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December 11, 2005 |
WTVN Radio • Columbus, Ohio Sunday morning from 8 until 9 |
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Didn't the OptInRealBig jerk promise to stop spamming?Somebody thinks you're a moron. Several months ago, OptInRealBig.com agreed to settle charges that it sent spam containing falsified headers, falsified routing information, and deceptive subject lines and that the spam was illegally routed through a worldwide network of more than 500 vulnerable computers. I thought that meant the end of this organization, but apparently not. OptInRealBig is still alive and kicking, claiming that it is "The nation's fastest growing online marketing company." The website talks about trust, too. OptInRealBig was the subject of a suit by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who said, when a settlement was reached that the settlement holds Scott Richter (the owner of OptInRealBig) and his company to a new standard of accountability in their delivery of e-mails. "If he does not fulfill these standards," said Spitzer, "he will find himself back in court, facing greater penalties." The Attorney General had sued Richter, his company, his agent, and the marketer that hired him, after an investigation into millions of e-mails sent over the course of a month to Hotmail e-mail accounts that had been set up specifically to investigate spammers. As is so often the case, Spitzer has been out-maneuvered by Richter, who is still sending spam. I used to use "clients@blinn.com" as the address I provided to domain registrars when I registered domain names for clients. Richter's company, and other spammers, harvested that account name and I no longer use it. But the account still receives spam. Clues galoreThere were lots of clues when the message from "Krest" toothpaste "support" arrived. First of all, it's "Crest" and how much "support" does a toothpaste need?
The message had been sent to my "clients" address and any message not from a domain registrar to that address can automatically be assumed to be spam. Another spam clue is the crap at the bottom of the message. I'm really impressed by the job NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer did on this guy!
Yeah. New York's attorney general did a fine job of shutting down this organization, didn't he? So I fired up the notebook computer, which doesn't have a specific hosts file. When I arrived at the website, I found my old friend "MyCoolRewards". Is the offer fraudulent? Is it deceptive? I don't know. I report. You decide.
This is an "offer" that's not associated in any way with Crest (they finally figured out how to spell it) or with Procter & Gamble, the small print below the big picture says. Instead, it's an offer by "MyCoolRewards" that requires "compliance" with lots of terms, most of which are not stated here. Oh, I'm sorry! I must have been wrong!I said that MyCoolRewards is "my old friend" but my memory was faulty. I was thinking of "MyOnlineRewards", the either fraudulent or misleading company I wrote about back in August and (even earlier) in July. Now I see that MyCoolRewards is a totally different organization.
It couldn't possibly be that the Online Reward Center at 123 N. Congress Ave., Ste. 351, Boynton Beach, Florida, might in any way be connected with My Cool Rewards at 123 N. Congress Ave., Ste. 351, Boynton Beach, Florida. Could it? Happy holidaysWhether for you it's Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, or something else, happy holidays! Can your computer make the season better? A discussion list I participate in has been talking about people who avoid today's technology, but a story from a friend (I've never met him, but I consider him to be a friend) described how his computer helped him to re-connect with people he knew in the 1960s. "I am experiencing one of the joys of having a computer tonight. It's been 35 years since I was at AFTV Germany, and just about a year ago one of the men I served with took the initiative and looked us all up -- about 8 of us, anyway -- and we started getting back in touch. Just yesterday, after our e-mail exchanges had tapered off for about two months, one of our number sent us all a message asking, "What's up?" There have since been about 25 e-mails, some serious, some silly. It would be hard to do via phone. But with e-mail, we can all be a party to the same conversation. And best of all, we WRITE. Not talk. WRITE. Just like letters. But much quicker. "I love these guys, and it is so great to be back in touch. The one member of our group who would have been voted Least Likely to Settle Down and Make Something of Himself surprised us all by becoming rich as all get out. The one who would have been voted Most Likely to Do Drugs Until He Checked Out has actually done that; he died a few years back, I just learned, still doing drugs. The one we thought would become a true university intellectual is happily adrift in life living hand-to-mouth on a boat in Florida. One of us is a mayor. Another is still in TV news. Another owns three TV stations. And then there's me.
