First Facebook Faux Pas

     Have you ever done something you knew was bad, just to see what the outcome would be?  I seem to be one of those plagued with this ailment.  But, as it seems, only when it comes to computers.
     I received a post on my wall the day before last that seemed ridiculously fishy.  Curious about that, I went to the wall of the friend that had left me the post, and decided that this post was generated by a Facebook virus.  Feeling curios, I booted up a virtual machine of Windows XP and went to the page of the place that post lead me too.  I followed the social engineering instructions on this new Facebook wall, knowing quite well this was a set up.  (This particular one was about getting to track people "creeping" you Facebook page.)  After following the pages instructions so I could "find out who was viewing my facebook page", I was re-directed to a page that was talking about taking surveys to win a free iPad 2.  Having sated my curiosity and feeling bored with this game now, I exited out of Windows XP.
     I then noticed that my account had sent every one of my friends the exact same message my friend's account had sent me.  Not really caring much about my Facebook account, I shrugged, deleted the post from the most immediate friends on my list, and went to bed.
     The next morning, my e-mail was flooded with comment notifications about postings from friends.  All of these posts were from people concerned my Facebook was infected and warning me to get it fixed.  I then realized I had committed my first Facebook faux pas, I had clicked on something that lead to a potential security hole for my whole group of friends.
     I was mildly surprised at the reaction of my small community of friends.  Their response was quick and decisive, full of advice on how to fix my dilemma, and parental style warnings not to click on things I don't know where they'll lead.  The chance that I might have caused a security leak was a serious ordeal.
     Needless to say I'll be more careful next time, and set up an account specifically for virus hunting.  This experience opened my eyes as to how seriously people take their Facebook, and how easy it is to for the average person to get sucked into these kind of plots, I mean, everything on the virus' Facebook page looked legitimate.
     Well, here's to hoping for a safer internet, and I'll catch you on the flipside.

Finally Fraud Fighters

     Just a quick announcement, we got the fraud fighters section of the Digital Fruit website up and running.  For a quick link, its here:  http://digitalfruit.biz/techsupport/fraudfighters.  I hope to be able to set up a shorter, more memorable link soon, but I've no idea how long that will take.

Helping to Stop Internet Fraud and Hacking

     While Digital Fruit is by no means the greatest authority on internet fraud and malware, it is something we deal with on behalf of our customers.  And, in the attitude of prevention being worth a pound of care, I've finally gotten something started for the Fraud Fighters section of digitalfruit.biz.  I'll hopefully have it up by tomorrow night, and then we can discuss what this part of the sight will really be about.
     What we have started right now is a listing and review of several internet ads that seem to pop up on just about every sight you go to.  Some of these ads are from legitimate business, most are from people just trying to scam you out of hard earned dollars you've worked so hard just to get, and would probably like to keep, I'm sure.  I'm hoping that this list will start to grow into something that our customers will appreciate and use, and that it will help keep people from getting duped.
     Till next time, I'll catch you on the flip side.

Andrew

Outreach of the web

     Today there will not be a product pick due to time constraints.  That out of the way, today I'm shocked by the far reaching affect the web has on humanity, in both good ways and bad.  I'm surprised by the level of information freely available here on the internet.  I just logged into my Google Ananlytics account, and found out that people from as far away as Kanab, Utah have viewed this site. (Admittedly, I do know who this was, but I did not expect it, so thank you to them.)  Also, people from Orting, Seattle, and Puyallup Washington have all viewed this blog.  This kind of information in the hands of a small business give it real power, and greatly improve it's ability to connect with its customer base and viewership.  And this is why we love the web.
     But I'm also shocked, and dismayed, by the level of education that is centered around all this information.  That level is almost zero.  So many people out in the world, using the internet, are constantly placing their whole lives on display, for anyone to see.  A great example I have is one that worked out well, but shows a possibility for disaster.  I once did some work for a co-work on some video cassettes she wanted converted to DVD.  I completed the work, and went to contact her.  By privacy policy, our mutual employer could not even give her phone number to me, as a safety precaution.  This is wonderful, because it means weirdos can't just call your work and find out your number.  But all I had to do to actually get her number was to go onto a site like www.YellowPages.com and enter a few small bits of personal information about her that I knew from working with her, and I was not only able to get her phone number, but her address as well.  This kind of power is scary.  And worse, at times, we are completely unable to keep it from happening.  So please, use the web responsibly, it can be dangerous.
     On this note, I'm setting up a section of the future Digital Fruit website that will be devoted to helping customers and consumers in general to educate and fight back against people misusing the information placed out on the web.  We will be posting a list of known fraudulent companies, telemarketing phone numbers, and product scams that we have found out on the net.  We will also be posting articles about how to keep yourself safe, and also linking to content on the subject of information safety for you to do further research yourself.  As I have always believed, information is the best defense.