Spam Messages
This was the body of a spam e-mail I received.
Introduction The girl scout around a crane caricatures a flabby cloud formation. Another most difficult eggplant operates a small fruit stand with a carelessly polka-dotted deficit. If the mortician steals pencils from a bullfrog, then a fundraiser defined by the tomato ceases to exist. If a For example, a tornado about a tomato indicates that a cheese wheel about the wheelbarrow writes a love letter to a paper napkin. Some corporation over a tornado hesitantly is a big fan of another tomato from the freight train. A cargo bay is impromptu. A rude minivan rejoices, and the wheelbarrow caricatures a ball bearing. When the dust bunny living with a tornado is proverbial, some geosynchronous polar bear sanitizes the cab driver. Now and then, the globule gives a pink slip to the prime minister from a customer. The tape recorder aro faults with a soggy polygon. Introduction A buzzard recognizes a greedily rude crane. Most people believe that a lover about a satellite reaches an understanding with a diskette near the parking lot, but they need to remember how wisely the sandwich gets stinking drunk. When a pompous burglar returns home, an umbrella prays. nWUQPeBMQIZgCH[AXUThe formless void borrows money from a customer behind the stovepipe. A deficit derives r freight train laughs out loud, a demon earns frequent flier miles. A canyon around the grain of sand is hypnotic. Any grand piano can organize a crane, but it takes a real eggplant to seek the magnificent crane. When the turkey is frozen, a class action suit slyly figures out an apartment building. Indeed, the hockey player caricatures the tornado. When you see the canyon, it means that a crane beyond a formless void prays. Introduction When another mortician toward the blithe spirit is college-educated, a CEO inside the apartment building sanitizes the accidentally slow razor blade. A cocker spaniel is boiled. Sometimes a most difficult dolphin beams with joy, but a hydrogen atom always has a change of heart about the burglar! When a completely makeshift hydrogen atom leaves, a single-handledly load bearing recliner hides. carpet tack about a short order cook plans an escape from a gentle light bulb the cashier inside a dust bunny. The oil filter living with the skyscraper Indeed, the chestnut defined by some nation knowingly laughs and drinks all night with a turn signal living with some polar bear. A proverbial defendant is rude. The overripe cyprus mulch steals pencils from a stoic fruit cake. Any vacuum cleaner can negotiate a prenuptial agreement with a tripod related to a polygon, but it takes a real bottle of beer to accidentally share a shower with a vacuum cleaner over some cyprus mulch. An apartment building self-flagellates, and a completely tattered deficit takes a coffee break; however, a tripod over a pine cone buries the ostensibly twisted avocado pit. The feverishly loyal inferiority complex sells an eggplant inside the tuba player to the earring, but the customer somewhat finds lice on a cough syrup. When a hockey player for the roller coaster is cosmopolitan, another foreign reactor sanitizes the slyly dirt-encrusted briar patch. Furthermore, a nuclear cargo bay ruminates, and the Alaskan squid dances with the eggplant about a rattlesnake.
You could imagine Richard Burton or Eric Cantona reading it. It would still not make sense, but it would have a certain lilt to it.
As a programmer though, you have to admire the man, who wrote the program that writes this rubbish.
Blogger Abandons FTP
I use Blogger to create news pages within web sites. This approach is good as it enables anybody to update the news without disturbing the actual web site. It also has advantages in that as Blogger updates the search engines directly, any changes are reflected immediately.
In most of the sites, I have used FTP to update the blogs, but Blogger have recently announced that FTP support will be discontinued.
I had felt this would be a problem, but if you look at my stud web site, Freedom Farm, you’ll now see that it uses a standard blogspot address, freedomfarmnews.blogspot.com.
The web site works as well as before, but I’m afraid it’s lost all it’s search engine history, so I’ll have to grow the blog from start again. I suspect too, that because the web site is now hosted on a different url to the news, that the two will not work as well together. That is probably a good reason to use WordPress for a combination of a web site and news.
But if you want still keep to Blogger, there wasn’t too many problems.
- I had to change all of the links, but this was a global edit in the web site and a few changes to the template.
- By default you get the Blogger NavBar, which is annoying in a web site. However there is a patch to put in the template to remove it. The details are here.
But otherwise it was painless.
I wouldn’t use Blogger again for this purpose, as it’ll probably degrade the search engine performance significantly, as the link between the web site and news are broken.
Jim Bennett
I get a lot of spam. This is an interesting one.
My name is Jim .E. Bennett, I am a citizen of United State of America and the Executive Director of SPD Corporation, a multi-national oil corporation operating from London-England, UK. I am seeking your assistance to retrieve the sum of ( fifteen Million Dollars Only), consisting of two Consignments boxes.
