Taxpayers beware

This week’s post from, CNN.com, titled Beware of tax refund phishing scams, discusses a new scam that is going on related to taxes. The article is about a phishing scam that involves an email message being sent to taxpayers that indicates that they are receive money back, if they provide personal information. However, the information that they want is being given to the wrong people. The big problem with phishing scams is that they look like they are authentic emails from companies, and some even contain company logos.

With thousands of people receiving these emails, even the commissioner of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, Mark Everson, received one himself. This goes to show that literally anyone can be receiving these emails. The people behind this scam are not targetting a certain type of people, but they are targetting anyone who filed taxes.
However, there is one thing to remember during this tax season. The IRS does not send emails, so anyone information you are receiving in your inbox from them is clearly fraudulent.

As I have stated in previous posts, I have been part of a phishing scam before. I was quick to catch it though, and knew right away it was a scam. I have received such emails from AOL, Ebay and Paypal, all asking me to give them personal information to “update my account.” The big problem is that so many people fall victim to phishing scams. One solution stated in the article, is to bookmark certain websites that you visit often, such as financial websites, so if you receive an email with a fradulent email address, you will know that isn’t the ususal website that you go to. With that said, most fradulent websites have an extra letter in them, or a website that has a W in it, would show up as having two v’s. These differences are hard for the user to spot.

If you think that you have received an email that is part of a scam, call the company and ask if they sent the email. It’s better to be safe, than to be sorry.

EXTRA CREDIT- GOOGLE ARTICLE

After reading the article from CNN, called Imagining the Google Future, I think that the second situation, Google is the Internet, is the situation that has the best chance of occurring. I personally think that this could happen even before 2025, since it is only 19 years away. Google has come so far over the past few years, that I think in 19 years they could realistically dominate the Internet. Google is doing so well, that just last week, Google announced their profits increased by 60% in the first quarter.

As the article states, the word Google now means more than just the company located in the Silicon Valley. It is now a verb, “to google,” that is used when people are looking something up on the Internet. It has also become interchangeable with the words Internet and computer. This means that when people look something up on the Internet, the household name is now Google, which means that you use Google to look something up and you "google it." That is why I think Google will become “the Internet.” I also think that it is very realistic that Google will have virtual stores on their Gbrowser, where people can shop and order things online, and that their virtual stores could one day put an end to the days of Ebay. Hopefully their Gbrowser would be better than Internet Explorer and Mozilla, and if so, Google could surely beat the competition with a well developed browser. I am also a current user of Gmail, which makes Outlook Express look like nothing. With Google’s success today, I think that their chance of becoming the Internet is very realistic, and it will be very interesting to see what happens with the future of Google.

MySpace is in the news again

This week’s post from The Connecticut Post Online, titled
Protecting Kids online nothing new for FBI, mentions an oh-so-familiar topic from my blog: MySpace. With the MySpace craze today and the security issues involving the website, MySpace has recently hired a security chief to oversee the websites operations. However, the FBI has been protecting kids online for quite a while. One of the most recent cases involving the FBI on MySpace was when an FBI agent, posing as a 13 year old girl, nabbed a New Hampshire man. When the man set up a meeting with the “girl” he was speaking with, he was greeted with a pair of handcuffs.

The big problem with MySpace is that it allows users to make as much information as they want public. That can include their last name, age, and even their school. Unlike the website, Facebook, that requires a university address to create an account, anyone can join MySpace. The recent problems on MySpace are what prompted them to hire a security chief.

However, most parents believe that internet security is in the hands of the kids, and that they need to be trusted. But what happens when they can’t be trusted? The FBI gives several ways that parents can protect their children online. Programs like Ghostwriter provide parents with every keystroke their child has made. Even checking cookies, no not the kind you eat, but rather the HTTP cookie, can allow parents to see what websites their children have been visiting on Internet.

Hopefully the new security chief at MySpace will help reduce the amount of incidents that occur due to the popular website. Some people think that MySpace will be shut down due to it's lack of security, so it will be very intersting to see what happens with the future of MySpace.

This week’s article, Perils of online dating prompt safety efforts from CNN.com, discusses an issue that I hadn’t even thought about before reading the article; the safety of online dating. Yeah so I’ll admit it, I have played around on those dating sites and found my matches, (it’s actually really fun) but I never once thought about if any of these guys having a criminal record. I actually have a family friend who met his girlfriend on Match.com, and he is no serial killer.

