Fred Langa: What comes next?: woodland trail in morning

Fred Langa: What comes next?: woodland trail in morning

BlogSpot Makes You Jump Through Hoops

If you made a complaint to BlogSpot about a thief stealing your Yahoo Groups posts , you probably got in your email what I did. A nicely worded canned response telling us we have to fax our request with a long list of what to include. We can also write the request. Then they will investigate. (One look at the blogs in question would be enough!) In other words, they want us to jump through hoops to get their thieving blog members taken down. They want EACH post where information was compromised! It would take a very long time to provide that! There are thousands of Yahoo posts on those blogs!

It took over two weeks for them to bother with this response. I guess this is what happens when you get too big and don’t really care about the ‘little guys’. In case you didn’t know, BlogSpot, not everyone has access to fax machines!

To date I have identified 21 Yahoo Groups that are being copied to this skunk’s blogs (4). If this makes him enough money by driving surfers to his site he will surely make more blogs and steal from more Yahoo Groups. So if you have a Yahoo Group and you care about protecting your members email addresses and the confidential posts, you have to be on guard. Unless you can identify the thief, Yahoo can’t (or won’t) help you. Unless you have plenty of time and access to a fax machine, BlogSpot won’t help you. Even if you do have time and access to a fax, it will take awhile for BlogSpot to do anything, if in fact they do.

I have always been a fan of Google. I am very disappointed in this side of their operation. They have joined the ranks of companies with disappearing customer service.

You are on your own, Yahoo Groups!

(Don't bother asking me for the thief's blog, I am not sending traffic his way if I can help it.)

Martha
Martha's Web

Update! Hooray at last! The blog is gone! But 3 of 4 are still up. Maybe the Yahoo Groups with their messages being posted to those blogs will act and get them taken down.

Blog Thieves and Why They Steal From Yahoo Groups

There are only two reasons for a blog to steal content from Yahoo Groups.

1. A lazy way to get content to drive traffic to the blog.

2. Greed. Traffic is being driven to the blog for one reason, there are ads on the blog. Ads by Google and other ads. This can 'earn' the blogger money with no further effort on the blogger's part.

Ok, there may be another reason, just to see if they can do it.

However, you can bet the reason is 'too lazy to get legitimate content and greed'.

At the time of this writing, there are at least four blogs exposing at least seventeen Yahoo Groups' private messages for the world to see. Some of them have their email addresses exposed to spam email harvesters. No doubt there are more blogs like this out there, finding them all could be a chore.

I guess BlogSpot thinks these sites are ok and that copying private Yahoo Groups message posts is OK. I say this because many complaints to BlogSpot about DMCA Violation Notice for copyright were ignored by BlogSpot. Either that or no one is monitoring the forms posted for Copyright/Privacy. I would think someone should be monitoring those requests as this is a serious issue and should not have been ignored.
Otherwise take the form down

Yahoo Groups need to be on alert.

No one is looking out for you, Yahoo Groups. Be vigilant!

One more thing, if you find your Yahoo Group is being compromised, look here.

Martha
Martha's Web

Thought About Vista

By now, unless you have been living on a dessert island, you've heard all about Vista. Most of what you have heard is probably not too good. But what is the real truth? Is Vista bad? Is Vista good? Is it better than Windows XP?
From my prospective, here is what I think.

It depends.
It depends on whether or not a user upgraded to Vista over another version of Windows, generally Windows XP.

There are so many variables with upgrading it would be impossible to cover all the senarios. How old was the computer? What kind of video card did it have? (I've seen a lot of problems due to video cards) Is there a new driver that is for Vista for the card?
It depends maybe on what version of Vista was used for the upgrade. This may be stretching a bit and I have no way of knowing if this could be a factor. I think if someone had a good computer running Windows XP, the old saying 'If it ain't broke don't fix it' would have been good advice.

A whole lot of users bought a new computer with Vista installed. They don't like it for any number of reasons. A lot of the gripes are about external hardware like printers or scanners that won't work with Vista. While this may come as a big surprise to some folks, the same thing happened when Windows XP was new. Everyone blames Microsoft for printers, scanners, etc. that won't work with Vista. Microsoft does not sell printers or scanners. Microsoft sells software. Printer and scanner makers write drivers to make their products work. If they don't see fit to write a Vista-compatible driver for their older products, this is probably not Microsoft's fault. Microsoft was supposed to have let all of these folks know what is needed to make those older products work, but the makers of printers and scanners want customers to buy new products so they didn't write new drivers for old products.

Another gripe about Vista is a lot of older software does not work with Vista. (The same thing happened when Windows XP was new.) Some users are complaining that Vista is too slow. There are a number of reasons why this may be happening. Older software that does run, but was not written for Vista could be causing the slowdown. Too many resource hungry programs running in the background can slow any computer down. Since I am not a hardware person I don't really know if there are any hardware configurations that could cause Vista to run slow, but it seems to me that could be a possibility. I do know that no two computers are exactly alike. Two seemingly identical computers can in fact work very differently and over time, one can be running like a top and the other running like a slug.

Perhaps one of the biggest grips is the UAC (User Access Control), one of the biggest security features in Vista. Most of the so-called experts just turn it off and thus remove the security for Vista.

My experience with Vista is pretty good. I absolutely hated it at first, but once I found my way around and discovered how to be 'the boss', I like Vista. There are some things I don't like, Internet Explorer for one and the buggy Windows Mail, but since I use Firefox to web browse and Outlook 2007 for email, those things don't bother me much. However I do think Microsoft made a huge mistake with the changes they made from Outlook Express to Windows Mail (it's buggy). Microsoft chose not fix the bugs in Windows Mail and gave users the option to download Windows Live Mail. My experience with Windows Live Mail was no better than Windows Mail. (Why oh why does Microsoft give some of their products such similar names?) Mozilla's Thunderbird probably has gained a lot of users.

