Got this one today…

If YOU get something like this (especially if it is unsolicited) then DELETE IT and don NOT click any links. It is PHISHING for your passwords.

(I have broken the links in this example for your safety…)

———————– Sample Phishing Email ——————————

Subject: Reset your triustech.net password

Hello, info@triustech.net.

We received your request to reset your  triustech.net password.

To confirm your request and reset your password, follow  the instructions below.

Confirming your request helps prevent unauthorized  access to your account.

If you didn't request that your password be  reset, please follow the instructions

below to cancel your request.

CONFIRM  REQUEST AND RESET PASSWORD 

Click on the following web address:

https://triustech.net/ EmailPage.srf? emailid=mail/?shva=1#inbox/12983ccaa8732d93 

CANCEL PASSWORD RESET

Click on the following web  address:

https://triustech.net / EmailPage.srf? emailid=mail/?shva=1#inbox/12983ccaa8732d944 

Thank you,

————————- END —————————–

WARNING!

The links look fine with all that gobbledegook in them BUT…
it sends you to http:// equitativo .com .ar/ index2.html (a phishing site)

DO not click ANY of the links as they are HIDDEN DANGER taking you to the following site or something totally different to your actual email host

There is a Welcome to YouTube (confirmation) email going around that sends people to a bogus site (http:// sonda. co. kr / index2.html  - do not click it if you are unprotected) which has nothing to do with YouTube.

Everything else on the email LOOKS like it is legit… but it is NOT!

If you did NOT subscribe then DELETE THE EMAIL IMMEDIATELY! Do NOT click on ANY links

I have service@youtube.com in my whitelist so that’s why it got through to me.

Here is what it looks like (image only)

You have been warned!

Here’s the header sent to ME  (Sean Riminez is not me! but info@gosoho.net does get thru to me though.)

Subject : Welcome to YouTube
Date : Thu, 1 Jul 2010 10:43:00 +1000
Linked to : YouTube Service
From : YouTube Service
To : Sean Ramirez
MIME Version : 1.0
MIME Type : text/html; charset=”iso-8859-1″
Message-id : <20100630234324.F18F84802F@youtube.com>
From scalpingj1@rondele.com Wed Jun 30 19 : 43:31 2010
Received : from [95.181.4.162] (helo=95-181-4-162.goodline.info) by freedom.gosoho.net with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OU6wF-0004kE-9V for info@gosoho.net; Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:43:31 -0400
Received : from sjl-smtp9.sjl.youtube.com (sjl-smtp9.sjl.youtube.com [208.65.153.13]) by mail.rondele.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7z6759491 for ; Thu, 1 Jul 2010 03:43:24 +0300
X-BoxTrapper-Match : white: 1108: service\@youtube\.com

1) Check the Validity of the Content

Check any suspect virus alert on www.snopes.com and www.truthorfiction. com to determine whether it is true or false.

2) Don’t Ever Forward Emails to Everyone on your Contact List

Any time you see an email that says forward this on to ‘ 10 ‘ (or however many) of your friends, sign this petition, or you’ll get bad luck, good luck, you’ll see something funny on your screen after you send it, or whatever, it almost always has an email tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and emails of those folks you forward to.

The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of ‘active ‘ email addresses to use in SPAM emails, or sell to other spammers. Even when you get emails that demand you send the email on if you’ re not ashamed of God/Jesus… that ’s email tracking and they’ re playing on our conscience.

These people don’ t care how they get your email addresses… just as long as they get them.

Also, emails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable disease ”how would you feel if that was your child”…

3) Email Tracking

Almost all emails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are just trying to get YOUR email list from you.

There was a mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to a little kid in Florida who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of email is, is a way to get names and ‘cookie ‘ tracking information for telemarketers and spammers to validate active email accounts for their own marketing purposes.

You can do your friends and family members a BIG favor by sending this information to them. You will be providing a service to your friends, and will be rewarded by not getting thousands of spam emails in the future!

Do yourself a favor and STOP adding your name to those types of listings regardless how inviting they might sound, or make you feel guilty if you don’t! It’ s all about getting email addresses… nothing more!

You may think you are supporting a GREAT cause, but you are NOT!

Instead, you will be getting tons of junk mail later and very possibly a virus attached! Plus, we are helping the spammers get rich! Let’s not make it easy for them!

