Monoprice Still have issues

As you can see Monoprice.com and on their Facebook page, people are still getting Fraudulent charges. I just wanted to talk about this a little to remind people about Credit Card Security. I would expect you once they start to take Credit cards to start using Paypal one time Credit cards if you are going to buy anything from any other retailer. As you can see right now they are going to use Paypal checkout and Google Checkout to make purchases in the coming weeks.

This however is a small step to fixing the problem at hand. They are trying to be as transparent as possible with their customers but they will always have doubt when Monoprice starts to use Credit Cards in the coming future. It is going to be really interesting to see when that does come back up. I encourage everyone to use not give out your True Credit card information online and if you need to buy something online to use the PayPal.

This was a quick post to let people know about the news that is still going around with Monoprice!! Until this is fully fixed I suggest getting your cables from Amazon.com.

SEO Blackhat uses Scareware tactics for Cyber Monday

I was checking out some of the Cyber Monday Deals when I came across these two sites in Google. It looks like the black hats are at it again, trying to get you to install their fake Antivirus Software or Scareware as some would call. I went through to find out the fake scanner page url, you can see that on my previous post. They seem to only work when you have a http referrer from the search engine in question. The ones that I know about are Bing, Yahoo, Google, and Ask. If you click on a link from Google it will tell the page in question that you are coming from Google or any search engine above and thus display the fake warnings.

So how can you get around this little trick and prevent yourself from getting this type of scareware. There is and it can be used with Firefox. It is an addon that can prevent the Seo Blackhats who use this trick from fooling you. It is called No-Referer and it can prevent these fake warnings from popping up.

Download it:
Firefox Addon page
Firefox 3.5 and newer

Google Work at Home Scam.

Is Google Hiring Americans to Work from Home??

This is a site located in the URL [http://news8chicago.com]. It tries to fool you into thinking this is actually a news article from a credible source, like a Television station. The actual TV station URL for the Chicago news Channel 8 is [http://www.news8.net/]. This seems to be popping under advertisement and makes you think it is a legit news source but many people are falling for this scam. Snopes even reports this a scam and you should not buy into this legit looking website. The video on the fake website is Google Adsense people talking about how they can add Adsense to your website, the people who created this scam, seem to cut parts of the video to make it seem like they are talking about about the product in the fake article. Here are a few thing to think about before you do anything else:

• Check the Terms of Service — Most of these website that are a scam will tell you in the terms of service what you will actually be charged after the trial period. Each site usually only gives you a time period that is unrealistic and gets your money before you have chance to cancel.

List of malware sites for Sept 1, 2009

Well with it being the end of the month it was to be expected here is a long list of sites.   So please read these carefully.

Personal Antivirus Scareware Site and How to Remove them:

• live-virus-scanner9.com
• tryantivirusscan.com
• antispyware-scanner2.com
• bewareofvirusattacks2.com
• antivirus-scanner6.com
• valueantivirusshop1.com

Internet Antivirus Pro Scareware*SUPERAntispyware gets rid of these too*

• adjudg.info
• atwain.info
• caretz.info
• gaudad.info
• krapen.info
• nevils.info
• outliv.info
• penvie.info
• stampo.info
• ticedu.info
• unwept.info
• gelded.info
• dolchi.info
• figgle.info
• botled.info

Rogue Antivirus scareware sites:

• securepcshield.com
• myprotectedzone.net

Most of the time, These sites are injected into one's browser by way of a Trojan taking over the system. If left untreated these sites will become more and more profound trying to get you to install them. Most of the time these are installed in unsuspecting computers by way of exploits, backdoors, or unsafe downloading practices. This usually means that if you have it you should remove it by any means necessary because this software has been know to cause more and more trouble as time goes by. This software is fake ware, it tries to tell you have a virus and that they can get rid of it. In fact, this software is not designed with Antivirus engine in mind but to illicit pop ups and warning to raise the users security concerns about the computer in question. Downloading programs from bit torrents or other unsafe ways can and most likely will have these types of programs installed alongside the program you wanted.

