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Jun 07 2011

So a while back I was struggling with some issues in terms of data recovery and attempting to properly identify my damaged drive so that I could then properly identify the correct “donor” or cadaver drive to use in order to harvest parts from it in order to repair said donor…

Well, things were going along well for a while, I mean… I had collected my facts and done some research.  I’d taken pictures and like any other above average netizen, I began scouring the googles for the answer so as to not have to reinvent the wheel.  I came upon a forum of fairly hardcore data recovery professionals and enthusiasts (and yes newbies too, but we don’t talk about them).  Now this board has been around for a goodly long time… and while I had been a member for some time, I had not posted often.

So, in my head, what I was asking for on the forum seemed pretty dry and straight forward.  I would identify my hard drive manufacturer, the size, the model, the symptoms.. and ask what I needed to match in order to find the correct donor.  Simple right, tells a story.  But what I ended up typing was much MUCH worse (or entertaining, depending on how you want to look at it…)

I could sugar coat it, I could try to rationalize it, hell I could just not post it here and pretend the whole thing didn’t happen but… Well, what fun would that be?

So here, dear readers (i’d like to think my readership numbers in the N+1 at this point) is the whole, unedited posting I made on this hardcore data recovery forum where they routinely flame id10t’s with a veracity that would make Hitler’s drill sergeant proud…

Lord of the Clicks: The Return of the King

This story is set in Micropolis… A city which was once a proud place
for storage products to meet and raise arrays. Now it is reduced to
some back warehouse in an unknown Asian country…

We find our wounded hero DiamondMax and his trusty assistant
Plus-9, flayed out on a technician’s workbench.. Torx drivers and
head-combs lay about as proof of the surgery’s aftermath.

Plus-9 looks at DiamondMax and sez: “D-Max, you aren’t making any
sense.. I realize something is wrong but.. we keep putting new boards
on your back and they don’t work either! Not only that, but it seems
the boards die while trying to communicate with your internals.”

Maxtor the Grey, our resident wizard and alchemist comes with grave
news.. “Plus-9… It is not just *any* PCB you seek that shall bring
our dear Max back to life… and before we cure, we must diagnose the
problem….”

With that, Maxtor the Grey pulled a small yellow box from the folds of
his robe. It contained a red and a black wire, which ended in a
silvery spike. Maxtor removed the PCB from DiamondMax and set his
yellow box beside the exposed connectors. I stepped back and watched.
With a red wire in one hand and the white in another, he proceeded to
move the dagger-like tips with a cat like precision as he moved them
across specific points.
When he had finished, he arose and said only two words…
“Medusa-Heads…”
“Medusa Heads? What are Medusa heads?” I asked.
“Medusa-Heads, my dear little P9, is a condition where the pre-amp
chip inside the drive has failed, and in some places even shorted out.
These shorts can damage things out towards the heads, and down towards
the PCB. It is said that any PCB that becomes one with Medusa Heads
will never work again.. ”

P9 points to the pile of fallen heroes in a stack and says, “Well,
that definitely explains that mystery.. I guess each time we hot
swapped them, we were just hot shorting them…”

Maxtor the Grey nodded, then added, “what other methods have you
divined to help DiamondMax?”

“Well, we did try a double-blind swap…” Said P9. Maxtor the Grey did
a bit of a wincing face at the sound of the double blind swap.. it
always struck him as a bit too amateurish, too “if we can’t fix it
with one working part then let’s try TWO working parts..” They say
power is nothing without control, and that’s true.. But in the Hard
drive world, repair skills are nothing without the knowledge of how
the systems intercommunicate. Oh well, too many rants, and too little
time.. and right now, there was a patient and a friend that needed
some information from those sage enough to have it and even more sage
still to keep it well guarded until such time that one is found worthy
of the knowledge. And no one worthy of knowledge would just swap a pcb
AND heads into a drive without a good reason why.. and it was clear
their only reason why was “why not? It could work!”

Maxtor the Grey spoke: “By now, P9, you have realized that you have doomed
perfectly good PCB’s to the scrap heap because of the Medusa Heads…
So what would you say is the fix for such an issue?”
“Ummm..” said D9, “I suppose hot or cold PCB swaps are out and
swapping the known good PCB and good set of heads into him still did
nothing.. tho it was interesting that when the parts were swapped
back, the donor drive still worked… ”

“Continue…” Said Maxtor the Grey.

“Well, then there must be something in our process that we are
missing.. something as plain as the label on our lids!”

