Posts tagged Email at Switched

Posts with tag email

New E-Mail Scam Targets the Previously Scammed

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Dec 1st 2008 at 5:21PM

As if you didn't feel bad enough about yourself after being taken in by that e-mail from the Nigerian prince enlisting your help to gain access to nonexistent millions, now you've got to worry about guarding yourself against a scam targeted at those who have already fallen victim to Internet con-men.

Those infinitely malleable 419 scams that harvest personal info from the less cautious among us are now targeting those who have already fallen for the scheme. E-mails are starting to land in in-boxes promising cash compensation to those who have been fleeced by a Nigerian based scam before.

Cory Doctorow from Boing Boing received one recently that read:

THIS IS TO OFFICIALLY INFORM YOU THAT YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED AMONG THE 40 LUCKY VICTIM OF SCAMMED TO BE COMPENSATED WITH $500,000.00.FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS,THIS WAS CONCLUDED BY THE SENATE PRESIDENT OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA,SENATOR wALLIS KELLY WITH DELEGATE FROM THE UNITED NATION AND WORLD BANK AT THE AFRICAN UNION SUMMIT WHICH TOOK PLACE IN ADDIS ABABA IN (ETHIOPIA) AIMED AT REDEEMING THE COUNTRY'S IMAGE AND ALSO TO TRY TO PUT ANEND TO THE INCESSANT SCAM REPORTS BY FOREIGNER ESPECIALLY FROM USA AND AROUND THE GLOBE.YOU HAVE BEEN LISTED AND APPROVED FOR THIS PAYMENT AS ONE OF THE SCAMMED VICTIMS TO BE PAID THIS AMOUNT.

As usual, you should never give out personal information via e-mail, but if you feel so inclined, you can save your fellow human some trouble and engage in a little scam baiting. Every minute spent replying to your e-mails is time the fraudsters aren't trying to prey on someone else. [From: Boing Boing]

Man E-Mails Drawing of Spider to Pay Bills, Becomes Internet Sensation

by Dan Reilly, posted Nov 20th 2008 at 10:22AM

Who knew paying bills could actually be fun? We certainly didn't, but an Australian man changed our minds after he attempted to settle a bill with a drawing of a spider. The prank has since become hugely popular on the Web.

When a utility company rep told David Thorne that he owed them $233.95, he emailed her back with the above drawing of a seven-legged spider, saying that he valued it at exactly the same amount. When the rep refused the payment, he asked her to "return" the drawing, then said it wasn't his because he would've drawn it with eight legs. Thorne continued the correspondence and posted it on his Web site, 27bslash6.com, where he has plenty of other humorous posts.

News of the prank spread and Thorne's site crashed after receiving hundreds of thousands of hits. He's since said that the utility company rep thought it was hilarious, and somebody purchased the spider drawing on eBay for $10,000 without any intent to pay up. You can check out the entire hilarious correspondence here. [From: news.au.com]

Disgruntled Employee Takes Out Company's E-Mail

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Nov 5th 2008 at 2:49PM

Listen closely, we don't want to have to repeat this again: Revenge-hacking your employer's servers is not a good idea. Whether it's a crappy desk location or an unpleasant termination, hacking is never an appropriate method of recourse.

Steven Barnes has been arrested and sentenced to one year in prison after pleading guilty to hacking an Exchange Server run by his former employer, Akimbo Systems. Barnes claims that he hacked into the system in retaliation for being fired in 2003 at the hands of a group of baseball-bat-wielding thugs. He testified that several Akimbo reps showed up on his door step and confiscated both his work and personal PCs.

Months later, Barnes discovered that some login information he had for the company was still valid and that the company had no security features in place to prevent him from taking over the company's e-mail server. Rather than leave well enough alone, the disgruntled employee turned the computer into an open relay server capable of sending large amounts of spam, deleted the companies Exchange database, and damaged critical operating system components so that the machine would crash when rebooted.

