Category: Spam

Why I do not click “Here” in emails and why you should to!!

Paul
 

tools4technow.com

That isn’t going to happen!!

It isn’t like I do not know what might happen, but before I even did anything I check out the link by looking up the domain which if you want to check out what I see you will see the there isn’t really a main site link at the top of the Google search.   Odd isn’t it, well I then looked at the urls that was after the domain name and I found:>

/-wqs-/generallaborer.com/Free/GetStarted.asp?aff=F7288B41-CC5D-4D08-B06C-FB03EF98DEFB

As you can see it looks to be a redirect to “generallaborer.com” with an Affiliate link that means someone gets paid for links that use that link.   You can tell that someone gets paid by the “AFF=”.   I also have my own affiliate links but you will know when I put a link on my site that pays me money when you use my link to buy stuff with.

Spam

It appears to be a scam or a way someone makes money when you sign up with a link to that site.   I do know know what actually happens because I did not click on those links.   I can only assume that it was a link spam and not a scam but I will never truly know and I am not really worried about that type of help from people who try to make money off you without telling you.   

You rarely know what the links really go to from emails.   They can be masked or hidden and you could even get a virus on your computer as easily as you can get one just surfing the net.   It could also make you think your are logging into a site you visit often but in truth you are giving your password away to someone who will use it for all sorts of purposes.   These are the main I will never click on links without some looking up of the domain in question.   You should never click links that your are not expecting or from people who you do not know!   Each one of these should be a first step to prevent something terrible from happening to you or your computer.

 

Ask the Readers: How do you fight text spam?

Paul

Text spam is a constant problem!

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of text spam for the Walmart spam in my text message box!  I’ve really gotten mad at AT&T because it seems that I’ve had nothing but spam from AT&T numbers.  I even tried to explain that to a local AT&T store but they kept trying to tell me what the customer does is their own problem.  In other words, we aren’t the problem type of deal.  I even suggested that they might have a Security Issue where as people have found my Number through their database and I got shot down at that one too.  I’m sure they think they are like Apple and nothing could ever happen to their network.  I’m sure that is far from the truth in their network but I will let the engineers figure that one out!

Nothing but the Truth!

I’ve been getting only AT&T numbers sending spam to me and I’m quite confused, if they don’t have issues then why are spammers using their network.  So far every number, that I’ve looked up in my little app has said that it was Cingular Network, LLC and thus I’ve not seen any spam from any other network since I’ve started using my HTC Android Phone on the AT&T network!  The local customer support said, that I wasn’t on their network but Straight Talk, but yet the APN’s that I used are ATT and not Straight Talk.  Boy, the people should keep up with other cellular networks.  

Don’t Text Stop!

When I went into the local AT&T store, the guy suggested that I reply with the word “STOP” but I’m telling you that is the worst idea possible.  I didn’t sign up to get this spam so I don’t know what the spammer will do when he realizes that I’ve read his message and also received it.   Will he tell other spammers my number and enroll me in even more spam without my permission.  I always encourage people not let the spammer know you read and received their spam message.  Your best bet is to report it and hopefully that will slow or stop the spam all together.  I can however forward the message to SPAM (7726) since I’m on the AT&T network and report the number  that way.  I found that out talking to the guy, so at least I found an easier way to report a number on the AT&T network!

So it’s your turn!

I’m wondering if there is an easier way to fight spam or is this going to be a constant problem.  I will be doing a followup blog post with people’s comments or if they have more questions than answers that they would like me to discuss in detail about.  If you’ve got a question that you can’t seem to figure out.  I encourage you to ask it here and I’ll be sure to discuss it in one of my following blog posts.  This post is all about you and what you want to discuss to me or others and maybe we can come up with some unique ways to fight spam or solve a problem that you have!  If you don’t ask, I can’t help.  So start typing and contact me directly or indirectly by leaving a comment. 

Paul Sylvester

 

How Fake Antivirus writers try to fool you

 

Three ways on how to NOT waste your Money!

 

Companies Just don’t Get it about Spam!

Paul


Referrer Spam is a Big Problem!

As you can see this referrer spam is really malevolent, because of how many times it tries to hit my webpage.   It is on different IPS but they wanted to make sure I know about http://dentistinbrooklyn.org and the Address:

Thanks to one of the referrers, if you look closely you will see one for Google Maps and that Brings here:

Best Dentist In Brooklyn
718-544-4545 (866) 690-2935‎
9644 brooklyn st
Brooklyn, NY 11234

As you can see this company paid some other company to ADVERTISE For them without thinking of the consequences of the questionable company can bring your business to it’s Knees. I don’t say this lightly just by talking about this company and how it is doing business by doing a Refferrer Spam makes the company look bad in my eyes and probably gives you a bad taste in your mouth. When people spam, it makes me wonder just how trustworthy they are. I wouldn’t recommend this company to anyone and you shouldn’t either!! If your looking for a Good trustworthy Dentist, I would recommend checking the Christian Blue Pages and looking their!!


I get my glasses from GlassesUSA. They have a Satisfaction Guarantee and evenPrescription Sunglasess for when your out doors. Give them a try, and I know you’ll like them!

