Stupidity

Another Domain Name Renewal Scam

| Richard

I’ve recently received some e-mails sent to the Admin. contact for some of our .com domain names from “Domain Renewal” (reminder@domainrenewalonline.com) stating that:

“It is time to renew your domain name  {domainname.com}

Your domain name {domainnname.com} will expire within 90 days.

You may renew your domain automatically with Domain Renewal. Click on the link in this e-mail to renew the domain for another year. You should renew your domain as soon as possible in order for it to continue to be registered in your name.

Click here if you wish to renew your domain
 ——–>http://www.domainrenewalonline.com/for.php?d=domainrenewalonline.com

As soon as we have received your payment, you will receive a confirmation that your domain  has been renewed…”

It’s not until further down the e-mail that you read – if you get that far through the last, large paragraph – that “you may also request your Internet Service Provider to renew the domain for you” which is the first point at which you might twig they are unconnected to your ISP or actual domain registrar.

If you do venture onto their web site, it’s been cleverly designed to feature logos from major technology firms like Oracle, Cisco Systems, IBM and Microsoft for no apparent reason (other than to presumably make you think you’re dealing with a reputable firm in the Internet sector).

Prices? Well how does $59.95 for one year grab you?

4 Billion Files Over Quota

| Richard

Apparently…

One of the sites I manage is hosted with 1&1. I needed to do an update today and found that when trying to publish the changed page to the server, I got an error message:

“Exceeded storage allocation.”

That sounded a bit fishy, so I checked in the 1&1 control panel and got this:

4 Billion Over

Hmm. 4 billion files over our allocation? I don’t think so! So I rang them up.

“Yes,” the tech. support guy told me, “you’re over your file allocation.”

“I see,” I replied, “you’re telling me I have presently uploaded 4,096,815,118 files to the server?”

“Ah. I see your point.”

After a number of long pauses on hold, he promised to escalate the issue…

Carphone Warehouse

| Richard

Hey! Here’s an idea for the Carphone Warehouse: if your stores are shut, why not put a message to that effect on your stores’ telephone systems, rather than letting potential customers wait for over 5 minutes each time at each local store before saying their call cannot be taken (giving no reasons) or simply disconnecting?

And when a potential customer rings the main enquiries number to ask for the numbers for local stores to check if they have stock in store, why not:

  • have a computer system to check store stock availability to save your customer from making another call; and
  • tell them that the stores won’t be open today…

Star Technology: What Equipment?

| Richard

If you remember this post concerning Star’s implementation of Netstore’s online backup system, you’ll recall we cancelled it after their “upgrade” turned out to be a considerable downgrade.

So imagine my amusement – or should that be ‘bemusement’ – when I received a telephone call this morning to arrange for collection of Star’s “PC backup equipment” from our premises. What equipment? It’s an online service, you idiots! Maybe they were intending to come and collect the Internet from our office…

Star – Novel Interpretation of “Improved”

| Richard

For many years now, indeed since it was first launched, we have been using an online backup solution from Netstore. This has cost us £180 + VAT per annum and as I mentioned, we have been paying this for many years now.

The benefit to us was that it offered us (as early adopters) unlimited storage of backups of our data. We didn’t take the piss by backing up GBs of music files, etc. But all our data and archives, some 18GB or so, are backed up daily and incrementally.

Until today…

Netstore passed on the provision of the service to Star Technology Services Limited a few years ago and we continued to be billed by Star for the online backup facility.

Late last year, we received an e-mail from David Palmer, the Product Manager at Star, which said:

“Early next year Star will be launching a brand new and improved PC Backup service designed to meet the increased demands of our business customers. These improvements will make your online back-ups and restores easier and faster than ever – providing even better protection against data loss, corruption and theft.” [emphasis added]

One of the attachments to that e-mail re-iterated this and added that:

“To continue to use the service and benefit from its new features, you will need to prepare by transferring your users to the new service platform ahead of 28th February 2007“

One of the other attachments that followed over the next few days stated that we would have to un-install the Netstore software, download and install new software from Star, run a new backup for the first time and then continue as normal. So I’d basically put it off until today, knowing that we could then run a couple of big backups to kickstart it from scratch over the weekend and before this deadline.

Except…

Except one of the unannounced “improvements” is that the service is now capped at 4GB, or around 20% of the storage we’ve been using with no worrries and no complaints up to this morning. 4GB of storage. For £211.52 this year and every year. Only nowhere do you find this out until you install the “brand new and improved” software.

I’ve just spent another half hour on the telephone to Star trying to resolve this but no-one who can do anything appears to be working for Star today (who are now blaming BT for the cap…).

So unless it’s resolved this afternoon, Star can kiss goodbye to our business for good and we’ll buy our own data storage elsewhere. For a lot less than we’re paying Star.

Windows Vista Vulnerability

| Richard

Well now, after years in the making, Microsoft has released its latest operating system software, Vista, to consumers after releasing it to businesses earlier.

Except by giving it all the bells and whistles, they’ve given it a huge potential security problem. How so? Well they’ve gone to town with speech recognition (the hyperlinks on the Windows Vista sections of the Microsoft website are changing very frequently, so bear with me).

