Back at the beginning of April, I killed about a thousand spambot accounts on this blog and added some new defenses against them. Those defenses helped quite a bit; I was still getting about ten attempts a week, but any spambot that gave an invalid e-mail address got blocked, as was any that gave a …
These are pretty good, and if you can catch them all, you’re probably pretty safe on the ‘net. For now, anyway. I was surprised to note that they didn’t include any URLs with look-alike Unicode characters though. That’s practically impossible for end-users to detect, so they’d probably get howls of protest if they did, but …
Continue reading ‘“Think you can outsmart Internet scammers?”’ »
Apparently not: In the late 1990s Robert Soloway made $20,000 a day as a spammer. He drove fancy cars. He wore Armani clothes. He was, by all accounts, one of the most successful spammers on the planet. But if he were starting out today, he’d find some other line of work. In 2011, spamming just …
Continue reading ‘“As the Internet evolves, is there a place for spam?”’ »
The great computer security debate: what is the biggest problem in computer security, the software or the users? It’s important because the answer determines what we do to try to fix it. Two experts (and a mass of ZDNet readers) weigh in on the subject. My opinion (and a pretty strong one) is that both …
It wasn’t just Tumblr users, either. Demand Progress delivered over seven hundred thousand e-mails as well, including mine. Sorry, music and movie industries. The people won’t stand for such draconian and heavy-handed attempts at censorship to protect your outdated business models. You’re going to have to do what every industry eventually does: adapt or die. …
Continue reading ‘“Tumblr users fight SOPA with 87,834 calls to Congress”’ »
If anyone is looking for a holiday present for me, one of these would be REALLY appreciated. 😉 Think of the possibilities… this could eventually eliminate the need for a screen entirely! Add a way for the computer to understand subvocalized commands, and you could have a full-powered general-purpose computer and entertainment center with you …
Continue reading ‘“Laser display could mean 3D sans screens”’ »
It’s getting ever more dangerous out there. No one can afford to ignore the modern world of fraud and theft anymore — educate yourselves and anyone else who will listen, because those who would steal your money are getting better at it all the time.
There are three interesting things on this page: An “interactive brute force search space calculator” for passwords, which you can play with to get a good idea how easily a brute-force attack would find YOUR passwords. Some comments further down the page on mathematical entropy, and how it doesn’t affect password strength (despite common wisdom …
A good and up-to-date overview of defensive measures you should be taking to preserve your privacy on the Internet. I use many of the add-ons mentioned there already, but at least one was new to me too. (Here’s part 2.)
I’ve been using GPG to sign my e-mail for years, and encrypt it when the recipient will accept such messages (which is very rarely). I find it ridiculous that essentially everyone out there is doing the equivalent of sending e-mail postcards that anyone and everyone with access to any system along their delivery path can …