Ajit Gaddam: TechNews and Security

Okay, so I am watching the NFL draft. Yes, I can’t believe people spend 15 min, especially in the first round for each pick.

However, this is turning out to be a very interesting high tension drama. I honestly thought that Brady Quinn was the best QB in this years draft and the #2 prospect overall in this draft behind C.J. So let the Brady Quinn sweepstakes begin…

Its pick # 13 so far and we have Rams on the clock.

#14: Panthers — Panthers have Jake as their QB. I don’t think they need a QB right now

# 15: Steelers — Steelers have Big Ben

#16: Packers — Although this might be Favre’s last season, they have Aaron Rodgers waiting. The only if, is if they trade like next yrs #1, this yrs #2 and Aaron Rodgers for Randy Moss. Then they sit and pick Brady Quinn

#17: Jaguars — Byron Leftwich and David Garrad.

#18: Bengals — Palmer rules

#19: Titans — Vince Young’s the man here

#20: Giants — although shaky, Eli’s still the apple of NY

#21: Broncos — Jay Cutler

#22: Cowboys — Tony Romo

#23: Chiefs — second yr QB Brodie Croyle getting the call… ok the chiefs might snag Quinn. I hope they pass him.

#24: Patriots — whoa . Brady Quinn is still available. And guess who calls the best coach of all time. Coach Belichick gets a call from his former def cood Romeo Crennel. Pats trade this pick for Cleveland’s #1 next yr, #2 this yr and maybe a #4.

Sweet Deal I think

Google is promoting a new service today called the Google Web History Service. While technically this feature has been around for a long time, Google for the first time is promoting this service. You need to have a Google Account to sign in and be able to use this service.

With the Google Web History Service, you would be able to

a. View and manage your web activity. You can view and search across the full text of the pages you have visited with this service enabled including your Google web serarches, web pages, images, videos and news stories.

 b. Improve your Google Search results. Since you are letting Google profile you and your online activity, based on your incoming email, the web sites you visit most often etc, Google can provide you with a more accurate and relevant search results. At the same time, you are also letting Google serve you with better targetted ads than ever before.

c. Notice trends in your web activity. You can see interesting trends such as your most visited site or times when you are most active online etc

How to enable the Google Web History Service

1. Visit the Google History webpage. Once you sign in using your Google Account, you are asked to agree with Google Terms of Service.

2. To include the web pages you visit in your web history, you need to install the Google Toolbar with PageRank enabled. . Having PageRank enabled will send information about the pages you visit to Google and associate it with your Google Account.

Read the rest of this entry »

Absolutely love this picture. Check it out on a *nix console

Google Adsense referral program allowed publishers and webmasters the opportunity to earn additional revenue by exposing their visitors to high quality products offered by Google. Traditionally such product referrals included Google AdSense (Ad revenue for web publishers), Google AdWords (Targeted online advertising), Google Checkout (A faster, safer way to shop online), Google Apps (Communication and collaboration tools for businesses and organizations including Gmail and more), Firefox plus Google Toolbar (Improved web browsing) and Google Pack (Collection of essential software)

Now, it seems that Google is expanding the product it is offering through its referral program. The image below is a screenshot I took this morning while looking under the Adsense Products. Note that these products do not get any CTR yet… but very interesting. Some very lucrative products that you can refer include the Microsoft XBox, shared web hosting etc…

Read the rest of this entry »

Google Sitemaps is an excellent tool used by a lot of webmasters out there including us at AskStudent.  As a webmaster, you would always want to exercise greater control over what is indexed by the search engines. For this purpose, most of use a robots.txt file or robots meta tag to tell the search engine spiders what we don’t want indexed. But sometimes, you like to remove content that was already indexed.

As an example, at AskStudent, couple of months ago we had .html then .php static pages serving content before we moved to WordPress to serve out content. What happened during this move was that a lot of static .html pages from AskStudent were already indexed. This resulted in errors such as the ones shown below showing up for the search engine crawlers.

