Things That Just Piss Me Off

Look, anytime you get an email that is not personally addressed to your email address, delete it. Do not open it. That alone will reduce your chances of being scammed by at least 75%.

Then of those that were addressed to you, delete all the ones that are from someone you do not know or from websites you never visited. Now you move your protection level up to about 95% safe from being scammed by email.

The energy department refund scam is one of the latest phishing scams going around. These scammers are experts. They find current trends to use against you. Right now everyone is thinking green. They want to help conserve energy. We always want to save money.

Remember con artists depend on your greed. The emails will tell you that you have a refund coming from the energy department. You will be asked to login somewhere and provide personal information in order to mail you a check.

The energy department never sends refunds to any consumers. NEVER. N E V E R. So if you get that email or one like it, delete it.

Paypal never emails you with “Dear User”. They address you by name. Your bank likely does the same. Any banking email that starts with calling you user or member or some other generic name can be safely deleted.

Anytime you open an email that seems to be from your bank or other financial website you use, never click the links in that email. Never. N E V E R.

I hope you got that. Instead, close that email. Close the email program you use as well. Then open your browser and go to your banking website by typing in the address. You can find out anything you need to know there.

When you are done with a banking session online, logout. Close all browser windows. Then reopen one if you are going to another website. This may all seem like a hassle but if you want to protect yourself from being scammed or having your banking passwords and other info stolen, you need to do these steps.

Ok, rape is a strong word, but the online date chat scam is for real. Are you talking to a real person? Are you talking to the police? Are you talking to a TV News Program? Are you talking to a robot? Are you talking to a girl or a guy?

If you are 18 or older and trying to make dates with girls that are under 18, then you may end up talking to police or end up on TV while trying to explain why you are at some 13-year-old’s house.

We have all seen those shows and we know that those who are doing that deserve their fate.

But recently Date Bots have been running on russian dating websites that know how to actually flirt with you. They can answer questions and make comments that will fool you into thinking you are chatting with a real live girl.

They do this to thousands of online date chatters at once. They attempt to get your personal information. The bots can even send you a picture of themselves. Or rather some girl that looks hot.

The bottom line is do not ever give your personal information to anyone you met in a chat room. You may be lonely and need to chat to people on a dating website, but unless there is some way for the dating website to filter that contact info, like providing you with a way to receive messages on their site rather than using your own email, then you need to understand you may be sending your information to the police, tv news, scammers with datebots, or someone of the opposite sex you believed them to be.

Nothing like finding out that 19 year old cheerleader you have been hitting on actually turning out to be a guy named Harry and it’s also his nickname from those who have seen him.

The datebots that are trying to gather your information through onl;ine chatrooms are hitting russian dating websites right now. Coming to a chatroom near you soon.

There is no end to the people that want to take your hard-earned money away from you. On the Internet they do it mostly by email, but you need to know that a lot of your personal information is out there on the web, such as your phone number and items from your credit report can be obtained easily. They may call you on the phone as well.

The following is about how some scammers will get information about debts you owe and then act like a collection agency to get you to pay them rather than the actual creditor. You’ll pay that money to the scammer and still owe the creditor.

Beware Fake Debt Collection Agencies

Posing as a collection agency representative, the con artist will contact a victim by mail, email or telephone, claiming the person owes a specific dollar amount to a particular company.

To convince victims to wire money to pay the “delinquent accounts,” scammers will threaten to report “overdue bills” to credit bureaus, take some form of legal action or even drain money from victims’ bank accounts without their consent.

Ironically, real “deadbeats” probably wouldn’t fall for this scam, since they have no intention of repaying their creditors. But upright citizens may doubt themselves, thinking they’ve forgotten to pay a bill.

Take the time to check out who is demanding money from you. Call the creditor, (not a phone number the scammer gave you in your email), look up the creditor’s phone number yourself. Resolve it with them directly if it is real. If it isn’t you can click the link below for more info on how to deal with these scammers.

More and more every day American Companies are selling stock in their companies to foreign investors. It’s a great deal for the corporations and stock brokers becaus ethese foriegn investors are willing to pay a lot more than the stock is worth to make the aquisition.

No matter who the investor is, they don’t do anything for nothing. You have to ask that if they are willing to pay more than something is worth, why are they willing to do that?