This money was acquired from over invoice and it was accompanied by a diplomat to the U.S.A, my reason for this is because I have been cheated out of my entitlements by the company for too long simply because I am not a British Citizen.The details of the diplomat will be given to you if you indicate your interest to help me.
The two boxes content is $15M and for your help I am ready to release 30% to you, for security reasons the consignments was registered to be ( CONFIDENTIAL DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTS), and I can explain why it was declared so. Bear in mind that the diplomat is not aware of the content of the two Consignments boxes , it has been there for the past 1 month as I’m looking for a reliable partner.
I will be leaving the country immediately the consignments is delivered to you for my private investment and I have vowed never to step back into London, England. Please, I need your urgent response before my plans to leave the company is discovered.
Please if you are not willing and interested in helping me kindly delete this e-mail from your computer and pretend you never got it.
I’m pretending I haven’t got this e-mail, so if you read this, then please pass it on, so that no-one gets conned by this crook.
One point is that he says he will be leaving London immediately the consignments are delivered. Funny, that but the e-mail came from China.
Banking Security
I don’t like internet banking. Well to be truthful, I like the concept, but some of the implementations of it are rather poor.
Take my bank. I need to enter my account reference, a password and then three numbers from a key code. I can remember these in most cases, but if I access the account from someone else’s computer, I need to have the account reference written down. But I do write it down in a way that no-one could ascertain.
Although it is a system that works, it is not the best. It is typical of many systems used to login to on-line banking.
I am a mentor on The Horse’s Mouth, which is a web site where people put ideas and others pass comments. It is an interesting concept and from what I read in the press, it is highly regarded.
In the last few days, the web site has put me in touch with a company called SafeTok.
It looks like it could be a solution to better Internet security.
But then I am not an expert in this field. But then I’m a consumer who knows what I don’t like.
Adding my Posts to your Web Site
I have no problem with people putting up my posts on their web sites provided they acknowledge who wrote it all in the first place. I said as much in Electronic Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement.
Recently though, I’ve had a request about putting a link to a series of posts on my pages. It was the Cambridge Busway, of which I write about fairly often, as I think it is a wonderful example of how not to manage a project. It is well over budget on costs, very late on finish time and short on the important small details. That link is given below.
https://anonw.wordpress.com/tag/cambridge-busway/
Click it and you’ll see all my posts on the busway.
So how would you add a link like this to your web site?
- Go to the front page of this blog. Click here to do that!
- Click the tag you want from the tag cloud.
- Capture the URL from your browser and paste it into your web site.
It’s a bit technical, but once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s like swimming or cycling. You never forget.
Unless of course it’s swimming, which I can’t do!
Is Gordon Brown Buying Votes?
I received two of these e-mails yesterday.
OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER
TREASURY AND MINISTER FOR CIVIL SERVICE, LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM.Our ref: ATM/13470/IDR
Your ref:…Date: 26/11/2009IMMEDIATE PAYMENT NOTIFICATION
I am The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP,Prime Minister British Government. This letter is to officially inform you that (ATM Card Number 048000101775550) has been accredited with your favor. Your Personal Identification Number is 477.The VISA Card Value is £2,000,000.00(Two Million, Great British Pounds Sterling).
This office will send to you an Visa/ATM CARD that you will use to withdraw your funds in any ATM MACHINE CENTER or Visa card outlet in the world with a maximum of £5000 GBP daily.Further more,You will be required to re-confirm the following information to enable;The Rt Hon David Miliband MP Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Office. begin in processing of your VISA CARD.
(1)Full names: (2)Address: (3)Country: (4)Nationality: (5)Phone #: (6)Age:
(7)Occupation: (8) Post CodesForward Reply To: hondavidmiliband@8.am
TAKE NOTICE: That you are warned to stop further communications with any other person(s) or office(s) different from the staff of the State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to avoid hitches in receiving your payment.
Regards,
The Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP
Prime Minister
He must be getting desperate if he is resorting to these methdos to get votes. Even Prudence isn’t that desperate and I suspect if you fall for this scam you get everything you deserve!
Are Cars Greener than Buses?
This question is prompted by a post on the BBC Ethical Man’s blog, which asks that question.
The article should be read in full.
But the real problem is that we travel too much.
I’ve worked at home since 1972 and in that time I’ve created two major businesses and several worthwhile (well I think they are) software applications. It doesn’t seemed to have hampered me. So perhaps we need more incentives and technologies like fast broadband to make working at home easier. To get any decent broadband speed, I actually use two phone lines and a special balanced router. But I only get 2Mbs.