So how do you remove such content that’s already been indexed? Well…. Google Sitemaps has added a brand new tool today which will allow webmasters to expedite the removal of outdated links instead of waiting for the next crawl.

In your webmaster tools account, under the Diagnostic tab, you will see a new option called URL Removals. To get started, click on the URL removals link, then New Removal Request and then choose the option that matches the type of removal you want to persue.

Individual URLs

You can choose to remove an individual URL or an image using this option. According to Google, in order for the URL to be eligible for removal, you must meet one of the following criteria.

• The URL most return a status code of either 404 or 410.
• The URL must be blocked by the site’s robots.txt file.
• The URL must be blocked by a robots meta tag.

Read the rest of this entry »

Spam comes in a variety of forms, including fraudulent messages. This mass-messaging is called ’spoofing’ or ‘password phishing.’

Such fraudulent practices involve messages that appear to be from a legitimate source, or the creation of an official-looking webpage that asks you to provide your username and password or other personal information. Such messages or pages could ask for your Social Security number, bank account number, PIN number, credit card number, mother’s maiden name, or birthday.

Spammers often ask for this information in an attempt to steal your email account, your money, your credit, or your identity.

Many email clients including Google, Yahoo and MSN provide services which identify a phishing email. Besides that, when using Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox as your browsers, they actively monitor the sites you visit and flag them if you visit a suspected phishing site. 

Most email client’s phishing alerts operate automatically, much like spam filtering. A spam filters automatically divert smessages that are suspected of being unwanted messages into ‘Spam’. Similarly, phishing alerts automatically display warnings with messages that are suspected of being phishing attacks so that users know to take care before providing any personal information as shown in the image below

You should always be wary of any message that asks for your personal information, or messages that refer you to a webpage asking for personal information.

Here’s what you can do to protect yourself and stop fraudsters:

    * Make sure the URL domain on the given page is correct, and click on any images and links to verify that you are directed to proper pages within the site. For example, the URL is http://yourbankname.com/ or, for even more security, https://yourbankname.com/. Although some links may appear to contain ‘yourbankname.com,’ you may be redirected to another site after entering such addresses into your browser.
Read the rest of this entry »

Sweet… I just got my first comment spam in Russian.

Apparantly, they are promoting a site selling MP3 songs. Here is the translation of the Russian in the above comment spam to English. Google Translate did a pretty good job…

The latest site with MP3 songs. Here you will be able to download different mp3 free. Our site is updated every day and filled the best player. There is a different directory mp3, albums and performers. Please http:/ / www. cdmp3 .ru

This email definitely takes the Outstanding spam email award in my opinion so far… so far.

The reason I saw i saw its outstanding is because of the effort that went into creating this spam email. I have checked a couple of Lotteries and the Ref File number, the batch number etc are all pretty well laid out and detailed. There are no spelling mistakes, atleast from my dictioniononary and unlike addressed to any Respected Sir/Madam/Blah, this spam email is addressed to me! Also, they have people signing off on this “lottery winner notification”. Another impressive thing is the lottery numbers in pictures.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most popular articles on my blog continues to be the “I won the Microsoft Lottery Award” article. Another popular spam email doing the rounds these days in the Coca Cola Company Promotion Prize Award.

This spam email comes from a certain Mrs. Kate Hudson of the Coca Cola Company.  This spam email is primarily targetted to those living in the United Kingdom as all the variants I have seen of this spam email have their destination addresses in the UK.

The email informs me that I am one the lucky 20 winners where I won a prize money of £1,000,000 or One Million Pound Sterlings. One of the first red flags comes here. If you notice carefully, it just says £1,000.000. Notice the period after thousand instead of a comma denoting 1 million. This Coca Cola promotion award it seems was held in conjunction with the British American Tobacco Worldwide Promotion.