4)  Email Petitions are NOT Acceptable to Any Organization

To be acceptable, petitions must have a signed signature and full address of the person signing the petition, so this is a waste of time and you’re  just helping the Email trackers.

5) Clear Your Cookies Regularly

Also remember to clear your cookie history now and then from your computer.

There are some brilliant web experiences to be had these days, but every now and then, something goes wrong and it is not always an error on someones behalf.

We ran into a couple of technology related issues with different clients this week which serve as a good reminder about the need to both be aware that different technologies can cause different website and internet experiences and the need to be vigilant and keep your website and other technology more up to date.

These issues related to newly released websites that a number of viewers had trouble viewing correctly. You would expect, and quite reasonably, that if you told your friends and colleagues to check out your new website that they would actually see it as it was designed.

Well that wasn’t the case. As it turned out some earlier browser versions of Internet Explorer have trouble with the latest versions of many web technologies. In this case a version of IE that was first released back in 2001, nearly 10 years ago.

Old Technology
The reason there are different versions of web browsers is because of technology changes. The big up-dates (eg from version 8 to 9 for example) are supported by interim changes (ie 8 to 8.1 to 8.1.1 to 8.2 etc) which are usually for bug fixes and smaller updates until the next major update release. These updates are to keep up with the ever changing demands on web experience and expectation as technologies change.

So, these constant updates are done for very good reasons and it becomes more and more important over time to keep your computer software up dated.

4 Technologies That Drive The Need To Update Websites And Computer Systems And Software

* Search Engines – these have become more and more sophisticated and over time many have disappeared as the web advanced in leaps and bounds. Do you remember names like Infoseek, Lycos, AltaVista, Excite, Netscape among others? Where are they today? Google dominates search today with only really 2 other contenders in Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing.
* VOIP – Voice over Internet Protocol which is a technology for transmitting voice over the internet. Skype is probably the biggest player in this space and allows cheap and free calls to be made globally. With both text and video chat, computers must be powerful enough to deal with it and internet connections must have high volume capacity. I know many people who simply cant use the video chat because it interupts the voice call quality.
* Real Time Streaming – Consider the real time status updates available in Facebook and Twitter. New technologies that have and are changing the way we deal online. It has improved the way we communicate and spreads news…but this is only a couple of years old.
* AJAX – a new (’ish) technology that effectively allows a webpage to update information without re-loading the page. Too complicated to discuss in full here, but it is a technology that allows things like Google Maps, Google Docs and Meebo to deliver a more computer desk-top like user experience by updating text edits, or new images and messages without have to reload the page…I bet you hadn’t even considered that this feature on many websites wasn’t able to be done until recently. Now we just expect this powerful user experience to be there and that websites and computers should be able to deliver.

There are many more examples than this, but I think that is enough to get the message across. These technologies don’t necessarily impact on browsers directly, but over time, their ability to provide the expected user experience is affected and they must continually update and develop to keep pace.

New Website Development

When developing a new website, we work to ensure that the viewer experience is a positive one in as many browser versions as we think are reasonable and across a number of platforms…Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Mac’s Safari, Google’s Chrome (and don’t forget iphone), plus in the most likely recent versions of these programs.

But we do draw the line at going back in time too far (and 10 years is way too far!). The cost of trying to make a website work correctly on every possible version of a browser would make websites prohibitively expensive for the majority.

Other issues still arise, however, such as the same browser on a PC and a Mac will likely display things differently…it’s not a perfect world.

So, it becomes a percentages game.

The Viewers Computer
Two other issues that drive viewer experience are;

* Age and quality of the computer being used – speed of processor, available memory, number of other programs open etc.
* Speed and quality of internet connection – to those of us using the latest high speed ADSL or Cable internet connections, it would seem crazy to think that there are still dial up accounts operating today, but there are. With memory and download hungry media such as video being so common on websites today, most of us would understand that dial-up connections just won’t cut-it any more accept for the most basic of needs.

So, as a user, you need to understand that more and more activities are becoming web based and that this trend is rapidly growing. For example, my wife opened a new mobile/cell phone account the other day and the default choice of invoice or account delivery was email…to save trees and of course cost. The old standard of a paper version via snail mail was not mentioned and is considered the last resort. It wasn’t that long ago that snail mail was the only option. The result is that you need to regularly make sure that your computer systems are up to date so you can do what you need to do online. What’s more, it is becoming the norm to have an email address now.