Maxtor flashed a quick smile then said, “Truer words were never spoken
P9… You might just earn your place amongst the trusted initiates…”

“Well Maxtor, based on my conclusions, I think we are using the wrong
heads… I think we need to find the heads that were inside DiamondMax
to begin with.. He was always special to us, but who knew he had
special heads to blame for it?”

“You are on the cloud of truth little one! Well done.. Our hero’s
code of N,M,G,A that we found emblazoned on his lid does not seem to be compatible with the K,M,B,D of the
common folk we have been finding. Our search is made even more complex
due to the quickly shrinking wiggle room in our paramaters..
This is what we know:
Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 160gb
YAR41BW0
N,M,G,A
6Y160P0042811

I will be honest with you P9… Tho I am wise, I am not as wise as the
elders. And it is them we seek with our questions in the hopes they
will have found our troubleshooting and triage worthy of being shown a
glimpse, a clue, a sentence that could help us…”

“But!”, P9 interjected. “Who do we ask? Which question do we ask
first? do we get to ask more than one? How do we know if it is right?”
“My little P9… In here, as in life, the questions do not change…
Let us not dwell on the could-nots and have-nots until it is our only
option left.”

Maxtor continued, “We have many riddles before us… The first one is
the Riddle of the 4 Letters…
My time spent pouring through the ancient tomes of knowledge revealed
to me some conflicting information (as many of these tomes can tend to
do).
One suggested that ALL 4 letters must match to make a head
transplant.. Another suggested the first and last letters.. and of
course there is the rumor that these letters mean nothing, and any
heads work. Thus is born: The 4 letter Donor Codex.”

“Once the codex is cracked, we set out on another hunt. But what if
the codes appear on a DiamondMax Plus9 that is 200gb? Can we still use
that and just ignore the extra heads? And what of But what of these
codes if appear on a Diamondmax Plus 10? or a Plus 16? Would the
letter codes allow us to get a set of heads that would work with our
older PCB? Or would the PCB have to come with it? ”

“I understand Maxtor the Grey.. in any large problem, we must always
tackle it one problem at a time, and never lose sight of our final
objective.. ”
“That’s right P9.. We must snatch DiamondMax back from the Clicks of
Death and deliver him alive and clicking! At least long enough to copy
him to a new shell.

And so, I ask you brave and reclusive Elder who holds the knowledge we
seek… Have you found us worthy? Will you guide our quest in a
successful direction?

This narrative format has been brought to you by watching entirely too
much television, my love for creative writing, and Ambien…
“Ambien.. The food imagination runs on when you should really be sleeping.”

The elders, were the veterans on the data recovery board… and well, yeah.. It was not as well received as you may have thought.  I had to ask the admin to pull the posting for me, since the board had rules about posts that were over 4 hours old were not able to be edited.  It was… a bit humbling.. but still entertaining. ;)

Good night fellow space/time travelers of the cosmos on the ship that burns Zolipedem… Aka Ambliens!

3 responses so far

Recruiters, Staffing Firms, Headhunters, Staff Solutionizers: Take Heed

Jan 21 2011

I get a lot of JobSpam from recruiters.  I learned a long time ago that if you put your resume into any of the major online databases, it is only a matter of time (weeks, months, in one case 4 years) before your resume gets either sold (legally or illegally) as part of a huge resume database.

In fact, if I had to give anyone a piece of advice with regards to putting their resume online, it would be to create a separate email address dedicated to JUST your resume.  Trust me, you want to do this… But back to my story…

I will confess, I do read almost every job spam email I get and thanks to that I’ve become somewhat of a self-certified expert on these emails, so I like to run them through my mental filter of pass/fail characteristics.  Recently, I got an email that was just sooo bad that I felt it necessary to actually write the recruiter back, and highlight some of her mistakes.  Here is the message I got:

I recently reviewed your resume and believe you may be a good candidate for the Security Specialist/Team Lead position we are offering at GNS, Inc. and would like to set up a phone interview. If you are interested in pursuing this opportunity, please send me your updated resume, salary requirements, and let me know when it will be convenient for us to speak.

GNS, Inc. (Global Network Systems) is a woman-owned, certified 8(a) Information Technology Solutions provider. Our services branch off into two major competencies, Information Assurance (core) and Systems Integration (secondary). For more information about our company, please visit our website at http://www.gns-us.com.

A job description which includes our benefits list is available on our website under Jobs for your review and consideration. If you would like to know more about the position or if you have any questions, please feel free to call me at (Number removed). Thank you. Have a great day.

Sincerely,

(Name removed)

HR/Recruiting Manager

Office: (Number removed)

Fax: (Number removed)

GNS, Inc.

