Don’t fall for it people
October 10th, 2008
There are heartless assholes out there wanting to take advantage of other people and what better time to do so than right now while our country is having major financial problems. Banks and other financial institutions are failing so the people who send out the typical “enlarge your tool” spam emails have stepped up their game. Now their goal is to get you to send them your personal and financial information.
This is called “phishing“. It’s called that because the way it works is they will send you an email that usually contains a link to a website and that you need to log in and give them your Social Security number, bank account number, or some kind of other personal information. Or the emails that I’ve received lately says that they’ve upgraded some kind of security this and that and they use a little bit of technical talk to get the user to say, whatever, sounds important, and to “click on this link to update your security whatever”. The emails look very well written and the email address that it came from appears (to people who just don’t know any better) to be from a legitimate source. The last one I received was from “manager#3244@bankofamerica.com”. When you click on the link you’re “taking the bait”.
*STOMP STOMP*Pay attention cuz this is important. A bank will never, ever send you an email and ask for personal information. This is a HUGE security no-no. If you receive an email and it looks so legit that you really are temped to click on the link, don’t click on the link, pick up the phone, call your bank and tell them what’s going on and ask if they really do need your information. I promise you they won’t. I also promise you that a Bank will never, ever have you install a patch of some kind on your system. They care about protecting their equipment, not yours.
It’s bad enough as it is, don’t allow yourself to become a victim.
~Brad
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I agree, as I’ve written before in the other security posts, always handle personal matters where you exchange private information at a physical institution. If you want to be as safe as possible, bank at the bank, don’t be lazy!!!
I did a case study for school a couple of years ago about personal security in the internet. One of the cases involved a man from Chattanooga, TN. The man had a perfect financial record and was a few years into his retirement, about 65 years old. Everything the man owned was paid for. One day the collection agency showed up at the mans house. The man learned that he owed huge sums of money to many different credit card companies, and that someone had even bought cars and houses in his name.
The problem with what happend to this guy isn’t that he was parusing the internet and was taken advantage of, it is that he did not keep proper track of his credit. He did not bank online, didn’t handle information over the phone, but he also was unaware of his current credit that was in his name. The stress, the amount of money involved initally clearing his name, the amount of time it took go get insurance to pay out, and the burden on his life caught up with him. This guy actually died within a year of finding out that he had been taken advantage of.
What I learned from this class is how easy it is to get credit in someone elses name. I’m not going to pass any of those methods on, but it is very easy to do. A person does not need anything more than a name in a phone book and the address next to it. From there you can legally get that persons social security number, their credit report, banking institutions, and then illegally electronically request funds tranfers, loans, lines of credit against a house.
All of this can be minimized, not prevented. If someone wants to take advantage of your identity, they will do it. It may just be a short period of time before they are caught, but the damage can take much longer to undo. Know your credit and protect yourself to the best of your ability.
~Jon
Google Chrome
September 12th, 2008
First of all, thanks to Jonathan (a frequent commenter on this site) over at jdsnow.net for pointing out to me that Google’s new web browser, Chrome, had been released for Beta testing. I’ve been running Chrome for a few days now and so far everything that I have to say about it is very positive. I’m running it on an XP SP3 laptop, even though Google only supports SP2 for some reason. The browser loads extremely fast, unlike IE and FF. BTW, FF seems to be getting kind of bloated and slow lately. I’m not sure what the deal is…?
The features (not all inclusive, but what stands out to me):
- Dynamic Tabs - this allows you to change position of tabs, and drag tabs out to their own window
- Crash Control - they made a task manager just for your web browser! I love being able to see what is hanging up my browser or using resources
- Incognito Mode - Remember Ctrl+Shift+N… that is how you surf porn. This new window will allow you to surf away and have your offline content, cookies, browser history, etc, deleted as soon as you close the window. Pretty snazzy.
- Application Shortcuts - gmail on my desktop, yes please! You can launch google apps directly from a shortcut without having to navigate to the site. The page is launched to look like a browser. Pretty slick.
- Debugger - right click, inspect element. It’s pretty handy for web development/ajax hacking.
- SIMPLE - once you get a look you’ll know what I’m talking about. This is no frills, just an awesome browser.
- Honorable mention category - V8, the new javascript engine. Mac and Linux versions on their way. Built on Mozilla?!?! and Safari!?!?
