Martha's Web Blog

Lost in Cyberspace

2011-08-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

Somewhere between Gmail and Outlook, an email vanished. I looked everywhere, but to no avail. Since I always check Gmail in the AM before I open Outlook, I did see the email so I know it was there. It came yesterday into Gmail but it never came into my Outlook which stays open all day once I open it.

So where did it go? All of the other messages received in Gmail downloaded into Outlook, but not this one. It's not in the Inbox or the folder where it should have filtered. Not in the junk mail folder, the deleted folder or anywhere else. It just didn't download.

So now I am wondering. Did all of the extra stuff Google has added to Gmail 'break' something? Or is Outlook having hiccups?

So now I start to think; I have seen some replies to emails that I don't recall seeing. Hmm, I will check my Yahoo mail online. (I have two email accounts that download mail into Outlook.) I know I turned the SPAM filter off, but just in case I looked. There were 41 legitimate emails in the SPAM filter! Is Yahoo playing a 'gotcha' on me?

I reset the settings, so now I will check to see if more legitimate email goes to the SPAM filter. I think too much is happening with Google and Yahoo, each wanting to be a 'Social Network', and stuff may be getting broken along the way.

Why did you give that website my email address?

2011-06-12T07:27:00.000-07:00

When you joined that social network, probably Facebook, did you give them my email address? Why? I didn't tell you that it was OK.

"Oh no", you say "I would never do that!"

Well, if you gave them the password for your email account, you just gave them 'my' email address, along with everyone else's email address in your address book. Now the social network is spamming everyone in your address book. While the spam is an invitation to join you on your social network, it is still spam. And that spam goes to everyone more than once if the original spam is not accepted.

If you did give them your email password, (which has compromised your email account!) I highly recommend you get busy right away and change the email account password to something very secure so any hackers on the social network will not be able to steal your email account.

Stealing my email address!

2011-04-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

There is a blog that was stealing posts from one of my Yahoo Groups. In addition to private messages being exposed, so were email addresses.

Before this blog was set up I NEVER got SPAM for this email address. Now I am getting SPAM, more than likely due to some web scrapping for email addresses.

Numerous requests have failed to remove this thieving blog. We did stop the thief from posting more messages and email addresses, but the offending blog is still there.

Why Blogger? Why won't you remove this scummy blog? Do you want the spammers to have our email addresses? Is it because it is a Yahoo group?

Martha

Spam in My Gmail Account

2008-12-01T11:50:00.000-08:00

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

BlogSpot Makes You Jump Through Hoops

2008-04-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-14T08:28:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-10T16:35:00.000-07:00

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!

2007-12-04T07:24:00.000-08:00

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

Educate!

2007-09-08T14:39:00.000-07:00

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

A Follow up Mystery on Poor 'jackass'!

2007-07-28T11:24:00.000-07:00

Something funny going on here! The domain name 'wallasasa.com' was "Created On: 24-Jul-2007 00:00:00" according to Whois.

Now is this a coincidence? Created on the same day as my original post about jackass@wallasasa.com? Did someone decide to get a domain name that seems to already be out there? Did poor jackass@wallasasa.com just make up the email address so he/she could spam websites? The mystery deepens!

The biggest question for me is why would anyone want a domain name associated with a spammer? Did poor jackass decide to make his email address legitimate at last? Why would he as it would finally lead a trail back to his infinite spamming?

Ah, who knows what wallasasa.com will eventually become? Or will it be just another domain parked somewhere in cyberspace? Burning questions not but it does make me wonder!

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

And an FYI, wallasasa.com is apparently supposed to be a site for finding other sites that contain records. And unless you really like pop-ups and pop-unders, avoid this site, to find what you want, use Google instead!

Poor 'jackass'!

2007-07-24T11:17:00.000-07:00

Who is this poor fellow "jackass@wallasasa.com"?

I first noticed him when he (she?) starting spamming the feedback form on my website, Martha's Web. Being curious about so many user names with all the same email address, I Googled the email address. Wow, over 12,000 hits!

I think he must be very lonely! Maybe he is a druggie trying to kick the habit! He uses user names like 'Drug abuse rehab', 'Substance abuse treatment program' or 'Alcohol and drug abuse treatment center'. Maybe he wants to move! He also uses user names like 'mover houston', 'dallas movers' or 'moving company houston'. maybe he doesn't like where he lives and wants to come to Texas.

Poor 'jackass'! He has way too much time on his hands! He seems to be very fond of website guest books and contact forms. And he isn't discriminating, either. He puts his email address on forms everywhere, regardless of language!

So far I have identified Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Czech, Arabic, Hindu and some other languages I am not sure about. He likes English sites as well, U.S., Canada, British, etc.

He really isn't very original in his user names after all. Since I looked at the various 'hits' on Google, I see he is adopting domain names for his user names.

While he is rather annoying, spam filters are catching his Feedback entries for me. It's just too bad this poor 'jackass' has nothing better to do than harass website owners. Just think, if he had been doing something constructive in the time he wasted 'spamming' web forms, he could have become rich or famous, not 'infamous'!

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

'Zoom' in Outlook 2007

2007-04-20T18:21:00.000-07:00

I am using Outlook 2007. When replying to a message in HTML format, I somehow managed to get into a 'Zoom' mode of only 10%. This made the message totally unreadable of course and I could not see what I was typing. I tried forwarding the message, same thing. I tried another message in text format, same thing.

Since I don't recall ever seeing 'Zoom' in previous versions of Outlook, I had no idea what was going on. A search of Microsoft's Outlook 2007 site was a search in vain. Since I didn't know I was in 'Zoom' 10%, I had no inkling that I should be searching on 'Zoom'.

I am persistent and started looking through every one of the countless menus that are now in Outlook 2007, depending on what you are doing. Menus in new messages, replying or forwarding seem to have 'growed like Topsy'! (As far as that goes, all menus in Office 2007 seem to be a lot more and until I got a tad familiar with the way they are done, very hard to navigate.)

Just about the time I thought the update for Outlook 2007 that I had installed earlier had somehow broken Outlook, I discovered 'Zoom'. I guess it could come in handy, but I sure would like to know how I managed to get 'Zoom' with 10% in the first place, as I certainly didn't knowingly set that in place!

I just wish there was a 'Zoom' for some of the menus and buttons, especially those teeny arrows at the top for previous and next messages.

And FYI, that earlier update I installed was to make Outlook 2007 stop being so sluggish, and by golly it worked!

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Vista is Growing on Me

2007-04-20T18:09:00.000-07:00

I have a new notebook that came with Vista Ultimate installed. In the first few days of owning this notebook, I seriously considered wiping the drive and installing Windows XP Pro. Vista wouldn't let me do what I wanted to do! Vista wouldn't let me open some files or folders!

Humph, this is MY computer and no operating system is going to stop me from opening, looking and/or editing a folder or file if I need to edit it. It isn't as though I was going to go willy nilly changing things that shouldn't be changed.

However, I am persistent and finally figured out how to get to where I wanted and 'take ownership' of those files and folders.

I am beginning to like Vista a lot. I don't use a huge number of programs and so far, every program I think I have to have installed is working just fine. The exception is the firewall I want, Zone Alarm, and ZoneLabs has a working beta for Vista. I don't do betas much, they have caused me to do a comple reinstall of Windows in the past. So I am relying on Vista's firewall and the firewall in my router.

I have tested several virus scanners that work in Vista. I finally went with Nod32. I should have gone with Nod32 years ago. Such a light footprint, not intrusive and does the job. Better than most according to the sites that do security reviews!

A lot of folks don't like the UAC (User Access Control) in Vista. Some of the folks that don't like UAC are also those folks that complain about the lack of security in Windows. I am learning to live with UAC, although there is a way to turn it off, I want the security.

One of the things that Microsoft finally got right in Vista is Search. I am always filing things where I shouldn't, especially if I am in a hurry. Sometimes I give files titles that I don't remember days later. But with Vista search, all I have to do is put a word or phrase in the search field and Vista finds it. I love it! Windows XP is still a great OS, but Search in XP leaves a lot to be desired.

