To BCC or Not? - Let's Stop the Spam

I mean seriously is it too hard to understand a simple email program and use the bloody thing correctly to protect peoples privacy?

Computers have been around since ….. what 1990 (common use) email for just about a long. Email has been common use since 2000 (or thereabouts)

How many spam emails do you receive daily? 10, 20, 30? or more? I imagine that businesses receive 100's if not 1000's.

If employees used BCC for group emails, then spam would be greatly reduced. Just tonight I received an email from a sporting organisation (state based) and in the CC section, there are 25 email addresses.

6 are ISP addresses, like Telstra and Optus
1 is Government defence address
1 private business
15 are free email addresses (predominately hotmail!)
1 is a large business
1 is a "mobileme" address

So big deal you say………………

If everyone on that list forwarded the email without cleaning up the email addresses in the CC line - YOUR email address has been exposed 1 x 25 = 25, and each recipient forwarded that email twice, and  every person who received that email also sent it forward by two. Your email address has been sent to 30,065,107 people (If I am not mistaken) IN SEVEN (7) days……………………….

See how evil not using BCC can be?

Do you know how much a viable (working) email address is worth? It's worth between $10 and $30 on the black market. Value of Email on the Black Market Now add to that any other personal information a hacker or spammer has been able to determine and you can immediately double that value!

So USE BCC, Train your staff, train your parents, train your children and stop the spam.

The meaning of  CC and BCC (Old School)
CC = Carbon Copy
BCC - Blind Carbon Copy

How much is an email address worth on the black market?

Due to this post:- Syncing Mobile Phones Offline and this post Why Can't I Sync my Mobile Phone Offline I had many people question my demands to be able to sync my personal data (possibly including your data, OFFLINE) My reasons are purely privacy of your data and mine.

I don’t want the world knowing what I’m doing and where I’m going and who’s birthday it is (via my calendar) I don’t want the world to have access to your email address and phone number (via my outlook address book)

In other words, my reluctance to use a phone that requires the transferring of all this information online, (via an email account or similar) before I can download back to the phone is something I refuse to do. PERSONAL SECURITY.

If my email address was hacked (hopefully never) there would be close to $7000 worth of data available for sale on the black market! Did you know you are worth that much?

Depending on who you listen to – your email address ALONE is worth anywhere between $10-$30 depending on what you do, who the address was gained from and what information is attached to that email address! Add to that other personal data of addresses and phone numbers AND BIRTH DATES and that value could triple! That’s JUST IF MY EMAIL address was hacked. Then the documents that you store online (in your email account sent folder), like passports, credit card information etc, that adds hundreds ($100), if not thousands ($1000) to the value of the data stolen.

From Expert Reviews UK Expert Reviews - How Much Are You Worth to a Cyber Criminal?

From Experian Experian - How Much is Your Personal Identity Worth?

So are you happy using a HTC Mozart which requires data to be uploaded/synced via a live.com account? Or happy to use iTunes to transfer your data?

Online security has been a big issue recently, not just at the personal level, but at the commercial level, look what happened to Telstra this past weekend, look what happened to Sony and another gaming venues recently. Is anything online ‘safe’ anymore?

Should people be more aware of the information they store online and perhaps reduce/delete unnecessary information? It’s not for me to say, but I prefer to store everything locally and not online, thus my demand to be able sync MY personal information OFFLINE on MY computer and not yours!

Edited: 26th December 2018

Mobile Phones, Telcos, Customer Loyalty and Failing Hardware

I have been an Optus Customer since the good old days of analogue.

I have had very few problems, the odd billing issue, but never a hardware failure, never have I broken contract, never have I lost a phone, never have I asked for favours.

I have ALWAYS had 2 year contract and within 6 months of the contract expiring I ALWAYS get a new phone with a NEW 2 year contract.

For the last 2-3 months my phone has been playing up, calls drop out, the phone restarts for no reason what-so-ever and within the last week the phone won’t tether to my laptop…….. which is a real issue as I use this feature often for work.

Today I dropped past an Optus Store (Franchise) and asked if there was anything they could do for me. They said no – you break contract it will cost $404 to get a new handset. I said surely 15 years counts for something and they said there is nothing we can do, you have to call Optus customer service.

 So I call Optus customer service and after a 20 min phone call, I am advised that Optus will drop the $404 penalty to $250 and I can get a new handset. I started push I mean I’ve been a loyal customer for 15 years, doesn’t that count FOR SOMETHING?