Martha
Martha's Web

TXU is Spamming Me!

My electric company is TXU, which was recently sold to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and TPG, formerly the Texas Pacific Group, both are private equity firms.

The sale is supposed to make our rates go down, according to all the hype during the transitional period when the sale was in the process of being approved by the powers that have the option to approve such transactions.

Deregulation took place in Texas several years ago. Deregulation was supposed to be good for consumers and make prices go down. Except it didn't happen. Before deregulation Texas has rates that were among the lowest in the US. After deregulation we now have the highest rates in the Nation. Two years ago TXU's rates jumped 25% within a two month period! All the new electric companies raised rates as well, so where is that competive price option to save us money?

The rates have come down a bit since then, but nowhere near 25%. The 'new' TXU is offering some new plans that will supposedly save consumers money. The only problem with the plans is they are so confusing it is hard to see how they will save any money. One is offering a 3% cash rebate. Now those folks who know me know exactly how I feel about rebates! I may be looking for a new electric provider.

The icing on the cake, so to speak, came in my inbox this AM. Spam from TXU! Two spams to be exact! One was wanting me to 'refer a friend' and I don't remember the other one but it was something about wanting us to sign up for a new plan .I signed up years ago to get a notice when the electric bill was available online. (Our local postal service may or may not deliver the bill by snail mail.) I signed up for the notification only, not to receive spam! Furthermore, there was no option to remove my email address to prevent these spam messages! So I just blocked future messages using my trusty spam filter.

I went to TXU's website to review their Privacy Policy and nowhere does it say they will or will not send me messages other than the one I signed up to receive. Not only that, the site is hard to read, with a light gray text on white background. I had to copy it all and paste it in to notepad in order to read it! However I am slightly outraged
and I will be checking offers by some of the other electric providers in Texas. (I really, really hate spam!) The only problem with other companies, how do I know they won't spam me as well?

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Spam in My Gmail Account

I have more than one G-mail account and use them all. I really like G-mail's spam filters because for all but one of my G-mail accounts very seldom (read almost never!) does a spam email hit my Inbox. Until about three months ago, this was true for all of my G-mail accounts.

I very foolishly used one account to sign up for something from a corporation I thought could be trusted not to sell my email address. I should have known better! Upon reading the privacy policy in depth, I found the following:

A. Strategic Partners
"From time to time we may enter into a special relationship with another company that is not owned or affiliated with the (edited) Company. These special relationships may include business partners, sponsors and co-branded sites (referred here as "co-branded pages"). Any information, including personal information, that you provide on one of these co-branded pages will be shared with these third party partners. By participating in activities or providing your information on these co-branded pages, you also consent to our providing your personal information to those third parties. Since these third parties will use your information in accordance with their own privacy practices, you should check their web sites for information regarding their privacy policies."

No place does it tell me exactly 'who' these third parties are or how I can find out. So in effect by signing up, I gave them permission to give my email address to anyone they choose who may decide to sell my information and/or actively spam my email address!

So the fact that this account is now literally a spam account it is mostly my own fault for trusting! Folks, on the Internet you can't trust major companies to respect your privacy. I suspect if you read the 'privacy policies' of any major company that offers a free service you will find it is a 'privacy NOT policy'.

But I am wondering why G-mail doesn't seem to be able to determine that all of this junk email is spam when the other accounts don't have this problem!

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Educate!

I wish I could wave a magic wand and educate computer users! I really just wish they would use their brains and read about security before they blindly connect to the Internet and click on every link on every page and every link in email.

Admittedly, the news media is a 'bit' slow warning about new schemes to entrap computer users.

I guess I am day dreaming about educating folks who just don't read because they can't be bothered. Some are like an elderly relative of mine who once told me "They couldn't print it if it wasn't true" and believed everything the media printed or said, regardless of the source. These are the folks who buy from sp*mmers, and believe all of the hoax emails they receive. These are the folks that keep the Nigerian scammers in business.

Please, please! Follow these rules!

Never connect your computer to the Internet without a virus scanner! NEVER! (Yes I am shouting, I have to get through to you somehow!)
Make sure the virus definitions are updated!
If you think you must use Internet Explorer, TURN ACTIVEX OFF!
Use spyware scanners, at least three! Everyday!
Use a firewall! One that will tell you if something is trying to 'phone home' (spyware). This means a third party firewall. Windows firewall in Windows XP will NOT do this.

Keep Window updated! Microsoft doesn't send out security updates to aggravate you, they send them out to close security holes that let scumbags get in to your computer.

When reading email, do NOT click on links in email from people you don't know. NEVER! NEVER! I repeat, NEVER!
There are hundreds, maybe thousands of 'Zombie' computers sending out emails hoping you will click one of those links and if you do, your computer will probably be a 'Zombie computer as well.

Delete unopened emails from strangers! Delete emails with attachments from friends, unless you are expecting them.

In case you don't know what a 'Zombie' computer is, it is a computer that has been infected by a worm that enables spammers, virus writers, etc. to take over a computer and cause it to send out more emails to unsuspecting people that will click on links and you guessed it, turn their computers into 'Zombies'.

If you fell for the latest scam and clicked the link in the greeting card (post card, ecard, egreeting card) email that is flooding in-boxes every day, you probably have a Zombie' computer already. Have fun re-installing Windows and I hope you have a backup of all your important files.

Martha

Martha's Web