Well there's more coming about this in a future post, but the new Dell XPS laptop that I am now using has LoJack.

We'll track you if you steal it. :) It came with it for a year for free, not sure if it's something I will use or not after my 'free' year is up. But here is what the web interface looks like. I hope I never need to use it.

Sick of getting spam, here's a few things to try.

• If you run your own domain, turn off your settings to allow *@domain.com email to go to a single box.
• Remove text that contains your email address on your site, and consider changing it to be "user at domain dot com".
• Consider creating a windows live or Gmail account to use for sites that require registration. Once you've determined if they are trustworthy, change it to your 'good' email address.
• Double spam filter your email. The email from my site goes through my ISP's spam filters, and then Gmail picks it up from my inbox there, sure, it's a few extra minutes to get my mail, but then it goes through Gmail's spam checks. I think I get maybe one to two spam messages in my inbox per week. This also allows me to have a single point of presence for all of my mail, not to mention the hard disk space I'm saving by using Google 2.8 GB of online storage. I've set it up this way for close to six months, and I've only hit 5% of their allotted storage space.
• If you are getting a lot of spam from reliable companies, unsubscribe from their notices, they have to provide a way for you to opt out of their requests. Be careful though, a lot of spammers use this feature to fish for email addresses, so while it's ok to tell Macy's or Nordstrom to stop sending you junk, I'd be weary of BigOffers.com.
• Use Gmail's Report Spam feature in the web based email.
• If you're using Outlook, use it's built in Spam filter capabilities.
• Only give your email address to people you want to receive email from.
• Spammers use name lists to guess at common windows live, yahoo, and gmail accounts, when possible, add something that won't allow your name to be 'guessed' (jsmith89@gmail.com) . It's kind of cryptic, but yet another effective preventive measure.
• If you're getting more spam than good email, it might be time to retire that address and start clean.
• Don't get caught by a phisher either.

When a business touts a benefit, like having free wifi when you get your oil changed, it makes me happy. I can sit and geek on the net, check email, etc, do something productiive when I'd normally just have to sit. This was a big thing the dealership we purchased our car from kept telling us.

When they offered me oil changes for the car for life, for $299, I did the math, and thought, heck... why not? So the first time I came to get the oil changed on the car, I was happy to connect to their network and have something to do while I waited.

But it did not work. I could get an IP address, but could do nothing more. I unplugged their router, rebooted thier cable modem... to no avail. I complained to the service department, and they said they'd get it corrected.

Today, our second oil change same issue. In fact, another user was griping about the same thing. So I finally got frustrated and determined with the level of technical abilities here, that their access point was probably wide open.

A quick trip to http://192.168.0.1/ gave me a username/password dialogue, no password. Man I gotta love that.

I was in. A SHITTY Dlink router. After about 3 minutes I found the problem. They were essentially blocking all of the common ports. The genius that set it up was probably trying to allow it. I removed all the filters, rebooted, reconnected and viola! I'm posting this message.

I told the dealership that I'd send them a bill. I was slightly kidding, but at least I know I can connect to their access point any time now, and solve things myslef. I'm happy again now.

It's not enough. Go out TODAY, and buy a CROSSCUT shredder. Shred everything. Any mail you get, that's not filed, or retained, shred it. With the rate of identity theft on the rise, and the amount of people out to get you, it's just too easy for people to get info out of the trash.

We even keep our trash can inside our garage, and it goes out just before the garbage man comes. We don't even let it sit out all night.

Credit card companies even tell you just rip up the application, and you'll be safe. Check out this link from "cockeyed.com", Rob Cockerham, a guy that loves to pull pranks, build crazy things, and perform 'social engineering' projects via his website, decided to see how far a credit card company would go to issue a new card. He completely RIPPED up his application, re-assmebled it, changed the address, and phone even, and was issued a new card. It's down right scary.

http://www.cockeyed.com/citizen/creditcard/application.shtml

Seriously shred it all.

I was talking with a friend who recently added the transparent console that Scott blogged about. He challenged me to inquire, "No spyware right?" I was relatively sure that there was not any, there was no install for transparent console, and I trust Scott.

So he added it to his machine, took my configuration settings. And while he was playing around with it, reported that he had just run a "netstat" and he was seeing a connection to some server in taiwan, a university in fact.

Now that's alarming. If you aren't browsing to a site with a .tw extension, and you're unsure of why there is a connection to a foreign country, the first inclincation is to shout "SPYWARE!!!".

So while talking with him we were using liutilities.com to check each process to make sure there was no virus, or spyware running. There wasn't. So after making sure all his running processes were legit, he started closing system tray programs, and then running the netstat command again.

After closing Skype. It went away. I'm not sure why Skype was connecting to Taiwan, maybe someone there had added my friend as a contact? Or was trying to see if he was online, but either way, it was good to find out what was using the connection.

Type netstat from a command prompt and see what's going on.

I didn't fall for it. But let's just say I almost clicked.

Seems like they'll never end. And they're getting more clever every day. I try and remind myself, not to fall for it. Just delete them, if it's really serious, I'll get a call from my credit card company. They just won't be contacting me online. I had renewed a domain name today, and the site I was using said that my charge did not go through. I don't carry a balance on my credit card, so I was a tad alarmed.

I promptly called my card company, and they said, "No... it went through." I thanked them and hung up. I submitted a trouble ticket with the domain registration company. Weird, but it must have gone through. I chalked it up as an error on their side.

Later, I went to check my email account, to see if they had responded. There was an email that appeared to be from Visa. I had just recently added more security to my visa account through a new type of authentication, and this email instantly grabbed my attention as being possibly legitimate.

After about three seconds, I knew it was bogus. But it goes to show how a series of events could lead you to believe that an email like this may be legitimate. Another blogger, I can't remember who, referred to it as a "perfect storm situation".

Here it is, read below for the numerous red flags that will make it impossible to be from Visa.

1. They've spelled verified wrong in their subject! You would think with the amount of time and effort they put into these scams, that spelling would be the first thing they would get right, but thankfully almost all of the email phishing attempts I've seen have horrible spelling and grammar.
   
   
2. They make reference to having this problem cleared up by February 31, 2006. Wow, looks like I'll never get this problem cleared up.  I'd typically wait till the 30th of Feb to handle something like this. There's no way Visa would send out email with an impossible date in the text.
   
   
3. I've removed the actual link target from the "click here" and the link below it from above, as it was actually pointing to www.comsec-data.dk/catalog/admin/backups/ (unlinked for your protection) an international web site, not even close to anything visa would be using. So remember, even if a link looks correct it's too simple to obscure where it really goes, mouse over the link and look at the bottom left status bar in your browser, it will tell you where it really goes.
   
   
4. I did not bother to look at the mail headers, but that's always something you can look at too.
   

Just remember to not fall for it. No matter how credible it seems, don't talk yourself into it. Call your bank. Call ebay. Call Paypal, call whoever it is claiming to be. Make them prove it's real. If you start down a path, and you feel strange, or you feel it's not legit, close your browser and quit.