1 Research Court, Suite 340

Rockville, MD 20850

www.gns-us.com

This is a PRIVATE message. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete without copying and kindly advise us by e-mail of the mistake in delivery. NOTE: Regardless of content, this e-mail shall not operate to bind GNS to any order or other contract unless pursuant to explicit written agreement or government initiative expressly permitting the use of e-mail for such purpose.

To be clear, this is the FULL message.  The only thing different is that I removed the person’s name, and associated phone numbers.   This is by far the worst email I have gotten from a recruiter in a long time.  Now, maybe it wasn’t my best day at work.  Maybe I didn’t have my bowl of Wheaties ™ that morning, or maybe, just maybe, it just irked me to no end.  Now, as I get older I have tried to assume the role of the kindler, gentler, happy-go-lucky, water off a duck’s back IT Security professional who can let the petty things go and concentrate on the important things.  Alas, today was not that day.  So, armed with a healthy dose of “WTF?!”, I began to craft my response, to wit:

(Name Removed),

On average, I receive around 8 emails a week from individuals in the hiring field for government IT security jobs.  Through sheer exposure over time, I have become quite the expert in terms of the various ways in which these types of messages are written.  I see that you work for a woman-owned 8a firm.  Being an individual who was raised by three women, I have a soft-spot for such companies and like to see them succeed.  Having said that, I would like to offer you some suggestions in the future that might increase your percentage chance of getting a response from potential candidates.

  1. Subject line:  The subject line of your email was blank.  Normally most internet-savvy people would just delete an email from someone they do not recognize that had a blank subject line because they would assume it was spam.
  2. Salutation:  People pay more attention to email when they find that they are being addressed by name, specifically by their first name.  This shows that you have at least read the person’s resume and took some time out to personalize the message.  Your email did not address me in any fashion, not even the generic “Dear sir:” or the even more generic “To whom it may concern:”.
  3. Job Description:  Qualified candidates are always currently employed, and you are the one contacting them, not the other way around.  Your email below directed me to your website if I was interested in reading over the job description.  This was bad for several reasons.
    • You want me (the typical candidate) to read your email, and decide if I’m interested in contacting you about the job you have open.  You should be showing me how easy it is to consider your job opening so I can make an informed decision about it.
    • Email is free, it wouldn’t have been that much harder to simply include the description at the bottom of the email.
    • Telling me that the job description is on your website, and not providing a direct link for me to click on requires me to visit your site, find the link to your “jobs posted” area, and then hunt around for the job you think I might be interested in.  This just isn’t going to happen.  People on average don’t have this kind of patience.
    • Amazon.com conducted a marketing study that showed the number of clicks and the number of seconds a person will endure during a web-based purchase before they give up and go somewhere else.  That’s right! People would rather start over at a different website than wait more than 8-10 seconds! (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/psychology-web-performance/).  This same psychology applies even more so to unsolicited email from individuals in the hiring field.
    • Bottom line?  You have to make it easy for the person reading your email to learn more about the job.
  4. In the interest of being complete, I visited your site and found that there actually isn’t a link to a position called “Security Specialist/Team Lead”.  On your “Jobs” page, the position is called “Security Specialist – Task Lead”. It isn’t until I click on that link that the name for the job changes to “Team Lead”.
  5. Location, location, location:  We live in a major metropolitan area that encompasses many square miles.  5 extra miles in a given direction could mean the difference between a 30 minute commute and a 90 minute commute.  In addition to the job description, tell me where the job is located.  That will tell me immediately if I am interested in learning more or if it is an absolute no-go.
  6. Salary:  It is a tough economy and the 6 figure jobs aren’t as plentiful as they were in the dot.com boom.  Tell me what the salary range is for the job.  I’ve seen job descriptions for jobs similar to the one I am in now go from 75-150K.  Clearly it makes a difference.
  7. Cash:  If all else fails, offer me something to change my mind and make me want to contact you.  Tell me that you will mail me a $10 BestBuy gift card if I contact you and do a phone screen for the job, but only if I call you within the next 2 days.  Tell me I have a week and I will put it off and then forget.  Small business hiring is all about increasing your rolodex of qualified applicants.  Even if you don’t find the right person for the job today, having an internal database of candidates with updated resumes and some notes as to how the phone screen went might make the difference later on.  Pick 5 really strong candidates, tailor an email message to them with the steps above and offer them a $10 BestBuy gift card if they provide you an updated resume and call you for a phone interview.  I bet your success would increase ten-fold and in the end you are only out at a maximum $50.  Small businesses have the flexibility to exercise creative solutions to every day problems.  Why bang your head against the door like the big companies do when you can ring the doorbell?