Threat to System : Moderate

List of Fake AV sites for Aug 22, 2009

If you know anything about the Malware writers they are always registering new domains and here is the newest ones they are using:

Personal Antivirus Scareware Site:

• antispywarebestscanner.com
• professionalvirusscanv3.com
• professionalcomputerscanv2.com
• scan-your-pc-now.com
• professionalspywarescanv8.com

Internet Antivirus Pro Scareware:

• hopest.info
• suffic.info
• cressy.info
• unowed.info
• inclin.info

Rogue Antivirus scareware sites:

• securitytoolsite.com (Fake Scanner)
• webscansecurepc.com (Fake Scanner)

Most of the time, These sites are injected into one's browser by way of a Trojan taking over the system. If left untreated these sites will become more and more profound trying to get you to install them. Most of the time these are installed in unsuspecting computers by way of exploits, backdoors, or unsafe downloading practices. This usually means that if you have it you should remove it by any means necessary because this software has been know to cause more and more trouble as time goes by. This software is fake ware, it tries to tell you have a virus and that they can get rid of it. In fact, this software is not designed with Antivirus engine in mind but to illicit pop ups and warning to raise the users security concerns about the computer in question. Downloading programs from bit torrents or other unsafe ways can and most likely will have these types of programs installed alongside the program you wanted.

Threat to System : Moderate

Twitter Spam attempt: “See the NSFW pics twitter deleted from my profile here”

Looks like this might have been a improper adult content or maybe a Malware attack:

If people are wonder what NSFW means:

Not suitable/safe for work (NSFW), not work-suitable/safe (NWS), or not school-suitable (NSS) is Internet slang or shorthand. Typically, the NSFW tag is used in E-mail, movies (such as on Youtube) and on interactive discussion areas (such as internet forums, blogs and community websites) to mark URLs or hyperlinks which may be sexually explicit or include audio containing profanity, helping the reader avoid potentially objectionable content.
[via Wikipedia]

It looks like this was done with using Tinyurl and has been flagged for either Spam, Fraud, Malware, or Any other use that is illegal. I am glad Tinyurl did catch this and stop it. If you see something that say NSFW in your twitter account your best bet is to delete it and go on with your life. I am sure it is something your should not go to probably because it was a malicious way to get your to go to the link. If you want to preview the urls that are used by Tinyurl, just visit the preview feature. If anyone else hears of some kind of Twitter attempt let me know and I’ll blog about it. This would be the best time to install Free Anti-virus and Free Firewalls to help prevent from getting Viruses or Malware.

Microsoft released April Patch list for Patch Tuesday

To see what systems are affected please see the bulletin for further details.   Some of the updates have to do with IE 6 and IE 7, maybe it is time to update to IE 8.  It looks like if you update to IE 8 you will not have to worry about the Remote Code Execution.  There also seems to be a remote code execution for DirectX 9.0A, B, and C.  This however doesn’t affect DirectX 10 and if you have a Vista machine please consider updating to DirectX 10.

The other one is a MSDTC program that has a vulnerability of Elevation of Privileges that needs to be fixed.  There will of course be more than this for April but these are the ones that Microsoft has determined to be release for Tuesday.  There are going to be at least 8 Different patches for Windows XP, and some For Vista.  Some will be only for XP and others will be for XP and Vista.

Then Microsoft Internet Security andAcceleration server will have an update to prevent a Denial of Service attack.  This will be needed to patch on the server side as soon as possible.  Then there is the Excel Remote Code execution that needs to be fixed.  It looks like CVE-2009-0238 is the one that this is being patched for but this is only a guess.

Now is the best time to get Autopatcher ready for this update because this will be quite a big update.  You should also update your anti-virus software and Firewall.

Are You and Your Friends Fine — Virus Spam

Logged into my Google Email and was checking my spam to see what I see and this one draws my attention:

I think I know where this is leading me but I click the link and this website with the Reuters logo pops up:

Now as you can tell this looks authentic but when I did go to this site, AVG detected some trojan.  It blocked it, but  the file that it is downloaded called “save.exe” and I have talked about flash player fake updates.  I have seen other blogs talking about dirty bomb news report leads to malware.  I don’t know about you but if I wanted to update my flash player, I go to the source and not use any links.  It is wise not to download any programs or files and run them without properly checking them out for viruses and Trojans.  You should have a firewall and anti-virus running at all times and that will help but it is your actions that help your prevent from getting viruses or Trojans.

