Category: Websites

How companies use Big Data and Analytics

Paul

Big data by Nick Youngson
CC BY-SA 3.0
Pix4free

What is Big Data?

The term “big data” refers to data that is so large, fast or complex that it’s difficult or impossible to process using traditional methods. The act of accessing and storing large amounts of information for analytics has been around a long time.— Sas.com (https://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/big-data/what-is-big-data.html)

Even that information is a little more harder to understand than we think.   Big data is the use of servers with massive hard drive space and massive cpu power to use to analyze and look for patterns or maybe it is even simpler it is a bitcoin rig that is trying to find the hash to make a profit out of.   Either way it requires a big amount of data and processing power to find the right hash to unlock bitcoins.   This is what big data is, it has to analyze the hash and find the possible algorithms to for he bitcoin and make money for the user.   It’s really a long process but the idea is simple it requires a lot of data and sending and receive of data to verify if the bitcoin is unlocked or not and each time it uses even more data to check it hashes as it tries to work out the formula for the bitcoin.  This is what big data is about in a fashion.

Data Analytics

When we talk about analytics it can seem strange to say or even think that a company will use it to make a profit.   It however is the thing in today’s market because most of the time, companies are trying to figure out what the user is wanting and leveraging what they want with making money.   So what’s Analytics and why should I need to know about it?

Analytics is simply the process of looking for patterns in users and data to find common paths and understanding why those paths are being used. 

Let’s face it, Companies want that information because they can figure out how to advertise to you or even bring more people to a landing page to convert into you buying their products or services.  If they know 20 year olds like a certain vehicle or likes a movie, they will advertise to these groups of people and make sure their products are seen more widely to them so they can make a profit from these 20 year olds who didn’t know they were being used to make money from.

Websites

Most websites now are getting as much data as they can to find those common paths to help increase their profit and make money off of the web.  It is always going to be that way, after all advertising is a really good commodity for those who can harness the data and leverage advertisements to people who visit their site.  I say that with some understanding of this because I do this from time to time on my site and it isn’t any harder than what most think.   I am constantly looking at what people are doing or where people are going on my site.   This way I can get the advertisers to advertise for me and bring me some money to help support my website and help support my data needs for the site.  I am hopeful that it will bring even more people to my site and bring them into my world and want to be loyal readers but in reality I also know when I have loyal readers they are more likely to support me and keep my site running in many ways.   This is the nature of analytics and that is why it is so widely used.  After Facebook does this and they know you are know it in one way or another.  In truthfulness we really don’t have any more privacy when we are on the web because everyone is going to use that data for one purpose or another.

 

The Dark side of Dating sites!

Paul


Come to The Dark Side, We have cookies Shirt — Cafepress (Click image to check it out!)

You Don’t know the Power of the Dark Side on Dating sites!

When your looking for that special someone you probably have been on several different sites.  It however is nothing compared to some of the things I’ve seen.   I’d get emails with the heading:

 

  • Someone sent you a Flirt
  • Someone’s Trying to Get in Touch With You!
  • A Zoosk member would like to chat with you on Zoosk
  • A Zoosk member sent you a flirt on Zoosk!
  • Someone wants to meet you!

These are a few of the emails I would get from time on these sites.   Some times it is a legit email and other times.   You have to wonder who comes up with the email.   Most of the time you get emails from people with phone numbers and email addresses they usually use “/” to avoid the filters on the said dating sites.   Now here are a few observations from not being scammed on dating sites!

Ways to tell you it’s a fake profile!

It doesn’t make much since but these people who send you some stuff makes me worry.   For example here are my tips to know if this is a spam and probably just a scam email in the same process.

  • Gives out the Email address the first email!
  • Gives out the text number to text them on the first email!
  • They claim to be living in another country in the first or few emails in!
  • The person profile isn’t complete!
  • The picture on the profile is super hot!

These are just a few observations that tell me a profile is either fake, but it isn’t the only indication.   Usually if I am curious I will still use one of my many email address specifically designed for the spam catching emails addresses.  Just to see if this is a real person or not.   You can usually tell by checking out the email headers.  If you ever want to know for sure this is the best possible way to tell if this email is coming from Germany, Africa, or Some other country besides the one you are on.   It just takes a little patients!  Hope this helps you out!

Paul Sylvester

Amazon Affiliate Link

 

 

JSRedir-R/Gumblar The underlying problem!!

Paul

Some people have made comments about there website being hosted to Malware injection into there site.  I’ve been seing a Lot of talk about JSRedir-R/Gumblar found to be the biggest malware threat on the Web.  They estimate that it is 42% of infected websites to be carrying this malware threat, last week.  I have heard some think it is weak login creditals.

[ad]See the Graph from Sophos about the percentage.  I also wanted to tell people how to identify if you have the infection or not.  This is very important to check because people are letting this Malware spread and all.  