I think it will be a keeper. I’ve tested many pages that FF has problems displaying because they are “IE Specific”, and Chrome, for my needs, has no problem mimicking IE so far…
~Jon
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First of all, SHAME ON YOU GOOGLE! I’m a Mac user and there is no Mac version for me to play with. Sergey Brin already said he was embarrassed that a Mac version wasn’t ready so hopefully he put a boot in an ass and we’ll get something soon…
Ok, now that I have that off my chest… Google, you rock! I’ve used Google as my search engine for as long as Google has been available. Why? Because I LOVE the simple, no frills home page. Google has a ton of projects going but they’re a search engine first and foremost and their goal is to help you find information and find it fast and they do it very well. From everything I’ve seen this dedication to minimalism has made it’s way to Chrome and that is fantastic.
I love my Firefox, no doubt about that, but I can’t wait to get my hands on Chrome to try it out. From everything Jon has said I think I’ll like it. I’ll be sure to update ya’ll when they do come out with a Mac version and give my full review.
~Brad
Score (non-technical)
September 10th, 2008
I can’t fault DirecTV, but just the individuals that work there. I ordered a bundle through AT&T and part of it was the TV portion. Just for signing up I got all of the premium channels for free for the first three months. They actually didn’t cut them off after the third month and we had to call them to tell them to do so. It wasn’t a problem, but they did make a small mistake… they cut off every channel except for Skinemax. Yes… Cinemax, the best premium channel ever made.
As a side note, they didn’t charge me for my cell phones for about 4 months either. I would normally be attacked by my conscious, but I am conducting more of an experiment than anything now to see how long they’ll give me free stuff.
Thanks DirecTV for all the late night softcore! Any similar experiences with vendor’s, Brad?
~Jon
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Actually, yes. I didn’t get free porn though, instead I got a free Mexican! I came home today to 2 trucks in front of my house and some Mexican dude in a hole that he dug in my back yard. They were from Charter Communications and they were burying a cable line for the house at the end of the street. The distribution box is in the corner of my yard. You see, a couple months ago I was a customer but after my cable internet was dropped a bunch of times and my “digital signal” never once came in clearly and not to mention the worst customer service in the business I 
decided it was time to ditch them and go with Dish Network Satellite and DSL for my net. I’m married with one child and one on the way… yet ditching Charter was the happiest day of my life. That was several months ago but today I realized yet another reason why cable tv sucks. They require actual cables to get the signal to your house. That just seems like, well, old technology to me.
Charter sucks!
~Brad
Barack Obama triggered my PP Spot
September 8th, 2008
I happened to catch Sen. McCain’s acceptance speech on TV the other day. I thought that he gave a good speech… right up until I got on YouTube and watched Sen. Obama’s speech. Holy crap that man can give a speech. Not only that, he triggered my PP Spot! Let me explain…
Every American I’ve ever met has this little spot in their gut reserved for Patriotic Pride. Let’s go ahead and call it your “PP Spot” shall we? Some have a larger, more sensitive PP Spot than others and in most cases it’s triggered by different things. Sometimes it’s the National Anthem or it’s the flag on the pole in their front yard. Sen. Obama’s speech is the first time a political figure has ever triggered my PP Spot. I was laying in bed next to my wife watching the speech on my MacBook and boom, my PP Spot was triggered. Unfortunately my wife was asleep so I had to contain myself.
I think it’s been a while since Americans have had their PP Spots triggered. I realized after watching the speeches that yes, America needs change and yes, both candidates said in their speeches that change is on the agenda, but (I think) only Sen. Obama would be able to trigger the PP Spot inside Americans.
It’s too early for me to decide who I’m voting for but in all seriousness, that pride is important. In my eyes if both candidates are already wanting to make changes but only one of the candidates also gets it that I’m proud to be an American and that feeling of pride is important then that’s who I’ll vote for.
~Brad
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Hopefully this is my last post from a foreign country… I totally agree with you on this one. I’ve felt patriotic a number of times serving in the military, fewer since I got out, and I think others are feeling the same. America is a great place and I’m about over the mental depression that everyone seems to be in. It would be nice to have a upswing in the patriotism department. Just to make myself clear, the way that I feel about the US is that if you don’t like it and want to change it for the good then more power to you. If you do not like the US for political, tax, laws, etc reasons and are just willing to gripe about it, then suck a big one.
The US has been blessed in a number of ways, and I’ve noticed it even more after being in Europe for a couple of weeks. I know where I live (In the south) that I do not see nearly as many flags hanging outside of houses as I used to. Check this out if you need a project this winter!