Malicious Spammers target Bank of America

I’ve saw two different security firms talking about Bank of America and I wanted to share with you:

Picture from F-secure

The two sites are F-secure and Pandalabs who are talking about Bank of America and how they try to get you to install malware.  With Adobe having just sent out the new updates last month it looks like spammers are using this to get people to install Malware.

It is also been known to be floating around in Facebook this spam.  So if you get a link going to a site you don’t know about to see a video and it says you need a codec or the Adobe update you should turn right around and leave site. You should always type in the url of Your Bank and not go there through links.

From what they are saying it monitors Network traffic and Steals ICQ, POP3, and IMAP passwords.  If you find network traffic going to Hong Kong IP, then it is time to check to make sure all your Virus definitions are up to date and you’ve installed an Anti-virus and Firewall.  I would encourage  users to report it to Phishtank so that any other unsuspecting user or person going to that site will be warned.

Is Google the ultimate news source?

As you know We had a big problem Monday Night and All day Tuesday. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you would of noticed either a 503 or lag. It was due to an article that I released late Monday night about the PIFTS.EXE and the so call conspiracy.

At the time, I was wondering and quite disturbed about what Norton Symantec was doing to the forums. So I blogged about this and wouldn’t you know my site was Held Hostage by Google. I kid you not, I had so many people come to my site in under an hour it wasn’t even funny.

So I sit here, asking a really good question is Google the News? I don’t know exactly when but according to Wikipedia Google was formed in 1998. The Google Motto is Don’t Be Evil, and I guess it makes them look like a news source. When did they get past the news site? I would hazard a guess that it was in late 2004 they started when they when Google gave people the first chance to own the stock on August 19, 2004, when Google became a publicly held company.

I got hit hard by Slashdot, Reddit.com, and Google.  In truthfulness, It was more of searches and people coming from Google than anywhere else. I would say Google was the 90% and and Slashdot and Redidit was 8% and the rest was from other websites for this one article. Now don’t get me wrong the 2% of people was my normal amount of people for the day. So you can imagine how many people actually came to my site over this fiasco.

Thinking back to PIFTS.EXE.

Thinking to this very incident looks to something out of the movie “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events“.  I won’t go into much detail but here is what I want answers to about the PIFTS.EXE.  You see after I have read a great article talking in detail about this, I have also come to the conclusion something isn’t right.

The blog owner known as Anshar in the forums on the Symantec points out some key events. He wanted to point out that the users who were posting were not violating the TOS and was posting questions that look to asking about this file. See screen capture of what I took. This one picture doesn’t prove his theory in whole, but does bring up some suspicions. This actually might be them trying to find a ’scapegoat’ so to speak. He also talks about what others are asking? What is PIFTS.EXE? People seem to still have not be answered that question.

Although, in Norton’s defense there seems to be a lot of information that they have to sort through. I’ll admit this information people are asking should be really simple to find in the Symantec Databases somewhere. I will not say they are hiding anything major but I do think something is going on that we are not aware of. Here’s some other thoughts to considers? If Norton needed to find out who was using Windows 7, couldn’t they of asked or even made a simple site redirect to find that information, after all anytime you visit a site you have that information sent to the stats. I could in theory find out how many visitors are visiting from Macs and how many are on older systems. That would be very easy to do with Google Analytics.

Fake Scareware Sites Popup after the Pifts.EXE Conspiracy

There Seems to Be a Fake site that are popping up today right after what happened with PIFTS.EXE. I just happen to Google it to see what people are talking about and this appears on the front page.

As you can see this leads to a server in Poland and once you go to it you see:

I will be reporting this to Phishtank. This is scareware which means  there is no real VIRUS because and you
Should never believe the screens when you see something like this. According to Wikipedia:

Some websites display pop-up advertisement windows or banners with text such as: “Your computer may be infected with harmful spyware programs. Immediate removal may be required. To scan, click ‘Yes’ below.” These websites go as far as saying that a user’s job, career, or marriage would be at risk. Products using advertisements such as these are often considered scareware. serious scareware applications qualify as Rogue software.
[Via Wikipedia]

Conspiracy theories run rampent due to PIFTS.EXE

(Looks like some of this was a 4chan gag, check my other post about it)

All of the sudden people around the World are seeing PIFTS.EXE popping up. Norton Antivirus is asking users if they want to accept it. Here what I do know:

Here’s some information I pulled from my Zone Alarm Logs. Does this make sense to anyone?

