A Spammer Gets Screwed, Glued and Tattooed
I don’t like spammers and this story is worth a read.
The hero is actually an American law firm, that took up a ridiculous case against a British anti-spam organisation; Spamhaus, on a pro-bono basis.
Will LulzSec Target the UK Legal System Over Jailing of Joanne Fraill?
LulzSec are a group of hackers, who have broken into various computer systems all over the world, including a web site linked with the CIA.
I do wonder whether the jailing of Joanne Fraill for discussing a case where she was a juror on Facebook, will get a response from LulzSec. Especially, as some reports say all jurors who use Facebook to discuss cases will be jailed.
How long before the idiots on Facebook start a “Free joanne Fraill” campaign?
I can’t help feeling, that this one will run and run and in a direction that the government and the judges won’t like.
What Joanne Fraill did was wrong, but then it was also incredibly stupid. So are we now jailing people for doing things, they don’t have the intelligence to realise are wrong? In Joanne Fraill’s case, she should have been given a community sentence. Perhaps one working with the victims and problems of drug addiction, that her actions have inadvertently made worse, by stopping a trial of drug dealers.
Justice By Facebook
I think that this is the biggest threat to justice, I’ve seen in the last thirty years. In this case for example, according to the Guardian, a juror contacted the defendant and the trial collapsed at a cost to taxpayers of £6,000,000.
I don’t know how you stop it, unless you ban those who know about the Internet from juries.
So it might be the end of the jury system in many cases, and we go to a system, where defendants are tried in front of a panel of judges.
I hope not.
Has HMRC Moved To Brazil?
This spam e-mail wasn’t written by the sharpest knife in the drawer.
Tax Refund Notification
After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity, we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of 973.90 GBP. Please submit the refund request and allow 5-7 days for processing.
Click Here To Claim Your Refund http://ocenomato.com.br/pantanal/galeria/xxxxx.xxx
Best Regards,
HM Revenue & Customs
But it might fool someone. Let’s hope it’s not you! After all, they’d stop sending them, if they didn’t find a mug in each batch they send.
But do note the Brazilian web site! The xxxx’s hide a dangerous web page, so don’t try and access it.
An Alternative Approach To Stopping Spam
This article based on research done by three eminent Universities; University of California-San Diego, the University of California-Berkeley, and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, shows that the best way to stop spam might be to go for the banks who process the money for the spammers.
It would appear that just a few banks are involved. Here’s what the article says.
However, when it comes to banking, the bottlenecks are far more severe, and switching is far more difficult. One bank alone was used to settle more than 60 percent of all transactions, and the top three banks—Azerigazbank in Azerbaijan, St Kitts & Nevis Anguilla National Bank in St Kitts &Nevis, and Danish-owned DnB Nord in Latvia—together accounted for more than 95 percent of all money paid to spam vendors. The implication is that many banks simply won’t deal with spam outfits. Even when switching does occur, it’s disruptive, with payment processors typically introducing delays of days or weeks for due diligence to be performed.
Surely, no honest person would trust these banks with their money.
So we shouldn’t give up on our spam filters, but constantly chase the routes that the money takes to get to the criminals. After all the researchers used just 100 purchases to obtain their findings. So shouldn’t Western and other governments pool some researchers and money to find more rogue banks and then eliminate them from payments systems worldwide.
You Fight Twitter At Your Peril
It has been reported on the BBC that South Tyneside Council have obtained an order in a US Court to indicate who has been posting possibly defamatory statements about councillors and officials.
Type the name of the poster into Twitter and you’ll find a large amount of posts about the postings, most of which support the poster of the statements.
This one will run and run and the only winners will be the lawyers. When do people realise, that if you’re in a hole, the first thing you do is to stop digging.
I can envisage something like this happening in the not too distant future.
- Parliament passes a law that says that anybody who tweets about a superinjunction will feel the full force of the law.
- Someone important billionaire, who has done something he doesn’t want in the papers obtains a superinjunction.
- It is published on Twitter.
- The tweeter gets found guilty, but continues to tweet about the case.
- He goes to jail.
- Others would then tweet the story and be arrested.
So what do we do if hundreds of thousands needed to go to jail?
A New Toy
This is my new Acer Iconia W-500.
Acer Iconia W-500
It’s a tablet computer that runs Windows. When I get my network sorted, I’ll use it to demonstrate Daisy and also to browse on my travels to access my bank account, Zopa and GMail.
I think I might write some stroke-friendly software for the device. Of course, it will be in Visual Basic 6. You might ask why I don’t want an iPad.
The reason is simple. Real programmers don’t use Apple products and anyway, I’d need to learn a whole new set of progrmming tools. As it is virtually all of the software, I’ve written will run on this machine. I won’t need to buy anything else, except possibly a case to protect it. But it does fit my manbag.
Here’s an old joke.
Q: How do you make an Apple go faster?
A: Drop it from a higher building.
Faster Rural Broadband
It has been announced that the first round of funding has been agreed for faster rural broadband.
I am not a high consumer of broadband capacity, as most of my on-line activity is e-mail and blogging.
However, I’m a strong believer that every home and business should have superfast broadband, as this will be one of the ways to create employment everywhere.
It can’t be installed everywhere too soon!
Phishing Scams From Someone Claiming to be HMRC
We all get these and some look like they come from sensible addresses like alert@hmrc.gov.uk.
Here’s a typical content.
Date 21/05/2011
A tax refund of 1560.10 GBP .(Still Pending) Due to invalid account record we were unable to credit your account Please submit a verified tax refund request.A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline.
Click the “Refund Me Now” link below and follow the on screen step in order to have us process your request.Refund Me Now Note: For security reasons, we will record your ip-address, the date and time,Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued and indicated.
Best Regards,
HM Revenue & Customs
They are all a scam designed to get your login asnd password to the HMRC web site.
They show all of the typical mistakes of scammers.
- Why would they say 2510 GBP, when the £2510.00 would probably be used?
- The English is a bit clunky. But then so is a lot of Civil Servant-speak!
- I especially like the last bit saying “Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued and indicated.” What do they mean about indicated? Does a nice young lady all dressed like Lady Gaga in leather come round and give you a ticking off? Now that will be fun!
- And then there’s the Best Regards bit! Very HMRC! I don’t think!
So what should you do with these e-mails, other than comply with what they say?
The real HMRC have a page which says what to do.
Note this clear statement on the page.
HMRC will never send notifications of a tax rebate by email, or ask you to disclose personal or payment information by email.
You should never disclose your personal and/or payment information in reply to an email that may look like it’s from HMRC, you may well be revealing your details to a fraudulent website.
It also says you should forward them to phishing@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk
I shall be sending a few today, so let’s see what happens.
The Anonymous Widower 