Vista is also pretty! I love my 'eye candy' and see no reason not to have it. I will admit there are still a lot of things in Vista that I still need to get used to, but i am getting there.

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

If it Has a Rebate, Don't Buy it!

2006-10-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

Hoodwink, bamboozle or what ever you want to call it, manufacturers and retailers are sometimes guilty of this:
'Concealing one's true motives from especially by elaborately feigning good intentions so as to gain an end.'

This is the practice of offering a rebate or gift card for x amount of $ if the consumer purchases a certain product. What happens:

1. The consumer sees an ad offering a product at what seems to be a really good price and fails to notice the fine print stating the price is after mail in rebate.

2. The consumer goes ahead and buys the product thinking (very naively) the money/gift card will be a nice bonus when it arrives. Hopefully they will receive it eventually.

3. The consumer takes the product home. If the customer reads the fine print about what is necessary to receive the rebate and dutifully fills out the form/forms correctly, finds the proof of purchase on the product, copies and mails all of the required information, they MAY receive the promised check/gift card in anywhere from five to twelve weeks.

4. A lot of times the consumer makes a mistake on the forms or uses the wrong form.
(This happened to me once, the retailer gave me the wrong rebate slip and dummy me failed to notice it. Rebate denied!)

5. Other times consumers just forget about it as it takes time to collect copy and mail all of the required information. This is exactly what the manufacturers and retailers are hoping will happen. They have already enticed the consumer to buy and they have the consumer's money. They really don't want to have to give some of it back.

In the past I have had some very good experiences with rebates. The best was for Microsoft. I purchased a tax program that offered a rebate on Microsoft Money if I purchase both together, as well as a rebate for the tax program. I got the rebate from Microsoft in less than a month and the rebate for Taxcut came shortly hereafter.

But there have been some bad experiences with rebates as well. Two of these I have already documented on my blog, Home Depot and Symantec. The Symantec fiasco made me very unhappy, as a result I will never ever buy another product from Symantec. The Home Depot gift card was a really fun experience! Took a lot of phone calls and four months to get that all taken care of, but at least I did finally get the promised cards.

Now I am waiting on another rebate check, this time from Samsung. In July I purchase a Samsung computer monitor from Circuit city. I did not purchase it because it had rebates offered (two), but because it was the monitor I wanted. Since the rebates were offered, I completed and copied the requested forms and mailed them the very same day. One was for Circuit City ($30) and one was for Samsung ($50). After all, that is $80 and I would be a fool not to send for the money!

In less than six weeks I received the rebate from Circuit City. I kept checking with Samsung's rebate site and the site had no record of receiving the rebate request. I called the phone number on the site and received information it could take twelve weeks.

OK, I waited. Finally the information was there, but they were denying the rebate! The reason? They said it was postmarked after the offer date range! Now I know sometimes items are postmarked the day after they are mailed, but I mailed that rebate on July 18 and they said it was postmarked on Sept 22. No way!

I called the center again and spoke to a guy with a very strong accent who told me I would be receiving a card in the mail with instructions on how to get this resolved and get my rebate. He said the card was mailed on October 3rd. He assured me once I received the card and called again, it would all be taken care of.

The mail came today, October 17, and still no card. So I called again and this time I spoke to a girl who also had an accent. She looked up my record and I explained the entry for the postmark was an error. She put me on hold for a minute and then came back and asked me to hold again. In a minute she came back and told me I would receive the $50 rebate check in four weeks. I thanked her and hung up. (While I was on hold, I looked up the address for the Attorney General of the State ofTexas. If I don't receive the check, I will use the address!)

I had previously decided never to buy a product just because it had a rebate/gift card offer. I have modified my decision to this,I will never buy a product IF it has a rebate offer! Never! The whole concept of rebates/gift cards is just a method to entice consumers and in some instances, try to hoodwink, bamboozle or otherwise cheat! I firmly believe that Home Depot and Samsung had no intention to actually send the promised rebates/gift cards unless I followed up and kept following up. I hope I am wrong, but circumstances have led me to believe this.

I am aware that manufacturers and retailers may be outsourcing the rebate offers to consumers and are not aware of the aggravation this is causing. Generally though, a resource center employed by a business only follows guidelines that are provided to them by that business. It would be in their best interests to check to see how these centers are handling requests.

If a business is offering a rebate, it is bad enough that a consumer has to go through all of the process of getting together all the requested material, filling out the forms, copying everything and then putting postage on it and taking it to mail. It should not be necessary for a consumer to have to call and call, wait and wait before obtaining what has been promised at the point of sale.

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Update: I finally received the rebate from Samsung, on November 24. It took over 4 months! If I hadn't challenged Samsung about the postmark, I would never have received it. This whole process only confirms my belief that rebate options are an open invitation to fraud that many companies are perpetrating on unsuspecting customers.

Why no 'Other'?

2006-08-26T10:06:00.000-07:00

I use the Internet a lot. I mean a LOT! I wonder what I did before the Internet was available! I shop, compare services, check companies for quality ratings (I use AngiesList), I use email including Yahoo Groups and I have two personal websites and a website for a charity and one for a Yahoo group.

If it is possible to contact any business or service using email, I much prefer that to using the telephone. One reason for that is the endless tripe you have to hear before you get to the right department (if you are lucky) and awful hold music that most businesses seem to think will keep you entertained while you are on indefinite hold. Some of the 'menus' you are subjected to makes me wonder what idiot came up with the whole concept in the first place? (I rather suspect some of them, in spite of the extremely annoying "Your call is important to us" message, hope you will give up and hangup in frustration so they won't have to address your issue. Have you ever noticed that none of the menu options are what you need? Why don't they have an option for 'Other'?

Email is usually much simpler. You can type what you want and press send and that is that. That is IF you can find an email address! So many sites just don't provide a contact email any more and if they do, you get a scripted response that does not seem as though anyone really read what you sent. This is pretty frustrating as well. Sometimes after lots of searching you can find a sitemap and see 'Contact' listed. Don't get your hopes up just yet. It could be a form to fill out, that's no problem, well maybe it is.

I am using a pretty nifty little utility know as 'SiteAdvisor'. It is extremely popular with folks in the know as it identifies sites that have questionable content that could possibly expose your computer to malware. I really like this service, provided free, at least for now, to users by McAfee a very well know and popular provider of virus scanners, firewalls and other security products.
The problem is, today all at once I am getting a warning everytime I go to a site I know is ok. The warning is as follows:
"You have attempted to establish a connection with "dss2.siteadvisor.com". however the security certificate presented belongs to "dss1.siteadvisor.com". It is possible, though unlikely, that someone may be trying to intercept your communication with this web site.

If you suspect the certificate shown does not belong to "dss2.siteadvissor.com", please cancel the connection and notify the site administrator."

I would dearly love to notify the site administrator! I have searched this site for contact information to no avail. The only contact form I have found wants me to input what the question is about, it lists all of the programs McAfee sells, but I guess since it isn't selling SiteAdvisor they don't plan to support it in any way.
The SiteAdvisor site wants me to 'signup' before it will let me contact anyone. On the feedback page I am given five options and I have to choose one.

1.Submit a site for testing
Select this option and get a field to input an url for a site.
2.Leave user comments about a site
Select this option and you have to signup to be a reviewer before anything else can happen.
3.Leave comments as a site owner
Select this option and get: Once you become verified as a site owner you can post a comment on your site's report page.
4.General McAfee product support
Select this and get redirected to McAfee's Technical support for their commercial products. If you click on the tecnical support links, there is no option for SiteAdvisor!
5.Contact our business team
Guess what, you get an email address for someone there! I already know this would be an exercise in frustration!

Why no option for Other? My guess is they don't want to be bothered. I suspect this is the same reason you don't get an option for Other on those endless, pratling phone menus!

I am still using SiteAdvisor and hoping the stressful warning will soon disappear.

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Practicing What I Preach

2006-07-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

July 19

Don't do as I do, do as I say!