2009/03/09 18:26:44 — New Program — PIFTS.exe — Destination IP: 67.134.208.160:80 — outgoing — blocked — Destination: ping.lifecycle.norton.com

2009/03/09 18:47:52 — Program Access — PIFTS.exe — Destination IP: — outgoing — blocked — Destination:

2009/03/09 18:48:28 — Changed Program — Windows Explorer — 207.46.248.249.80 — outgoing — blocked — Destination: sa.windows.com
[Via The Symatec Forums]

This indicates that the program tried to change tactics to go out on the net.  I look a look for this and it is SwapDrive.  So this must be an update to Swapdrive but I am unsure as to why it pops up that way.  The other ip is in Africa or at least take the .80 out of the equation and it points to an Africa IP.  (It looks to my mistake in that little part, “to error is human” Check out this  post about it)  Although just recently Norton Decides to Delete that thread and people are really worried about why?  Is this a cover up of some sort because there is a exploit in the Wild that we don’t know about?  These are good questions that need to be answered.   Here is what one posted about this just after they deleted the forum thread:

Are you Email domains being blocked by Cricket?

So I got this Tweet from Mai_ling on twitter and she said:

So I did some digging around the net and found it is something that is a common practice for ISP’s to block PORT 25.   If you want to find out if Cricket is blocking your mail service you can easily follow these instructions to see if port 25 is actively being blocked.  So what are some options in fixing this little problem.

Due to spammers exploiting port 25, ISP have been blocking port 25 for other domains but theirs.   You can receive email but not send email.  Most ISP’s have a way for you to have an Alternative Port that you can use and you should check with your email domain provider to see if you can send and receive on either a SSL or another Port.

You could set up your email client to receive on port 25 but send out on the SMTP server of Gmail.  This would be useful for people who want to send mail out but not have to change there email address.  People will still see it coming from whatevername@whatever.com.   You can tell Thunderbird to send out on the port and yet use your domain as your email address.

Another possible solution that may work for some is to sign up for Google Apps.  The downside of this is It cost 50$ a year but that is 4.20$ a month to be added on to your Cricket Modem charge.  This looks promising and has a 30 day trial so, if it works then you will know before you have to pay for anything.  This should be dealt with by Cricket, they should have a way for there customers to send and receive email without having to jump through hoops to send email and receive email.

Fake Emails about Windows Support spam!

According to Trend Micro, Some malicious software is being sent to unsuspecting users about Windows SP1 andSP2 having a error that could damage software or even hardware.  See Trends blog with the photos of the fake spam.

Although from time to time Microsoft does send out security information to Technet subscribers people have also used this in the past to get people to install Viruses and Malware, like this one that installs TSPY_BANKER.MCL. TSPY_BANKER.MCL monitors the affected user’s online transactions and steals banking related information

Microsoft sends e-mail messages to subscribers of our security communications when we release information about a security software update or security incident. Unfortunately, malicious individuals can and have sent fake security communications that appear to be from Microsoft.

[Via Microsoft]

So if you get an email from Microsoft you’ll probably want to delete it.  Any Microsoft communications will be sent from the Update center.  You should never install software that is from an untrusted website.    If you are concerned you should check the web and find out what people are saying about the situation and see if it is a scam or true!!  Remember only you can prevent a virus or Malware!

5 Steps in Finding the right Affiliates!

So you want to make Money with your blog but don’t know how? I thought I would share with you what I’ve learned in the past few months to earn enough money to pay for the space and web address. I’ll go through each step talking about steps:

First you will need to explore all the great Affiliate programs like OpenX, TMIWireless, Adsense,  Converseon, and Commision Junction.   There is of course even more out on the Internet, but these are ones that I like and have given me some insight as to Commission and Affiliate marketing.  I have been using TMIWIRELESS and Converseon more and more.  I still have Adsense but you have to get a balance on Advertising and what people are wanting.

Find the right fit for you blog and talk about the products you like the most.  I like TmiWireless because you give out free phones and still get money in return and Converseon for recommending Cell Phones. You should figure out what does better, and always keep looking. There are more than a few out that will work for you better. If you know one that I should look into let me know.