What Are The Marketing Takeaways?
If you own a website, you need to think about who your core target audience is and what technologies and understanding they are likely to have so that you can make sure you give them as positive an experience as possible.

Unfortunately, unless you are an individual or organisation with budgets that extend to funding full time web development teams, you must expect that the user experience with your website will vary. As mentioned earlier, the key is to ensure you pitch a positive message to your niche…and don’t forget, people actually like to receive the odd message in more traditional ways…don’t forget to catchup for a coffee from time to time and actually talk!

Sourcs: X2 World

Strong passwords are the first line of defense against identity theft.

Read the original post from Iolo

We use passwords so often that it’s easy to lose sight of just how critical a password really is: one of the best defenses we have against cybercrime is often the one we take the least seriously.

After a hacking incident in 2009, InformationWeek analyzed the login information of the site’s 20,000 users and found that most passwords were ones a hacker could guess in seconds. The most common passwords? 123456 and password.

Don’t make it this easy for the cyber criminals—create strong passwords that are easy for you to remember but hard for others to guess.

Why you need strong passwords

It can be tempting to use an easy-to-remember sequence like a birth date or cell phone number as a password. But don’t. Many systems have been broken into due to weak passwords, which are passwords that can be easily guessed or can be quickly decoded by a cracking program.

Once your password is known, a hacker can tap into your private information and do all sorts of damage, ranging from reading your personal emails and creating fake postings on your profile page to robbing your bank accounts and stealing your identity.

Tips for creating a strong password

4 Password Dos

• Use long passwords. The longer your password is, the better. Use a password that has at least 8 characters, and for your high-security accounts, security experts recommend even longer passwords: at least 14 characters. (How can you remember 14 characters? See “Consider building passwords based on phrases” below for some ideas.)
• Mix it up. Use a mix of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols—the more types of characters you use in your password, the harder it is to guess.

  To illustrate: For an 8-character password with all lowercase letters, a cracking tool would be able to run through every possible combination in 2.42 days. By mixing in uppercase letters, numbers, and symbols, the tool would take 210 years to run through every combination.

• Use text that’s not in a dictionary. A password cracking program can check millions of dictionary words in seconds. Avoid “real” words that can be found in a dictionary.
• Change passwords regularly. Change your passwords on a regular basis. Every 60-90 days is the recommendation of most security advisors; you may want to change them more or less often depending on the security of the information the password is protecting.

4 Password Don’ts

• Don’t use ‘password’. The word password and variations such as password1, passwd, p@$$w0rd, and drowssap (password spelled backwards) are so common that many hackers start with these.
• Don’t use easy-to-guess patterns. Don’t use a sequence of characters (like 123456 or abc123), repeated characters (ioioio), or patterns that use characters that are close together on the keyboard (qwerty).
• Don’t use your name or other personal characteristics. Don’t use your first or last name, and don’t use terms associated with your personal life that others may know, like the name of your spouse or children, names of pets, license plate numbers, and phone numbers.
• Don’t use the same passwords for every account. The risk in using the same password for multiple accounts is that if someone figures out one password, that person now has access to everything else. For the utmost in security, use a different password for every password-protected program, web site, and account that you use. It’s particularly critical that you not re-use your email account password on web sites because once it’s compromised, the door is opened to all your accounts that have your email address on file.

Consider building passwords based on phrases

The truth is that a long string of random characters can be hard to remember, especially when you have a lot of different passwords to keep track of.

One strategy is to use passwords that are built from easily remembered phrases. You take the first letters from each of the words in the phrase, and you also mix in some symbols and numbers in place of certain words, like using & to replace “and.”

Here are a few examples of strong passwords built on phrases:

• M2010nyri2l15# (”My 2010 new year’s resolution is to lose 15 pounds”)
• Lmu?i:Wayd4o? (”Life’s most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?”)
• Iw2Tls&cw2gb! (”I went to Texas last summer and can’t wait to go back!”)

TIP: A number of online password checkers like The Password Meter can be used to check the strength of your password.