>From The NYTimes

Shares rose on Monday after a billion-dollar investment deal between Merrill Lynch and the Singapore government raised hopes that wealthy foreign investors would come to the rescue of America’s ailing investment firms.

Investors were cheered by news that Alcoa, the aluminum producer, was selling its packaging and consumer businesses to a company in New Zealand for $2.7 billion. Reynolds Wrap, the kitchen staple, will no longer be an American product.

>From the Washington Post

A report issued by Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Jen estimated that funds such as the United Arab Emirates ADIA ($875 billion), Russia’s stabilization fund ($32 billion) and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings ($100 billion) collectively hold $2.5 trillion in assets — a sum equal to about 18 percent of the value of the S&P 500.

General Electric sold its plastics unit to Saudi Basic Industries Corp. (SABIC), which is 70 percent government owned. The private equity firm Blackstone Group announced that China’s State Investment Co. is buying a 10 percent stake for $3 billion.

This phenomenon presents opportunities for Americans… Portfolio managers on Wall Street are salivating at the idea that China’s government may start rolling cash into the S&P 500 index, for example.

Of course they are salivating. It allows them to make huge commissions while they sell these corporations to foriegn investors. They don’t care what it means to America. They care that they can buy another really cool car or another vacation house.

When governments own companies, that creates the potential for geopolitical mischief. Hugo Chavez has used the Venezuelan government’s shares of Citgo … to poke his fingers in the eyes of the U.S. government. In Russia, Vladimir Putin has used state control of energy companies as a political tool against domestic enemies and a diplomatic tool against Russia’s neighbors.

Foreigners own 45 percent of U.S. publicly held debt, in the form of low-yield government bonds. As long as we pay the interest, the debt doesn’t entitle the foreigners to any say in how we run our Government.

But stock investors have a say in how the corporations they own are run. … One could imagine a day when the Chinese or Saudi government is a top shareholder in blue-chip companies.

What’s more, the foreign state-affiliated companies tend to cluster in industries that have a bearing on national security: logistics, infrastructure, oil, petrochemicals, airlines. Remember the outrage when Dubai Ports World wanted to buy a British company that operated U.S. ports? Or when the Chinese-government-controlled petroleum company CNOOC tried to buy Unocal in August 2005? Expect more of these episodes. China is thought to be setting up a $300 billion investment fund…

Other concerns arise from the prospect of foreign governments acquiring big chunks of corporate America. Fortune 500 companies such as General Electric are comparatively enlightened employers when it comes to issues of gender, race, sexual orientation and religion. Can anybody say the same about Saudi Arabia? What kind of future might a female Jewish engineer with G.E. plastics have at SABIC?

These governments could buy up the controlling interest in these huge corporations. These are the same corporations that exert a huge amount of influence on our politicians and provide the money for their campaigns.

That means that foreign governments could soon be controlling our foriegn policy and even domestic policy. Are you ready for election reform yet?

We either need to get the money out of politics or make laws about how much stock major corporations can sell to foreign investors.

source

This was a comment by one of my subscribers that I wanted to share with others and make sure as many people as possible see it.

In a desperate attempt to get a job, my wife was lead to believe such thing, by heartless telemarketers !!!!

“The U.S. Postal Service is hiring for full-time and part-time employment. Hourly salaries start at $25 an hour. For employment information, call 1-800-555-5555.”

Have you seen advertisements like this in your local newspaper? Postal Inspectors warn that if you should call these promoters for “employment information,” you are probably going to very disappointed.

In most instances, you will find that you are going to have to pay about $30 to receive information of very dubious value. The con artists may lead you to believe you are talking to someone from the U.S. Postal Service, but no postal jobs will be offered.

Frequently, the con artists promoting this “service” offer to provide you with training that they say will help you pass a required Postal Service pre-employment examination. Naturally, this training is expensive and requires you to purchase books, study guides and other training materials.

Those who complete the promoter’s training are often told by the scammers that they will be placed in Postal Service jobs. This produces further disappointment.

Other promoters advertise that they can guarantee that you will be placed on a U.S. Postal Service register of applicants from which new hires are selected. Postal Inspectors warn that such guarantees are false.

For accurate information about career opportunities or application requirements for the U.S. Postal Service, call your local postmaster. This information is free to the public.

Please Note: The United States Postal Service offers study materials free of charge at www.usps.com or your local post office. Publication 60-A is a 32 page orientation guide for exam 473. Publication 60-E is a 32 page orientation guide for exam 460.

http://www.usps.com/postalinspectors/fraud/uspsjobs.htm

Thank you for the heads up on this scam Vic.