Sometimes I learn the hard way not to take shortcuts and yesterday I had it brought home to me.

I 'know' to turn off all running programs including virus scanners when installing a program. I also 'know' it is much better to uninstall an old program and then install an upgrade.

However, just because I know better, doesn't mean I did it that way yesterday! SpySweeper, my very most favorite spyware scanner, has a new program upgrade. I downloaded the upgrade and proceded to install it.

Not finished with real dummy stuff, the same day I had gone to the Windows Update site and updated Windows. (I think I should have waited!)

All of a sudden, my system seemed to be dragging. Some programs would open, but not run. In order to close them, I had to do a hard boot. No Task Manager would come up. I could open some programs that worked ok, but one of my games caused a blue screen when I exited. What the heck is going on? Maybe System Restore would work. So I did a restore from the day before the troubles all started.

Things seemed to be working ok, so back to Windows update and updated again. No more problems, the updates seem to be ok.

So what was causing the problems I had earlier? Memory failing? Harddisk problems?

After a frustrating entire afternoon of trying to troubleshoot the problems, the 'Great Light' dawned. There was a problem with the new SpySweeper install. Since I had done the System Restore, I needed to upgrade it again. Then I figured out I needed to do what I have always said to do, uninstall and then reinstall, never upgrade over a previous version. I looked for the license code and couldn't find it. I ALWAYS put the license code in a text file in the download folder for a paid program, but not this time! I had to go to Webroot's site and request the license code be sent to me. (Sigh!)

As soon as I got the code, I uninstalled SpySweeper and rebooted the computer. Then I stopped the virus scanner and installed the new version of SpySweeper.

The computer was like new again, running oh so fast. Programs opened, ran as advertised and closed with no problems.

Lesson learned. Even though some upgrades say you don't need to uninstall to upgrade, my advise is this: Unless the program upgrade specifically says "Do Not Uninstall the old version", uninstall the old version! Be sure to disable your virus scanner as well. When they say to close all running programs at the beginning of an install, they mean it and don't forget the virus scanner!

(And make sure you know where your license codes are for downloaded programs!)

Oh, yes, the reason I couldn't find the license code for SpySweeper in the download folder, I originally installed it from a CD I bought at Fry's. The license code is on the CD envelope. Duh!

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Cheap Gas is Gone Forver

2006-05-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

We need to get over it. Europe has been paying these high prices for a long time, however, their prices have been high due to taxes. The problems are too many people (countries) chasing too few barrels of crude. That may be a very simplified version of the problem, but it is only going to get worse as more and more of the developing countries' appetites increase for energy.

Then there is the 'greed' factor. As long as people are willing to pay for energy the prices will not go down. This will cause the divide between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' to grow wider. The obscene profits by the major oil companies shows just what the greed factor is about. They have us all just where they want us. We are too dependant on our gas gulping cars and ever more electronic goodies that need more and more energy. It isn't just the oil companies, it is the oil-rich countries as well.

There is also the undisputable fact that there is only so much oil on this planet and sooner or later it is going to be (gasp) gone. Finished! Caput! No more! We need to be furiously looking for alternative energy sources and economical ways to make them available to everyone, including the 'have nots'. If the major oil companies would invest just a fraction of those obscene profits into research, it might happen, but I'm not sure they will. But when the oil is gone, the profits be gone as well.

I know it is popular to blame the President, Congress or whoever is in charge for the high price of fuel. The last time I checked, they have no control over what the price of crude may be at any time. True, some of the policies set by government probably have an impact on prices, but I really don't think it is the government's fault that gas is so high priced. I don't think it is their fault that we had so many hurricanes, tornados, wildfires, etc., either!

Martha

Martha's Web
Martha's Place

Mr. or Mrs. Know-it-all

2006-05-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

At some time or other, almost everyone has had a Mr or Mrs Know-it-all in their life. It could be a family member or a co-worker or maybe just a casual acquaintance. However or whenever, this person can be very obnoxious and irritating to most folks.

I had a family member that was a 'know-it-all'. If you found a bargain, she found a better one. If you had a good experience, she had a one just like it, only better. If you had a bad day, she had a worse one. If you just learned something, she couldn't believe you didn't know that! The rest of the family tolerated her, well, because she was 'Family'! For me she is now no longer a member of my family, but that's another story.

Occasionally, a 'know-it-all' will be on an email list or group. Eventually, the 'know-it-all' cause so many complaints that the list or group either dies or the 'know-it-all' is removed. That's too bad, because this one probably needs to be
accepted and could provide assistance and knowledge if it was presented in a manner other than 'know-it-all'.

Sometimes we encounter a 'know-it-all' that really doesn't know it all or anything at all, just pretends to 'know'. Unfortunately this can lead to problems if this individual makes people believe what he/she says. This can lead to more problems for those who believe everything the 'know-it-all' says.

Why do people become 'know-it-alls'? Probably because they are insecure individuals desperate for attention. They probably mean well, they just don't know how to get the attention they want any other way. They may think because they have 'an answer' for everything, folks will admire them and give them the attention they seek, while in reality they are having the opposite effect.

Martha

Martha's Web

Martha's Place

Another Software Spasm

2006-04-12T18:54:00.000-07:00

(This is a followup to a post I made last August, Software Spasms.)

I like to play games but in no way am I a 'Gamer'. I like the simple games like MahJong or Spider Solitaire. Every once in a while I will try a new game and usually I just delete it after two or three sessions. But a while back I found a puzzle type game that I really liked and I bought it. When a sequel was released, I downloaded the sequel and bought it as well.

This was on Saturday, April 8, 2006.
So I installed it, clicked the icon to open it and waited. And waited. It didn't open. I checked in Task Manager and there it was, running, but it wouldn't open. Hmm, this has a familiar ring! I tried uninstalling it and reinstalling, no go. I re-downloaded it and tried again. Still it wouldn't open.

Frustration set in and I decided to contact support and I sent them an email. After three days I heard from them. They more or less told me to do what I had already done, but I wanted to tell them I did everything they suggested and on the off chance there was a new download, I again re-downloaded the game and reinstalled it.

Did it open? No, but Task Manger showed it was running. Sigh! Remembering my previous problem with a 'software spasm', I stopped my spyware program from running in the backgound. No go, the game still wouldn't open. So I tried something else. I stopped my anti-virus program, and now the game opened. It worked just fine.

So if I want to play the game, I 'pause' my antivirus, just long enough for the game to open. Once the game is running, the anti-virus can run in the background and there are no problems.

Who can say what is going on? I wonder how many people are trying to install programs that won't work because of a conflict with another program? More than likely they are blaming the wrong thing for their software that doesn't work!

Ethics on the WWW ?

2006-03-18T07:03:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of 'free' stuff on the World Wide Web. Just about everyone likes free stuff, who wouldn't? But sometimes the 'free' stuff really isn't free, in order to get the free stuff you have to make a compromise of some sort, like agree to view ads, or let someone follow your web surfing. (This is how a lot of spyware gets planted on computers!)

What some people may not realize or stop to think about, software offered for 'free' is still the result of someone's labor. Really free software is usually offered because there really are folks, who for whatever reason, are offering software they wrote because of their own need. Once it was written they have decided to share with others the fruits of their labor.

Sometimes these folks decide to keep making improvements to their product and eventually the programs become very substantial and are no longer free, but become 'shareware'. A very well known graphics program started out this way and a lot of others as well. After all, it takes work to write, test and rewrite software. Really good software program writers deserve to receive compensation for their work.

So when unscrupulous thugs try to take advantage of someone else's hard work and offer 'cracks' for software, the people who go for it are in fact, thieves as well. Most of these same people who use 'crack' software probably would never dream of shoplifting or breaking in to someone's business and home to steal merchandise, but they are in effect stealing someone else's hard work.

There are also some 'work-arounds' offered for services. One that comes to mind is a program that offers to allow a user to get around the requirement that Yahoo email must be a paid for (premium) service in order to allow downloaded emails of their popular email service to a user's computer. Again, this is in effect stealing!

