More On (or is that Moron?) Spam Emails

Twice yesterday I received messages from friends that their email addresses were compromised and not to click any links until further notice. One was from a MSM account and the other a Yahoo account.

One lead to http://pvc0.ukparasd.com/ (AKA - http://medicaltoystore.net/ - which touts itself as Canadian Health & Care Mall {also Canadian health&care mall} ) which is one of those cheap pill pages. How those sites ever make money I don't know. The competition is immense and they all have the same cookie cutter web pages on them. I just hope that their stuff is not poisonous. Had a friend say that probably all they send out is sugar pills anyway.

The other website that used a friends email address and list of friends addresses is: http://www.snnsn.com/ - Supposedly selling cameras and computer related items. Just thought I'd put this out there so people that might be wondering about using either of these sites will have a chance to find out that there are some people that have been spammed by them.

The owners of those sites might say that they contracted with some other outfit that spammed people. If that were true then they are guilty of not doing their homework and making sure they are dealing with reputable outfits. that excuse still does not assure me that putting my credit card info into their site will be a safe thing to do.

Any outfit that does business like that will not get my dollars

Another thing is when you get a forwarded email with a long list of emails send it back to the person who sent it to you with a reprimand. Using BCC is easy and if they don't know how to use it (AND delete previous email addresses) they should not be allowed on the internet. They only make your email address susceptible to spammers and hackers.



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Does Portions of Our Government Have Our Best Interest at Heart?

Jim Kouri has posted on American Daily Review an article titled, Cyber Threats and Vulnerabilities Continue

In his commentary/post Jim Kouri states:

Cyber threats to federal computer systems and cyber-based critical infrastructures are evolving and growing. These threats can be unintentional and intentional, targeted or non-targeted, and can come from a variety of sources, such as foreign nations engaged in espionage and information warfare, criminals, hackers, virus writers, and disgruntled employees and contractors working within a targeted organization.

Moreover, these groups and individuals have a variety of attack techniques at their disposal, and cyber exploitation activity has grown more sophisticated, more targeted, and more serious. As government, private sector, and personal activities continue to move to networked operations, as digital systems add ever more capabilities, as wireless systems become more ubiquitous, and as the design, manufacture, and service of information technology have moved overseas, the threat will continue to grow.

I had to comment and since I type my diatribes slowly I thought to bring my comment here to get more bang for my buck...

I'm a cynic and as a result when I read government names such as "Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative" I instantly ask, "How much graft and corruption is going on there?" So I Googled, Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (no quotes) and the first hit took me to the NIST.gov website for it... Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative: Leap-Ahead Security Technologies
(+$5 million) ...

After reading about it from their website I could see that such a wing of our government could, if run by ethical people, have a benefit to the security of our nation and be in line with the Constitution. You know. The part that says government's purpose is to protect U.S. citizens.

Looks to me like the NIST program could do it's job and do it well IF politicians stay out of it's way. According to this Wired story ... What’s Up with the Secret Cybersecurity Plans, Senators Ask DHS Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) asked questions that I think, if answered, might give cyber terrorists and criminals new directions for hacking that they otherwise may have been ignorant of or ignored.

There does need to be oversight but not at the expense of security.

Pryinng1 sez: If the politicians try to micromanage this department all bets are off regarding it's effectiveness.

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