I know everyone is concerned about security and we want the FBI to have the tools they need to fight terrorism but we still have to be careful that they do not go to far. Although privacy is not guaranteed specifically in the Constitution, it is implied, like is the part about search and seizure.

“Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to solve crimes and identify criminals and terrorists. The FBI will also retain, upon request by employers, the fingerprints of employees who have undergone criminal background checks so the employers can be notified if employees have brushes with the law.”

I agree with the FBI having the ability to use biometrics. I’m reluctant, but biometrics can really help them catch criminals and identify terrorists. However, the retention of fingerprints so they can notify employers if a person has a brush with the law is going overboard.

As an employer, I do like to know who is working for me. If I employed a terrorist by mistake, I would definitely want to know that. But I do not believe that I have the right to know if one of my employees was questioned about a crime let’s say. That would be a brush with the law. Should I have the right to know that? I don’t think so. If they are convicted of a crime, yes, I should know that. But a conviction notwithstanding, this is an invasion of privacy.

“It’s going to be an essential component of tracking,” said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s enabling the Always On Surveillance Society.”

Are we willing to accept Big Brother to feel a little safer?

Soon, the server at CJIS headquarters will also compare palm prints and, eventually, iris images and face-shape data such as the shape of an earlobe. If all goes as planned, a police officer making a traffic stop or a border agent at an airport could run a 10-fingerprint check on a suspect and within seconds know if the person is on a database of the most wanted criminals and terrorists. An analyst could take palm prints lifted from a crime scene and run them against the expanded database. Intelligence agents could exchange biometric information worldwide.

This sounds good. Again, I just think we should be very careful about the amount of surveillance we allow on US citizens.

More than 55 percent of the search requests now are made for background checks on civilians in sensitive positions in the federal government, and jobs that involve children and the elderly, Bush said. Currently those prints are destroyed or returned when the checks are completed. But the FBI is planning a “rap-back” service, under which employers could ask the FBI to keep employees’ fingerprints in the database, subject to state privacy laws, so that if that employees are ever arrested or charged with a crime, the employers would be notified.

That is the part I take exception to. being arrested does not equal conviction. We are to be assumed innocent until proven guilty. This would and likely will lead to someone being falsely accused of a crime and losing their job as a result. Losing your job means you likely won’t be able to afford an attorney and will have to settle for a public defender. So the disparity of justice for the rich and for the poor would be even wider.

The FBI intends to make both criminal and civilian data available to authorized users, officials said.

It’s that civilian data being available that bothers me. The biometrics are not very accurate yet and they are proceeding anyway. False positives on facial or Iris recognition would lead to the detainment of innocent people by police.

In addition to that, there are many people who can spoof or fake a lot of things. Bar codes have been spoofed. Credit Card Magnetic Strips have been counterfeited.

The information, such as your Iris or Face, or even your earlobe are all biometrics and stored digitally.

If someone spoofs your credit card, you can get a new credit card. If someone digitally spoofs your Iris digitally and commits a crime, what happens then? Let’s say you are found innocent. You still can’t just be issued a new eyeball.

We should be very careful in giving more and more power to our government to use surveillance on US Citizens and we should move slowly in that area to be sure that flaws and false positives are at a minimum before it can be used on US Citizens.

Using it against a known terrorist database, yes, move on it right away. Just take it slow when using it on US Citizens. That’s my opinion anyway.

This will piss off all the mac users out there. Mac users are like Bush supporters. No m,atter what the facts show they will still support it no matter what.

You see all the commercials on tv. mac is more reliable. Mac is more productive. Mac is more secure. Buy this Mac. Are you hypnotized yet?

Well here are some facts for the Mac Users.

Back in April of this year, hackers took over a fully patched Macbook and won $10,000 plus the Macbook they hacked.

Windows XP, Vista, and Mac OS X vulnerability stats for 2007

XP Vista XP + Vista Mac OS X
Total extremely critical 3 1 4 0
Total highly critical 19 12 23 234
Total moderately critical 2 1 3 2
Total less critical 3 1 4 7
Total flaws 34 20 44 243
Average flaws per month 2.83 1.67 3.67 20.25

So this shows that Apple had more than 5 times the number of flaws per month than Windows XP and Vista in 2007, and most of these flaws are serious.

