It is not at all surprising that a sinking economy runs parallel to rising crime. When income opportunities are scarce the scams increase and generally feed on fear, greed and need.

We do all kinds of things as second nature because we know it is the safe and smart thing to do.
Like locking the door or wearing a seatbelt.
When I was kid nobody did either.

Crime happened in big cities and I lived in a small town. Eventually though the freeway encroached as did crime form the nearest big town and the closer the threat got to home the more people adapted to protective behavior.

Before the World Wide Web started becoming popular there were internet “communities” of sorts, beginning with the military, then education, science, technology then came business, then everyone. It was sort of like watching a small town grow. While the expansion meant many more services and a better infrastructure, it also meant there was a population explosion. Suddenly there were strangers, impostors and bad guys invading the citadels of the information age. Email and electronic texting has virtually replaced memos and letter writing.

Ladies and Gentlemen Fasten Your Seatbelts and Keep Your Identity Safe Throughout The Ride

Doing business on the web and communicating via email and text messaging has become so commonplace that thumbs twitch if there is in not a device handy for more than 5 minutes at the dinner table!

How Safe Are You?

• What do you know about the safety of the information you are sending?
• Who can see it?
• Who could steal it?
• Who could use it?
• Where is it stored?

How Sure Are You?
Someone sends you an email with information…

• Where did the information come from?
• Who says that it is true?

What you do NOT know can hurt you!

We all need to expand our Internet Intelligence. We need to take the time to ask the right questions and be sure before we place ourselves or those we care about at risk.

“In 1996, Americans with Internet access spent fewer than 30 minutes a month surfing the Web, according to Steve Coffey, who’s now the chief research officer of the market research firm the NPD Group.” ~ Jurassic Web By Farhad Manjoo

NOTES: (1) Internet Usage and World Population
Statistics are for December 31, 2009. (2) CLICK on each world
region name for detailed regional usage information. (3)
Demographic (Population) numbers are based on data from
the US Census Bureau
. (4) Internet usage
information comes from data published by Nielsen Online , by the International Telecommunications
Union ,
by GfK , local Regulators and other
reliable sources. (5) For definitions, disclaimer, and navigation
help, please refer to the < Site Surfing
Guide .
(6) Information in this site may be cited, giving the due credit
to www.internetworldstats.com. Copyright © 2001 – 2010,
Miniwatts Marketing Group. All rights reserved
worldwide.

Tags: custom solution, fraud, identity theft, impostors, information age, internet communities, internet intelligence, letter writing, memos, protective behavior, Scams, second nature, texting, wearing a seatbelt

We are blocking more incoming mail to our mail servers than ever before.  First we are blocking some entire countries from reaching us and then we are blocking service providers and unmanaged goofballs. After that we get to the nitty-griity of specific IP address of evil doers.

Anything that makes it past that we run Bayesian filters on. Each user on our system is invited and encouraged to “Learn Ham” and “Learn Spam” on their own mail to assist the filters but most users leave that to us. We have mail accounts they can send the headers of repeat offenses so we can specially analyze the problems.  Many of the problems are actually “BCAK” -  “Between The Chair and Keyboard” . It seems that training spam systems and Bayesian filters is MUCH easier than training users!

SOME THINGS  I HAVE LEARNED

There are few mistakes that I see all the time:

• Online purchases  – watch the check boxes and read the terms – most users AGREE to get future updates and email. When you get email from them IT IS NOT SPAM!
• Forwarding forwarded mail – (with tons of email addresses included) nothing like passing lists to spammers!
• Sending email with tons of email addresses in the TO: or CC: line (The spammers love you)
• Clicking “Unsubscribe” on emails you never requested in the first place validates that you are a receiving address. (Note: this is different from places your actually gave your address to)
• VACATION and “AWAY” messages… really do you need to do that? Every spam you get while you are gone automatically validates your address to the spammers.

Tags: Spam and DeSpam

I am seeing an increase of spoofed email going around regarding
google ad word accounts, creditcard, bank updates, and other “account” updates.

Common spoofs are links to domains that are spelled “like” valid business domains.
Many of these links are to pages that contain viruses and malware.

The emails themselves may contain nothing more than “familiar” looking copy and/or images and a link
- the virus scanning software on the mail server and your computer do not find anything to remove.

Because the content of the email carries so much information that “looks like” information you would
normally want, the spam filters do not necessarily tag it.

The danger is on the page you would hit if you click the link.

Security Recommendations:
Don’t click on any links in emails.

Instead:  Bookmark the “home page” of the companies you have accounts with.

From the Business home page you should be able to navigate to the area required to manage your account.

If you train yourself to not click on links in emails it soon becomes second nature and is not
really all that time consuming, especially when compare to the time required to recover from
identity fraud or computer viruses.

Tags: business domains, computer viruses, email, email security, fraud, identity theft, mail server, security recommendations, spoofs, valid business, virus scanning software

We all have bits of information that others want or may find useful.

A blog is a wonder place to share this information in an organised, flexible, editable and scalable format.

Need ideas?

• Blog about what you know.
• Blog about what you love.
• Blog about the information you have that others seek most frequently.

Tags: blog content