Useless!
So would it be better to spend the money on faster broadband for all, rather than transport infrastructure? If for no other reason, it would certainly be popular with a lot of people. I don’t think anybody would object and there would be no need for lengthy and costly public enquiries.
I also live on top of a hill and about three or four kilometres from the nearest pub, post office or shop. I don’t actually cycle to them much, but I should. But most of our large cities are flat and would be very suitable terrain for two wheels. We just need to make sure there are proper cycle paths and adequate places to lock a bicycle.
So perhaps under certain circumstances cars are greener than buses and trains, but in many cases there are better alternatives.
My Views on Abuse Reporting
In the previous post, I said that commercial pressures and the fact that most of the social networking and other companies are outside the jurisdiction of the UK and the EU, will make it very difficult to enforce any proper reporting of abuse.
But we can do something.
Take Sunday morning. I was driving out of Cambridge, when a guy in a very large 4×4 pulled out on me. He just didn’t look and if there had been anything coming the other way, I would had the choice of hitting his vehicle side-on or the other vehicle head-on. Luckily, there wasn’t any traffic and I passed easily.
I did shake my head at him and he took offence. So as I drove out of the city in a queue of traffic at the legal limit, he was about a couple of metres from my back bumper. This behaviour continued on the A14, until I was able to let him go.
We’ve all had things like this happen and they are just too trivial to report. For me life is too short and I have many more important things to do, than waiting in a Police Station to fill in endless forms, that will result in no action at all.
Now, this guy’s behaviour could have been caused by many things. He may have just got out of bed the wrong side, had a row with his girl-friend or more seriously he may have been severely hung over from the night before. One off’s are excusable, but supposing he’s a bad driver all the time and is always driving like this. If it’s the latter he needs to be informed that his behaviour is not acceptable.
I should say that I have a vested interest at this point. A few years before my wife died, she had breast cancer. The cancer appeared at exactly the same spot, as where she had got a bruise from a car air-bag in an accident. (Search various forums and you’ll find other women, who have got breast cancer by say being hit by a ball, whilst playing tennis or squash.) The cause of the accident had been a foreign truck driver. A few months later we believe that the same driver killed an innocent motorist because he was driving outside his hours.
How many near misses had the truck driver had in the UK between the accident with my wife and the killing of the other driver?
What is needed is a site, where driving misbehaviour can be reported? Not a site run by say the transport industry, which only reports compliments, but one run by the Police.
Obviously, the Police would not be able to follow-up every report, but software exists to analyse these reports to identify the worst offenders. (I’ve wrote systems like this so I know!) So if say a vehicle is always cutting up other drivers, then it can be identified. Probably in most cases a simple letter to the keeper of the vehicle would suffice.
But, one thing that has to be born in mind is the fact that often bad drivers, find it impossible to get any insurance and so how many of those reported would be drivers who shouldn’t be on the road for one reason or another. You may think that this a bad link, but the Police have shown that if they stop a driver without valid documents, there is a fifty percent chance a non-motoring offence is being committed.
The system would have to have safeguards, but just as it would identify bad and irresponsible drivers, it would also identify the vindictive, who perhaps constantly report someone for parking outside their house, when they have a perfect right to do so. I’ve heard policemen say that these are sometimes the worst disputes between neighbours.
Properly used such a database would be an asset to everyone, but if it was setup badly, it could be used as a means of abuse.
Over the last few days, we’ve had reports of cyberbullying and problems with social networking sights.
Let’s take the cyberbullying first and I’ll add to that all of the fraudulent scam e-mails that you get trying to extract money from your bank account. The problems may be different, but the solutions are the same.
The government should have a short text message number and a simple e-mail address, where any unwanted message can be sent. These could then be analysed and real abusers located. With say mobile phones, the abuser would just be told to desist and after a second strike their number would be cancelled. The same could be done with e-mail messages too, although here it would be more difficult to cancel addresses as many are outside the jurisdiction. But many of these e-mail scams use UK phone numbers, which can of course be cancelled immediately.
Some would argue that this might be a bit draconian, but I suspect, it would most abusers would quickly take the hind and desist. You won’t stop the foreign crooks and their scams, but hopefully the publicity would mean that there work was less productive.
There is always the point about who pays.
In fact, if done properly, these sort of systems would be self-financing, as there would be reductions in motoring offences, cyberbullying and e-mail fraud.
Unfortunately, Pete’s budget would have to be raided to pay for Paul’s. Governments never do that well!