Some additional points for you and your company to ponder.

  • Your website does not mention that you are SBA 8a, woman-owned on your About Us page.  Neither does your corporate capabilities document linked off your about us page.
  • Your About Us page does not include any information about the people who own the company, your executive board, the experience these people have, etc.  Most 8a companies in the government space like to list this kind of information since at least one or more members of the senior executives have a government background that forms the cornerstone for opening doors for the company’s business development.  Who is the woman behind “woman-owned”?  People want to know this.  There is very little information out there about your company and it’s ownership.
  • Your One Page Flyer (http://www.gns-us.com/GNS%20Brochure%201Page%20-%202009%20online%202.09.pdf) states “INC 5000 Award 2007, 2008, 2009″.  Yet your news page shows”GNS, INC. RANKS NO. 2611 ON THE 2010 INC. 5,000″.  Therefore you may want to update your flyer to include 2010 or just span 2007-2010.
  • Your “Corporate Capabilities Package” (http://www.gns-us.com/GNS%20Front%20Desk%20Binder%201.09.pdf)  states “In 2008, GNS was ranked 849 on the Inc. 5,000 List.”  Why did you choose 2008 and not 2007? Was 2008 the year you were ranked the lowest (and therefore best) number out of the 4 years you have won the award?  You may want to change that sentence in your corporate capabilities package to reflect the same 2007-2010 line from your flyer, because as I read it, you went from 849/5000 in 2008 to 2611/5000 in 2010.  While still being in the list of 5,000 is great, it does send a certain negative message for those who can do the math.
  • The WashingtonTechnology.com “Fast 50″ button in the upper-right hand portion of your website on your “About Us” page must have at one time linked to a news article from 2006.  This button/link no longer works.

As for me personally, I have been in my current role leading Computer Security Incident Response for (my client)  for (a long time), and have a 1.8 mile commute from my house in (Anytown, USA).  I am currently not interested in a job in Washington DC doing C&A type work, but I thank you for the opportunity.

However, if your company is interested in leveraging my and/or my company’s abilities in the area of Incident Response, SOC Services, SOC Capabilities Assessments, Data Recovery or Computer Forensics, or a myriad of other Information Security specialties, please feel free to contact me at my corporate email address included in the CC line.  I have also included my VP, Mr. (Vice President) in the event that you are interested in doing business together.

Regards,

(Chico Escuela)

Senior Analyst and Incident Responder

Independent Security Consultant

It really irked me that they opted to capitalize the word PRIVATE in their email signature.  I mean, does this crap even hold up in court EVER?! You sent ME the email… How am I supposed to agree to the terms of the communication once I get to the END of the email?  I never understood that.  Also, how am I supposed to know if I’m the intended recipient? You didn’t actually address it to anyone!  Grrrr…

I should take this moment to mention that not only did I send it back to the individual recruiter, I CC’d the sales team and the CEO of the company.  I did this back in October of 2010.  Not surprisingly, I never heard back…

One response so far

The TSA and “teh gay” agenda

Dec 03 2010

Just when you thought you had heard every crazy rant and uproar about the TSA and their enhanced security screening process, you have this guy… http://dcist.com/2010/11/loudoun_county_official_tsa_pat_dow.php

Eugene Delgaudio, an elected official to the Loudoun County board of Supervisors, was recently quoted as saying:

“the next person who pats you down could be a homosexual, getting pleasure from your submission” and “TSA Pat downs promote the homosexual agenda”.

Now, when I just read the headlines and the quotes, I thought it meant Eugene Delgaudio was against it because he felt that screeners might “catch teh gay“.  Given his strong anti-gay stance, this made perfect sense to me since Dulles International Airport is in Loudoun County and it would mean it’s essentially a straight-to-gay conversion factory, churning out gay after gay once their CTC (crotch-touch-count) reached a certain threshold.  As it turns out, I was waaaay off base, and Eugene was simply worried that gays would flock to airports to become screeners so they could get their jollies being able to touch same-sex naughty-bits all day.  Because as we all know, the number one goal of the homosexual agenda is figuring out new ways to be able to touch same-sex naughty bits all day (and get paid for it!).  So while I was wrong in where Eugene was going with all of this, it didn’t stop my imagination from going into over-time as to what it would be like if my initial assumption was right, and I think it would go a little like this:

Imagine, if it really were that simple, and it really *was* all about the CTCs?  If a straight guy gropes other guys say 1,000 times in a row without a break, he catches “teh gay”, period.  Scientists everywhere realize that this is the case and that it had never been discovered before because at no time in history had it ever been a straight man’s job to touch other men’s crotches so often, in such a short time-span and without a break.  The political ramifications and public outcry would be such that working for the TSA would even come with hazard duty pay!  Why, you would have to have an entire new-hire training process dedicated to making sure screeners didn’t lose count and catch “teh gay”.  Slogans, posters, and training films, oh my!  I’m no artist, but I’m pretty good with marketing so I came up with a few catchy slogans that I could TOTALLY see being printed up and plastered everywhere:

“Nine, Nine, Eight? Staying Straight!” and “Nine, Nine, Nine? It’s Break Time!” and who could forget? “Hit 1K? Catch teh gay!”

