key actually they could read complete user databases or even could manipulate them.

The report concludes that user cannot become actively protect. You should be careful what app you entrust personal information. Developers, however, should be better informed of the safety precautions of the cloud provider and implement more restrictive access controls in their apps. The researchers have already informed some developers on the most critical vulnerabilities.

Cloud providers have to act

Even with the providers of cloud services is the Fraunhofer SIT in contact. Both, Amazon and Facebooks Parse.com, Google and Apple have been informed of the findings too. The cloud providers also incumbent responsibility to bring the app developers to use not only the most vulnerable authentications. In addition, the cloud provider should make not convenient, but the safest possible standards mandatory.

The problem is not new. Already in June 2014 did researchers of the New York's Columbia University, a similar investigation and covered a distance of thousands of secret access token for Amazon Web Services open. The researchers then criticized that many developers did not follow the recommended conversions when programming their Apps and imbedded secret keys directly into the source code. They are apparently unaware of how simple source code can be translated back. In March 2014 researchers had discovered ten thousands of AWS credentials on Github.

Newfound iOS bug triggers wave of instant messages that causes iDevice reboot loop.

There's yet another iOS bug that causes Apple gadgets to crash when they get instant messages containing a string of extraordinary characters. With further finessing, the same endeavor may have the capacity to assault Macs, since OS X is likewise not able to process the same mix of characters, which are in fact known as glyphs.

As indicated by individuals researching the bug on reddit, the content reasons iPhones running different variants of iOS to expeditiously crash. A whirlwind of Twitter clients, irate that their gadgets succumbed to instant messages, demonstrates that the bug is bringing on issues. Apple will in all likelihood issue a fix. Meanwhile, clients can secure themselves against the irritation message by going to framework settings, exploring to Notifications>Messages>Show Previews, and switching it to off. 

That change will forestall assaults that are as of now coursing on the web, yet it may not prevent scoundrels from discovering better approaches to crash individuals' iDevices. As per reddit the string messages sent over WhatsApp might likewise trigger the accident. What's more, contingent upon the way individual applications parse Unicode glyphs, different projects may do likewise. The bug can likewise trek up OS X, in spite of the fact that the assault obliges an objective to connect or glue a malevolent record into the Mac terminal, as indicated by an analyst who passes by the Twitter handle Hacker Fantastic.

Programmer Fantastic has tweeted a mixture of other fascinating specialized points of interest. The bug, he reported, lives in a piece of the working framework that procedures Unicode glyphs and reasons a string to be composed to a specific memory area. The bug is fixed to the way flag warnings process Unicode, reddit user sickestdancer98 reported. The pennant is not able to show the content and in the long run crashes the whole OS. 

While the bug is legitimately viewed basically as an aggravation, refusal of-administration vulnerabilities can frequently be the consequence of genuine defects that, with more work, can be misused to perform code-execution assaults. Furthermore, notwithstanding when more vindictive adventures aren't conceivable, DoS openings can infrequently show open doors for blackmailers or individuals hoping to upset huge occasions for occurrence individuals at a meeting. Anticipate that Apple will discharge a patch in the advancing week or somewhere in the vicinity.