Why an otherwise honest person decides to take advantage of a 'crack' and steal is simply beyond me. I can only surmise that these folks just don't stop to think or maybe it's because they just decide they want it, so get it and phooey on ethics!

Martha
Martha's Web

Stealing My Bandwidth Part II

2006-01-07T18:43:00.000-08:00

Last time I said if the offenders stealing bandwidth did not remove the hotlinked image from their pages I would publish the thieving pages.

Due to circumstances beyond my control I have been unable to identify all of the bandwidth thieves (My site was down due to server problems and there are still problems with the statistics server) but I have identified 13 of the offenders, four of which have honored my request to remove the hotlink.

I am sure there are more, however they were not contacted with a request to remove the hotlink.

These were asked and chose to ignore the request.

http://www.myspace.com/doknock
http://myspace.com/shawnhag
http://www.myspace.com/samara_553
http://www.myspace.com/fairybug
http://www.myspace.com/synx
http://www.myspace.com/worldsgreatestdad
http://www.myspace.com/heyitscolleen
http://www.myspace.com/bowlingkev300
http://www.myspace.com/feliciahogan

Repeated requests to MySpace have been ignored as well. As soon as I find the time, I will identify the individual IP addresses and request my host to block them.

Isn't it fun on the Internet?

Martha

Martha's Web

Stealing My Bandwidth

2006-01-03T09:48:00.000-08:00

The Internet is loaded with clever and/or pretty eye candy. This consists of joke files usually in the form of jpg or animated gif files or photos which are in various file types like jpg, png, etc.

A lot of owners of personal web sites like to use these files to liven up their pages or to convey a theme. Some of them make their own image files or use files created by talented folks. There are a number of these files that the creators have given open permission to copy (save) and use on personal web sites. Notice the word 'copy'. If a website owner 'copies' the file and pastes it to their own site, this will cause a 'hit' on the original owner's site every time the image is accessed on the 'copied' site. This is known as 'hotlinking' files. Most of the sites that provide these free files have a notice that users should save the files to their computers and not use the 'hotlinking' procedure.

Hotlinking can cause the original owner big bucks if their images are used on a lot of sites using the 'copy and paste' method of adding images. Every time a 'hit' on the copied image a bit of bandwidth is used on the original owner's site. If the image is fairly large, like a photo being used for a background, this can cause quite a lot of bandwidth for the original owner to foot the bill. Even if the image is small, if enough 'hits' (times accessed) are made, it can cause the bandwidth bill to get big!

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people using free services for personal pages that really do not have a clue about real websites, hotlinking or bandwidth theft.Two of the biggest free service for pages described as online diaries and journals, rofiles, blogs, etc., are Xanga.com and MySpace.com.

Once the users for these pages discovered images on my website, the hits on my bandwidth went ballistic! Over 5000 hits for the month of December alone! This has caused me to work overtime trying to stop or disuade these users. Educating them would probably work best, for which I have enlisted the help of a friend who joined MySpace for just that purpose! (Thanks, Enon!)

Some of the users are trying to do the right thing, but a request from one just brought an email with obsenities!

I hope they will comply with my request to remove the hotlink from their pages, if not, I will publish the offenders' names and page addresses here on January 6.

Some terms in this article explained:

Bandwidth

Hotlinking

Until later,

Martha

Martha's Web

Hotlinking!

2005-12-26T20:44:00.000-08:00

Everyone who has a website can relate to how frustrating it is to have other sites 'hotlinking' to images or other files on their website. I have tried various ways to stop this practice, but to no avail. I tried blocking the domains (culprits), but that also blocked some legitimate users as well. So had to unblock the offenders. Next I renamed the files and 'edited' (changed the files to something really ugly and put my website address on the files) the hotlinked files. That worked to a point, some of the offenders view their sites more often than others, but one persistant hotlinker just went back and linked to the new file name.

One remedy that worked, I removed the file altogether. Sort of drastic, but that worked. Sure got a lot of 404s after that, though.

Two of the worst offenders for hotlinking are MySpace.com and Xanga.com. Yesterday I had over 500 hits from MySpace, all from hotlinking.

Today I had a friend who is a member of MySpace.com, email four of the known hotlinkers and explain what hotlinking is and how to save images and upload them rather than hotlink. I doubt that will do much good as the people that use MySpace don't have a clue about websites. MySpace is rather notorious for this behavior. I did email them to let them know they have people hotlinking to my site, I got a very stupid reply from them.

Their reply:

Hi there!

We are currently experiencing errors with the I.M. (Instant Messenger), we apologize for the inconvenience. We are currently doing our best to make this service operate properly. Please bear with us, as we anticipate these changes to take place very soon.

Thanks!

MySpace.com

Notice I said I emailed them, I didn't IM them! Guess if they don't like the message they just send a 'dumb' response.

If anyone has a better answer, sure would like to know about it!

Martha

As a footnote here, if the offenders do not remove the hotlink from their pages by January 5, I am going to publish the links to their sites.

Martha's Web

Rebates and Gift Cards, Same Old, Same Old

2005-12-25T15:43:00.000-08:00

The newest hook to get consumers to buy merchandise, gift cards! Buy a new fridge, get a gift card by mail. Buy a new computer, get a gift card by mail. I think I have heard this con, I mean come on, before only they were calling it rebates.

At least if he or she did receive the rebate, it was in the form of a check which a consumer could cash and either save it or spend it wherever he/she wanted to shop. With the gift cards, the consumer is required to spend the card where the original merchandise was purchased. That is, if the gift cards are ever received!

The rant is on! You can probably guess where this is going!

In October I purchased a new refrigerator (stainless steal, double doors with ice water, crushed ice, cubed ice available through the door and not cheap!). I also purchased a new washer and dryer. Gift cards totaling $200.00 were to be mine as soon as I dutifully filled out all of the paperwork and sent it in along with the required proofs of purchase. This I did the next day after the purchase and I still have all of my suggested copies. November came and went, no gift cards. On December 15th I decided to call the 800 number on my copy of the gift card receipt.

Yes they received it, for all three gift cards. One card for $150.00 mailed November 28, the phone rep stated. Two other cards, for $25.00 each were mailed on December 7. So the phone rep said. So why didn't I receive them? I could see maybe one go missing, but three? Uh huh, I don't think so. So now I must wait 45 days from the date the cards were mailed before I can get new cards, unless the original cards have been used.

Wait a minute! If they can tell the cards were used, then they must have a way to invalidate them if they are lost! I think I have been scammed royally! Anyway, I will wait until the 45 days have passed and see what happens.

Stay tuned, there may be a real bang up for someone, in the corporate headquarters of this big and I do mean big, merchandiser, not to mention a newsworthy tidbit for the local news. Names to be mentioned later!

Martha

Martha's Web

Update!

After four months and numerous phone calls, the missing gift cards finally arrived. I do believe they were never sent originally and if I had not been persistant, I would never have received them. Sigh!

Rebate, Freebate, but Not For You!

2005-12-14T08:21:00.000-08:00

It's time for American consumers to rebel against that insidious marketing ploy known as a 'rebate'. You see the ads all the time for a really low price on an item you really want, or maybe even need. On second look, in very small print, the ad states 'After rebate'. You still have to pay the regular, sometimes-inflated price and send for the promised refund known as a rebate. The manufacturers assume that consumers don't mind spending a lot of time, effort and some postage to send for the promised rebate.

Sigh! So many rebates offered, so many never received!

In order for a consumer to receive the promised rebate, many things need to happen. A form for the rebate must be completed properly and then all of the proofs of purchase must be gathered together. They suggest everything should be copied 'for your records' before sending it to an address for that particular rebate. Of course, what this really means is the consumer needs the copies to remind them of the rebate they never received, but I digress! (This address is usually written so small that a magnifying glass needs to used to read it.) I know why they offer these rebates. They hope the buyer will give up in disgust over all of the requirements, especially when they have to cut a proof of purchase from a cardboard box that is at least an inch thick!, Well, that is an exaggeration, but it seems like it sometimes. Then of course the request must be received before the deadline. In fact many people do not send for the rebate, either they forget, lose some of the necessary requirements or just don't want to bother. That's why we keep seeing those ads for rebates on products. They are good for the merchant, good for the manufacturer, bad for the consumer who never gets the rebate!

