click – Paul's Tech Talk

Oh My I got the Presidents Attention!!

PaulFebruary 25, 2009

I just got an email telling me:

Barack H Obama (PresidentBarak) is now following your updates on Twitter.

So I go to the click the link and I see this:

Wow, I didn’t know I was this influental to get the Presidents attention(NOT).

http://www.economygrantprogram.com/

After checking out the profile I see that it has a link to a site that basically asking for your personal address and your email account. After I go check the site I see in really small catch you have to pay 3.95 for Shipping and Handling. Well You know what they say, nothing ever is Free. This looks to be a way to get email addresses to spam in the long run. I wouldn’t give them any information because this is looking to be a scam and I hate scams. You best bet is to go on with your life and report this spam to twitter. This however got my attention because of the who it was, and that is probably why they chose the name. It is however quite funny. 🙂

Careless Facebook profiling can lead to Identity Theft!

PaulFebruary 19, 2009

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:

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]

Now 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?

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.

Tech Journalist breaks the silence — Journalist got Pwned!!

PaulFebruary 18, 2009

It was another ordinary day for this tech journalist. He had just waken up from his lovely dreams and hadn’t realized that he was being baited with Phish. Yes that is correct he actually gave out his password to an Phish site and didn’t know it.

I have to admit that he didn’t hide it, in fact he decided to post about how he got Pwned and what happened.

The Face Of A Facebook Phishing Scam
[Click Picture to see the full story]

[ad#ad2-right]As you can see the site : Facebookcom.awardspace.com is a phishing site and should never give out your information to third parties. Some things to remember if you get an email with a link sometimes won’t send you to the real link. This can be easily done just like blogging. You don’t know where you will end up when you click an email link. One thing to remember is if in doubt log into facebook the old fashion way and see for yourself.

You could be the next person to have your Identity taken away from you. So what should you do to prevent this type of phishing attacks, assume any email you get from Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and Any other Social Sites to be a possible phish email. These are always going to be a problem for these sites. The spammers want access to be able to spam your friends and family with links, or to make you look foolish. This is the reason they do it for Money or just for laughs.

One thing to remember is having a strong password will make it that much harder for you to be phished because if you can’t remember it you will be more careful. I will keep preaching this having a good Firewall and Anti-virus will also prevent you from getting viruses from these type of phishing attacks. It will also make it much more harder to go to sites that smell like Phish. Remember only you can keep your identity a secret.

Twitter Spam bots are hot to trot: http://gentai.com/revenge1

PaulDecember 29, 2008

Ok so I was curious why I all of the sudden got people joining my list. each one I look at just to see who these people are have only one twitter message saying this from two different accounts:

and this one also

and once you click that link it takes you to this website and see what they want you to do:

These people are trying to get you to click on there links and [ad#ad2-left-1]get you give them email accounts. This has been socially engineered to look like it is real. I gave them a 10 min email account to see what they sent me. It was a link to there porn site. Wanting me to give them my credit card or checking account information and to join there site. I don’t think so, not this old dog. Anyways if you get this spam from a user you might just want to block these people. Some of these people have followers. Hmm I don’t know about these people. I guess they want you to send an email to other people to spam them also. How nice of them to social engineer this scheme so you can make your friends and family mad at you and probably not even talk to you. So that is why it is good not to auto-follow people when they subscribe to your twitter account. Some people have that set. Some people just don’t learn. I am sure some people will like this site for other reasons but please don’t spam people with this little site. Please don’t put people on that list.

Warning Signs of Hard Drive Trouble

PaulDecember 22, 2008

For every computer there comes a time when you have a problem with hardware or software. This is for those who want to learn the signs of possible fixes for having hard drive problems. Although if you know you’re hard drive is dieing then you better back it up as quickly as possible. You will of course need to get the back up software to protect your data. If you have special drivers you will need to backup yours drivers. If you have an OEM system then you will need to backup the Hidden Partition.

So what are the warning signs of a hard drive failure:

Unexpected freezing of Windows — When Windows Locks up and you have to reboot or getting a Blue Screen of Death. You have no choice but to restart because you can’t do anything with windows.

Losing data files — if you seem to see files being lost or deleted without your direct input. It might be a sign of a computer virus or it could be a damaged hard drive.

Locking up during boot — this is most common when you have a hard drive failure, although if you can restart and not be a problem then just keep in mind that it might be the beginning. The more frequent you have the lockup boot problems the more chance of the hard drive dieing.

Hard drive isn’t recognized in BIOS– Although this can be a old hard drive, if the bios can’t see it then the problem might be a hard drive failure, usually this is meaning you just have to replace the hard drive. there’s isn’t much you can do with this problem, just replace the hard drive. Most of the time it is a problem inside the Hard drive bios and you really can’t fix this, you’d have to send it off to possibly save the hard drive data.

Clicking, Scratching, Whirling, Grinding sounds from Hard drive — This is the most dangerous signs of hard drive failure and means you need to get your data off ASAP. If you want to hear some of the waring sounds of a dieing hard drive click here.

Although some of these can or can not be a hard drive failure, some can be driver issure or disk defragmentation and should be check out to rule out these problems. There can be several problems that might be easily fixed. If you think it is a failure you might try Spinrite. The program is made by Steve Gibson and he actually has a “Absolute Satisfaction Guarantee“. So if it doesn’t work or your not satisfied you aren’t out any money. I’ve used this in the past for hard drives that are dieing so I could get all the important data off before it died all together. It is essential that if you can get it working for a short time to get a backup.

Disclaimer: Although spinrite might fix some of the problems associated with a hard drive failure, it might not fix all the problems or any problems. So it is left up to the user to decide if it is worth it or not to buy it. I don’t recommend this for every situation or every problem only for the off chance that it might let you get the important data off the computer before you lose it. Use at your own risk.