I was then advised that I could receive a ‘loan’ handset until the end of contract. I immediately asked what sort of handset….. Various brands and models were rattled off, but when I started asking would it seamlessly sync all my details without 3^rd party software or would the handset tether wirelessly to my laptop….. The answer was unknown.

I said seriously – I’ve been a customer of Optus for 15 years and you can’t just get me a new contract and handset and forget about the old? I was advised that the call taker had gone to her ‘limit’. Keeping in mind it’s now 20 minutes into a service call, that even though I’m with Optus I have to pay for…..

I started to realise I was talking to a brick wall.

15 years means nothing, customer loyalty means nothing and even when I used the “I’ll go to another provider” line, they seriously didn’t seem to care.

I’ve got 2 months left (before I get an early release) on my contract before I’m issued with a new handset… I’m going to sit the remainder of the 5 months of THIS contract out and seriously consider switching to Telstra (Other providers are no good where I live) And now that Telstra has ‘memo’ (a one to one answering service) just like Optus’s ‘Surepage’ There is nothing holding me back.

I’ve essentially been given ‘The Finger” and told my money, my loyalty and 15 years of service means nothing.

So might as well behave as though that is the case.

Wall-E – The Movie, The world that could be….

.............If we allow it to be.

My reason for writing this post, is that I was watching this movie on the weekend with my 13yo and even he realised there is a grain of truth in. Are we smart enough to save ourselves now? Or do we have to wait 800 years for a saviour?

W.A.L.L.E. = Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth Class.

Walle is a trash compaction unit, left behind after Earth was evacuated due to people just using and abusing and throwing away. Humans are evacuated as a temporary measure until the WALL-E units can clean up the planet and allow the humans to return.

Unfortunately 5 years after taking to the skies, earth was deemed too toxic for humans to return, so they stay in space and with a sedentary lifestyle, turn into fat humans, unable to move and only living because computers do everything for them, from making decisions, to bringing them food, to clothing them and making them scared of the real world.

When Eve is sent down to the Earth to see how things are going, she finds WALL-E and then a seedling, once Eve detects the seedling, she shuts down, hiding the plant, and calling for a ship to come and pick her and the plant up.

WALL-E hitches a lift and makes it back to the mother ship. The Auto-pilot of the Mother ship realises that the plant signifies life and by declaring WALL-E a threat and stealing the plant, the autopilot almost derails humans returning back to Earth.

Eventually the humans realise that being obese and reliant on robots/computers is not good nor healthy for them and make a change.

What I’m getting at, are humans being too consumer orientated, prepared to settle brand-new straight out the box and not fix something that is broken, rather throw it out and get a replacement?

Are we becoming too reliant on computers to feed us, warm us, monitor us, coach us, entertain us and pretty much do everything except spoon the calorie laden food into our mouths and wipe our butts (Although I believe you can buy a toilet seat that does that!)

Have we lost our sense of who and what we are? Have we lost the ability to think for ourselves, have we lost common sense. Are we so stupid that we can’t think for ourselves anymore.

Think it about – watch the movie WALL-E, it might have been made in 2008 and it might be animated, but look, listen and pay attention – there IS A MESSAGE THERE.

Flying Fezzes, ……………… I’ve fried my HD

I’ve always been a supporter of back-ups, I’ve always been a supporter of duplicate data, I've always been a supporter of back-up of a back-up. Hell anything to keep data and data integrity.

November 27th 2009, I finally moved away from CD’s for storage of my precious photos, so not only did I have a copy on my HD, I also used to have a copy on CD. November saw me take a step up in to world, with an external HD, which was meant to store my photos, my back-ups for my PC. All the stuff I didn’t want to lose.

I’d also merged all the data and then copied this and sent the data off site for safe-keeping.

I’m patting myself on the back as we speak. My external HD failed last night and it isn’t even 12 months old. It’s gone, won’t register on my PC, The PC says it’s disabled the hardware, because it’s faulty. That’s all very bad news.

Thankfully I had the copies, My heart didn’t even reach my mouth, simply because I know I was prepared and that saved me the heart-ache of racing to find a computer technician who could save this data for me.

I followed my own advice for once (come on, admit it, you don’t always!)

I’ve previously posted about the backing up data, about having this data stored off-site, about making sure you don’t lose those precious family photos. I;m so glad I followed my own advice, this once!