But don’t let facts get in your way. Keep telling people that Macs are better.

Well, finally there is something the spammers are doing that might reduce the number of peolple responding to spam. Right now, if people stopped clicking links in spam emails, the profitablity of spam would go down and along with it the number of spam emails we would receive.

if no one was responding, they would not be making any money and would not continue to send out spam. So you. You know who you are. Stop responding to unsolicited email. You are clogging up the Internet and our email because you are dumb enough to keep clicking on those emails.

If you are not smart enough to use email, then at least set up an email account at gmail so most of it can be filtered for you.

Despite sophistication in ISP e-mail delivery policies and developments by malware services firms, this past year saw spam hit an all time high. According to spam detection services firm Symantec, which monitors more than 450 million inboxes worldwide, spam grew to more than 70% of overall e-mail traffic in 2007.

“There is a lot more money to be made on spam attacks, and spammers are getting more sophisticated,” he said. “Pump-and-dump stock scams — spam that encourages recipients to buy inflated penny stocks at cheap rates, after which spammers sell the stock to profit and then drop the value of the stock — are very profitable.”

As e-mail marketers themselves are embracing new technologies, so are criminals. According to malware detection firm IronPost, spam has become less focused on selling products and more focused on growing spam networks.

If you have ever clicked a link in a spam email, you may now have your computer being used as part of a spam network.

“Earlier versions of spam attacks were primarily selling some type of product such as pharmaceuticals or low interest mortgages,” said Jon Orbeton, strategic product marketing manager at IronPort. “Today’s spam includes an increasing amount of links that point to Web sites distributing malware. This malware is often designed to further extend the size and scale of the bot network that originated the spam in the first place.”

Botnet spam messages are sent out from a host computer, or zombie. These computers can host these botnets for months before being triggered to send spam, usually millions of messages in a very short period of time. This makes them difficult to track and shut down.

So it is not just attachments that you have to avoid anymore. A simple link in a spam email can send you to a website where a virus or malware awaits you. Please stop responding to spam email. get a gmail account, spam arrest or something. Ignore emails you did not sign up for and emails that are not even addressed to you in the first place.

Anyone with a wordpress blog gets spam comments that come from a spambot. I just looked up one of these spambot sales pages and you’d be amazed at the bs on this page.

So go and order extra large hosting packages right now - I’ll teach you step by step how to get thousands of visitors who will make you the money like crazy!

If you make a comment on a blog and link to a website or blog that is not related to your product, services, or topics, then that link has absolutely ZERO SEO value.

So What’s The Secret? Well, I’ll be honest with you - there is no secret. Really. If you will read ANY Search Engine Optimization related book or visit any SEO forum, you will see the only main requirement - to make your website successful, you MUST get as many incoming text links as possible. And if some “experts” sold you crap (e-books, stupid tools, etc.) claiming you will become a millionaire after purchasing their crap, you were scammed. So take your money back and get ready for next-generation tool.

Yet this guy is telling people that exact thing and anyone buying this junk should get their money back. Akismet, the wordpress plugin kicks out most of their crappy links and others are deleted by blog owners. SO you don’t get tons of backlinks and the ones you do get are worthless.

I’m sorry, but I’m not going to tell you how Comment Poster bypasses protection used against automated comments posting. If you don’t want to receive my automated comments - the only way to stop this madness is to remove your website from the Internet

That statement right there should tell you that you should avoid this product and avoid doing business with these people. He is unethical in the way the bot posts comments and is scamming people into believing that these links will help you make money or build link popularity.

If they have no ethics in dealing with the people whose blogs his software posts on, what makes you believe they is ethical in what they tell you?

Nah, I’m not one of these scammers who use dirty tricks to get your money. Most of these dirty tricks used by scammers look like this one - “This software is worth $1000, but if you will order today, you will pay only $300 and I will give you free bonus of $2000 value”. Yes, it’s amazing how many people still believe in this trick and order junk products. But think yourself - what kind of idiot he should be if he is selling $1000 value software for $300? Also their “bonus” is nothing but 100% scam. Everything you will receive - some junk ebooks with links to their affiliate products.

I just love the way they tell you that everyone is a scammer, except them.

Seriously, if you believe that these automated spambots are going to help you make money or build link popularity, then you are too dumb to hold on to your money.