The following is the full text of the spam email

THE COCA COLA COMPANY
PROMOTION/PRIZE AWARD
DEPTCOCA COLA AVENUE
STAMFORD BRIDGE LONDON.
SW1V 3DW UNITED KINGDOM

THE COCA COLA COMPANY OFFICIAL PRIZE NOTIFICATION 2007

We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just concluded annual final draws held on the (24th of March, 2007) by Coca-Cola in conjunction with the British American Tobacco Worldwide Promotion, your email was among the 20 Lucky winners who won £1,000.000 (One million Great Britain Pound Sterlings) each on the THE COCA’COLA COMPANY PROMOTION However the results were released on the (26th of March, 2007) and your email was attached to ticket number (7PWYZ2006) and ballot number (BT:12052006/20) The online draws was conducted by a random selection of email addresses from an exclusive list of 30,031 E-mail addresses of individuals and corporate bodies picked by an advanced automated random computer search from the internet. However, no tickets were sold but all email addresses were assigned to different ticket numbers for representation and privacy.

The selection process was carried out through random selection in our computerized email selection machine (TOPAZ) from a database of over 250,000 email addresses drawn from all the continents of the world.

This Lottery is approved by the British Gaming Board and also Licensed by the The International Association of Gaming Regulators (IAGR).This lottery is the 3rd of its kind and we intend to sensitize the public.
 
To claim your price contact your claim agent.
 
CONTACT PERSON: MR. DAVID JACKSON
POSITION: FINANCE DIRECTOR,HSBC FINANCE CORPORATION
2700 SANDERS ROAD PROSPECT HEIGHTS LONDON
UNITED KINGDOM.
DIRECT PHONE NUMBER: +44 703 190 9886. 
EMAIL ADDRESS: jackson_david0009@yahoo.com
 
 
 
Kindly send the following information to your claim agent:
Ticket Number:____________________________
Ballot  Numbers: _______________________ Tel/Fax Number: ________________
Full Name: _____________________________ Age: _________________________
Sex: _____________________ Company Name: ____________________________
Full Address: ________________________ Occupation:______________________
Amount Won: _______________________ Country: _________________________
 
Please you are adviced to complete the form and send it immediately to your claim agent through email for prompt collection of your fund.

You are to keep all lotto information away from the general public especially your ticket number and ballot number. (This is important as a case of double claims will not be entertained).

*Staff of CocaCola and the British American Tobacco Company are not to partake in this Lottery.

Accept my hearty congratulations once again!

Yours faithfully,
Mrs.Kate Hudson
Cordinator

A lot of websites and blogs including at AskStudent, we run Google Adsense to serve targetted advertising to our visitors. However, for a site getting a lot of visitors, think about this: How many of them are potential advertisers for your site?

At AskStudent, where our primary audience is students and teenagers, there are a lot of advertisers out there trying to reach this market. Now let’s assume an advertiser comes across your site and feels it would a good site to advertise on. You don’t want to lose this advertiser, right? That’s where Onsite Advertiser Sign-up comes in: Advertisers can create site-targeted campaigns directly from your site.

Although the ‘Advertise on this site’ link will no longer appear on your ad units following last week’s ad format change, you can still display a separate Onsite Advertiser Sign-up link on your site, such as within the sidebars or footers of your pages. This method offers you more flexibility as far as the placement, the font, and the color of the link, and can help you retain interested advertisers who visit your site.

If you’d like to create such a link on your site, just follow the detailed instructions shown below and then add your link into the HTML source of your pages. If you use CSS on your site, you can create a nice rollover and make your link even more visible to potential advertisers:

Once you’ve created a separate link, don’t forget to customize your Onsite Advertiser Sign-up page. Please keep in mind that it’s currently only possible to customize one landing page per account. In other words, advertisers can target each of your sites individually, but they’ll see the same landing page when they click an ‘Advertise on this site’ link from any of your sites.

We encourage you to give this new method a try and to experiment with various placements. Having more interested advertisers bidding on your site means increased competition — which in turn translates into higher revenue potential for you.

Read the rest of this entry »