Here are some prior posts about what you should do:-
Duplicated Files
Back Up, Did I say Back-Up?
How safe is the data in your safe?

So get off your butt and do it now, no heart-ache, no worries, be completely at ease.

If this seems like too much trouble, there are online back-up services available also, that require little effort on your behalf – so that is something else to consider.

Here is one that comes recommended by friends - Carbonite AU

So choose your poison and do it NOW – don’t delay – don’t think tomorrow, tomorrow maybe the day your computer decides to shit itself!

When I was growing up.......and modern communication

I was thinking about a conversation with my darling Mstr13 – He wanted to visit some friends, I said ring them and find out what they are doing. He said I don’t have their phone numbers. I said, then how do you contact them? –Internet, was the response.

I thought back to when I was growing up, when I was 13yo. I grew up in a small town and we’d ring friends first thing in the morning (not before 9am) that would be rude, and we’d organize our day that way.

Then we I grew up and left school, same thing, you’d ring the house and organize something, if you were lucky they had an answering machine. If they didn’t, you’d try again later.

Then pagers were invented. Great for working people, great for people contracting, you worked out with family and friends codes, that when the number was sent through, you’d add and extra digit at the start or finish of the phone to signify something. 0=out, 1=in, 2=home soon

Then pagers had text capability – WOW – it was heaven, no more trying to remember what meant what. Mobile phones were around, but they were far too expensive for the average person to have. Mobile phones were for corporate type people.

Eventually the cost of owning a second hand mobile outweighed the cost of a pager and returning phone calls etc. So many people switched over to mobiles.

Now if you don’t have a mobile (or don’t answer it on the second ring) you are a luddite .

Technology has gone far these last 20 years, now it is common for people not to have access to a landline, to only have a mobile phone, everything is wireless and far more cost affordable.

The internet for those under the age of 20 years, is considered the norm, in fact life didn’t exist prior to that apparently!

I think what scares me, is that in an emergency, people won’t be sitting by their computer waiting for you to contact them. How will kids manage if there is an emergency and they don’t have access to a computer?

Mobile phones are great for 12-24hours and then after that you need 240v power to recharge them.

I suppose what I am saying is get something other than an online user name from people you considering friends, imagine putting out a call for “deep_throat”, whom you haven’t spoken to in a month. You know they live in Timbuktu, you know they go to “Prince School of the West” You think their name is Tom, but you have no idea what their surname is. Get their phone number! It would make life a little easier!

Take care out there

Duplicated Files/Photos on your HD or storage devices

For years I’ve struggled with duplicated files across many storage devices and on my HD – the reason for this is that I am a compulsive ‘saver’. Every time I open a document I re-save it with the time and date attached so I know which is the most current file. If the document requires many adjustments/changes then I could have 20 different file names for the same documents – all with the same alpha, but different time and date stamp.

Then on top of that I also keep multiple copies of data on several media types and located in several places! <-- I know one sick puppy. Anyway – using Google (my best friend) he showed me a program called Anti-Twin http://www.joerg-rosenthal.com/en/antitwin/

The program is very easy to use – will compare just one drive, or multiple drives – you choose what you want to compare.

The files are listed – so you can choose what you want to keep and what you want to delete.

You are shown the file paths and folder. Literally control is in your hands, and you can choose to delete or keep. When it comes to the deleting side of things – you even have the choice to delete immediately, delete to the recycle bin OR delete to a folder called anti-twined – which will store everything until such time as you are ready to delete.

The thing I absolutely LOVE about this program is its ability to compare photos pixel by pixel and determine if 100% match or less – you even get to nominate the percentage of match before the program flags it.

Try anti-twin http://www.joerg-rosenthal.com/en/antitwin/ and if you like it – donate to maintain the program – even $1 helps

**I forgot to mention, the program not only uses english but many other languages as well. So if english is a second language - you can use your native language (if supported!)

Back-Up – Did I Say Back-Up?

Tell me – When was the last time you backed up the data on your computer?

Can you remember?

I’m not just talking about the documents, but the photos, the family history, that you always mean to organise and never quite get around to doing.

Those images, those documents are IRREPLACEABLE.