If the consumer only has a P O Box for his/her address, sorry, Out of Luck! Can't use a P O Box, even though it is the correct and only address! (I guess this is to prevent someone from getting two rebates, but two products would need to be purchased to get the rebates, so....another consumer ripoff!)

In order for merchants to make consumers themselves look good, they often will provide a receipt just for the rebate. There is a warning here, if the receipt has written on it what the rebate is for, make sure it is for the same product purchased! This is experience talking here! Never mind if the print on the receipt is faint or hard to read, trust me, the folks at the Rebate center can read it. (I lost $5.00 on that ploy.)

Excuses, excuses!

Not responsible for requests not postmarked by the deadline! Wrong item purchased! (It wasn't, but my receipt said otherwise.) Not responsible for items lost by the Postal Service. (They do get blamed for a lot of things!)

I have purchased many items and sent for rebates that were duly received. Microsoft has the fastest response time here, less than three weeks. I was impressed! I sent for one rebate and received notification that my submission was approved and being processed, but never received the rebate. That was Office Max. Most of the time I have received the rebate eventually, sometimes long after I had forgotten about it. (I now keep a record in Excel, for who, when sent, amount and if ever received.)

Most of the time the rebate check comes like a postcard. It's no wonder some are never received. Or if they are received, easily un-noticed amid all of the junk mail and probably tossed.

I am still waiting for my Gift cards (the latest marketing ploy) that I have been assured are 'in the mail'. If I never receive them, I have been told I can get them sent again, providing no one has used them. What a ripoff! An immediate discount would have impressed me a lot more! I must admit the cards are for items I would have bought anyway, but since they were offered, why not send for them?

This isn't the first time I have written about rebates. I had a rebate experience with Symantec that was totally infuriating, so much so that I will never buy another of their products. You can read about that in ' I Am Going to Say 'Goodbye' to Symantec', in a previous post.

So I am rebelling against rebates. If I see a product that I want on sale with a rebate, I will keep looking. The hassle and frustration is too much for an old lady like me!

Software Spasms

2005-08-24T18:39:00.000-07:00

Have you ever installed software that just wouldn't work? Or maybe it worked for awhile and then just quit working? I am going to tell you about my experience with Software A and Software B. (I won't name the software as they are both really good and I don't want to discourage anyone from using them.)

I installed Software A on my new laptop and it worked just fine. Then it quit working and nothing (and I do mean nothing*) would make it work. Totally frustrating!

For some reason my new laptop was acting flaky about a lot of things. Sometimes when it started up and password duly entered, it would just sit there and I would have to do a hard boot & restart it. There were other little gremlins in this computer and finally, I had enough! I backed up my data to an external drive and since I received a complete restore disk with this laptop (amazing!) I just popped in the CD and did the deed. In practically no time I had a pristine version of Windows XP SP2 on my notebook.

So I uninstalled the stuff I didn't want (Norton Antivirus and a few other things), updated Windows with all of the available critical updates, installed my virus scanner and firewall, and installed my must have programs, including Software A. Oh goody, now it worked! So I went on happily customizing Windows to work the way I want, installed some other must have programs and everything worked just fine, now more gremlins. Then a few days ago I went to open Software A and it wouldn't open. I tried all of the suggested fixes by software A's support and nada, it would not open. Phooey! Talk about frustrating!

Now today, Software B (which runs in the background all the time, as it should) had a problem because of an idiotic move by me (not going to explain that fiasco) and it crashed. So it isn't running in the background. Just on a hunch, I tried to open Software A. Guess what, it works! So I started testing. Open Software B, Software A won't open. Close Software B and Software A works just fine. Hmmm.

Reboot and try the testing again, same results. Software B running, Software A won't open. Software B closed, Software A works! Now I have to wonder, how many times have folks installed some software that just won't work and the problem is just a conflict with other software on their computer?

*re-registered the dlls and executible, ran the dianostics provide by Software A's support, un-installed, re-installed the program. Sigh, if only I had known how easy it was to solve the problem!

Until next time,
Martha

Martha's Web

Can I trust Spybot?

2005-06-10T12:08:00.000-07:00

Since I first learned about spyware, AdAware and Spybot Search and Destroy have been at the top of my 'must have' program list. One of the functions that I have performed religiously has been to update and run these little jewels on a regular basis.

Just imagine how I felt when I learned the following from a user on one of my Yahoo groups lists. Spybot may be giving in to presure from malware program owners! Don't believe it? Well, I don't know for sure either but why else would this be happening! I have heard rumors, but didn't believe them........

Open your Spybot program and click on the Mode button located next to 'File'. Click 'Advanced', and then click on 'Settings' on the left side menu. Click the 'Ignore Products' icon and scroll through the list of programs. There should be no check marks in the boxes beside the listed programs unless you have previously checked some of them, for what ever reason.

I checked Spybot on both my desktop box and my notebook and here are the results.

In the All Products section, I found check marks by:

MySearch (This is an IE toolbar and a homepage hijacker, according to doxdesk.com)

New.dot net (category, popups)

SideStep (Don't know much about this, but appears to be another toolbar) My question about this one is, why is it listed here with a check mark? And why check marks for the others?

The user that posted the message also found some other things checked, but this was all I found.

So what is going on with Spybot? I scrolled through and unchecked these boxes, updated Spybot, scrolled through again and found them checked again!

Can I trust Spybot? I still use it, but I am wary now!

Until next time,
Martha

Martha's Web

I Won a Million Dollars! (Not Really)

2005-05-18T05:31:00.000-07:00

I got a message today, saying I won a million dollars! Whoo Hoo! Too bad it is a scam. I could use a million dollars! I rather suspect I am not the only one to receive this message and I fervently hope all of the recipients understand that this is the 'hook' for a big fat scam. Unfortunately, some of the folks that receive this message will fall for it and soon will be parted from some of their hard earned money.

Here is the message complete with headers. I found it interesting that Microsoft would use go.com to send out this message, LOL! Even more interesting, Bill Gates sponsored this lottery. What do you want to bet he doesn't know he sponsored it!

X-Apparently-To: changed to protect my email address@sbcglobal.net via 206.190.37.109; Wed, 18 May 2005 02:10:07 -0700
Authentication-Results: mta810.mail.scd.yahoo.com
from=go.com; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
X-Originating-IP: [199.181.134.41]
Return-Path:
Received: from 207.115.57.39 (EHLO ylpvm08.prodigy.net) (207.115.57.39)
by mta810.mail.scd.yahoo.com with SMTP; Wed, 18 May 2005 02:10:07 -0700
X-Originating-IP: [199.181.134.41]
Received: from wmailmta04of.seamail.go.com (wmailmta04of.seamail.go.com [199.181.134.41])
by ylpvm08.prodigy.net (8.12.10 083104/8.12.10) with SMTP id j4I99wHx008849
for ; Wed, 18 May 2005 05:09:58 -0400
Received: (qmail 27686 invoked from network); 18 May 2005 09:04:45 -0000
Received: from wmailweba01.seamail.go.com (HELO wmailweba01) (10.192.72.91)
by wmailmta04o.seamail.go.com with SMTP; 18 May 2005 09:04:45 -0000
Message-ID: <2944243.1116407122295.javamail.microsoft_lotto013@wmailweba01>
Date: Wed, 18 May 2005 02:05:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: MICROSOFT LOTTERY
To: Microsoft_Lotto013@go.com
Subject: CONGRATULATIONS!!! YOU HAVE WON.
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Mailer: GoMail 3.0.1

FROM THE DESK OF THE COORDINATOR [MICROSOFT GLOBAL EMAIL LOTTERY]
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT
MICROSOFT B.V. 44 Boeing Avenue, 9459 PE Schiphol-Rijk.