I on the other hand think the way this is spreading is a Cross Site Scripting vulnerability for these websites but there are a few websites that do keep your login cache on your system.   I would recommend if your a web site owner to have your cache deleted everytime you exit your web browser.   This should in theory help prevent Cross Site scripting and Website owners should also either buy [intlink id=”2205″ type=”page”]Anti-virus and Firewall software or install the Free version[/intlink] to better protect your website.

Just like the[intlink id=”3308″ type=”post”]Twitter Cross Site Scripting tom foolery [/intlink]this is my theory on how websites are being injected with this malware.   It is however just a theory.  I was never logged into my account on twitter through my web browser when this happened and that is what kept me from spreading it to my Twitter users.   You should also consider always logging off your web site when your done doing what you do!   Just my thoughts on the matter,  Remember only you can prevent from getting a Virus.

Careless Facebook profiling can lead to Identity Theft!

Paul

I just got in contact with a old friend from High school and another friend of mine suggest the new friend. I was looking at her profile and couldn’t believe what I saw:

Something users shouldn't do!!!As you can see this is not good I was amazed at how many people are giving out there birthdays and who they are married to to friends and family. So we heard about how people are claiming they need help or are in need of desperate money. This is nothing new, as you know people are having hard economy times and people are using the social engineering to scam people out of money.

I feel that I should warn people the important necessity.   You shouldn’t be broadcasting your DOB and who your married to to your friends, just in case they get hacked.

Recent activity indicates that identity thieves are hacking into trustworthy profiles before selling on the login details to interested parties. This information is used by spammers to target legitimate users, posting misleading links on their “walls” – personalized message boards.

[Via Computing.Co.UK]

This deservese a little mind and a lot of understanding.   By the spammers hacking into facebook accounts they have the chance to scam or spam people with links to possibly have a virus or trojan installer.

[ad#ad2-right]For example This one blog talks about the Virus:

Symantec’s Norton Antivirus software has flagged this as a “high risk” Infostealer.Gampass virus. More info on this particular Trojan vius is here. (Note: Symantec warns the risk level is “low,” since it originated in 2006, but this new Facebook email is a new iteration of the same virus.)

You might be inclined to click on this link because it’s from a friend, but they did not intentionally send it to you — and yes, their Facebook photo is attached, too.

[Via Sync-blog]

facebookident2Now I went searching through my friends list and also found this little bit of information.  As you can see this one is asking for people to use there account to scam people out of money.  They could use this to find out even more information of the Other partner and make you believe your talking to the real deal.   Saying they need money because they are stuck over seas or something like that.   I’ve seen this on other blogs where people have sent money to “friends” but are actually people who are the scammers.  Then if you send the money you are out of luck with your money and possibly your friends to.  I am sure there are more but this is prime examples of what you shouldn’t do and why.

So what can you do to prevent Identity Theft and/or being scammed?

    [ad#cricket-right-ez]

  • Roboform Review — A Password Manager that will help protect your passwords from key loggers and other such phishing sites.    I strongly recommend it to to all who are security minded. (Never use the same password for all your accounts)

  • Are you worried about your identity? — This is good information in checking out sites that might be questionable.  You can find out what type of site it by using your brains.

  • Old Phish Become New again — This is blog post about twitter and what may happen if you did give out your password.   This is a good example of why you never should give out your password to third party websites.

  • Twitter Spammers a getting more smarter — This is also good example of what happens when you see become friends with someone who isn’t real.   You could be the next to be spammed and/or impersonated.

If you follow some common steps you to could prevent from being the victim or getting your Identitiy stolen.   Some things to remember is Never tell anyone your Birthday the whole date like someone did on twitter a few days ago.  It’s nice that they are growing older but that gives people that much more information to use to steal your money or your idenitiy.   Think before you give out any personal information like Age, Married, who your married to and anything that might be used to be able to access your account or your impersonate you.  Remember only you can prevent from being scammed or lossing your identity, you wouldn’t want to have to pay for your mistakes.

People coming from Sites that don’t exist

Paul

So I woke up today checking out my sites, and looking outside.   So As I was checking my Stats for my blog.  I cam across a referring site that brought Supposedly Two people to my site.  I looked at the URL for the site:

  • http://trojan.fiftystatesclassifiedads.com/index.php

[ad#ad2-right]So after seeing the “trojan” Prefix and I am wondering if this was an attempt by Malware to infect my domain.   So I go check this domain out.   I got to it and I get a 404.  I then do a Cache Check with OPENDNS.  I also Then decided to see if it was even Registered domain by the doing a Whois.  So I am opening this up to people who might know.   I did do some research and here’s wha I’ve found out so far.

According to How2hack, they talk about how people want privacy and that it might be someone who does not want to be found.  I tend to agree with them, Privacy for Privacy sake is good but if you want to be private you would you even be checking out websites knowing people will want to find out who really is coming to your site.  The How2Hack site also talks about how this might happen and I see where they are coming from.

This was the only site I could find that even looked like it was relevant to what I was searching for.  I don’t see how someone can come to my site saying they were referred by another site and that site does not exist?  Anyone want to try to answer this question and give insight as to why this would happen?