Five ways to reduce spam in your Comments — From my perspective

Paul

With there being so many different ways to rid you self from comment spam. I figured I would suggest some ways to help reduce your spam. On Growmaps Post about Akismet, We were discussing some ways to help reduce spam in her comment moderation and I wanted to post about what I use to help reduce the bots from posting. Anyone can do this because of all the problems we are having with Akismet, I have disabled that on my blog and I haven’t looked back yet.

Having been working to minimize my spam intake.   I have talked about about some email spam problems in the past.  Although there are many reasons why you get spam, the main reason is for someone trying to make money from something they want you to buy or even install!!

As you can see that image I have up shows you the type of spam I get and you probably like me asking yourself why are they trying to leave those comments.   I think I know but this is to help those who might want to get rid of some of the most common comment spam.

  • Bad Behavior Plugin — I am using this plugin with conjunction with my Project Honey Pot to help harvest those bad guys.   This little plugin works in conjunction with Project Honey Pot to determine if it is posting same comments from the same IP.  You will need http:BL API Key to get Bad Behavior to talk to each other.

  • Project Honey Pot — You should understand, there are more than the API KEY.   I installed a few Honeypots on my server to help other content management systems administrators help collect data of possible comment spammers.  This helps others who are trying to fight spam see if there are other sites that this IP is commenting on!!  The more who sign up and install their own honeypots the better off the community is in the long run.

  • WP-Recaptcha — Now this works with logins and Comments to help reduce the amount of possible bots.   Although it is somewhat harder for comments to be written by a true person.   This helps reduce bots but won’t reduce them to much.   You should also protect your Wp-admin subdirectory by using this to help detour scripts from dictionary attacking your password.

  • WP-BAN –  This is proactive solution from just sitting back and doing nothing.   Here you can watch spam and figure out which IP’s are making the most comment spams and prevent them from even accessing your website.   This is great because this will alert the user who has an infected system that can’t access your site and to email the admin.   I haven’t had one of the banned IPS to send me email yet.   So either they don’t want to get on my blog or they are just bots.

  • Comment Spamtrap — This is almost like Project Honey Pot but instead these are hidden to all real users and bots who fill in these forms are reading from HTML and not from the screen. If you fill in all the forms then you will be consider a spammer. So it automatically deletes them or marks them as spam. These are the one that I use to help detour spam bots.

You have to understand in order to fight spam you have to find more than one way to block spam.   I will not be going back to Akismet because I feel I fight back with spam and figure block the ones that I know are spam commenter.     You got to give your comments almost a firewall for bots to get past to get to post comments but there are no guarantees that this will work on all blogs but I do think it is working well with me because of the spam I haven’t gotten in the past few months.   I hope this blog post has helped you and if you know a blogger who is having problems with spam send them to this page.

Have a Good Monday, See you Wednesday!!


I get my glasses from GlassesUSA. They have a Satisfaction Guarantee and evenPrescription Sunglasess for when your out doors. Give them a try, and I know you’ll like them!

How to know if the scareware warning is real or not:

Paul

I got an email from someone who wants not to be named asking how do I know if these sites that I have talked about like Defenderpageblock.com, Spywaredomainlist.com, adwaredomainlists.com, badwaredomainlists.com, browserdefenderlist.com,  malicioussitesblock.com, and browserliveprotection.com are fake warning sites because of how the site handles the URL presented.   Let me give you a few example urls to see what I mean:

http://defenderpageblock.com/block.php?id=2006-54&url=http://paulstechtalk.com/scareware-adviser-from-defenderpageblock-com/

http://browserliveprotection.com/block.php?id=2024-4&url=http://paulstechtalk.com/2008/12/microsoft-readys-to-layoff-around-15000-workers.html/

http://malicioussitesblock.com/block.php?id=2006-54&url=http://paulstechtalk.com/2009/08/list-of-malware-sites-for-aug-24-2009.html/

http://spywaredomainlists.com/block.php?id=2018-2&url=http://paulstechtalk.com/2009/08/scareware-adviser-from-spywaredomainlists-com.html/

http://adwaredomainlists.com/block.php?id=2031&url=http://paulstechtalk.com/2009/04/pc-speedscan-pro-a-bad-idea.html/

Now as you can see al these have an identification number probably like an affiliate link and then the url of the site that is supposed to be bad or have malicious in some way.  So what do you do when you see these types of warning pop up and you would like to know if this real.   Here are some things to try to see if it is real or not:

 

  • change the url it is going to, try Google or some other site that you know isn’t malicious and see what happens.   You will notice it will say the same exact same thing.
  • Check out Stopbadware.org —  Google uses this service for there search results so this would be more reliable and check out the warning domain to see what it says then also check out the domain and website in question.
  • Check out Phishtank.com —  Firefox likes to use this resource for reporting fraud, fake, or Phishing sites and also for sites that are dangerous to  the people who use Firefox.

 

Most of the time, you will see this happen when you are search for the site like Defenderpageblock.com it will use a key word and pop up because they don’t want you to remove this scareware or sometimes called badware.   So if you do a search for the site that keeps popping up and you click on a link the site in question will sometimes try to prevent you from figuring out how to remove it.    All these sites mentioned are associated one way or another to Personal Antivirus Scareware Site and should be removed.

So if your getting these types of warnings, I would recommend downloading: