Sender: xyz@hotmail.com (where xyz is in your MSN Contact list)

Subject: A friend deleted you from MSN Messenger!

Message:

I have just logged with my hotmail to www.MuyMSN.com that is a website where you can find WHO DELETED YOU from the MSN Messenger.
It´s incredible to find out that trusted friends deleted you
You might find out the same!!
Check it at www.MuyMSN.com

This video by Eggman85 is going to teach you how to perform the Mercury aces card trick – in which you appear to make a hand of four kings transform into a hand of four aces. Video after the break.

Please spread the message. A recent phishing-like e-mail is going around and if users aren’t careful, their MSN account can be hacked! I recently received some e-mails on my MSN account which read:

Sender: xyz@hotmail.com (where xyz is in your MSN list)
Tittle: Somebody has blocked you on MSN messenger
Message:

 

You’re Blocked!

A contact has recommended you to enter in www.youareblocked.com.
The site allows you to find out who has blocked or deleted you from the MSN Messenger

This e-mail comes to your inbox, since you have been recommended by one of your contacts

When you click the link, it’ll bring you to a website that looked pretty decent and professional. But don’t be fooled by the site’s design to pass it off as a genuine site. To check for a blocked contact (xyz@hotmail.com), you have to enter your MSN e-mail and password. But wait.

Why would you need to do that? Never give away your credentials unless you are very sure that the site is not bogus. Google the site and the source where you get the link from. Look for security certificates. And what I meant by “very sure” is if ask yourself this question — Do I feel a sense of insecurity (even a lil) giving away my password to the site? If you feel even the slightest distrust, stop and close the site.

Spread the word. Do not be fooled by the e-mail. Searching the WWW showed that people who have signed in actually got their MSN account hacked (multiple sign-ins, etc). IF you had fallen prey to this scam, change your password IMMEDIATELY!

Answer: ” tea please “

Question : ” Ceylon tea, Herbal tea, Bush tea, Honey bush tea, Ice tea or green tea ?”

Answer : “Ceylon tea “

Question : “How would you like it ? Black or white ?”

Answer: “white”

Question: “Milk, Whitener, or Condensed milk ? “

Answer: “With milk “

Question: “Goat milk, Camel milk or cow milk”

Answer: “With cow milk please.

Question: ” Milk from Freeze land cow or Afrikaner cow?”

Answer: ” Um, I’ll take it black. “

Question: ” Would you like it with sweetener, sugar or honey? “

Answer: “With sugar”

Question: ” Beet sugar or cane sugar ?”

Answer: “Cane sugar “

Question:” White , brown or yellow sugar ?”

Answer: “Forget about tea just give me a glass of water instead.”

Question: “Mineral water or still water ? “

Answer: “Mineral water”

Question: “Flavored or non-flavored ?”

Answer: “I’ll rather die of thirst”

I think all of you know about Food Bank (http://www.foodbankmaldives.com).  We go to eat Pizza, Tandoori, Fried Rice…. It sounds a like a good restaurant… isn’t it? yeah, its a restaurant. But… visit their site and view the source code to find the META TAGS. They described as like a night club or a bar in the META TAGS. Look at the screen shot above..

Some have suggested something more sinister is afoot as the only two countries in the area not affected were Israel and Iraq  sparking conspiracy theories that are spreading through the Internet. Telecommunication companies fear more cable disruptions in the future. The incident has also called into doubt the safety of the Internet cable system. Others have said that cable cuts occur frequently, and the later outages are merely coincidence with no great effect on internet traffic.

Cables damaged

January 23

Although it was not reported at the time, there was a cut off FALCON on January 23. The FALCON cable system connects several countries in the Persian Gulf and India.

January 30

On January 30, 2008, news agencies reported Internet services were widely disrupted in the Middle East and in the Indian subcontinent following damage to the SEA-ME-WE 4 and FLAG Telecom cables in the Mediterranean Sea. The New York Times reported that the damage occurred to the two systems separately near Alexandria and Marseilles.

While the respective contributions of the two cable systems to this blackout is unclear, network outage graphs show anomalies at 0430 UTC and again at 0800 UTC. The cause of the damage to SEA-ME-WE 4 or FLAG has not been declared by either cable operator. A number of sources speculated these were caused by a dragging ship anchor near Alexandria. The Egyptian Maritime Transport Ministry reviewed one day of complete video footage beginning 12 hours before and through 12 hours after the service disruption, concluding the cause of damage was not surface craft as no ships were traced sailing through the area of the alleged wire damage. The Kuwaitis also do not directly charge sea-faring vessels, instead referring to “weather conditions and maritime traffic.”

February 1

Two days after the initial break, it was reported that the FALCON cable was cut between Muscat, Oman and Dubai, UAE. This cut was between different landing points than the January 23 cut, FLAG Telecom issued a press release later, stating the “FALCON cable is reported cut at 0559 hrs GMT on February 1, 2008. Location of cut is at 56 km from Dubai, UAE on segment between UAE and Oman.”

February 3

On February 3, 2008, Qtel reported that a cable called DOHA-HALOUL connecting Qatar to the United Arab Emirates had been damaged, causing disruptions in already damaged Middle Eastern communication networks. It became the fourth cable to be damaged in 5 days. The location of the break is between the Qatari island of Haloul and the UAE island of Das. The problem is said to be related to the power system.

February 4

On February 4, 2008 the Khaleej Times reported that SEA-ME-WE 4 had also been damaged at another location, near Penang, Malaysia. The date of this damage was not given.

 from wikipedia

And even those who do well with once-removed support need help from an expert occasionally.

Those who seek handholding will be glad to know that Mozilla, the folks behind Firefox, have started offering a live-chat support service that lets you interact with a knowledgeable volunteer. From the Firefox Support Blog:

We’ve set 3 hours a day, Monday through Friday, when our current volunteers can commit to being online to take questions.  As more people can commit to being around at other times, we’ll expand our hours.  This is when we encourage new volunteers to help, but you may find someone available to help at other times — we just can’t promise it yet.

Because it’s volunteer-staffed, the hours are limited. When it is available, you’ll see the graphic above that announces “We’re Open!”. English is the only available language for now.

The hours are:

• Monday, Wednesday and Friday: 9am to 12pm PST (GMT -8)
• Tuesday and Thursday: 1pm to 4pm PST (GMT -8)
• For Saturdays, Sundays and holidays see our after hours policy.

I was able to conduct a chat this morning a volunteer, asking about ways to make Firefox 2 and the beta version of Firefox 3 co-exist better. The two can be run on the same computer, but each time you start one after using the other, the version you launch acts like it was just installed, checking for extensions and importing settings.

And as you can see, the chat window even works in Internet Explorer 7!

The answer to my question, by the way, is that there’s no simple way to fix the problem. Fuzzyfox recommended using the portable version of Firefox 3b2. My solution: Only use Firefox 3b2, which I prefer over Firefox 2.

Firefox help is also available via a beta forum and a knowledge base.

Microsoft offers free phone support for Internet Explorer 7, but only for setup and installation. A fee is charged to solve other types of IE7 issues. There is, however, a step-by-step troubleshooting guide. You can also ask a question in the IE discussion groups.

This isn’t the only service pack that’s pulling a Godot, according to Microsoft’s Service Pack Road Map. The second service pack for Windows Server 2003 has been pushed back from late 2006 to Q1 of 2007.

Service Pack 3 for Windows XP was long-believed to be planned for mid- to late-2007 release. It was largely going to be a collection of cumulative fixes and patches, IE 7, and .Net 3.0, although its contents were still up in the air.

Microsoft was not available for comment at press time.

Pushing the third service pack to 2008 leaves a four-year gap since Service Pack 2 came out. That’s not a good practice or message for business customers, said Mike Cherry, analyst with Directions on Microsoft.

“I don’t understand how on one hand Microsoft says it wants predictable releases of operating systems but on the other hand doesn’t see that the predictable release of service packs would be equally valuable,” he said.

Microsoft has refined its patching system through auto update, but there are still a lot of fixes to install since SP 2 was issued, he points out. “Granted, it’s done automatically, but it would be nice if it was all rolled up into one package and tested against each other,” said Cherry.

But Michael Silver, senior analyst with Gartner, said organizations are generally not in a rush for a new service pack.

“Support on SP1 just ended and there are a lot of companies that have not been able to get to SP2 yet because of application breakage issues or because it was low priority and they just haven’t gotten around to testing their apps,” he said.

Waiting longer for SP3 won’t bother most organizations, Silver maintained. IE7 just shipped and they’ll be more concerned with deploying that and the forthcoming .NET Framework 3.0.

There could be another reason, according to Rob Enderle, principle analyst with The Enderle Group: Microsoft doesn’t want to promote XP.

“They want to put all the focus on Vista and not have an XP service pack come out in a Vista launch year,” he said. “If they do a major refresh during the launch of a new OS, then people will get confused. They want the message to be clear, to move the customer to Vista and not patch XP.”

Microsoft seemed to confirm Enderle’s suspicion regarding priorities.

“Right now our priority is Windows Vista. We’ll have more information to share about the next service pack for XP after Windows Vista ships,” said the company spokesperson. He did confirm that a third service pack is planned for the first half of 2008.

Enderle said there hasn’t been a huge rise in demand for a third service pack, and he notes that by the time SP 3 ships in 2008, new machines will be coming with Vista installed.

=internetnews.com=

SPAM (junk e-mail) probably wouldn’t be half as bad if it were properly targeted, yet sadly a 12 year old girl is just as likely to receive such messages as a 40 year old man. Unfortunately an even greater problem is the quantity of messages, with some people receiving upwards of 1000 junk e-mails per day!

For many, dealing with the constant influx of junk e-mail has become a nightmare. Until laws are strengthened and legal action taken then little is likely to change. So what can ‘you’ do? ISPreview has pooled information from around the Internet and come up with a few helpful tips. While nothing can completely prevent SPAM, some of these should at least help to cut it down.

1. Don’t display your e-mail address in public (online)

SPAMMERS use automated systems (”robots”) to search websites, newsgroups and various other sources around the Internet. This allows them to extract any addresses that may have been posted in a publicly accessible location. Regardless of whether or not the address works, if it’s there, they’ll find it.

2. Setup several addresses

Most ISPs will allow you to setup several unique POP (e-mail) addresses, which means you can have one address for strictly personal communication, one for business and the last for general use; such as the e-mail used when buying online goods (order registration system).

This balances the workload and gives you greater control over your contacts, thus allowing you to better monitor the addresses receiving the most junk.

3. Make your addresses unique

SPAMMERS can often find addresses simply by auto-generating a list of commonly used names for any one particular domain name. Consequently using a combination of uncommon names/words, characters and numbers in your e-mail name can lessen the chance that you’ll receive a lot of junk.

For example: d.john.9x@domain.com is less likely to recieve SPAM than john@domain.com .

4. Always read the ‘Privacy Policy’

Most legal websites or publications asking for personal details should have a privacy policy (usually linked at the bottom of any given page). This policy document will tell you exactly how any data you submit may be used and why. Some organisations will intentionally use your details for SPAM and only tell you in this section.

In addition, keep an eye out for boxes that can be ticked and ask whether or not the company can pass your personal details onto third parties. For obvious reasons you should always tick the box that requests them NOT to do this.

5. Never respond to SPAM

Replying to a SPAM e-mail, even with a ‘remove’ request, is more likely to tell the SPAMMER that your address is valid and consequently you could receive more junk instead of less. Through personal testing we also found that most e-mail unsubscribe links do not appear to work, even where a message returns claiming they have. Best avoided.

6. Avoid ‘opening’ (reading) SPAM e-mails

Many SPAM messages use glossy HTML and images, with some data being loaded from remote websites and servers. These e-mails often contain imbedded code that tells the SPAMMER when the message has been opened, thus allowing them to validate your address and continue sending more junk.

Most e-mail clients will have an option that allows you to click through the subject title of messages without the body itself being read/loaded. This can often be difficult to find due to differing methods, thus it may simply be easier to go offline while reading your mail.

7. Disable HTML e-mail reception and or Image loading

Disabling HTML and or ‘Image’ (picture) loading could cause problems with the format of some messages; however it can also stop automated systems, such as the method noted above, from working and thus help to cut down on junk.

Unfortunately not all e-mail software will support such options, yet others may do so automatically. For example, Mozilla’s Thunderbird client will not load e-mail images unless you specifically choose to allow it. Most modern clients also use a degree of intelligence to block unsigned (imbedded) code from running and thus communicating with remote servers.

MS Outlook Express v6+ includes an option to disable HTML, although it’s not very obvious. Goto the ‘Tools‘ menu and select ‘Options‘ from the list, then select the ‘Read‘ tab. Under ‘Reading Messages‘ there should be an option for ‘Read all messages in plain text‘, tick it.

8. Does your ISP have a policy or filtering for SPAM?

Check the terms and conditions (T&C’s) of your provider to see if they have any kind of policy on SPAM. Some may filter junk e-mails or offer optional services to do so, while others could take action against the victims (that’s you) simply because they receive too much junk (affects ISP bandwidth).

In this case prevention is better than cure since many filtering technologies can also erase legitimate messages. Regardless, ISP’s that at least offer you the ‘option’ of filtering are better than those that provide nothing.

9. Avoid free e-mail providers

Free e-mail providers, such as Microsoft’s Hotmail, may be cheap and easy, but they’re also vulnerable to SPAM. These are well recognised services and thus frequently targeted by SPAMMERS, so much so that any filtering services (those offered by the system) can often be overcome by the sheer volume of junk.

