Proactive Networking Blog

In the space of a week I noticed three different laptops and a desktop (all different brands, and all with XP) that appeared to be off and then without me doing anything they turned on!  I thought there must be some new Microsoft update that must be causing this odd behavior.  After a bit of research, I realized they were only doing what they were told.  In the “Power Options” in “Control Panel” they were all set to “StandBy” after 20 minutes and “Hibernate” after 45 minutes.  I had just happened to come across all four of these machines when they were waking up from StandBy to move into hibernate mode.

I’m embarrassed to report that I fell for a Phishing email a month ago. It happened when I signed up for a new Yahoo! Search Marketing account. I signed up for the account and ten minutes later I had an email similar to the following email in my inbox:

There is an obvious part of this email that should have tipped me off immediately that I was about to be taken.  The email is not from yahoo.com.  It is yahoo-inc.com.  Close, but close will get your bank account drained.  The challenge for me was that I had signed up for a new Yahoo Search Marketing account just prior to getting this email.  I was in a hurry and just blindly clicked the link, figuring that Yahoo was requiring me to confirm my email address and since I had just signed up for a new account it must be legit.  The link lead me to a page that looked exactly like this:

This is the actual Yahoo Marketing Solutions homepage.  The page in the link in the email I received has been taken down. (See below)  The only way to have known I was in the wrong spot would have been to look at the url.  This one is correct - http://marketingsolutions.login.yahoo.com.  The one I clicked through to said - http://liveadsmscenter.com/adui.  other than that, the web page looked exactly the same.  Again, I was in a hurry and just saw ads and center in the url and didn’t think.  I had just signed up for an account, so it made sense that I do this, and I had other things to get on to.

The next day I got a call from my credit card company.  They wanted to know if I had made three $3000.00 charges to Yahoo!  I didn’t think so.  I had approved $100 per day for ads on Yahoo.  I could see one $3000 charge, but not three.  I logged in to my Yahoo Search Marketing account and instead of seeing all of the keywords I had put in, I saw dozens of keywords relating to mortgages and the ad spend had been raised to $3000 per day.

I quickly called Yahoo and  they locked the account.  They promised to refund the $9000, which they did in about a week.  At first I figured that I wasn’t stupid enough to have been caught in a phishing expedition as Yahoo suggested.  It became more apparent that I had when Yahoo support said that they did not send out emails to verify a users email account.  It became even more apparent over the next month when I proceeded to get an email almost every other day purporting to be from Yahoo Search Marketing.

It appears to me that the phishers send out so many emails that they are bound to catch someone at just the right time that it’s easy to end up a phishee.  If I get a notification from a bank where I don’t have an account, it is easy to tell there is trouble.  If I get an email that appears to be from my bank about a password problem, and I have recently changed my password, it would be easy to be distressed, and without thinking click on the link to fix the problem.

The obvious lesson here it never click on a link in an email.  Always type in the address of where you want to go, or use the link in your favorites.

I have been reporting the further phishing emails that I get to Yahoo and amazingly enough, the phishing site in the latest email I got was taken down within 48 hours of my reporting it to Yahoo.

If you want to continue answering mindless emails while you’re away on vacation, keep a few things in mind.  First, make sure you have access to webmail.  If you have POP email, you’re going to be frustrated.  Almost all hotels are blocking sending outgoing email from your POP account now.  This would be the time to talk your boss into RPC over HTTP email which is generally unaffected by firewalls as it talks over the same port that you surf the web over, and your hotel is probably not going to block that. (This type of setup requires you to bring your own laptop, use Outlook 2007 or 2003, and for your company to have a Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 or 2007).  In my opinion this is the slickest way to do email that there is.  It also has the nice feature of seamlessly syncing your Smartphone, your laptop, your desktop, and Outlook Web Access, when all else fails.  You delete an email on your phone, it’s gone from your laptop and the rest of your devices.

If a new Exchange Server is not in your budget, and you have a POP account on your laptop, take the address of your ISP’s webmail service or your company’s Outlook Web Access URL with you, at a minimum.   This will prevent you from spending your first hour of vacation getting IT support from the hotel desk clerk, or spending time on the phone with the hotel’s ISP.  If you like talking IT when you are on vacation, they can show you how to change the outgoing SMTP server on your laptop to their ISP’s server.  Change it back when you get home.

Connect to the internet with a wire whenever you can.  If your wireless connection is not strong, you will be annoyed.  A low signal strength wireless connection can play havoc with your ability to get anything done, and can make you think that your laptop is on the fritz.  Go to the lobby for the best signal, get your emails answered, and then get back and cannonball your kids in the pool.

Here are some links to free stuff to use on your business technology blog:

Kontactr is a one-click free contact form service. It is incedibly easy to set up and use, its simple, and they provide the code for you to cut and paste. The best part is that is has built in CAPTCHA Protection to protect you from spam.

Box.net is a web-based service that lets you store files online, share with other people, and collaborate on projects. There are 3 types of service; Individual offers 1 GB for free!

Vimeo is a video sharing community. Kind of like YouTube but more Web 2.0. Free HD on the web! You can actually watch it in full-screen without squinting to make out what it is you’re watching…Vimeo has a simple interface, an easy uploader, and the option to let viewers download your original file.

FeedBurner is feed-based content and advertising. Recently acquired by Google, it is THE app used for RSS on your blog. If you don’t know, now you know.

I am continually surprised that many people I talk to have little to no understanding of how the Google results page works.  If you know that Google’s own proprietary search results are shown on the left hand side of the page and paid search (advertising)  is on the right, you are doing well.  If you also know that the first three results on the left can be paid results, you are way ahead of the crowd.

I think it can be tough to remember that those first three results on the left can be paid results.  They are slightly highlighted and it says “Sponsored Link” to the right of the result, but this almost makes them  seem like a special links.  I find at times these can be pretty relevant links.  If someone has spent enough money to be at the top, they hopefully have spent the additional money it takes to have a good page that the link takes you to.  Just have to remember that you are looking at an ad.