Blog Flak

Finally some good news! Sometimes I like to think back to the good old days when the worst thing you got in your inbox was tons of spam with an occasional virus. Nowadays you have to worry about people trying to steal your personal information with phishing attempt emails coming from all directions almost every single day. If it’s not your bank account it’s your Paypal account or credit card data or social security number. And they just keep coming and coming and coming.

At least one guy got a taste of his own medicine though, the Microsoft Internet Safety Enforcement Team uncovered a scheme by Jayson Harris, age 23, of Davenport, Iowa and got a location on him which they promptly turned over to the FBI. He faced charges on two counts, with maximum sentences of 10 years and 20 years. Unfortunately the court only gave him 21 months for his crimes, although he is ordered to pay restitution of $57,000. I say hanging is too good for him and 21 months just isn’t enough!

“Today marks a new milestone in Microsoft’s global phishing enforcement initiative,” says Aaron Kornblum, Microsoft’s Internet Safety Enforcement Attorney. Microsoft’s hope, he explains, is that this case will serve as a deterent. In furtherance of that effort, Microsoft has filed 125 civil lawsuits against phishers to date, and secured takedowns of more than 2,000 phishing web sites targeting Microsoft, MSN and Hotmail users since January 2004. “It’s about taking the fight to the phishers,” Kornblum adds.

You gotta like hearing that!

Source: MSN Phisher Sentenced to 21 Months

Technorati tags: phishing, MSN, data theft, thief, crook, scam

The Tech Crunch has an article up about a new service that Google will be rolling out next week, called Google Notebook. It will be in direct competition with Yahoo owned Del.icio.us link tagging, a service that I like to use here at Blog Flak. I’ve also started using BlinkList for tagging my posts and tutorials as well. Blink List has a rating system that allows you to rank the tag according to it’s importance to you, the user, a feature that I like very much.

It sounds interesting, especially if it includes integration with Google search engine results, making it easier to tag items directly from your web searches. I’m sure I’ll be checking it out as soon as I can and of course I’ll do a write up on it!

Technorati tags: tagging, linking, del.icio.us, blinklist, bookmarking, blogging, google, google notebook, web search,

Problogger has an excellent article up titled “The Cost of Comment Spam” that is a must read for anyone who’s blog is deluged with the scourge of comment spammers. We all know what a pain in the arse it is to deal with but giving up and giving in is not the answer, even if you’re feeling overwhelmed and tired of dealing with it. Taking an aggressive stance to delete, remove and prevent spamming on your blog is highly advisable to keep spammers from destroying your hard work, reputation and your search engine positioning.

Did you know that it’s possible for spammers to fill your database up with spam on future posts? WordPress seems to be particularly vulnerable to this type of attack and the first sign is that spam comments show up immediately everytime you put up a new post. The reason why this is possible is because of the way posts are numbered and they can load your database up with comments on posts that you have yet to write, invisible until you login to your MySql database on your server and delete them. There’s some great stuff at WordPress on “Combating Comment Spam” that you should read up on to help you get a handle on this nasty problem.

Technorati Tags : spam, blogs, blogging, comments, seo, search, engines, wordpress