E-mail scams and phishing attempts evolve constantly, hoping to take advantage of the latest trends and current events. Although the e-mails change, the people behind them inadvertently send up the same warning signs again and again. SWITCHED dug through mountains of spam to find the most prevailing trends. Here are some warning signs to help you spot a hustle the next time one lands in your inbox.
1. Requests for personal information
No legitimate organization will ask for your social security, bank account or PIN number via e-mail – and none will include a link, sending you to a form to enter it.
2. Watch for typos or spelling mistakes
Scam artists are street smart, but many flunked basic grammar (or barely speak English).
3. Clickable Web links in e-mails
What might look like a legitimate address is often linked to a third-party site that looks official, but is actually run by thieves and scammers.
4. ‘Market research’ or surveys that ask you for personal information.
You’ll be asked to fill out a survey or enter a contest – requiring you to give personal information or “log on” to your account. Once you’ve done so, the scammers can use it themselves.
5. Stock tips from random people or companies
It’s probably a “pump and dump” scheme. The sender already owns shares – and when you and others act on the “tip,” the stock price soars and he sells fast – leaving you with virtually worthless shares.
6. Attachments in e-mails from anyone you don’t know
It’s almost always a virus or spyware meant to steal your personal information
7. Wordless e-mails
Some legitimate looking “e-mails” are actually just images. The danger with these is that clicking anywhere in the body takes you to a suspect Web site – where you may be fooled into entering personal information, or the scammer may slip spyware onto your machine.
8. Outdated information
Some scammers like to pose as technical- or customer support from a company you associate with – but fail to keep up with current events.
9. Red-flag phrases
If you see the phrases “verify your account,” “you have won the lottery” or “if you don’t respond within XX hours, your account will be closed,” it’s a scam – every time.
10. Generic greetings
While you can’t trust every e-mail that knows your name, you can definitely ignore the ones that start “Dear member” or “Hello friend.”
1- Canyon Beachwear
2- Couture Candy
3- Everything But Water
4- Figleaves.com
5- J.Crew
6- Malia Mills
7- Nancy Meyer
8- Net-a-Porter
9- Shopbop.com
10- Victoria’s Secret
According to Today.MSNBC.com
Expand the Ability to Direct Message Anyone on the SiteAccording to LouisGray.com…
According to cnet…
1. Miley Cyrus poses in a sheet for photographer Annie Leibowitz.
2. Vanessa Hudgens takes off her clothes and the nude pics are leaked.
3. Miley Cyrus flashes her bra, her underpants, her midriff, etc. at the entire internet.
4. That Cheetah Girl takes off her clothes on purpose.
5. Pictures of Pete Wentz’s… uh… private business leaks onto the internet.
6. Kate Moss did cocaine.
7. Photo agency X17 posts photos of Lindsay Lohan and Vanessa Minnillo in a variety of weird and sexual poses… with a knife.
8. Pics of what might or might not be Kristen Davis doing something dirty emerge on the web.
9. Us Magazine published photos of ‘Laguna Beach’ star Jason Wahler playing Russian Roulette.
10. Nude photos of ‘The Hills” Audrina Patridge surface on the web.
- Hitting the escape key should freeze any animated GIFs on a web page.- Middle-clicking on a tab is a fast, easy way to close tabs. But it can’t currently be aborted — what if you click your middle button on a tab and then realize that you don’t want to close that tab? On Firefox you can move your mouse off the tab before releasing the button to abort closing the tab. That doesn’t work on Chrome right now.
- If I start typing “Google webmaster blog” into the Omnibox, it offers to search Google for “webmaster blog.” I’m a power user, so I want a way to turn that quicksearch off. I type a lot of searches of the form [Google X Y Z] but that doesn’t mean I want to search on Google for [X Y Z].
- Chrome doesn’t recover submitted form data as well as Firefox if you have to click the back button.
- There’s a weird interaction between WordPress and at least the current dev version of Chrome. If I select some text and click the “link” button when writing a blog post, I get a pop-up that already contains “http://”. The text “http://” should be selected so that I can delete it or paste over it easily. Right now I have to select the text and then delete it. This is really annoying.
- One thing I love about Chrome is that you can type ‘t’ in the omnibox and it will suggest something reasonable like “techmeme.com” and you can just hit return to go there. But if you’ve been to a hostname that exists (e.g. if you’ve visited a valid internal server at http://t/ ) then you have to type ‘te’ before the “techmeme.com” suggestion comes up, because Chrome assumes that you want the server with that name. I want to be able to right-click and delete any Omnibox suggestion. Then ‘t’ will suggestion techmeme.com again.
- I’m a weirdo, but I want the ability to add user styles so that I can (say) highlight nofollow links. So I want the equivalent of userContent.css that Firefox offers.
- A friend pointed this one out to me: If you’re using a proxy url and get on a VPN, Chrome can take 20-30 seconds to refresh/reload the proxy script. I think Chrome might use a Windows-wide service, which is why it takes a while? In Firefox you can click a “Reload” button to force a refresh of the proxy configuration URL.
- Chrome doesn’t have that many options now, but eventually I’d love the equivalent of Firefox’s about:config method of changing settings.
- I don’t know if this is a Chrome issue, but when I use Chrome with Twitter, copying and pasting urls/text in the text box can be weird sometimes, e.g. you copy/paste urls and it copy/pastes from a different location in the text box. I don’t know how to describe it, but people who use Chrome and Twitter a lot might have seen this too.
According to Matt Cutts…
There are plenty of dating sites out there, but they all focus on finding compatibility based on users’ profiles — not necessarily on personalities. This site offers blind dates at public places in your neighborhood in New York; Austin, Texas; Boston; and San Francisco (with more cities coming soon). The dates can be arranged on short notice — even as soon as tonight — without viewing a profile or image for your date. It’s the closest thing to a matchmaking friend you’ll ever find online.
Better than: Pining over profile pictures on Facebook.
2- DailyLit
Being well-read might not be your biggest priority, but it comes in handy during dinner conversations. Luckily, there’s DailyLit. The site offers both classic and contemporary titles, all provided in quick-reading installments that can be sent to you either via e-mail or RSS. Since most of the classics are in the public domain, they’re free; newer titles are available for purchase. So, the next time the conversation turns to the genius of Herman Melville, you can join in. Better than: Lugging around real books.
3- IWantSandy
While a glut of applications help you organize appointments on a calendar, there’s a lot of activity in your daily life that doesn’t fit neatly into your calendar’s time slots. Not good at remembering to print out your flight confirmation code? Send a message to Sandy, and she’ll remind you in a daily digest, in a text message or as an event on your calendar. Using e-mail, SMS, Twitter or Jott, you can set up and receive reminders for appointments, contacts, lists and random information. And, true to her humanlike presence on the site, Sandy speaks and understands plain English — just like a real personal assistant. Better than: Paying a real Sandy who needs sick days.
Physics probably doesn’t come to mind as a conversation starter, let alone an icebreaker in a room full of unacquainted guests. But in this elegantly written blog, stories about science and technology come to life as effortlessly as everyday chatter about politics, celebrities and vacations. Blogger Jennifer Ouelette makes science and technology engaging enough for 2,000-word posts. Now, that’s a feat. Better than: Trying to impress the in-laws with your martini capacity.
5- Newsmap
Newsmap is an amazing graphical representation of the constantly changing headlines on Google News. By relying on something called a “treemap algorithm” to aggregate news, Newsmap uses space to translate the importance of a story; in other words, more popular and important stories appear larger, while less important ones appear smaller. It also connects news stories by theme, using a variety of colors to represent categories. Better than: Sorting through RSS feeds.
6- Run.com
You have no excuse for not keeping your New Year’s resolution now that you can take that jog almost everywhere you go. Run.com, a user-generated database of running routes all over the world, uses Google Maps mashups, allowing runners to look up routes in their area and choose them by length, difficulty, scenery and other user-rated criteria. Business travelers who want to keep in shape on the road will be glad to find routes in all 50 states, as well as in dozens of foreign countries. The site is still in beta, so look for more routes to come. Better than: Getting purposely lost just to mix up your running routine.
7- MakeUseOf
MakeUseOf is a tech blog that even laymen can understand. While early adopters delve into the tiniest details about Web technologies, most Web surfers want only the highlights of the latest developments. MakeUseOf offers just that, in considerably de-geeked language. The tech-savvy aren’t left out, though: In the “Geeky Fun” section, the initiated will find plenty of fodder for hearty laughs. Better than: Trawling through techno-babble blogs for something free, cool and useful.
8- 5min
Try this: Write directions for tying your shoes, or making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It’s not as easy as it seems; some things are best demonstrated, not written. That’s what makes the 5min “videopedia” invaluable. It’s a site featuring short videos that provide solutions or instructions for common and practical issues, like how to insulate your house or how to teach your dog to sit. None of the videos is longer than five minutes, and they’re all user-generated, making 5min a kind of instructional video version of Wikipedia. Better than: Reading About.com.
9- TryPhone
With so many mobile phones on the market, it’s hard to keep up and know which one is right for you. That’s the logic behind TryPhone, a fully functioning interactive phone-testing site where you walk through all the common features of the phone you’re considering buying in glorious, high-resolution interactivity. The site also contains user reviews, specifications, product photos and links for purchasing. Better than: The dummy devices at cell phone stores.