Akimbo said that it was unable to send, receive, or access e-mails and was blacklisted by several spam blocking services. Barnes, in addition to spending a year in prison, will have to pay $54,000 in restitution and will serve three years on probation. [From: Ars Technica]

Peek Handheld Device Discounted $20

by Darren Murph, posted Nov 5th 2008 at 7:06AM

The Peek email-only handheld got a peculiar amount of praise given how, shall we say, non-multifaceted is it, but even being atop Time's "Gadget Of The Year" poll couldn't save it from an imminent price cut. Yes friends -- nary two months after this here device began shipping, its creator is already knocking a Jackson off of the purchase price. Sure, the site says "limited time only," but as with Celio's REDFLY, we have all ideas the sticker will be sinking lower before it shoots back up. Monthly service is still situated at $19.95 per month, but you can snag yours now in Black Cherry, Charcoal Gray or Aqua Blue for the low, low price of $79.95.

For more, check out our Hype Check on the Peek.

[Via Gadling]

Candidates Fight Back Against Internet Smears

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Oct 20th 2008 at 5:10PM

If you've been getting most of your information this election cycle via the Internet and e-mail, chances are you've come across a series of rumors about the candidates that are just flatly false. The nature of the Web spreads the flames of these lies like the Santa Ana Winds during the dry season.

The candidates are fighting back as quickly as possible by using the Web themselves. Obama has a whole section of his site dedicated to "fighting the smears," and sites such as Factcheck.org do their best to keep the rhetoric honest. That doesn't stop these rumors from having a negative impact on the campaigns, however, especially when they make the front pages of reputable news papers.

Allow us to do out part to dispel some of these more heinous rumors. Barack Obama is not a Muslim, or a terrorist. John McCain did not admit to being a war criminal. Joe Biden is not being replaced by Hillary Clinton. Trig Palin is Sarah Palin's son. Obama is a natural born U.S. citizen, and McCain didn't cause problems for a resort in Fiji by acting in a way unbecoming of a senator.

Because tracking the origins of these rumors is all but impossible, the best we can do is dispel them as quickly as possible and encourage our readers to view every piece of information that they come across (including things on this site) with a critical eye. [From: CNN]

FBI Raids Apartment of Suspected Palin E-Mail Hacker

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Sep 22nd 2008 at 12:10PM

The wily, if careless, hacker who weaseled his way into Governor Palin's private Yahoo! e-mail account may now be in the cross-hairs of the FBI. According to witnesses on the scene, the apartment of David Kernell, a student at the University of Tennessee who is suspected of the hack, was raided by the FBI after the agency obtained a search warrant.

The agents broke up a party to search the residence and issued subpoenas to Kernell's three roommates. According to some witnesses, Kernell fled the scene, but details surrounding the events are a bit murky.

The hacker, who broke into Palin's e-mail in-box, left a posting late last week on a forum at 4chan explaining how he used publicly available information to change the password for the account. Bloggers and forum members were able to quickly associate the handle used on the posting, rubico, with an e-mail address, rubico10@yahoo.com, which was then connected to Kernell. Authorities were also able to identify the IP address used to break into the account as belonging to Pavlov Media, the ISP that provides access at Kernell's apartment complex.

Kernell has not been charged with any crimes as of yet, but a grand jury hearing is set to begin this week. If convicted, he is expected to serve little if any jail time and be charged with a misdemeanor, though felony charges are possible. [From: Wired]

Don't Let Your Office E-mail Come Back To Haunt You...

by Peter Mychalcewycz, posted Sep 14th 2008 at 2:23PM

Office e-mails are not private.

Some of you are probably reading this while wearily nodding your unemployed head. We know what you're going to say...That the e-mail about Paula/Paul from legal dancing on the bar was hardly private information and that the modern workplace environment has been transformed into an over-sanitized icebox. The latter is true, the former was not.

The fact is, you cannot say anything over office e-mail you couldn't show your boss, who, let's face it, is probably reading your files right now. We want you to protect yourself. We want you to keep your job. Here is a list of suggestions from Asylum that just may save your...Job/Income/Marriage:

1. Don't write anything to one person that you wouldn't be comfortable sending out to everyone else on staff. Okay, we've established that your boss is reading your stuff, but he and other recipients may also be forwarding it. Consequently, your work e-mail account is not the medium for dissing your co-workers.

2. Keep in mind that your boss may be flagging your e-mails with search software. Certain words or phrases may bring his attention to off-color jokes or your flirtatious missives with your office fling (That's a bad idea as well). Keep it professional, because even if you're not slapped with a sexual harassment suit, it might get your boss worried that you will be -- and get him thinking you need to take a permanent vacation.