When do you “Never Fold”

So I got this email and wanted to show you just how try to get you to link to their site:

I got this email and wanted to talk about how people link to sites they shouldn’t.  Although this a real site, I had my doubts from the get go.   You see it talks about sending 21 visitors to my site.  I got to the site Neverfold.net which after I looked and there I am but I wonder why? Because Poker and Calicanis have nothing in common with Poker or at least news and all that.

As you can see when you go to that site via the link he gives me, which by the way if you weren’t paying attention is a hidden link with Neverfold.net/?pg=YKchR. As you can see this is a way for him to know when you click it to put your name on the forum page. You can tell because Ref: YKchR is at the bottom of the email. This is most likely a generated email by a bot, I did even more research to find out more information. I found out that the so call 5k to 7k page views were bogus. I checked with Alexa, and I find out this:

I hate Snopes Spam

As you know Snopes is used to find out about urban Legend and Rumors:

I received a Virus alert from my RSS feed about Email virus warning.  It even adds a Snope URL.  The Author just copies and pasted the virus warning into the blog without even going to Snopes.

According to Snopes and I’ll quote:
Although the Postcard virus is real, it isn’t a “BIG VIRUS COMING” (it’s already been around in multiple forms for a long time now), it will not “burn the whole hard disc” of your computer, CNN didn’t classify it as the “worst virus” ever, and it doesn’t arrive in messages bearing a subject line of ‘Invitation.’

[Via Snopes]

Now as you can tell the link described in the blog post was “http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/postcard.asp”. If you went there, you’d have seen this as a not really true and some parts of this might be but that part about burning your Hard drive or even consider the Worst virus isn’t true.

Some things you need to consider before forwarding anything is:

• Is it completely True?
• Is it Legitimate?  (True blown warning about something like a product recall  or something important like that)

Microsoft Releases the Patch Information for March

Microsoft Has Released the Patch information For march and This is what is expected to be patch on March 11, 2009:

• Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Excel Could Allow Remote Code Execution (Kb949029) — This security update resolves several privately reported and publicly reported vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Excel that could allow remote code execution if a user opens a specially crafted Excel file. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.  (affected System : Microsoft Office)

Gmail Vulnerable to a Change PW Attack!

Securiteam has made an announcement that Gmail has an issue.  I will quote:

GMail is vulnerable to CSRF attacks in the “Change Password” functionality. The only token for authenticate the user is a session cookie, and this cookie is sent automatically by the browser in every request.

An attacker can create a page that includes requests to the “Change password” functionality of GMail and modify the passwords of the users who, being authenticated, visit the page of the attacker.

The attack is facilitated since the “Change Password” request can be realized across the HTTP GET method instead of the POST method that is realized habitually across the “Change Password” form.

[Via Securiteam]

One way to prevent this to a point is right now having GMAIL automatically connect securely.  You would go into your settings in gmail and make sure it uses https connection:
This is one way to prevent the cookie attack but is still needing to be fixed.   Since it is using the HTTP GET method it should use the HTTPS method as soon as you try accessing the site.   Google needs to change to the HTTPS Get method instead to prevent this type of attack.   If you have any other ideas for Google just leave a comment.

Cracking and Warez sites are Host of Trouble!!

It is nothing to laugh at and should be understood that gamers have no freedom right now.   That said this new Variant to Virux Trojan is in regards to Win32/Vitro Trojan.  It seems tobe infecting .exe and .Scr files just like this.

According to Trend Micro:

The downloaded malware include variants under the FAKEAV, TDSS, and VUNDO families. Infection chains, however, are notable for the presence of VIRUT and VIRUX malware. VIRUX and VIRUT attacks were initially about the volume of infected PCs. The numbers are massive enough to worry Web users and security researchers: around 20,000 PCs are infected per day
Read more: “Crack Sites Distribute VIRUX and FakeAV“

Now it seems to be more and more sites with getting computer infected. It also seems the Malware writers are using these servers for helping infect essentially gamers computers. So for the time being, if you have a favorite game and you want to:

• No-CD Crack (This is good for those who want to play the game without the CD)
• Key Gen Cracks (This is used for pirated version of a game)
• Update Cracks (This is used to prevent CD checking or Also prevent Version Checking)

And the Oscar goes to . . . Not these guys!

