Byte Me by Marv Dealy
Phishing Scams
I got a new twist on the old “phishing for your information” scam in my email in the last few days. You faithful twenty-six readers have heard me talk about phishing schemes, wherein you receive what looks like an official email from what is supposedly your bank or credit card company that asks you to log into your account to correct or verify some personal information.
Of course, if you’re idiotic enough (sorry, there’s no other way to describe it) to comply with their request, you’ll be sending off your personal, perhaps financial information, to bad guys who will sell it to each other so fast it’ll make your head spin. You’ll suddenly find yourself in different parts of the world simultaneously buying yachts, RVs and luxury vacations that of course you or your credit rating will never enjoy.
This latest phishing attempt came with a twist – it claimed to be from the Webmail help desk, and said I was dangerously near having a full inbox and if I didn’t take action I wouldn’t be able to receive any more email. Gasp!
Of course, I knew right away this was a scam, as we serve our own email, and there’s no way any of the baloney in the email was correct. I noted that if I had followed their instructions, I would have sent along enough information for them to log into a webmail account and download whatever email I had then currently waiting for me. This could have potentially damaging consequences, to say the least.
There is more than one politician who can in retrospect say they wish they hadn’t sent that email, including a certain South Carolina governor. I’m not concerned about someone seeing “that kind of email” as I don’t send ‘em, presuming that anything I email could just as well be posted on someone’s blog for the whole world to read.
I clicked on the reply button in my email to see what address I would have been replying to, and saw that the disguised address was “upgradedesk@strompost.info” and not the “helpdesk@webmail.org” that purportedly sent me the request.
I decided to look up the ownership of the strompost.info domain, and discovered it belongs to one Andy Paumann who registered the domain from Austria. His phone if you want to just call him and give him your personal information is +43.140397686, according to records at NetworkSolutions.com
One more time with feeling – no company of any reputation at all will ever send you an email asking you to “update your information” or anything of the sort. If you get some email like that, and you think it might be from your bank or whatever, use the telephone, call them, and ask if they sent you the email. Or just do as I do and hit the Del key.
Michael Jackson’s death: So many Internet users wanted to learn more about the King of Pop’s death that numerous web sites, including Google News, treated the spike in hits to their servers as automated attacks.
The entertainment website TMZ.com and Twitter both nearly sank to their knees under the onslaught of people twitting or seeking news and spreading messages of grief and shock. Other websites, such as iTunes and Ebay, were flooded as droves of music fans bought and downloaded “Man in the Mirror” and other Jackson songs.
News on Twitter had recently been about events coming out of Iran, whose government has shut down access by outside journalists, leaving the rest of us to read posts loaded onto one or more of the social networking websites. People who watch Internet traffic patterns had said that about five percent of posts on Twitter had involved Iran; when news spread of Jackson’s death, posts about him jumped to fifteen percent of Twitter’s traffic.
If this had been an actual national emergency instead of the death of a pop music icon – the reason the Internet was invented by a bunch of generals after all – we might have had to resort to radio or other regular “old media” to get the real news. The “New York Times” had the story of Jackson’s death within seven minutes, and we should note that not everyone, including me, is on Twitter.
Before you join your neighborhood block party in dancing your own local “Thriller zombie dance” in Michael’s honor, you might want to watch the work 1,500 prisoners in the Philippines did to put out their Jackson tribute; view both videos they produced at tinyurl.com/lx845g
If you don’t get the numerous dance steps in the very, very long zombie dance from watching those Filipino prisoners dance, you might want to read the instructions I found at eHow.com (tinyurl.com/lh5vzq) which say you’ll need a mirror and a copy of “Thriller.” I’d think you’d need a loud stereo as well, but what do I know.
Overheating iPhones: You might not be able to warm your coffee with the new iPhone 3G S, but reports and photos are circulating about problems the latest iPhone has with overheating. A post by Andrew Hickey at CRN.com says, “forums on Apple’s Apple Discussion site say that a host of users’ iPhones are overheating. One user said a friend’s apple iPhone 3G S ‘got extremely hot. He almost put it into the fridge.’
“Even over on PC World, Melissa J. Perenson wrote that her Apple iPhone 3G S ‘became very hot. Very, very hot – not just on the back, but the entire length of the front face, too.’ At the time, she was using a game and then the Web browser over a Wi-Fi connection with the device plugged in. ‘Toasty doesn’t even describe how surprisingly hot it got. It was too hot to even put the phone against my face.’”
Reports are that the white iPhone 3G S is having discoloration problems from the overheating, with pictures having been posted on several websites showing what appear to be a brown discoloration in the case, purportedly due to overheating. Apple hasn’t responded to the allegations as of yet.
Just what Steve Jobs needs in his first week back at the office.
Email questions to Marv at: marv.dealy@throck.com.
Marv Dealy founded Throckmorten Enterprises in San Francisco in 1988 and moved the company to Big Oak Flat in 1996. Open Monday through Friday, 9-ish to 5-ish. 209-962-7308. The company provides technical support for HP’s webinars, professional website design, computer repairs, and has recently begun providing wireless ISP services. The company also publishes the Yosemite Gazette.
