ureadit

WARNING: International scammers that operate beyond the reach of U.S. Law are using ordinary citizens to help them funnel illegal money to their accounts. You can easily be duped into taking part in this scheme if you are not careful.

So how does it work?

Here’s how, in story format:

Mr. Scammer, currently residing in the Czech Republic, wants to be rich, so he decides to rob a bank located in the United States. He chooses a bank, which we’ll call “U.S. Bank,” because it has some very wealthy customers and its security for online transactions doesn’t seem too strict. Starting with a list of bank customers, Mr. Scammer tries different nefarious means of guessing usernames and passwords. Because he’s casting such a wide net over a lot of customers, he increases the odds that he’ll get lucky. And indeed, after several weeks, he is finally rewarded with a welcome screen to a corporate bank account. Searching through the account, he finds that there is over a million dollars sitting there, just waiting to be taken. Mr. Scammer gets very excited. He sees himself sitting on the beach in Cabo San Lucas, mai tai in hand, pretty girls all around, and plenty of warm sunshine.

If you want to browse to websites without leaving a trail, there is a special mode called “Incognito” when using the Google Chrome browser. Any website you visit while in the incognito mode will not be recorded as part of your browsing history. The incognito mode also prevents your browser from storing any cookies or recording the fact that you downloaded a file. Essentially, the incognito mode leaves no trace whatsoever of any website you’ve visited while browsing.

To enable this mode while in Chrome, you can hit the Ctrl+Shift+N (Windows) or ⌘-Shift-N (Mac). Or, you can simply search for the wrench icon in the upper right side of an already open browser window, pull down the menu and select the “New incognito window” item.

This evening I’m trying out eyeglasses for the first time. I’ve never had to wear glasses before, but then, I’ve never turned 50 before either. I suppose everything wears out with age, and my eyes are no exception. The glasses are the “progressive lens” type, which means that the focal length changes gradually as I look through different parts of the lens. Basically, the lower the angle I cast my eyes, the shorter the focal length. Thus, the lower part of my vision looks distorted, and since I’ve developed astigmatism in my eyes over the years, the glasses, which now correct for it, gives me the illusion that the earth is on a slant.

Anyway, what does this have to do with my blog? Well, I’m going to stretch a bit and say that as things get older, they change, and so it is with IPv4. IPv4, the currently deployed protocol that carries Internet traffic, has just about hit its limit. Its replacement, IPv6, is on its way in, and it seems to be accelerating in popularity. For example, Google just enabled YouTube for IPv6, and instantly, they were flooded with IPv6 traffic. Apparently there are a lot of early IPv6 adopters out there just waiting for the popular sites to implement the new Internet standard so they can be among the first to use it.

I’ve written many times in the past about personal security when online, and I’ve assumed all along that banks are operating in your best interest. Now, from left field, comes a recent study from the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge (UK) that is highly critical of recent online security developments in the banking industry. At the heart of the matter is something called “3-D Secure” or “3DS” You may see the brand names “Verified by Visa” or “MasterCard SecureCode” being used to reference the 3DS technology.

The 3DS technology was developed for the purpose of minimizing online fraudulent credit card transactions. As such, much of its implementation consists of a new set of agreements that allows merchants to take on less liability for fraudulent transactions. (Good for merchant.) However, it also allows banks to pass more of the liability for fraudulent transactions on to the customer. (Good for bank. Bad for customer.)

My weight-control method involves watching the calories I take in every day and counting them against the calories that I burn. The question is, how many calories does my body burn in an average day? You can find a good answer to that question at the calorie calculator on the Calories-Per-Hour website.

So given my age, height, gender and activity level, the calorie calculator says that I burn about 2,700 calories a day. To not gain weight, I need only make sure I don’t exceed that number in calories that I eat.

A few years back, I decided to mothball an old Gateway PC that I’d purchased back in 2002. I hadn’t scavenged it for parts, so it remained intact at the back of the coat closet under the stairs. Quite frankly, I forgot I had it until I went digging through the coat closet about two weeks ago. “Oh yeah,” I said when I stumbled across it. “I remember this thing. I wonder if it still works.” I thought it might be worth spending some time to see if it worked, and if so, it would make a nice desktop for my wife, who’s been using an old beat-up laptop for the past year or so.

So I plugged in the little beast, turned it on, and it came to life. It ran, albeit very slowly. My senile 50-year-old brain suddenly remembered that before I mothballed the PC, it was under heavy use for a year or two, and registry-induced constipation had slowed it to a crawl. I decided to reinstall XP on it and see if I could get it running at a decent clip again.