"The flurry of exchanges with them in the past 48 hours has been truly wonderful and so 21st century!" This reminds me of the TV coverage of the Internet a decade ago, as it was becoming ubiquitous. The initial TV reports suggested that the Internet was our savior. There was nothing the Internet couldn't do. Then, perhaps as the Internet began to threaten traditional media, TV news portrayed it in a much darker form -- the Internet would corrupt your children, steal your spouse, and be the ruin of the world as we know it. The Internet is just a tool. Just as a hammer can be used to build a home or to kill someone, the Internet can be used for good or for evil. Don and his 1960s friends are using it for good and I hope that his story encourages you to reach out to those you knew a lifetime ago, to re-establish relationships, and to enjoy the technology. Happy holidays! (No, it's not just Christmas. It's also Hanukkah. It's also Kwanza. There are lots of holidays this time of year and saying "Merry Christmas" omits more holidays than it includes. This, by the way, is NOT an attack on Christianity.) This is too easyEvery day I get dozens of messages from people offering to sell me "OEM software" for next to nothing. If I can buy Microsoft Office Professional for $70 instead of $550, why shouldn't I? Does OEM software exist or is this just a fraud?
OEM: Original equipment manufacturer. Occasionally OEMs have an agreement with Corel or Microsoft or Adobe to pre-load that company's software on the OEM's computers. Occasionally some of these OEM licenses find their way to a gray area of the retail channel. Selling OEM licenses without selling the hardware that should accompany the licenses violates the OEM's agreement with the software company. And if you see an offer to sell an application that would retail at $550 for just $70, might the rational consumer not conclude that something is amiss?
Hovering the mouse over any graphic or any link suggests that I'll connect to tovarkasoft.com. And where, exactly, is that company located? Well, as you'll see in the WhoIs entry at the left, the company is located in Tahiti. A lot of computers are manufactured in Tahiti by people whose last name is Rodrigez. I can understand that people who are not involved in any way with the hardware or software industries might believe this kind of ploy, but I've heard from people who are actively involved in the industry who have taken these spams at face value. If you receive one of these spams, view it with a jaundiced eye. It's a fraud. Nerdly NewsAn Xsuit for MicrosoftMicrosoft's Xbox 360 seems to have a small problem: Getting rid of heat. The power supply overheats in some cases and this causes the machine to freeze up. (Overheating causes freezing? This calls for a bad joke, but I can't think of one at the moment.) Previously Microsoft included the power supply in the Xbox main unit. That's the way most "desktop" systems are powered. The new Xbox has an external power supply like most notebook computers do. The problem is that the Xbox needs a lot of power for those games and power means heat. The design apparently doesn't allow the heat to be dissipated quickly enough. Microsoft says this is a problem for about 1% of the units that have been shipped, but a man in Chicago says that number is badly understated and he's filed a class action suit that claims the product was rushed to market and is defective. Microsoft is a big company with a lot of money that it can toss to attorneys for the defense. Chances that this class action suit will succeed are low. Microsoft is probably more concerned about how to increase production because sales have been robust. Firefox 1.5 -- needless problems?Yes, I think so. A lot of the extensions I use were broken by version 1.5. Additionally, I was unable to log on to the American Express with version 1.5, although all was well with the earlier version. There are new features. But there are also new problems. Lots of them. If the goal is to make Firefox a commercial product, there's work to do. A couple of additional problems:
Is Firefox still my default browser?Yes. I've loaded an extension that allows me to view a page in IE if it won't display properly in Firefox and I have to use it far more often than I'd like to. Mozilla is in an uphill battle for market share. IE has more than 85% of the share versus about 8.6% for Firefox and about 7% for everybody else. Let us know what you think. Write to:
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I tried to connect to "stipulae.com", but it redirected to "ekmas.com", which is blocked in my hosts file. Who is ekmas.com?
It's a company in Utah, but lookie here: It's associated with OptInRealBig.com. 
To answer that last question first, the answer is yes. OEM software does exist. But an offer such as this is a fraud. Even if you buy legitimate OEM software, it's a fraud unless you're an OEM.
The image above at the right (click it for a larger view) shows an e-mail I received this week. You may notice that "Norton Antivirus" is shown in a serif typeface even though everything else is sans. You may also notice that the "add to cart" graphic has been stolen from Amazon.com. Ethical? Trustworthy? I doubt it.