Johhny’s first birthday party or Grandpa’s 80th birthday. They will all be gone if you have a hard-drive failure or similar. Refer Here as to what this similar might encompass

Back everything up – I don’t care what media you use – just back it up and move it off premises. That way if something catastrophic does occur – you will have lost little. Make a habit of it – and do it perhaps once a month, Alternatively – if you can afford it, get off-site data back-up, depending on the connection and the data volume, will determine the cost.

I use plain old data CD’s and copy everything to CD-RW and take a copy to work and the switch that with the 2nd copy and maintain the backwards and forwards, Emails I have set up to automatically be forwarded to a third account, which is used purely for storage. There are many cost-free alternatives.

Use them and by thinking outside the square – you will lose little if your hard-drive fails or flooding, or fire. You have taken another step to protecting yourself and ensuring your family history lives on!

The Wireless Modem and Children

I have found a new point of torture for my children. I’m sure you have the same problem, they turn deaf whenever something needs to be done. They suddenly acquire Alzheimer’s when you ask them to do something as you head out the door. They won’t go to bed, they basically refuse to listen and you are sick of it.

Most often the cause seems to be a conversation via MSN or a computer game. (we only have computers and PSP2 here)

I’ve found a solution for us and possibly for you!

We run a modem with an aerial, which allows the kids, via dongles to access the internet.

I unplug said aerial and thus instantly remove internet access!

Suddenly I have mild, co-operative, non-combative children begging to do as I ask.

Try it – you might be surprised at the results. If they really peeve you off – try taking the aerial to work with you, BUT make sure you have password protected your PC or they will just use that as an access point!

Good luck!

Social Media and the Personal Attacks (Trolling)

Some people call them trolls, some people call them sick. I call them people who are bored with nothing better to do.

Often their claim to fame as having completed a BA (bugger all) in something that is really nothing, in that it hasn’t gained them useful employment. They are angry that this is the case and blame everyone around them.

They think they are better than everyone else on the planet.

They believe it is their god-given right to attack people who disagree with them, people who have opinions are considered dangerous as they can see through the garbage the attacker is spouting.

The attacker will claim they are being victimised, they will claim they are the one being hard done by. Yet they fail to see that they caused the problems in the first place.

People who attack via social media – I consider them to be psychopathic with regards to real world behaviour, so much so that they have often isolated themselves behind a computer with little thought for the outside world.

Many people say ‘don’t feed the trolls’ this in essence is difficult because as the name suggests – they are ugly creatures and even if you don’t offer food (responding) they will find crumbs to feed off (another topic)

Some people claim that opening up and removing the anonymous nature of forums, twitter etc. will remove the threat of trolls.

I have personally experienced a personal attack, the nature to this day, still can’t be disclosed, but the reprisal was the publishing of all my personal information, phone numbers, email accounts, residential address, all in one location. In a forum that is not your average ‘nice’ guys forum.

Trolling or personal attacks whatever you may call them are vicious, uncalled for and people who instigate such attacks, should be sanctioned and possible removed from the media they offend in.

Until laws in the real world catch up with those on the internet, it will be hard to police, but perhaps the medium being used, needs to address and enforce their own rules BEFORE they become liable under current laws.

Trolls, think before you leap – with the court ordered disclosure against Google of information, anonymous is no longer as hidden as you think.

Kids and the internet

We’ve heard it all before – put the computer in the main part of the house, monitor the time the kids spend on the computer. Discuss with them all aspects of cyber-bullying.

The government some time ago – supported a program called K9 – now what is K9 you ask? It is a program that allows you to monitor what your children are doing, where they are going and what times they can access the internet and what they can access.

K9 web protection as it is called can be located here - http://www1.k9webprotection.com/

I have used K9 and I can recommend K9. Once the program has been trained it is an excellent nanny – regardless of where the computer is located. It barks when something is accessed that is not permitted. It blocks access to the internet when directed to do so.

Overall it is a good simple program that is understandable and easy to use.

This doesn’t mean that your job as a parent now ceases, it is a tool ,that enables you to be a ‘better’ parent. So that you can have a shower and not wonder if the kids are checking out the ‘biggest willie’ site or similar.

You can access the program directly and check where the children have been.

The only thing that you are not warned about – make sure that email address used to join is not accessible by the people you are trying to monitor – That is the only warning NOT issued and perhaps should be.

I have used K9 and can recommend it as a tool – remember it does not replace real parenting, it will not stop cyber-bullying – but it may help assist you with these problems.

Good luck and best wishes! – Kids will be kids – but with you as a parent – I am sure they are better for it.