Not only that, but because screeners would complain that it was unreasonable to have to keep count and do their job, and because they had too many close calls and not so close calls with people going over their 1K CTCs, a whole cottage industry bloomed where companies would make disposable CTGs (crotch-touch gloves).  Each company would tout their model as the best one and like any industry it would break down into the cheap, the middle of the road, and the overkill.  Just like police officers, you would be provided with the cheapest equipment that the government would deem “satisfactory for duty”, but if you wanted to upgrade, they would only pay the difference.  Oh, you are wondering what would that look like? I’m glad you asked!

First, there’s the “el-cheapo” version.  These would be the minimum required for the job and would be provisioned free to the screeners.  They would of regular-looking clear vinyl gloves with wrist straps.  They would be designed so that on average, after about 900 medium-pressure impacts to the glove, chemicals inside the glove’s layered materials would mix and the glove would start to turn pink.  The government loved these since they provided a clear and simple indicator and they were relatively cheap to purchase, which was a good thing, since it still required putting on a disposable glove on over them for the actual pat-downs.

The middle of the road versions would be more like “fingerless-gloves” and would have little pressure sensitive counters and numerical LCD screens that automatically tracked your CTCs (it is worth noting that screeners being who they are, changed the first word in CTC to a more profane one that rhymes w/ “rock”.  Hey, I didn’t make this up.  Wait no, I did, but it could totally happen.)  These would not be disposable, but required the screeners to buy them in their hand size.  The batteries would be expensive and they would be the number one item stolen from screener lockers.

Lastly, the expensive models would have audible alerts as you approached the “danger zone” (could you get it to play you a little song? Like maybe an 8-bit Casio keyboard rendition of Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”?), and would include a central GPS tracking and logging system that would alert other screeners if someone near them caught “teh gay”, like an Amber Alert system, only umm, well pink of course.  Maybe even a robotic announcement like “Code Pink on Concourse B, Security Checkpoint 4.  Warning! Warning! Screener Salgado has now caught teh gay.”

Also, let’s not forget the infamous iPhone app “Who’s caught Teh Gay at TSA” which would have a running counter and would show the last 5 people to have caught it.

Ok, so that covers the slogans and the equipment, which leaves us with the training film!!

-Filmstrip Begins-

(Our film opens with two male screeners in the locker room.  It is clear their shift is over as they begin to remove their uniforms.  A conversation begins.)

Screener 1:  Man… I thought that shift was NEVER going to end!

Screener 2:  Tell me about it!  And the AC is STILL broken! I’ve been sweating like crazy all week!

Screener 1:  Dude, did you hear about Bob on Terminal 3?

Screener 2:  No, what happened? He catch a terrorist?

Screener 1: No.

Screener 2: Get fired?

Screener 1: Worse… one minute he was doing the routine search up a dude’s thigh as far up as possible.. Then, when his hand touched the guy’s package, he just snapped!  Started running around screaming “Fabulous!” as loud as he could and grabbing other men’s crotches and “honking” them.

Screener 2: You mean?

Screener 1: Yep,that’s right!  He caught “teh gay” and *we* could be next! We touch people’s junks all day!!

Screener 2: But, wasn’t he wearing his CTG? Wasn’t he watching it to see if it turned pink?

Screener 1: Nope.  He took it off. Said he didn’t need it.  Said he could “just tell” when he was getting close to three nines.  Supervisor looked over the tapes and apparently he caught it yesterday, but it didn’t take until today.  Apparently it can take up to 24 hours to surface.  You could tell he was trying to keep it together but, well, in the end teh gay wins, ya know?

Screener 2: Duuuude… What are we gonna do?  We weren’t wearing our CTGs yesterday cuz it was so hot and our hands got all sweaty!

Screener 1: Bah! I’m sure we are fine.  Look, it’s been a long day and I for one am hitting the showers… You comin’?

Screener 2: Yeah.. Hey, you look kinda tense.. How ’bout a massage?
<BOW, CHICKA, WOW, WOW>

(Deep male voice, reminiscent of the old Smokey the Bear commercials comes on)
“Remember… Only YOU can stop Terrorists… Even if it means some of you might catch Teh Gay…”

-Filmstrip Ends-

Trainee1: Dude.. that’s… That’s the strangest training film I’ve ever seen.  It didn’t even make sense! I mean, shouldn’t the voice over have said something like, “Stay away from catching teh gay” or “Stop teh gay, wear your glove all day?”  Is this really required to become a screener?
Trainee2: Dude, were you not paying attention? Do you *WANT* to catch “teh gay”?
Trainee1: No.. umm.. I guess not..
(I wish I knew Randall Munroe from xkcd.com personally, this last bit with the trainees would be so much funnier in context as one of his line drawings.)

One response so far

bringlimewireback.com – Free T-Shirt is a scam

Nov 10 2010

I don’t spend a lot of time cruising non techie-related sites, but when I do I like to visit slickdeals.net and check out the various sales and freebies on the internet.  I came across a freebie today that just didn’t seem right, and since  I spend a large part of my day researching stuff like this for a living, I thought I’d throw my skill set at this and see what I could find out.  The site in question is www.bringbacklimewire.com: A seemingly on-line petition website who wants to bring back the popular Peer2Peer internet file-sharing business “LimeWire”.  They claim that if you sign their petition (by providing your First/Last name and mailing address, email is optional) they will send you a free t-shirt that says “Bring Limewire Back”.

Ok, so I’ve done the free t-shirt thing before and have gotten a few from reputable companies, but something about this didn’t seem right.  So let’s apply my 3-step process (patent-pending!) for analyzing your typical internet scam site.

  1. Grammar-Fail:  The grammar on this site is correct.  More than likely the scammer’s native language is English.
  2. Physical Address(es):
    IARR Inc.
    New York Office,
    304 Hudson Street,
    12th Floor,
    New York City, NY 10013 USA
    This check is a FAIL.  A little bit of Google-Fu showed that I couldn’t find any businesses at this address going past the 6th floor.  After calling around I finally got directed to the lobby of the building, who verified there is no 12th floor (only 8 floors), and there is no business by the name or initials of IARR Inc. registered at that building.  And really, am I supposed to believe they have the entire floor of a building in downtown NYC? Not even a suite number?

    3. 27th Floor,
    Brookfield Place, TD Canada Trust Tower,
    181 Bay Street,
    Toronto, Ontario
    Canada

    <insert here more Google Fu and several phone calls and butting my head against a internal phone system and people that kept giving me internal extensions that couldn’t be dialed from the outside>

    I spoke with a very helpful individual at the front desk of the Canada Trust Tower.  He verified that he had no entry for such a business but did tell me that Regus (a company that leases office space) had a presence on that floor.  I called and spoke with the receptionist who verified there was no such company.  For trivia’s sake, the building is  51 stories tall, so at least it does have a 27th floor.

  3. Whois Information aka Who owns the domain name?

    4. The Domain is registered through GoDaddy and shows that the domain information has been privatized by a DomainsByProxy, a popular tool sold through GoDaddy that allows people a level of privacy when registering domains.  This isn’t a pure “pass or fail”, but it does raise a little suspicion, since why would a company trying to raise awareness for any cause go through the additional effort to privatize their contact information?  Coupled with the fact that they use not one but two fake corporate addresses, this is a major warning sign.  Usually I would also point out the fact that the domain is brand new as a warning sign, but in this case limewire hasn’t really been shut down that long ago.

    Registrant:
    Domains by Proxy, Inc.

    DomainsByProxy.com
    15111 N. Hayden Rd., Ste 160, PMB 353
    Scottsdale, Arizona 85260
    United States

    Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
    Domain Name: BRINGBACKLIMEWIRE.COM
    Created on: 06-Nov-10
    Expires on: 06-Nov-11
    Last Updated on: 06-Nov-10

  4. The Google Ad Tag

    5. Ok, so I said it was a patent-pending 3 step process, but like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, I’m adding a new step and calling this a trilogy of four parts. Looking through the HTML code for the site, I identified the scammer’s google-ad tag of “pub-6122501907414420″. Googling this tag gives you a fair number of hits including this one which states:

    i just like to point out there is a freebie/s being posted on MSE and other freebie forums that are scams to collect emails and get google ads clicks and know paypal money etc

    freekeyring dot com
    freebeermug dot com
    freestressball dot com
    bobbleheadies dot com

    i have made a complained to google adsense and ask all HUD users that send off for the freebies to complainn using the email adsense-support@google.com there google adsense id is pub-6122501907414420 included this when you email google so at least they dont get any money from google and hopely this will stop them setting up more freebie scam sites.

And this is why I say bringlimewireback.com is a scam…

Comments welcome and encouraged!

Chico

4 responses so far

Goodbye Craiglook.com… Hello dark ages…

Oct 17 2010

I have always prided myself in my Internet-Fu, specifically in my ability to find anything for sale.  I took great pride in watching the look in people’s eyes as the shock set in that I was able to find that rare item that had been eluding them for weeks/months/years with just a few smug keystrokes.

So it is with a heavy heart that I must lift the magician’s curtain today in mourning, for you see one of my most powerful search tools has died today, no doubt in large part to the single most reoccurring theme in history responsible for everything from the failure of Beta as video tape format to the persecution of the Knights Templar by the Catholic Church: Greed.

Craiglook was, hands down, the best search engine for the terribly addictive and search-interface challenged website known as Craigslist.   Now Craigslist has come under some pretty negative press recently with regards to their “Adult Services” listings (which they have recently turned off, leaving many a horny and cash-laden individual wondering where exactly it is he is going to go now to try to score his “massage with happy ending”.)  I have actually always been an overall fan of CL.  I loved being able to tell people the the WWW in front of most domain websites stood for “Wild Wild West” because the Internet as a whole was the new wild frontier of our age, and that if they didn’t believe me, all they had to do was take a single 5 minute tour through CL and see that in one place you could get a place to live, stuff to put in it, a roommate to share it with and a person to sleep with you…  If that wasn’t the very definition of a wild frontier, I don’t know what is.

I loved (and still do) CL because of it’s minimalist approach to the web.  No Flash, no Java, no fancy graphics or even Cascading Style sheets..  God bless them for adopting the “less is more” philosophy and making a site that could load quickly even over a 33.6K modem!  But the one thing that was always a huge issue with CL was the ability to search for things near you, especially if you lived in an area that sat squarely in the middle of two major metropolitan areas which had their own CL sites.  Live between Washington DC and Richmond, VA? you have your work cut out for you.  Live on the border of Connecticut and Rhode Island? You are gonna be there a while.

Even more-so was the problem of looking for that rare item that might be 15 miles or 1,500 miles away.  Enter Craiglook, the most elegant way to search ALL of Craigslist.  Put in your zip and distance and you were off and running.  Feeling like a roadtrip? Search it all and decide just how far you are willing to drive for that 1890 cast-iron coffee grinder the size of a pre-schooler.

Now with Ebay owning at least 25% of CL, and the concept that CL is supposed to be only for “local shopping”, it isn’t hard to make the leap that if you can find what you are looking for a little further out of your immediate circle, you aren’t going to go buy it used on Ebay, so it could be said that being able to negotiate a transaction on a site like CL *does* in fact “cost” Ebay money.  (Pssst.. Craigslist? If you didn’t want to make a product that allowed people to buy things outside their local network, you shouldn’t have put it on the Internet…  Get over it.)

Or, on the flip-side, someone somewhere has a nice PowerPoint deck showing exactly how CL/Ebay can monetize global search and the lawyers and bean counters got together and agreed this was a “Good Thing ™”.  Step one? Shut down the competition! The first warning signs that you are being controlled by greed is when both of these parties agree, much like how most banks now charge an extra fee for online banking with Quicken “Hey, let’s charge people to access our website with an automated tool!” (but that’s another story for another time…)

So, farewell Craiglook.com.  It was great having you as one of my secret weapons in my Internet search bat-belt.  I look forward to the next brave pioneer of online classified search.

One response so far

softbusinessonline.com is a scam

Aug 19 2010

I’m the guy all my non-technical friends call whenever they have any kind of issues, questions or concerns… So it wasn’t all that strange that I had an email from a friend who works as a technical writer and trainer asking me to take a look at a website that claimed to sell Microsoft Office Professional 2007 for the low, low price of $59.  She wanted to know if I thought it was a scam.  well, Let’s see… That’s a savings of $440.99!  Too good to be true? Yes.  Scam?  -shakes the magic 8 ball- “All signs point to yes!”

So a quick read through their FAQ shows that they don’t offer software for sale that they can ship.  All licensing and software is offered through “digital download”.  They claim it is perfectly safe and legal and even Microsoft does it.  Right there, that should set off your scam-o-meter.  Another thing to look out for is that there was almost ZERO information about this company or even customer reviews to be found on the internet, although further down we find out why.