Sponsored and promoted by Bill Gates, Founder, Chairman, CEO of the World's Largest software(Microsoft):

http://www.templetons.com/brad/gmap.gif
========================================================================================

Ref. Number: 132/756/40027
Batch Number: 538901527-BC722
RE: WINNING NOTIFICATION/FINAL NOTICE.
To claim your prize contact Barrister Roy Hans (RoyalChambers@sify.com)

ATTN.

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the Our Global Email Lottery program held on the 4th May, 2005.
Your e-mail address attached to ticket number 37511465899-6410 with serial number 4872-510 drew lucky numbers

7-14-88-23-3545 which consequently won in the 1st category, you have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay out of US$

1,000,000.00 (One Million United States Dollars).

CONGRATULATIONS!!!
Due to mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep your winning information confidential until your claims has

been processed and your money Remitted to you. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming and

unwarranted abuse of this program by some participants.

All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from over 20,000 company and 30,000,000 individual

email addresses and names from all over the world. This promotional program takes place every three years. We hope with part

of your winning you will take part in our next USD 50 million international lottery.

To file for your claim, please contact our fiducial agent/attorney:
=======================================
BARRISTER. ROY HANS (ROYAL ADVOCATEN KANTOR)
Amsterdam-Netherlands.
Tel: (31) 617 792 760.
Fax: (31) 847 506 277.
E-Mail: RoyalChambers@sify.com
=======================================

Please in order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, remember to quote your reference number and batch numbers

in all correspondence, also indicate your country and city. Furthermore, should there be any change of address, do inform our

agent as soon as possible.

To enable you file your winning prize, you are advised to fully comply with our co-respondent agency office.

Congratulations once more from our members of staff, and thank you for being part of our promotional program.
Note: Anybody under the age of 18 is automatically disqualified.

Sincerely yours,

Mrs. Susan Smith
Lottery Coordinator.

___________________________________________________
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GO get your free GO E-Mail account with expanded storage of 6 MB!
http://mail.go.com

Reads nice, doesn't it. The scammers are getting better at what they do, trying to part you and your money for their benefit.
Please, don't bother calling the above number, what you will get is a request to send money for the fees to collect the winnings. This is just a variation of a scam that has been around for a long time! Real lotto winners don't pay to collect and real lotto winners actually entered a lottery!
For more information about lottery scams (and other Internet frauds), just go to this site: How to tell if you have a Lottery Scam Letter

Until next time,
Martha

Martha's Web

Blue, Red, or United?

2005-04-15T06:35:00.000-07:00

(I am ranting again!)

Whatever happened to the United States? I guess the verbiage on the legal tender doesn't mean much any more. You know,the statement 'United we stand, divided we fall'. It seems like this great land is no longer 'united', but instead we are 'blue states' or 'red states'. I know that this isn't really true (I hope!), but I have to wonder what kind of image or message this is sending to those countries that would like to see our mighty nation destroyed.

Why have normally intelligent people allowed this to happen? Whatever happened to the idea of voting for the person or ideas instead of voting for 'The Party'? The Democratic party is not always just what this country needs and neither is the Republican party. Each of these organizations have good ideas, but as soon as one of them announces one, the other immediately jumps on it as 'bad'.

Folks, the way I see it, there are just a few people in both parties that are fomenting the division of our land. I won't mention any names, but if you read the newspapers, listen to TV and/or the radio, you know who they are. My idea to stop this dividing of the United States? Vote these suckers out of office! Let's have just the United States once again!

A Follow-up to ' I Am Going to Say 'Goodbye' to Symantec'

2005-01-19T13:03:00.000-08:00

I did finally receive a response to the inquiry I sent to Symantec about the rebate amount sent in and the amount received. The date on the email I received today, Jan 18, was Dec 27. I guess this email was lost in 'cyberspace' or maybe the same black hole where my rebates went!

Unbelieveable response! Not a single answer to anything I asked!

Thank you for your rebate inquiry. Our records show that check number 8369221 was issued on 10/23/2004 in the amount of $20.00. This check cleared our bank on 11/05/2004. ( I knew that!)

We appreciate your participation in this promotion. If there is anything else we can do to assist you, please contact us at symantecrebatesupport@symantecrebates.com. We are always happy to help. (I don't believe that!)

This was what I asked:

I have a question: My rebate check I received was for $20.00. Why? I sent two rebate offers, one for $30 and one for $40.
Please note, the product that I selected above is NOT the one I sent the rebate for, as Drive Image is not listed.
Comments: I purchased Drive Image because it works. I could never get Ghost to work, it would not install. I tried three times and it always failed. Everything else worked ok. If this is not resolved in a satisfactory manner, I will no longer use Symantec products.
Tracking Number: xxxxxxxx

Obviously this is a 'canned' response, I wonder if anyone actually read this inquiry? Or maybe I should ask 'Did anyone in office that processes rebates read this inquiry?' I am quite sure that Symantec outsources rebate processing, maybe they don't know what it is to followup for 'good customer service!'

I have totally removed anything from Symantec from my computer and guess what? It runs better! Just like everyone said, Norton is a resource hog! I am using eTrust™ EZ Armor™ LE from Computer Associates and so far I like it just fine!

Note: I am not the only one with rebate gripes! Rebate Gripes

My Magazine

2005-01-14T18:37:00.000-08:00

I subscribe to several magazines and sometimes I actually have time to sit down and read one of them. I stopped my computer magazine subscriptions a while back, though. It just seemed like they keep repeating the same things I have already read in an email newsletter or on one of my favorite websites. The titles kept promising me how to clean up my hard drive, fix my email or
or some other wondrous thing, and when I read the article I would think, 'I already know that', or I would think, 'These guys are nuts'.

But I still want to read something once in a while that isn't on my computer monitor, so I subscribed to a couple of really famous magazines written mainly for women and home makers. I won't name them here, but if you really want to know, just email me and I will let you know the titles.

As I perused the latest issue of one, I started noticing how many full-page ads there are for everything from soup to nuts and lots of stuff in between. So I counted them! Yeah, I was bored. There were ninety-three full-page ads, including 20 for prescription drugs (ask your doctor). In addition to the blatant ads were a number of articles for makeup and hair care specifyng brands. There were a lot more half page ads. I didn't count those. Then there were the cards to pull out and mail, ten of those.
There were several interesting articles, but they were all mixed in with all those ads. Oh and I don't want to forget the special advertising section! Eight pages there, with a few coupons to entice me to try the products.

So, out of the two hundred pages in the magazine, less than half were devoted to anything I really cared to read. In that less than half was an article on redoing one of my rooms (a make over) with picture of both before and after. If my room looked as good as the before, I sure wouldn't worry about a make over! True, the after really looked great!

So when this subscription comes up for renewal, I think I will pass. But I will keep Discover magazine!

Do You Think?

2004-12-24T08:55:00.000-08:00

I've been reading some of the security newsletters that come into my inbox on a regular basis. A recurring theme in these missives seems to be 'phishing' (see below) is going to be the biggest security problem for end users in the coming year. The sad thing, it is probably true.

How many times have the news media reported on this problem? Hundreds of times more than likely. How many times have users been told, 'Your financial institutions do not send emails telling you to go to a site and input your confidential information'.

Are end users like sheep, following wherever the paths lead? Do they just ignore common sense and blindly do whatever an email tells them? There must be thousands of these 'sheep like' users out there on the 'web' or the perpetrators would not keep up the endless barrage of 'phishing' emails I get in my inbox. The same holds true for spammers. They just keep sending and sending an endless stream of garbage email to just about everyone that has an email account. Some of the more gullible of users click and buy from this junk, thus encouraging the garbage handlers to send out more of their trash.

How can we educate end users to delete unopened all of this junk? How can we convince these folks to NEVER buy anything from a spam email? I wish I knew! If how to handle 'phishing' and spam is published in the local newspapers, reported on the news and written about on countless websites haven't made a dent in what these poor 'victims' will do, then what can be done?

