Month: June 2009

Facebook games having Scareware redirect Sites

Paul

I was on Facebook Yesterday doing my usually just playing one of my games when all of the sudennly this pops out:

powerantiviruscannerv2scam

[ad]As you can see this seems to be another site which is a [intlink id=”3397″ type=”post”]scareware site[/intlink], the site Powerantivirusscannerv2.com is trying to [intlink id=”3607″ type=”post”]scare you into buying a fake antivirus.[/intlink]   I don’t know if it was Facebook doing this or if I got the redirect cookie somewhere else.    Although if you have downloaded the program that they want you to install or even think you have this fake antivirus installed, Spywareremove has the information needed to remove off your system.  It seems they are going to use social sites more and more and you should be careful.  I also have some good resources like [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Free Anti-virus and Free firewalls[/intlink] that would help protect you from this threat.

Somethings to consider when you see something like this pop up are?  Do you have antivirus or a firewall?  If so, then you shouldn’t be worried to much.   Always look to see if you can see if it is a webpage and not from the system.  This is something the scammers are always trying to do to get your money.  Remember these sites are not really a trustworthy site and should be avoided at all cost.  I also recommend using the[intlink id=”2362″ type=”post”] Hijackthis software[/intlink] to look for these rogue softwares in your system to better protect your system.

Remember not everything is real or truthfull on the internet with proper research and understanding you won’t be making those rash decisions.   Only you can prevent you system from being infected.

The behind the scenes of the bad guys

Paul

Photo by freezelight Photo by freezelight

Have you ever wondered how they find out your Email address or even find out your name or so called shipping address.   I’ve been wondering that for quite some time and have went researching online for the reason.  You see I’ve been getting spam email with my name and address  like this “Possible Check Pending [Last Name] [Mailing Address] Sender : Pam [Last Name]“

That email was a “Kevin Hoeffer” scam that advertise getting you money from Google, called the Cash Secret club.   Suffice it to say that the Rip of Reports all say this is a scam.  Seems they try to fool you into paying $1.99 and then charge an extra $98 after you give them your information.  The Domain that I looked up is protected by Whoisguard.com.  So I reported to them about this spam, this is a sure way to get off there list.  Reporting spam will black list you from getting spam because to there major providers.  That cost them money, if everyone did that the spammers would be stopped.  Although I think society as a whole isn’t even trying to fight the spam this way they just try to keep it under control.  I believe that if 10% of the spam is reported then we are making the spammers and scammers  pay for their misdeeds.

[ad]So I went searching for the reason behind how they got my information and I found Email Finder, which offers people email address or it offers to find out all that is out there to find about the particular email address.  Such as Name, last known address, social networks, and it goes on.  They do have an Opt-out policy where you can request not be listed, I advise everyone to go check and see if your listed.  You would have to pay to get the information but I if you see the screen where they said they have found information that is enough for me to opt out.   Actually it only cost the scammers and spammers $1.95 a month to use this service so they are making money in the long run.  You should also do an SEO Search on your email address  in Yahoo, Google, Bing and Other services to see if your email is out on the web.

There is a FAQ file on how Spammers Get your Email address, I strongly recommend people at least looking at it because it is still quite relevant to today’s spam.  I’ve also seen ways to Detect spam by using Bayesian filter but most companies now a days are using that from the get go.   Remember only you can prevent spam and from getting scammed, So do your research.

All RSS feeds are being Redirected

Paul

As of Today I am making all RSS feeds go to Feedburner, so if you are having trouble by all means drop me a line.  I am using FD Feedburner Plugin for WordPress, so I don’t know how well this will work.   I just wanted to keep up to date on the amount of people actually viewing my feed.

In order for this to work though I had to publish a post.  According to FD Feedburner Plugin Support site they say:

Known Issue

After you configure your feed, due to caching it probably won’t redirect to Feedburner until you make a new post.

So if you have problems after this post let me know and we will address them if you want to subscribe to the feedburner feed that will help prevent some of the problems.

*Update 6/12/09 9:00 pm*
I had to redirect with the .htaccess to actually do it.   So from now on every Feed will go to Feedreader.  So now it is fixed for permantly and should not change anything to the feed in anyway, this was just a statistical need for me to know how many people are actually subscribed to my feed.   Still if there is a problem let me know!!

The Frustrations of Wordrpess 2.8

Paul

Photo By Nicholas Wang Photo By Nicholas Wang

WordPress 2.8 was released Yesterday morning, and by Yesterday afternoon people were complaining about it.  Some of the issues seemed to steam from a minor template change in 2.8 to prevent people from editing or using Plugins.

Now I have talked about [intlink id=”3171″ type=”post”]backing up important data[/intlink], that includes your website.   You will never know when that back up software will be valueable and when you need to restore it.

Just like everyone else I have had problems with my ability to update my blog or update my Advertising.  Although unlike others who have a lot of widgets on the sidebar for there users, mine are html and not a plugin version.   Although I didn’t have as much problems as others, I did however have problems with the Back up process.   I used WordPress Database Backup and I had the file that it gave me but the PHPMyAdmin would not restore the database that I was given from the plugin.   So in the process of trying to fix my database, I had a few hours of downtime on my blog.  If your a regular visitor you might of seen the message “Database Error” when you visted my site.  I have since then fixed the problem With the help of my support team to get my website back up and running.

[ad]I know the WordPress Database Backup plugin is good for 99% of people but I am going to assume that with the difficulties of this restore with the PHPMyAdmin,  I will be looking for some other PHP Database editor that will work just as good as that one.  Until then I will be doing a Manual back up of my Database because that way I know of having a working copy of my Database in case of a problem down the road.  If someone has a good Plugin or an Alternative to PHPMyAdmin by all means leave me a comment and I’ll check it out or you can [intlink id=”995″ type=”page”]email me[/intlink] and let me know.

I still love WordPress because of it not being open source and more transportable onto other servers unlike Blogger, but there will always be those bumps in the road.   I will always advise people to backup before doing anything major from a system upgrade to a website upgrade.   I hope others have not had this problem as I have but mine might of been just the luck of the draw with all the problems, you know what they say “When it rains, it pours” but there is a silver lining to this.  I have learned more about website backups then I previously did.