Sans Internet Storm is reporting on Anti-virus Scareware tactic. I’ll quote from them:

ISC reader Gary wrote in to let us know that searching for “oscar presenters” and “oscar winners” with Google brings up a prominently ranked result on a web server in Poland, on a subdomain of “beepl”, which – surprise, surprise – includes a malicious JavaScript. The end result currently seems to reside on stabilitytracewebcom, and is yet another incarnation of the “Fake Anti-Virus Program” malware that we have covered repeatedly. Watch out, the EXE has a meager 6/39 on Virustotal.
[Via Sans]

I did my own research and it is true they are at least 3 sites with the .pl Domain that are used to send you to these fake sites. You should consider checking your system for possible viruses if you been to these sites and are worried. You should also report any site like this to Phishtank to fight this type of scare tactics. Please remember if you are worried about your system this is the best time to install software to prevent these types of scare tactics. Remember you don’t always have to buy software to be safe. There are free anti-virus and Firewall solutions at your fingertips, use them well. It is also a good idea to make sure you have the latest updates from Microsoft while your at it.

Being a Bad BOT!

I had the strangest thing happen today, Seemed a Bad Bot was Crawling my pages. I was getting at least 60 page views an hour from this bad Bot!! The individual IP’s of this Bad Are:

65.208.151.112
65.208.151.113
65.208.151.114
65.208.151.115
65.208.151.116
65.208.151.117
65.208.151.118
65.208.151.119

After the first initial hour of this going on, I started wondering what this bot was doing.   I did some more research into this little bot.   I did find out it is owned by Kintiskton LLC.  (Twitter Search)

Anyways It bothers me that when you do a Google Search for this company, it comes back with no company.  Some people have already did there research and have come up with very little.

I dug even more and some are saying this might be Homeland Security, and I have my own thoughts on this.   I might be paranoid myself but if there is no company out there and the IP keeps coming back, I assume it is BAD mojo.  Some people worry that it is a hacker probing for vulnerabilities and that worried me.

I decided with the Help from Godaddy, to ban the lot of IPs.  I figure someone is trying to get information or trying something they shouldn’t, I’ll stop it myself.   If you have Wordpress and are also having problems with this ip, you can ban it by adding this to your HtAccess file:

ThePirateBay might be blocked in the US

I was looking around on Google and thought I just for giggles check out the Piratebay complaints. I tried going to the site and here’s what Popups:

I tried on OpenVPN and my Local ISP, It keeps saying that. I then tried on my Cricket Modem and it tells me the connection has been interrupted, like something stops the connection in the first place. I can ping it and I can Tracert the Site but I can’t even view it. I would like to know if Anyone else is having this problem also. Although I’ve not checked Thepiratebay.org complaints for quite some time because I’ve been so busy with my website. If you want to watch your favorite shows check out these sites like Hulu, CBS, NBC, ABC, ABC FAMILY and TNT.TV for free. I am just curious as to what happened and does this have anything to do with Net Neutrality?   Anyway I wanted to talk about this and see what people are saying.  Anyone know what is going on?  Let’s talk about this and help everyone by saying what you know.   I don’t know if Thepiratebay.org is down but I do wonder if someone is preventing people from getting to the website.   I’ll update when I have more information.

Understanding Adsense for the Beginner

So you have a website and you’d like the site to pay for itself. That can be arranged it however depends on your website performance. You see you won’t make a lot of money if you don’t have several things going for you. I thought I share with you my experience with making money through Adsense. As you saw, I made enough money to pay for the website for 5 years. It isn’t hard to make money it is however very difficult to keep getting the money. Most people don’t know the tricks to making money with Google’s Adsense.

I’m here to help you out a little with understanding it and getting even more money from your adsense.   So here we are 3 months into to putting Adsense seriously on my site and let’s take a look shall we:

Looks Like Monster.com and UsaJobs.gov was Hacked : Change your PW!!

As is the case with many companies that maintain large databases of information, Monster is the target of illegal attempts to access and extract information from its database. We recently learned our database was illegally accessed and certain contact and account data were taken, including Monster user IDs and passwords, email addresses, names, phone numbers, and some basic demographic data. The information accessed does not include resumes. Monster does not generally collect – and the accessed information does not include – sensitive data such as social security numbers or personal financial data.