10- Damn Interesting
If you ever find yourself sucked in by the occasional History Channel special, you’ll quickly get lost in Damn Interesting, a blog that writes long-form historical summaries of just about anything that’s, well … damn interesting. Read about the bizarre saga of the Trans-Siberian Railway, or the story of the failed invention of wireless electricity. If you’re in need of an engaging academic time-waster, you’ve found it. Better than: The “Random Article” link on Wikipedia
According to Chris Danner and April Joyner on www.tech.msn.com
1- Audacity is a free program that allows you to edit your music and sound files.
2- Winamp is a great music player for those looking for a alternative to the common “iTunes” software.
3- Trillian is an all-in-one messenger that uses very little resources.
4- CPU-Z is a small program that displays your current computer specs.
5- WinRAR is a great program that allows you to compress your files to a smaller file size.
6- UltraVNC is a client to server based program that allows you to access another computer.
7- TrueCrypt This software allows you to encrypt any drive you want to and as you move files to that drive, the files encrypt automatically.
8- Skype is a voice over IP program that allows you to communicate for free for pc to pc calls.
9- HiJack This will search your registry for errors and possibly anything that could be wrong with it.
10- SuperAntiSpyware scans your computer for known Spyware, Adware, Malware, Trojans, Dialers, Worms, KeyLoggers, HiJackers and many other types of threats, and allows you to remove or quarantine them.
According to www.chris.pirillo.com
TheDollPalace.com, “Where Cartoon Dolls Live,” is by far one of the creepiest things I’ve seen lurking on the internet to date. Should you decide to sign your soul over to this elite group of doll-making weirdos, you will afford such luxuries as playing dress-up games with cartoon dolls, sending self-made cartoon dolls in email to other doll-loving online friends (through “DollMail”), and participate in forums where people talk about… dolls.
MyChurch.org: Because God hearts the internet. This is a social networking site for “Christian churches that follow the Nicene Creed.” The interface itself is fairly similar to Facebook’s, but in addition to a personal profile, you can also create a church profile to let everyone know what’s poppin’ at your church. And instead of joining groups like “When did I get a tattoo?!” you can join church communities. It’s basically a regular social networking site that weeds out the riffraff and reels in the God-fearing Christians.
This isn’t so much weird as it is rude. This social networking site, launched in 2004, is “Invite Only,” and a glance at the cover image above reveals that it is for the social elite that soar above the rest of us low lives. As we integrate more and more into this world of the wide web, we will inevitably shift from sitting at home on a Friday night waiting for the phone to ring, to sitting at home on a Friday night waiting for our aSmallWorld invites. However, the site reminds us: “If you have no friends who are members yet, please be patient.”
The site for secret agents that could either save us or lead to our ultimate demise as a nation. Set to launch in December.
If Fido has yet to figure out how to post a blog on his own (dumb!), Petster is a site where you, the human with opposable thumbs, can make a page for your pet and share with other pet lovers (or as I call them, “scaries”) the details of your pet’s existence. If “pet” is simply too broad of a term for you, please check out Dogster, Catster, and Hamsterster.
6- www.Eons.com
Eons: “Lovin’ life on the flip side of 50.” IMO, Eons is based on overcompensation. This is a site where those over the hump come to say “I’m not dead yet” and post photos and blogs detailing their mid-life crisis rendezvous. I don’t want to talk about Eons anymore because it’s giving me the shivers.
Right after members leave Eons, they network on Respectance, a site for the dead. I suppose it’s really a site for the mourning; however, it encompasses photos, lifelines, and stories about those who’ve passed on. It is a little sad. And now so am I.
IveScrewedUp.com, set up by the Flamingo Road Church, is what one would call an easy out. It is a social networking site for sinners to fess up in a virtual confessional and clear up their rap sheets before taking the ultimate vacation to see the Lord. Hooray! Everything is easy with the internet!
This is a goth social networking site because lordy knows the goths can’t mingle with us mainstream folk on our mainstream social networking sites. VampireFreaks.com hosts music, photos, journals, and cult-membership, better known to the regular beautiful people as groups.
10- www.HotOrNot.com
It is important for people the world over to know whether or not they are hot. This way, the non-hotties can go into hiding so the hotties don’t have to mingle with them or take offense to their ugly mugs. Jim and James (NOT HOT, by the way) knew this, and started this social networking site where people can judge and be judged. All is right with the world when we are relying on our internet pals to tell us if we are attractive enough to be worthy of existence.
According to Nicole Ferraro on www.contentinople.com
20. Destructoid.com
19. Joystig.com
18. GameRevolution.com
17. GameDaily.com
16. GamePro.com
15. GameTrailers.com
14. FilePlanet.com
13. 1UP.com
12. GameZone.com
11. FileFront.com
According to Ebizmba.com
PLAY