But there is more to online dating than is on the surface. About 700,000 incidents of “intimate partner violence” came from Internet dating. Companies like True.com, who perform background checks on their service, reject about 11 percent of people who apply. Other sites such as Yahoo! and Match.com, which are the industry leaders, only stress online dating safety, but do not perform background checks. MySpace, another free site that allows users to search for romance, also does not perform background checks. Lately, MySpace has been under scrutiny for its lack of security. (see article)

With more people becoming concerned about the issue, companies like Safedate and Honestyonline are increasing in popularity. Honestyonline can come to your home, and even check your bodily fluids to confirm that you are disease-free.

So to all you online readers, be careful. Make sure you check out your prospective suitor before it’s too late.

Job seekers beware!

This week’s article, Keep your online job search in-line from CNN.com, is very important to me, and probably to most of my blog readers. It discusses the dangers of job searching online. About once or twice a week I search online for jobs on websites such as Monster, Careerbuilder or HotJobs. With all of the job searching I have done, I have never once thought that it could be dangerous. However, after reading this article, the potential dangers of job searching online scares me and has me paying more attention to the different employers on the search engines.

People have gotten so smart that when they ask get an employee involved in a check-cashing scam, they have false documents with the company letterhead and false letters of credit. Why would someone be skeptical when they see the company’s logo? That is the exact problem with these scams; they are believable and people are falling to the scams.

Some important tips the article discusses are that online job searchers should make sure that they have an interview with the company, because no legitimate company will hire an employee without first interviewing them. Well duh, doesn’t that make sense? I mean, who in their right mind would accept a position without meeting with someone from the company! Also, when a company asks you to pay a “fee,” you should be suspicious! That is also another obvious one-I mean aren’t the employers supposed to pay the employee?

If you are a victim to these scams online, there is help! If you are skeptical about a job found on Careerbuilder, you can contact the Site Integrity and Compliance department, and they can verify the company’s legitimacy. The Better Business Bureau also allows you to search their database of complaints and inquiries about a company.

So remember, when the job seems too good to be true, it probably is!

Splog: The Newest Spam

This week’s article, Spam Mutates from PCworld.com is about the problem with spam. No, not the ham, but the unsolicited, unwanted messages that are sent over the internet. I am sure that everyone reading this has received spam at some point in their inbox, but now there is a new type of spam.

Splog, AKA spam blog is the newest form of spam. Here’s how it works: Spammers (hope you enjoy the picture of them from pritchettcartoons.com)or “Sploggers” click on the leave a comment button on someone’s blog, and leave an unsolicited message, often with a link to a product they are selling. Luckily, no spammer has hit my blog yet, and hopefully it will stay that way.

Splog has gotten so bad that it has prompted people to quit blogging because it is such a hassle to deal with. Peter Shinbach recently quit doing his blog because of the annoying splog he would receive on his blog each week. Shinbach says, “I’m not in this to spend hours a week cleaning up the mess spammers leave behind.” It sure sounds like splog can be a huge pain in the you know what.

However, there is help. Bloggers plagued by comment spam can use websites like SplogSpot and Splog Reporter. These websites help to filter out information to help reduce the occurrences of splog.

Annoyed much?

This week’s article, Cyberstalking law opens debate on what’s annoying from USA Today talks about a very important bill that was passed on January 5, 2006. This anti-stalking bill “makes it a federal crime to “annoy” someone over the Internet.” This article is near and dear to my heart, as I have been a victim of cyberstalking. No, I have not been threatened or harassed by a person, but I have been annoyed by a company! Getting five emails a day from an online pharmacy is annoying. The picture on the right from Google.com illustrates it perfectly Getting pop-up ads when my pop up blocker is turned off is annoying. So are these companies stalking me over the Internet? Even when I am looking at news on Yahoo.com, when an ad comes up on the welcome page and consumes the whole computer screen, it is annoying!! If I were to interpret the law, I would think that these companies could get in trouble for what they are doing.

Lawyer Barry Steinhardt says “words like threaten harass and abuse can be defined by what a reasonable person understands them to be.” This ambiguity creates a problem, because it let’s each individual person judge what they think is threatening to them.

It will be interesting to see what happens to companies that sell products online and send emails to potential customers. (No, I am not a potential customer for Viagra!) For now, I think the law will stay in effect, but I think there are several problems with it, especially the vagueness of it, that will cause problems in the future.