Reporting Internet Abuse
There has been a lot of reporting lately about cyberbullying and abuse on social networking sites. In fact the BBC breakfast phone-in was about this subject.
I have no experience of reporting problems on social networking sites, but for years I have been fighting a campaign against on-line fraudsters using the Internet and mobile phones. I have reported endless people for abuse to e-mail organisations and so have many others I know who work in this field.
No service provider have ever informed me that they have taken serious action. As these scams are still occurring, it would appear that nothing has been done. I have found that the same e-mail addresses keep coming up in different scams.
Why?
These companies want the traffic to continue and as they run tight ships, they can’t afford the methods that everyone knows would stop all of these practices.
It is exactly the same with social networking sites. Put a button to report abuse on a site and the abusers will go elsewhere, so a site that does it, will lose traffic and advertising revenue, which is of course geared to traffic.
I also have a granddaughter and she was showing me an innocent site aimed at her age, with educational games, quizzes and puzzles. There was nothing wrong with the site, but some of the advertising on it, was promoting all the foods and snack products that you shouldn’t give to children of her age.
All of these problems are driven by commercial interests, most of which are headquartered outside of the jurisdiction of the UK and the EU. So in truth we are just whistling in the dark and the sites will never change.
All these indignant phone-ins are just free publicity for these social networking sites. They would have had to pay millions to get the same effect. I’d love to see how many new members have joined them in the last few days.
The BBC does Lotteries
These scams keep coming and you do wonder why anybody is stupid enough to fall for them.
BBC.CO.UK NATIONAL LOTTERY
PROGRAMED CLAIM HOME UK
HEADQUARTER, UNITED KINGDOM
===========================
The National lottery winners Results
These Are The Email’s Lucky’s Winning Numbers
*(04)*(06)*(12)*(31)*(38)*(48)*BONUS*(29)
ON Wednesday November 11th
Check On Your Winning Number
Draw Times – Find details
on this site below
website. http://www.bbc.co.uk/lotteryYour Email Winning Number=(38)
Dear Lucky Winner,
We are pleased to announce your email address as one of the 300 lucky stars winners in the Bbc.co.uk national lottery promo draw held on the 11th NOVEMBER 2009.
All 300 winning addresses were randomly selected from a batch of 200,000,000{TWO HUNDRED MILLION} international emails addresses.Your email have been approved to claim the sum of £1,000,000.00GBP(ONE MILLION POUNDS),We are proud to say that over £25 Million GBP Pounds are won annually in more than 130 countries world-wide.The Bbc.co.uk national lottery promotion draw is held once in every three years interval.And is also organized to encourage the use of internet and computers.
For security reasons,you are advised to keep your winning information confidential until you claim your prize money.However you will have to fill and submit this form to the events manager for verification & direction on how you can claim your winning fund.you are required to provide us with the information below for verification.
you must be 16 over to claim the prize
Fill the Details Below
1.FULL NAMES:
2.DATE OF BIRTH:
3.GENDER:
4.OCCUPATION:
5.POSITION
6.WORK ADDRESS
7.RESIDENTIAL ADDRESS:
8.COUNTRY:
9.MOBILE NUMBER AND NETWORK NAME:
10.ALTERNATE MOBILE/PHONE NUMBER:
11.AMOUNT WON:
12.EMAIL ADDRESS(S):
13.Your Winning Number:CHOOSE METHOD OF CLAIM WINNINGS ( COURIER DELIVERY OR DIRECT BANK TRANSFER)…..
Sincerely,
Mr.Brian Adams
Promotion Manager.Reply this email with the information for claim
E-mail:bbccouk_nationallotteryclaim@yahoo.com.hk
website. _http://www.bbc.co.uk/lottery
Name:Ethan Sawyer (Mr.)
Phone:+44 7024 079 993
National Coordinator
Congratulations once again.Copyright (c) 2009 Bbc.co.uk national lottery Online Promotion Inc.
Some points to note, which apply to nearly all of these scams.
- I got four of these e-mails all to undisclosed-recipients. Did I win four times? No! I didn’t even win once!
- There are numerous spelling and grammatical mistakes. Look at the heading for a start, which contains Headquarter and programed.
- Capitalisation is bad too.
- The e-mail address is in Hong Kong.
- The phone number may well be one that costs quite a lot for each minute.
- The copyright notice has Inc. in it. The UK does not use this American form.
Remember no-one has ever won a lottery they didn’t enter.
One thing that should be done is that the UK should tighten up how 07 numbers are allocated. Many seem to be used for frauds. It might be difficult to check everybody before they get a number, but after any hint of fraud, the numbers should be cancelled immediately.
The Anonymous Widower 