Make any security questions strong, too

Automated password resetting is a process that lets you reset your password if you ever forget your current one; it’s typically implemented by you setting up one or more security questions that you have to answer in order to gain access to your account. But if these questions are too simple, someone else may be able to easily guess the answers.

One example of this technique happened in 2008 when the email account of Sarah Palin, a nominee for Vice President of the United States, was broken into. The hacker was able to answer three security questions and illegally access Palin’s email simply by researching her zip code, her birthday, and where she met her husband.

For any account that offers password resetting, be sure to set up strong questions as well.

And remember–keep your passwords secret

The strongest of passwords won’t protect you if others can readily access it. Have you ever seen someone’s password written on a sticky note taped to their monitor? This is a bit like taping your car keys to the windshield—you can easily find your keys, but so can anyone else.

Here are a few tips on safeguarding your passwords:

• Don’t respond to any email that asks for your password or asks you to verify your password by sending it in. Reputable companies don’t use email to ask their customers for this information.
• When using public computers such as in airport lounges, internet cafes, and libraries, don’t access any sites that require a password. In these insecure locations, hackers can easily capture everything you type using keylogging devices. (Read more about keyloggers.)
• The old advice was to never write down your passwords, but with today’s reality, you can end up with dozens of different passwords—and it’s better to use multiple passwords than to just use the one or two passwords that you can memorize. So it’s OK to write down your passwords: just be sure to keep the list in a secure place that others can’t access, such as a locked drawer or a safe deposit box.

Read the original post from Iolo

——————————————————-

By Renai LeMay, Delimiter.com.au on April 7th, 2010

Microsoft appears to have accidentally deleted six years of blog archives hosted on its free Windows Live Spaces platform belonging to Australian mobile technology evangelist Shane Williamson.

“About 3 weeks ago my Windows Live Spaces blog was deleted by Microsoft for no reason,” Williamson wrote on his site over the weekend. “That is over six years of blogging on mobile, technology and convergence gone … Microsoft claims they cannot reclaim any part of the data lost, or will they give a reason why it was lost.”

“This should be a major concern to anyone who is, or thinking of, using Windows Live SPaces as a serious blog or any other type of cloud computing services from Microsoft.” Delimiter couldn’t reach Williamson for a comment today.

When contacted about the issue today, Microsoft Australia’s public relations agency punted the question to ninemsn, which operates the Windows Live brands in Australia courtesy of its joint venture relationship with the software giant.

A spokesperson for the company said it was investigating the issue back in Microsoft headquarters in the US — as that was where the Windows Live Spaces blogs were administered from, although it hoped to provide further information on Williamson’s case in due course.

Previously known as MSN Spaces, Windows Live Spaces was initially released in 2004, and is broadly seen as competitor to other free hosted blogging platforms such as Wordpress.com and Google’s Blogger offering.

Williamson himself is seen as one of Australia’s foremost experts on the mobile technology space. In the past he’s held senior roles focused on the mobile space at a number of companies such as Microsoft, Optus and Hutchison Australia (before the merger with Vodafone). He is also the co-founder of the Mobile Monday Sydney chapter, which attempts to bring mobile industry professionals together.

Read the blog post on Zdnet

By now, you’ve probably heard that Facebook has made some big changes that affect your privacy. However, you might not know what they are.

So far, the changes have been explained in the language of the people that they benefit: companies and app developers. What about us, the end users?

Here’s a handy collection of the best tips that we could find for protecting your privacy on Facebook’s wild new frontier.

Read More on Download Squad

In its rush to take on Facebook and Google Buzz, Microsoft is now collecting and displaying personal information on your Hotmail page — information you may never have wanted to broadcast.

Exactly how it’s mining this information is something of a mystery, but if you use Hotmail or Windows Live, it’s time to review your privacy settings — lest something you said or did comes back to haunt you.

One user signed in to her Hotmail account recently and was greeted with Microsoft’s new, improved social networking splash page.

What’s wrong with this picture? All three What’s new with your network entries contain potentially embarrassing information that the authors never dreamed would appear on someone else’s Hotmail sign-in page.

Read More on Windows Secrets: http://windowssecrets.com/comp/100422#story1

Do you Facebook?? – You MUST watch this if you are a facebook user. Know all the facts before blindly continuing in being a user.. for you are a user being used. learn how.