I have a new three step methodology for detecting what I term the “e-tailer scam site from overseas”.

Step 1: Grammar-Fail

Take some time to read the website, really read it.  Does it sound like the kinds of sentences people would use? Does it make sense once you really think about it, or does it sound like something that got put through some kind of translator?  A few of the more common grammatical errors are one thing (we all fall prey to them on occasion), but a business website should have very few if any grammatical errors and awkward sentence construction.  Using the wrong its/it’s or their/there/they’re is one thing, but take a look at what I found under their “About Us” page:

SoftBusinessOnline.com Ltd is a software e-commerce concerned about
Customer profit first of all. We work for you to have the software
of a best quality only. Besides our prices are surprisingly low even
for those who are used to live in competitive e-world.
We are known for our ethical business policy so our customers are
often to apply to us again and get a wholesale discount.

Umm, What?!

The first sentence literally made me laugh out loud.  “concerned about customer profit first of all”? So, you are saying your company is all about the money?  I think your translator failed you and you were likely trying to say something about how you are all about helping customers with their bottom line by having low prices.  The whole thing reads like something out of Engrish.com

Step 2: Physical Address

At the minimum, any online company worth even vaguely trusting would publish some kind of mailing address and/or physical address.  This company did something very sneaky in that they published their company address inside a picture.  They claimed their address as 795 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA.  Ok, fine.. However, a little googling reveals that Twitter just moved their HQ to the entire third floor of this address.   Something tells me rent here is astronomical and could never be afforded by company that sells software at such deep discounts.  I might have even given them the vague possibility of having an office in this building, but not even a suite/floor number?  Are we to believe the entire building is actually being leased by this company?

Step 3: Whois Information aka Who owns the domain name?

A lot of information can be gained from pulling up the records for who owns a domain and when it was registered.  Here is the ownership information for this particular domain.

Registrant:
 huang yuhong
 beijing
 beijing, beijing 100036
 China

 Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
 Domain Name: SOFTBUSINESSONLINE.COM
 Created on: 12-Aug-10
 Expires on: 12-Aug-11
 Last Updated on: 12-Aug-10

 Administrative Contact:
 yuhong, huang  kokolpopo@gmail.com
 beijing
 beijing, beijing 100036
 China
 01085691232

Ahh, and now we get to the real soft, gooey center… This domain was registered by an individual in Beijing, China.  Why would someone register a domain and put contact information from China when they have a perfectly good (and massive) building in downtown San Francisco, CA?  Simple, they wouldn’t.  Using my (patent pending) three-step methodology, this is a Chinese scam site.  Pure and simple.

So what could happen to someone who uses this site and makes a purchase?

At the very least, you might get a working download of Office with a working (possibly stolen) license key.  But realize the person at the other end now has your personal information and your credit card information as well.  You open yourself up to having your identity stolen, other credit cards stolen in your name, your credit ruined, etc.  Not to mention the fact that the software you download may contain additional malware designed to steal all your personal and banking information and send it back to a nefarious person!  Oh that’s right! Don’t think that just because you download a program that looks and acts like MS Office that it didn’t come with a few extra hidden goodies too!

Oh, and why were there no customer reviews on the internet for this company?  It was created 7 days ago (as of the time of this writing).  To me, that is another warning sign that things may not be what they appear.

Now, I do this for a living, so it didn’t take me very long to figure all of this out.  A casual surfer is very likely going to fall for this site and put in their sensitive information.  In all actuality it took me longer to write and edit this post than it did to simply hit reply to my friend’s email and say, “Yep, it’s a scam.”  But she wanted to know the Why and the How as to my conclusion, and I feel that anyone out there that genuinely wants to be educated and be a little more “cyber-street smart” deserves a chance.  So, thanks to her and this post, I hope other people are saved from the possibility of ending up as another ID Theft statistic.

–Chico

2 responses so far

An introduction of sorts…

Aug 18 2010

The phrase was actually coined by my daughter when she was only 2 years old.  I was standing in the middle of the kitchen having a conversation with a few other “grownups”.  Suddenly, we heard the unmistakable sound of plastic toy wheels rolling on a ceramic tile floor.  From the corner of my eye, I spot a plastic toy car with a little girl in it.  Like Fred Flinstone, she uses her feet to scamper over to us inside her little car.  She stops, opens the door, gets out, and looks up and turns left and right, looking at our faces.  “Hi guys! What’s happenating?”

With that she gets back in her car, shuts the door, and heads off…

The term stuck instantly and appears to be spreading through the various social circles I encounter.  I know I’ll be successful once I hear it said on mainstream television. :)

No responses yet