How does all of this roll into an election? I believe that the President has limited ability to do something about the welfare of the US. I think that he (or she one day) has to have the backing of the country in order to be a truely sucessful leader. I am pleased that issues such as gay rights, abortion, the death penalty, and immigration seemed to have fallen to the wayside. The war in Iraq doesn’t even seem to be the issue. The candidates are debating on how they can fix the market, our economy, and ensure that our way of life doesn’t go down the pooper! I have the feeling that the other issues that I mentioned before will never line up 100% between me and the pres, but we can always work those out later. Healthcare, education of our kids, retirement, housing… that’s what I’m voting for.
~Jon
Live from Hermland or Deutchland blasen
September 1st, 2008
As some of you may know, Brad and I have lived all over the world at one time or another (more of you would know if we would finish the About Us page). I have a whole list of techie gripes to list, and the bad part is that I am on vacation! I’ve hardly used a computer or phone, but everything that I have used has gone terribly wrong.
first things first…
- the fucking keyboard on computers. I understand the need for a couple of extra letters and currency symbol changes, but why switch the y and the z? Also, I just had to look for the ? for about 20 seconds. the apostrophe is in the wrong place… if youre a coder, I hope that you do not use these symbols: -_<>*/ because they’re in the wrong place, and you better not use ~\}][{|, because they require the use of a special alt key that is not even on a … where the fuck are the quotes…. i can find the single… and the double is above the number 2… wtf…. anyway, the alt grusse isnt even on a “normal” keyboard. There is more, but Id like to leave Brad some room too. I know how much he likes the herms.
- as you may know I dont like my BlackBerry as it is, but it wont even work here. It is a “worldwide” version which only means that it supports GSM also. The problem is that i do have a phone plan for international coverage, but the phones dont work here out of the box. You have to set them up for roaming (Verizon isnt available overseas). The problem is that no one will tell you that so it wont work when you get there. You cant change it when you are there because you cant connect to the local wireless nets… Verizon cant do it over the phone without a sim card in the phone because of the crazy german system… and of course BBs dont have sims. WTF. Verizon also cant mail sims overseas, but they can mail them to your place of business and have them mail it to you.
- 2M down DSL… need i say more?
- this is technically not the herms fault, but page redirects. If i wanted to go to google.de or yahoo.de I would have typed it in that way. If I type in google.com I want to go somewhere in ENGLISH!!!
- German Windows Vista. You only thought that you had the worst version of vista around. This is fucking impossible to navigate. The words that they used to translate the menus don’t even make sense most of the time.
- apparently www.gmail.com wasn’t good enough for the Germans, so you have to go to mail.google.com. If you ever talk to a german they probably won’t even know what gmail is. Dont blame them, if you go to gmail.com there is a nice message in german from Google about the app/webpage having a different name. There is no autoredirect or hyperlink, you have to manually type the link into the address bar. When you finally make it to the site, it is actually called Google Mail!!!
Brad, below the belt is acceptable in this case… swing away.
~Jon
P.S. Herms is a term that Brad came up with. All of the Germans speak english, so it was impossible to ever talk about them when they were around. Herms is a codeword… that and they look like they could all be named Herman… some are!! Also, there are some positive aspects of Germany. I have driven excessively fast everywhere I have gone and the clubs here are awesome.
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Oh Germany. What an interesting place. You can jump on the Autobahn and drive 1,000 miles per hour and nobody cares but then you get off of the Autobahn and there’ll be an inconspicuous van parked on the side of the road with a camera hidden in it that will snap your picture for driving 5 “clicks” over the speed limit and then send you a ticket in the mail. There are many other aspects of Germany that made me miserable for a year and a half but Jon happened to spark my memory on one particular thing so I’ll focus on that since it’s tech related and that is the German Gmail issue…
I actually remember reading about this several years ago. If you head to Wikipedia and search for Gmail you’ll get this page and if you scroll down a ways you’ll notice a section that’s actually called “Germany“. I’ll let you go read more about the issue but the short of it is that some dude named Daniel Giersch has a company called G-mail that actually prints out emails and mails them via snail mail. The government ruled in his favor and Google can’t use the name in Germany. La ti da for him.
Germany has 2 cool things as far as I’m concerned, Porsche and the Nurburgring. And that’s it.
I should also point out that I’m not currently in Germany. Jon is. He’s on vacation. What’s worse than visiting Germany on vacation? Visiting your in-laws… in Germany… on vacation. Poor bastard… :)
It’s also amusing that his punctuation was so screwed up because of the German keyboard. I could have proof read it for him but where’s the fun in that?
~Brad