So all you need is a microphone and you’re away, being able to dictate commands as well as by clicking or typing them. And don’t forget that many PCs have speakers too.

Ah.

So in theory, your speakers could say something and your PC could act on the commands? No, of course not. Er … well, yes, actually.

You might visit a web page, leave it on screen whilst you go and make a coffee or nip to the toilet and whilst you’re away, the page might refresh to another one which has an embedded sound file set to autoload and autorun. And that embedded sound file might tell your PC to open the file explorer, select your documents folder and delete the contents. Then it might tell the PC to delete all the files in the recycle bin too for good measure.

Microsoft wouldn’t let that happen, would they?

Well … yes they did. And here’s more on that.

Oh dear…

Feedback Form, Trackback and Comment Spam

| Richard

You know, it never ceases to amaze me at just how stupid spammers are and, unfortunately, how stupid those gullible idiots who allow themselves to be caught out by a combination of greed and stupidity are.

Why are spammers stupid?

Well they know that there are those gullible idiots who are keen to hand over money to Nigerian 419 scammers and the like and how they’ll click on those phishing links, especially when there’s a $ reward survey supposedly there to be had, or to sign up to MLM programs especially those that proclaim they’re not MLM deals when they clearly are. So they take the broad-brush, scatter-gun approach to sending out junk e-mails.

That must work even with a very low number of clicks per million as it’s so cheap to send out Spam.

But they’ve moved on to getting their websites some coverage. And the way they found to do this was to spam blog comments and trackbacks as well as filling in and submitting feedback or guestbook forms.

The trouble is, anyone with half a brain either junks or disallows all trackbacks or else they use the features of their blogging software to require authentication or moderation so that those Spam attempts go nowhere. Liskewise, feedback forms: they’re going to come back to people like me who’ll just junk the link spam ones without reading them.

And the best bit is that is probably costing these fuckwith spammers money to get these forms filled in, either manually or by bots. Excellent!

T-Mobile: “Spam not our fault”…

| Richard

I’ve been having some “issues” with being spammed by T-Mobile and have complained to them. Their latest reply is a belter!

It started in December (18 December 2006), when they used a regular spammer called DBS data marketing to send out a mailshot to an e-mail address of mine that has only ever been used to register some domain names. That bit’s important…

So when I complained to T-Mobile, they contacted the Spammer who informed me that:

“Your email was supplied to us from Consumerbase and your opt in date was 2nd November 2004.”

Now Consumerbase have an “opt-out” policy, which means if they buy your e-mail address from someone or maybe harvest it themselves – who knows? – when they spam you, you have to click on an opt-out/unsubscribe link or else they add your e-mail address to the lists they sell on to other spammers like DBS data marketing. And as we all know, children, the more unscrupulous spammers merely treat such clicks as confirmation that the address is a live one. And as I mentioned earlier, that e-mail address was only ever used to register some domain names.

On 4 January 2007, T-Mobile wrote to me, stating:

“Your details were provided by DBS Marketing, which means that you’d have opted in to receive marketing from them. We would not send marketing advertisements otherwise, as this would be illegal.”

Red rag to a bull. I’ve been online since 1993/94 and know enough about spam to know there is no way I would ever opt-in to receive junk e-mails. Especially when the e-mail address to which it was sent is not a regular e-mail account, remember…

So I replied:

“I’m sorry, but for you to state so categorically that “[I’d] have opted in to receive marketing from them” is complete and utter nonsense and is merely repeating a lie you may have been told by them. As I already explained, the e-mail address your Spam was sent to has only ever been used to register some domain names with a company that is in no way related to that firm of known Spammers you chose, DBS. As you correctly note, sending out “marketing advertisements otherwise, …would be illegal” and indeed is.”

I received a reply on 9 January 2007 from them:

“Your details were provided by DBS Marketing. If you feel that they’ve incorrectly advised us that you opted in to receive marketing information then you’ll need to contact them directly to discuss this.

I do appreciate you letting us know your views Mr Morris. It’s important to us as it allows us to improve what we do. I’ve passed your comments on to our marketing department so that they can take these into consideration when choosing the companies that we deal with.”

A pity then that I had received another spam to the same address earlier that day from T-Mobile, this time via another well-known spammer, Emailmovers.

I replied to T-Mobile later that same day:

“Clearly your marketing department is not in the slightest bit fussy which Spammers they use: your company has again sent me Spam today (13:40) using a different firm of Spammers. The e-mail you sent is titled “Exclusive Offers and great phone deals with T-mobile” and this time your company used Emailmovers.
 
I would be very interested to find out from you what lame excuse you intend to use this time…”

And yes, verily it was a very lame excuse:

“I can confirm Mr Morris that our marketing department have removed your details from our mailing lists.

Any complaint that you wish to make about receiving unwanted marketing information should be addressed to the company that sent them. In this case I understand it was from Emailmovers. The emails are sent by them and not us. We just supply the email content.”

So it’s not T-Mobile’s fault that they use any old bunch of spammers to send out spam e-mails rather than relying on their own, proper, opt-in lists. Oh and apparently T-Mobile aren’t the company sending out T-Mobile mailshots. That explains that then…

I’ve suggested that the person I’ve been e-mailing at T-Mobile “needs more training”. That translates as “is a stupid twat”.