In *my* day, phishing was done properly

07 Jun 2005

I tell you what, phishing attacks ain’t what they used to be. It used to be that internet hucksters really tried their best to make their pitches seems realistic, but I feel like the scam artists are just getting plain old sloppy. Take a look at the latest in my inbox. I’ve taken the liberty of marking obvious spelling errors in red:

From: paypal@mail.paypal.com

Subject: Security Center Advisory

Date: June 6, 2005 8:02:55 AM CEST

To: Jack


We Recently noticed one or more attempts to log in to your PayPal account from foreign IP adress and we have reasons to believe that your account was hijacked by a third party without your authorization


If you recently noticed one or more attempts your account while traveling, the unusual log in attempts may have been initiated by you. However, if your are rightful holder of the account, click on the link below to log into your account and fallow the intrusctions.


https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=login-run


If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choise but not tempor aly suspend account.


We ask that you fallow at least 72 hours for the case to be investigated and we strongly recomanded to verify your account in that time.


If you recived this notice and you are not the authorized account holder, please be aware that it is in violation of PayPal policy to represent oneself as another PayPal user.Such action may also be in violation of local, national, and/or international law. Paypal is misappropriate at the request of law enforment agencies to ensure that perpetrators are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.


Thanks for your patiance as we work togheter to protect your account.


Sincerly,
PayPal Account Review Department
PayPal, an ebay Company

• Please do not respond to this e-mail adress as your reply will not be recived
  

Don’t even get me started on the grammar; the bad spelling just screams out “bullshit!” Not that I’m super-uptight about spelling or anything, but the super-scary warning supposedly from paypal lost its effect when they “recomanded” me to “fallow the intrusctions”.

For some reason I feel a little sorry for these jackasses, so I offer up some tips in the interests of helping my fellow men (even when they are maggots):

• Use a spell-checker before sending out your text.


• Have a native English speaker proofread your text.


• Don’t include ludicrous warnings like “don’t reply to this email, we won’t get it”. What kind of company sends warnings by email but can’t receive email in return? Think, dumbass!


• If you must include a paragraph warning people not to break they law (working under the assumption that people will automatically believe anyone who quotes laws at them), at least try to make some sense. “Paypal is misappropriate at the request of law enforment…” ??? That dog won’t hunt, slim.


• Above all, try to think up a plausible story as to why the mark should click your link and give up their password. I mean, what’s with this warning about a “foreign IP address”? Foreign compared to what? You mean it’s not an address in the US? Or what? And how the hell would you know? And do you know what country the mark is in? This kind of bullshit just shows that the person who wrote it not only can’t write clearly, they can’t even think clearly.

Hopefully these tips will help improve the quality of the phishing attempts I get in my email. If not, I’m going to have to give you all a big fat F pretty soon. Read on →

Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

05 Jun 2005

This link was passed to me by James:

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=7591

This is a “top ten” (plus lots of “honorable mentions”) compiled by a bunch of conservervate, errr, “thinkers”.

The list includes some obvious punching bags for the right (The Communist Manifesto), at least one obvious punching bag for most everyone (Mein Kampf), but a bunch of titles that I’m frankly surprised that any group of intelligent people, including plenty of college professors, can consider to be “harmful”. For example:

• 
  The Kinsey Report


• 
  John Dewey’s Democracy and Education


• 
  John Stuart Mills’ On Liberty


• 
  Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed

Sure, if I were a conservative I would probably consider most of these works uncomfortable, or unpleasant, but harmful? How detached from reality does one need to be, to consider “Unsafe at Any Speed” harmful?

Read on →

Bill Moyers

17 May 2005

I just read this transcript of Bill Moyers talking about the NOW show he used to host on PBS before retiring. Living in Sweden as I do, I’ve never seen the show (except for short clips here and there), but I have read transcripts now and then, and have great respect for Bill Moyers as a journalist.

So I was curious what the deal was when I read that PBS leadership had been pressed by right wingers in the administration into trying to make PBS more “balanced” (i.e. make them tow the party line). Fortunately Bill Moyers has come forward to talk about these events and share some opinions. Here are some good bits.

On his detractors:

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.

And here’s a good bit:

Hear me: an unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.

You the man, Bill.

Read on →

Tiger Bush Panic

29 Apr 2005

I’ve just released BushPanic 1.0.1. This is a bugfix release, so far built only for Mac. The bugs fixed are:

• The last level was inherently unwinnable. You couldn’t even really get a fair start. This is fixed.


• The 1.0.0 release turned out to not work on Mac OS X 10.4 (“Tiger”). This is now fixed.

Go to the BushPanic page to download the latest badness.

Read on →

hooray internet

10 Feb 2005

Comments are back online. I’ve fixed things so that the spamming won’t occur again, hopefully.

Read on →