Should ISPs make users take a security course before they let them connect to the Internet? Make them pass a test? That would seem to be impractical, but somewhere, somehow, there has to be an answer!

(Phishing, pronounced fishing, is a nefarious plot to steal a victim's information. The emails claim to be from a financial instution, like your bank or credit card company, eBay, PayPal or a simuliar company. The message varies, some claim to need you to update your information or your account may be closed. For an example,look at this page on Martha's Web.)

I Am Going to Say 'Goodbye' to Symantec

2004-12-05T10:55:00.000-08:00

Symantec's products have been on my computer a very long time. I currently use Norton utilities, (I may have to keep that) Norton's Internet Security which is the firewall and Norton Antivirus. I have been happy with these products. True they are big resource hogs, but I have plenty of rsources and have configured the products to not load until needed. Of course, the anti-virus and firewall are needed at startup.

So why am I going to say 'Goodbye'? I don't like being lied to. I purchased a product called Drive Image back in August, from a very well known retailer of Electronics. The product was advertised for $69.95 with two rebates, one was for an upgrade, $30, (I already had an earlier version) and the other was for purchasing the product, $40. Unfortunately, the company that made Drive Image was bought by Symantec.

I duly filled out the rebate slips and carefully made sure I had everything that was required. I also made copies of each of the rebates. The copies are stored in my Rebates folder in My Documents. Imagine my surprise when I received a rebate check for $20! That was it! So, I attempted to find a contact email address for Symantec Rebates, however, if they have one, it is very well hidden. They do have a page on their site for rebates, but no contact information that I could find. Apparently they don't feel it is necessary for customers to contact them to find out why the advertised rebates and the actual amount of the rebate are not the same. So, when it comes time for me to renew my anti-virus subscription, another product, as yet undecided, will take it's place. The same thing will happen for my firewall.

The sad thing is, I would have bought the product without the rebates. But if someone (or some company) lies to me, it's all over!

Why I Changed Martha's Web

2004-11-07T15:11:00.000-08:00

Been a while since I made a post to my blog, and below you will find out why! The post below is also found on my web site.

Every now and then, change is inevitable and usually good. I was pretty happy with the way Martha's Web looked for the most part. Since I was using Internet Explorer and most other folks were using IE as well, I didn't think it mattered. I was wrong!

Once I started using Firefox I could see there were big problems with Martha's Web. The template I was using just didn't render well in either Firefox or Netscape. In order to make the pages look right when they were opened, I had to make some drastic changes that made the pages render with a great deal of empty space at the bottom. Not good! Besides just being poor design, it caused the pages to take longer to load. I am not an expert with html, that's why I use FrontPage. Searching and testing just couldn't resolve the problem, so that template had to go!

I looked and looked for a web template I could live with and make my pages validate. I wanted my pages to look right in every browser.

I tried a template that caught my eye, pleasing colors (to me) and had the coolest popout menus! Well, guess what. The pages and menus looked nice in Internet Explorer, but they looked awful in Netscape and worse in Firefox! Forget that template! I paid for it, too!

So I kept trying. I stripped all of the javascript from the template and removed all of the theme stuff. Now it validated, but there were still problems with the visual aspect. The page banners looked too much like an amateur and I didn't like them. The pleasing colors started to look too dull. So I tossed the template and started over. This was starting to be a real drag!

Several months ago on a whim I purchased a neat program called Zara Webstyle 4. I had played with it some for another project, but really hadn't done that much with it. So now it seemed to be time to play with it again, this time for real! I did come up with a template that is now the backbone of Martha's Web. It bears little resemblance to what I started with in Zara Webstyle, but I like it.

I have learned a lot about html, but I am still no expert. I have learned a lot about includes, I love them! I have learned a lot about CSS, cascading style sheets, but still have a long way to go with CSS.

So while I was redoing Martha's Web in a new template, I decided it was time to reorganize as well. Outlook Express has a separate section now. Some pages just had to go and some were incorporated into other pages. Some of my screenshots needed to be redone with Snagit. (I love Snagit!) Some of the links no longer went to pages, so they had to go as well. There were some spelling errors to be corrected too! (There may still be some spelling booboos, spelling is not my strong point.)

You may think all I had to do was copy and paste from the old pages into the new pages. Wrong! Every page had to be redone, I copied most of it into Notepad and then into the new page from Notepad. This removed a lot of old bad formatting. Then of course the pictures had to be re-inserted, alt tags named and hyperlinks checked and redone. I have 111 pages on this site, so it took awhile!

I hope you like the new look for Martha's Web. (Because I am not going to change again any time soon!) If you find an error somewhere or a link that doesn't work, please let me know!

Defrag your hard drive!

2004-09-16T18:22:00.001-07:00

Good advice! I try to keep my computer maintained on a regular basis and I suspect that's one of the reasons I don't have too many problems. But..................

There's always a 'but' isn't there!

A very irritating situation with Defrag for me was what appeared to be two huge files that would not defrag. A report said the file that had two fragments was 'hiberfil.sys'. Apparently this file cannot be defraged. (I found out about the report from 'The Langalist".)

Research let me know that this a file used by Window's 'hibernation'. (You know, Windows goes to sleep when you aren't using it. Supposed to save power.) This option is one I NEVER use, so I turned it off. Voila! The fragmented files are gone and my system shows no fragmented files or folders!

To remove the file, go to Start/Control Panel/Power Options, select "Hibernate", and uncheck box "Enable Hibernate". Reboot your computer, and Windows will delete hiberfil.sys for you.

'Useless' Virus scanners

2004-09-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

I just read in an online forum that a certain popular virus scanner is 'useless and so are (the writer named two of the most popular scanners)' because the writer got a virus.

What a silly statement! For one thing, no virus scanner is perfect. There is always a lag time between when a new virus appears 'in the wild' and the anti-virus companies can write and deploy a 'fix' for the virus.

More importantly, how did this user get the virus? More than likely the user opened an email with the virus contained within. How many times do people have to be told, 'Don't open attachments unless you are expecting one'? And was the scanner in question updated? A virus scanner is only as good as the most recent update! I could tell from the tone of the writer's message, he/she is totally clueless!

The moral is, don't blame someone/something for something that is probably your own fault! Just check here for more information! Martha's Virus Info

Windows XP SP2, I did it, I installed it!

2004-09-08T14:27:00.000-07:00

I must say, the installation of Windows XP SP2 went very smooth. I have been reading about problems that other people have had and was very hesitant to install SP2, but hey, I have the CD, I have my system backed up using PowerQuest Drive Image,I printed all the instructions on how to remove SP2 and if that didn't work, maybe it 's time to do a re-install! (Shudder!)
But everthing went just fine. I did disable everything on my computer that normally runs in the background like Norton Anti-virus and Norton Firewall, Spyware blaster and PestPatrol. It took less than 45 minutes from start to finish and so far everything is working ok. I hope I don't find programs that won't work! If I do, rest assured, they will be posted here and on my web site, Martha's Web. I have a lot of programs, so it may take awhile to scope this all out!

Shopping for Food

2004-08-17T09:44:00.000-07:00

I hate to go shopping for food. I think everytime I go, the price is higher on at least one item, maybe more.
I am too tempted to buy convenience food as I don't like to cook. So I probably spend more money than I should on those already prepared items. And since I am a junk food junkie, I know I spend too much money that way as well.

I make lists and cut coupons. Then I forget to take the lists and don't usually buy anything that I could use a coupon to purchase.

I am probably in a minority in that I watch TV commercials about food. Usually, after I have seen the commercials, I won't buy the product because I feel they have insulted my intelligence or I just think the commercials are 'too silly'. (I once saw a coffee commercial that said they had more coffee in their one pound can than in the competitor's one pound can. Now maybe they could brew more because it took less to make, but that wasn't what they said. They dumped a pound can of coffee on the table and had coffee left over when they put it into a competitor's empty can. Now if they thought I hadn't heard of vacumn pack, they were wrong.
There is a commercial for a brand of cereal that insults my intelligense and is so silly. The commercial seems to think I am only going to eat one meal a day.