As a further precaution, we want to remind you that an email address could be used to target “phishing” emails. Monster will never send an unsolicited email asking you to confirm your username and password, nor will Monster ask you to download any software, “tool” or “access agreement” in order to use your Monster account.
[Via Monster.com]

UsaJobs.Gov is a partner with Monster.com so You should think about changing your Password.    They Also think this will be used for Phishing, if you have any doubts to the authenticity of email.  I’d suggest doing a google search on the company or name of the person who emailed you that way you can be well informaed before you do decide how you will handle it.   Also Remember most times if they ask you download software, it is probably Malware and should be scanned by your Anti-virus software.

Microsoft to Cut 5,000 Jobs Starting Today:

There are reports that Microsoft will start laying people off starting Today Jan 22, 2009.

Microsoft said it will cut up to 5,000 jobs in research and development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, human resources and IT over the next 18 months. The first 1,400 jobs will be cut Thursday.

[ViaPcWorld]

I really hate to see this happen but I did suspect this to happen.   I get a feeling this isn’t the last we will see of Microsoft doing something like this.   I would suspect it will become even more than 5,000 jobs.  I will take a guess and say 16,000 will be the total or close to it. If you want to see the other layoffs I’ve talked here are few:

• Google Search
• Largest Employer : University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is planning layoffs!!
• Mahalo Lay’s off around 10% of it’s workforce!!
• Viacom and ATT layoff some people. (12,850 People)

I have several differnent articles about the layoffs but I did speculate they will lay off 16,000 people so I am sure it will happen in the next few months.  Only time will tell!!!

Setting up Email Filters for Twitter Phish — Getting Phishing out of the way

Ok So we’ve all had the problem of having to deal with this twitter phish, and you can see there are more and more twitter spam.

So how do you start Filtering out the Bad twitter spam?

I’m using Mozilla Thunderbird so this will not be a complete way for people who use other email software.

Once You find your way to this menu you would click new and then you do this:

Now once you’ve named your twitter filter, I named it “Twitter Spam” but you may name it whatever you would like.   I then selected to “Match all of the Following”, if you don’t do this it will send all direct messages to your spam folder.  You’d get no direct message from anyone about anything.   I told the filter if it was from “*@postmaster.twitter.com”.   Once you done that you would click the plus sign to add

another row and then I selected the “Subject”.  I selected that to filter whatever is in the subject body of the message and filtered for “http://*.access-logins.com”.  Then I clicked Move Message to Spam Folder.  You can move it to your own twitter spam folder, it is just nice to move it away from the important stuff.   You also if you like can Mark it as read also by clicking the Plus sign and selecting “Mark as read” so that you don’t have to worry about reading each and every one.   For people who are wondering the Asterisk is a Wild Card which means it does not matter what is in there that is import to prevent getting spam from people you know or from sites you know are phishing.

Reviewing Roboform: Great Password Manager

I’ve had Roboform for the last few months checking it out working with it seeing what is the pro’s and cons of it. Here’s what I’ve found out.

Limited number of passwords for non-license (Limited to 10 passcards – login information and password) — This doesn’t surprise me in fact once I’d started using it I had to buy it. You see I’ve got so many places I like to visit and so many logins it isn’t easy to track them all. This helps me login to each and everyone of them very easily. Although if you only have a limited amount of sites the free version will work well for those people too.

Defeats Key loggers — This is good for those who have family members who use the same computer just in case someone installs a virus that tries to steal your sensitive information. Can be put on a portable thumb drive with use to a library or open platforms. This also will prevent key loggers from getting your login information.

Are you worried about your identity?

So after the fiasco of the other day, I decided I will talk about security and why you should worry about new websites that you have never heard of.   People are not worrying about there identity and keeping there identity safe.   You see whenever someone signs up to a service without thinking about their password being stored or even used maliciously.   You see when most people don’t use more than one or two passwords for all there accounts and then you use the same password with a new website.  Are you asking for your identity to be stolen?  In one of my previous blog posts I talked about not having any privacy on the internet.

So How can you protect your privacy?

When ever I come across a site that I don’t know about and I want to protect my account from being compromised I find out what I can from several places:

1. Google — Yes this is quite common to use to find out about what people are saying asking the keywords like is it a scam or what people are saying about the site?  This can be very useful to make sure I don’t get scammed by a company for instants the Nationwide marketing scam.  Although this is really important when you get things that sound questionable.  This can be very useful with regards to keep your wallet safe.