10. Webmasters should ‘hide’ e-mails

Webmasters (website managers) often need to display e-mail contacts, yet (as per the above warnings) this can make those addresses vulnerable. The best thing to do is hide the address using ‘character entity evasion‘ or a similar method of public encryption in your MAILTO command. A free online ‘generator’ for such addresses can be found here:

http://www.mways.co.uk/prog/hidemail.php

11. Webmasters should create a junk e-mails file

This is a large publicly accessible .txt or .html file on your site with as many ‘incorrect’ addresses listed inside as possible. This doesn’t so much cut down on SPAM as cause an additional headache for the automated systems that hunt for publicly accessible addresses.

12. Use client-side anti-SPAM software

If and ONLY if the SPAM you receive is at an unmanageable level, then consider a client-side solution. Most integrate directly with popular e-mail software, such as Eudora and MS Outlook; filtering junk in a method that you choose and control.

Unfortunately, much like server-side solutions, these systems are far from perfect and will often remove legitimate messages. However, you can usually specify that messages identified as SPAM be moved to a different folder, thus cutting down on your e-mail management time and allowing you to vet what is and isn’t junk.

A number of client-side solutions can be found listed here:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?id=10

It’s worth pointing out that some clients, such as Mozilla’s excellent Thunderbird package, include rudimentary anti-SPAM filtering as standard. This is well worth considering instead of the rubbish Microsoft usually manages to bundle with its operating software (Outlook Express etc.).

13. Changing e-mail & proper use of the “Address Book” feature

Shockingly most people never even touch the “Address Book” feature of their e-mail software, which would be a mistake. It’s usually wise to keep at least one list of important contacts (family, friends, work etc.) in your address book.

This allows you to quickly and easily send a message to multiple people at once, speeding up the process of communicating any address changes you may need to make. This is far easier than waiting until a later date and having to trawl through years of past messages to pick out those of relevance.

Sooner or later you may need to take the big step and setup a new address rather than remain with a SPAM deluged one. This is difficult enough, but the above tip could save hours of hassle.

14. Keep your PC secure and up to date

SPAM isn’t just distributed by unscrupulous individuals, it can also be sent on mass following infection by malicious software (Trojans, viruses etc.). Typically all computers on the Internet are vulnerable and thus any infection of your system is likely to harm others as the malicious code often utilizes the user’s computer to spread to others through e-mail.

Hence it is essential that everybody use anti-virus software and stay up to date with the latest security patches. Automated update methods are built into most modern software, but you must make sure they are enabled.

15. Custom legitimate messages filter (submitted by John).

Spam filters frequently misidentify legitimate messages as spam, placing them in the bulk folder where they are either overlooked or found only after a time-consuming trawl.

This technique, which I call Recipient Header Verification, reduces the incidence of these false positives, and can be used by anyone using an anti-spam system permitting user-defined filters.

It works by checking that the To or CC header in the message contains an appropriate phrase, such as the display name (sometimes in quotation marks). This is distinct from the email address itself, which is often enclosed in angle brackets. Message headers are formatted automatically thus by most email software, e.g.

Fred Smith <fsmith@some.isp.com>
“Fred Smith” <fsmith@some.isp.com>

Spammers often harvest email addresses, but not the display names. They either omit the display name, guess one from the email address, or just make something up e.g.

To: <fsmith@some.isp.com>
To: “Fsmith” <fsmith@some.isp.com>
To: “Claudia Blenkinsop” <fsmith@some.isp.com>

However, in legitimate messages, the display names (if present) are usually valid. By means of a filter on the display name in the TO or CC line, these messages can bypass the normal spam checks, e.g.

If…

   TO/CC contains “Fred Smith” (case sensitive)

Then…

   Move message to Inbox folder

(N.B. The above filter should work whether or not the name in the header is included in quotation marks)

Ideally, the display name should include a character string which is not in the email address, to make it harder for the spammer to guess correctly. This display name should be included in the FROM header of all messages sent by the user, as this will be included in the entry in recipients’ address books, and hence in return messages.

Note: Messages from AOL may still be misidentified, as address headers in AOL messages do not seem to contain display names. There may be others too.

——————————–

None of the above tips are complete solutions; they’re merely designed to give you an idea of how to avoid the bulk of junk e-mails. Remember, even if you don’t get any SPAM, that doesn’t mean to say you won’t in the future. Following this guide could save you a lot of trouble later on.

Surf Junky Bans Those Near Payout!

Yeah, so you like Surf Junky. You won’t like it any more when you reach a $25 balance. Once you get to that amount of money, Surf Junky will mark your account for deletion.

That’s right, deletion. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

Surf Junky will accuse you of using illegal programs to inflate your payout rate regardless of whether or not you actually used them. You will be blamed for this no matter what you do, even if you are following all of the rules. This is how they plan to silence everyone.

Ok a lot of you heard about SurfJunky here, well apparently Surfjunky might not be paying out as promised.. You might want to check this out, if this is the case we need to do something about it.