The supermarket commercials can really irritate me as well. They just brag about how much I can save, especially if I use their "preferred card'. Seems to me that's like saying 'You won't save anything' if you don't use their card and that means two sets of prices. Should be the same price for everyone. I know they just want customers to get a card so they can track everything the customer buys. It's none of their business what I buy. They can figure out what customers are buying by keeping track of their inventory so why do they need to know what I am buying? I just shop where they don't have 'nosy cards'.

Have to go now and go food shopping.

Viewing the Olympic Games

2004-08-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

I have always been a fan on the Olympics. My favorites are the Winter Olympics (I just love to watch the ice skating), but the summer is fun too. I enjoy the gymnastics, track and swimming the most. If I were of the male gender I would enjoy watching any of the sports with the ladies, their outfits are skimpier than ever this year. (At least they are for Beach Volleyball!) I didn't think that was possible, but just watch a few and you'll see what I mean. I think I must have been born 40 years too soon, either that or the generation performing in the current Olympic games have no idea what the word 'modesty' means!
I still enjoy the games, though. I was very disappointed in the men's basketball game today, but I do realize the USA can't (and shouldn't) win everything!

Why Don't People Listen?

2004-08-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

It seems as though my friends all know I have a web site, Martha's Web, that deals a lot with computer problems including spyware, but until they start having a problem they never look to find a solution. After spending a lot of time with Deb to clean spyware from her computer (among other things, like getting a working virus scanner and firewall), another friend emails me saying her computer freezes everytime she tries to do anything.
After finding 424 spyware files (I had her download Ad-aware and Spybot) things seem to be back to normal.
I hate spyware as much as virus! Why do these scumbags who write this junk do it? Just because they can? Grrrrrrrrrrrr!

How Deb and I Spent Last Night and Today

2004-08-06T20:14:00.000-07:00

August 5, 2004

Deb has put a password on her Content Advisor (in Windows XP Home) and now wants to remove it, but has no idea what she put in as a password. The hint is totally meaningless. So she asks me (on the phone) how she can reset the password. Believe me, that was the easy thing to fix on her computer.

She is also getting her search seemingly hijacked by a hijacker called Shopnav that keeps popping up. The big problem: she is unable to go to any secure sites. She isn’t sure when the problem started, but it is preventing Deb from logging into her homepage which happens to be a secure site.

Last night I had Deb download, install and run Spy-bot Search and Destroy, Ad-aware and SpywareBlaster. After each program was installed and updated, she ran Spybot and found 111 instances of spyware. Ad-aware then found 37 more spyware files.

Deb still could not get to her secure sites. Opened Internet Options and went to the Security tab. No secure sites listed in restricted sites. Checked Trusted sites, at first nothing appears here. Then when Deb starts to add her home page to the Trusted site zone, as soon as she types the first h (as in http) a list of sites appear in the zone. Every site she goes to is being added to the Trusted zone! There are also five very strange entries, something like this:

http://www.newwebsearch-https://login.hersecuresite.comAAXCE(these are not the exact characters) and a long string of other characters. The sites appear to be identical, but the last few characters are different. When she highlights one of the entries to remove it, the Remove button is greyed out, inactive.

Now we are both very perplexed and frustrated. We decided I will go to her house tomorrow and see what we can do. I spend the rest of the evening searching for answers and posting to a Yahoo Group for help. I have found what seems to be some solutions and print them off to try tomorrow.

August 6, 2004

After a nice lunch out (Deb paid!) we go to her house and see what we can do to fix this strange problem. Someone on a YahooGroups list, Mike, to be exact, suggested it could be something in the hosts file. (That makes sense, why didn't I think of that?) So I do a search on her computer and look at the hosts files, nothing there. Deb has a Trackball instead of a mouse and it took me forever to use it. (I won't be getting one!)
So maybe CWShredder will fix this hijacker! I download the program and run it, it doesn't find anything. Well, it hasn't been updated for a while.

The strange thing, Symantec has a fix for Shopnav and the virus updates should have caught this a long time ago. I open her Norton and nearly choke. The virus definitions expired December 31, 2003! Live update decides to run so we let it run as she also has Norton Internet Security. I think I must have been asleep about now, but more about that later. Deb has been off work for a while so she needs to watch her money and I suggest we download and install AVG free version. So we do get to Grisoft's site and get AVG, downloaded and installed. For some reason it couldn't get updated but we ran it anyway and AVG found 6 virus files. (This is starting to get really serious!) So, after we run the virus scan and remove the bad files, turn off System Restore, reboot and turn it back on, we still cannot get to her secure sites. When the system comes backup, AVG updates and find more virus files! I did remember to turn off Norton.

We looked in the Add/Remove programs and find some stuff she didn't know what it was (some kind of spyware) so we removed it. It fought hard, kept saying 'are you sure you want to remove this?' 'Yes'. 'Do you really want to remove this?' 'Yes'. It stayed on the remove screen so long we thought the system had frozen, but it finally removed.

We check Windows update, it is broken, can’t connect!

Last night while searching for Shopnav in Google, I found a link for PestPatrol that promised it could remove this pest, Shopnav. Since Spybot or Ad-aware didn't do the trick she decided she couldn't have this junk on her computer and would buy PestPatrol. I told her I couldn't guarantee this would work. Well, remember, she can't get to secure sites, so she can't make the purchase!

Deb and her husband each have their own profiles so Deb goes into his profile and connects to PestPatrol's site, and gets to the secure purchase screen with no problem. (Is her profile corrupted by spyware?) She downloaded PestPatrol and installed it. When PestPatrol is updated and run, it found 77 instances of spyware, including several trojans and a keylogger!

I finally wake up and realize, why hasn't her Norton firewall been alerting her about all this spyware calling home? Checked the firewall and it is DISABLED! (Virus did it? Spyware?) It will not let us enable it! Not in Deb's profile or her husband's profile. This is really getting frustrating! Checked and Windows firewall is turned on, so at least the computer is protected from incoming hacks. If we can't enable the Norton Internet Security, we decide to uninstall it.

So, off to Zone Alarm's site. She downloads and installs ZoneAlarm and we get it configured. We install Firefox. The really strange entries are still in the Trusted site zone, (I really have to find out how to fix this) but she can now connect to her home page, the secure site. Oh, yes, Windows update now works as well. That was the one good thing; all of the critical updates had been installed.

Before I go home, I show her how to edit the Registry to remove the Content Advisor Password. (That was easy!)

Deb learned a big lesson today; she thought her husband was taking care of all this, from now on, she's in charge!

May 19, 2005
After some further testing, I discovered that the behavior of typing an 'h' in the trusted zone that seems to add every site you have been to, is by design. If the Control Panel is opened and Internet Options is selected, Temporary Internet files deleted and History is cleared, go to Security/Trusted Zone and type in an 'h', no new sites will show up, only what has been placed there already by the user.

Martha's Blog

2004-07-27T18:40:00.000-07:00

Well, everyone seems to have a Blog these days, so guess I'll just jump in and have one too! I do have a rant & rave page on my website, Martha's Web, but everyone tells me that it isn't the same thing. I just hope no one expects me to post to this baby every day!

Right now it seems like the big thing going on is the Democratic Convention. It all seems like a big waste of money to me, everyone knows that John Kerry and John Edwards will be nominated to run on the Democratic ticket. Guess they enjoy spouting off about what they are going to do when they get elected. Did someone forget to tell them they have to win first? They may well win, but 'It ain't over till it's over'!

The same thing will happen when the Republican Convention gets going.

I wish we had a law that would allow the candidates one month and only one month to campaign before the election. They could have two ads on TV per day, no more. Instead of bad mouthing their opponents, they would have to speak about their own accomplishments, good, bad or indifferent. They would have to tell the public what they propose to do while in office and how they intend to accomplish their proposals. There would be a moderator to make sure the rules were followed. Only money from an election fund could be used and every part would have the same amount of money. Dream on, Martha, it will never happen! Would be nice though!