3. Remember that your company owns your computer and can probably retrieve deleted e-mails from your hard drive. Unless you're an IT whiz who understands the nuts and bolts of a PC, you should work under the premise that you can never make anything totally disappear from your outbox once you've sent it. So, don't imagine you'll be able to just clean up your hard drive and make everything go away.

4. Reread every word of your e-mail before you hit send, and if you're angry, wait a few minutes. This seems fairly obvious, but it's good to make a habit of slowly going over every word that you've written again before hitting send. Typos look bad whenever you send something, but make sure it's clean enough to be on the record for good.

5. The disclaimer at the bottom of your e-mail = pretty worthless. Lots of people append a signature to the bottom of their e-mail to note that the contents of the note are confidential. This may make you feel like there's another level of protection -- and may cause your recipient to think twice before forwarding it -- but it's not legally binding and there are plenty of ways that information can be repurposed by the person who receives it.

6. Be careful with your CCs and BCCs. When you're sending a blast e-mail to many people, it's often good practice not to reveal who all the recipients are to each other. By revealing someone's e-mail address to another person on the list, you may inadvertently be opening them up to unwanted solicitation or a boatload of spam
[From: Asylum]

Ad Agency Mails PowerPoint About Layoffs To Entire Company...Ouch

by Peter Mychalcewycz, posted Sep 4th 2008 at 10:47AM

We don't want to presume that the higher-ups at Carat Ad Agency sent a mass PowerPoint file to all of its employees detailing how some of them were going to be fired as some sadistic power-trip...but we will anyway.

Here's what happened...

Powerpoint files detailing how layoffs should be executed and to whom they would affect was circulated throughout the entire company. Whoops. That stinks.

Ad Age got hold of a copy and summarized it like so:

"Management informed its rank and file of forthcoming layoffs and other changes in Microsoft PowerPoint and Word documents full of "message" points on how people should be told of their fate and what should be said to their still-employed colleagues, clients and vendors. According to one person with knowledge of the memo, it was sent to all staffers before the mistake was realized, and it was pulled back by the IT department. The documents, obtained by Advertising Age and posted with this story, detail talking points for managers as they talk to clients, vendors, the press and employees as Carat tries to navigate the fallout from the news."

[From: ValleyWag]

White House E-Mails Missing

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 24th 2008 at 4:27PM

White House Dragging its Feet on E-Mail Recovery

Remember all those e-mails that went missing at the White House? The Bush administration is hoping you don't. According to an internal memo leaked to the Associate Press (AP) the government is pushing forward with its recovery "effort" the only way it knows how -- completely half-assed.

According to the memo, the White House is missing as much as 225 days worth of e-mail that just so happen to date from the time of the Valerie Plame leak and the Abu Ghraib scandal. The White House is theoretically taking bids from contractors to recover the e-mails, but has no expectation of the work being completed before April of 2009, after the current administration has left office.

According to contractors questioned by the AP, the memo doesn't appear to be a legitimate request for help in the recovery process. The memo says anywhere from 25-225 days of e-mails may be missing. The large discrepancy makes it hard to estimate the man power and time needed to tackle the project. Steve Schooner, co-director of the Government Procurement program at George Washington University said, "Generally, when the scope of the work is expected to fluctuate by a factor of nearly ten, I can only take you so seriously." [From: AOL News]

Online Scammers Targeting Olympics With Bogus E-Mail Sweepstakes

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Aug 12th 2008 at 10:18AM

Any time something major and well-publicized/media-covered happens in the world, there always seems to be a pack of cyber-criminals hanging around like a pack of vultures waiting to take advantage of unsuspecting and careless 'Netizens. An international event as huge as the Olympics is, of course, drawing its fair share of attention, from innocent, enthusiastic fans and ruthless online evildoers.

So watch out, as the BBC is reporting that scammers and thieves are flooding e-mail in-boxes with promises of Olympics-prize packages. But instead of prizes, these e-mails contain boobytrapped links to Olympic-themed Web sites that install malware on your computer. Other e-mails contain a PDF file that if opened infects your PC and turns it into just botnet zombie. These attacks are used to steal personal data and turn your computer into another spam spewing outlet from which to launch more attacks.

Avoiding getting sucked into these scams is pretty easy if you take basic precautions we've outline before:

Never open an attachment from an unknown or untrusted source
Don't follow links in e-mails unless you know for a fact it is legitimate
Keep your antivirus and spyware utilities up to date

[Source: BBC]

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