The Latest

I recently learned about a new sophisticated type of phishing scheme. Traditionally, a scammer looking to steal information from someone has to go through the effort of building a fake website to spoof the target site. These spoof sites aren’t usually very good copies, so a victim can spot that something is amiss and leave. The new trend, however, is to load the target site through a proxy server. The victim is, for the most part, interacting with the real target site, with a couple catches.

• The scammer can monitor whatever is submitted through forms on the site.
• The scammer can modify any content as they see fit.

Wow, scary right? A scammer could be hijacking your user’s info and you may never even be aware that the proxy exists.

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It’s always good to be prepared. So while I don’t imagine my posts going viral anytime soon, I thought it would be a fun thought experiment to figure out what I’d do. An important first step would be serving up a static version of the viral page. Here’s the plan I put together!

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Alright, this should help! Just activated Akismet on my blogs:

“A plugin which identifies and blocks comment and trackback spam on blogs with integration to various blogging systems.” – Akismet.com

Q:  Why no updates since February?
A:  Nothing has changed in my computer situation since February.

Q: Why does that matter?
A:  It’s kinda hard to develop websites without one. I’m too busy at work to do anything personal on the computers there. And borrowed laptops limit my access to the tools I need.

Q: So is this just how it’s gonna be?
A: Yes- but only for a couple (ok… maybe few) more months! Fingers crossed on the cash-flow thing, but assuming the rug isn’t pulled out from under me, I should have a brand new MacBook Pro in October, and I’ll be hitting the ground running. Then I can make updates to this site, other sites, and resume my education in PHP.

Until then, here’s something unrelated I’m working on. It’s the Information Delivery system (ie network) I’ll be installing in my home. Signing up for some reliable DSL soon, and I have most of the components otherwise. The idea is to have everything connected and easy to access for wife and guests.

Information Delivery Network