Sell Your Domain Appraisal Rip-Off

Thanks to Tyler Reguly who writes at .:Computer Defense:. for letting us know about this notorious scam which has recently resurfaced. If you’ve registered a domain name, your personal information including your Email is probably accessible to anyone.

So what would you do if someone sent you an Email saying they’d like to purchase your domain name for what ever price you want? This happens daily to a lot of folks and while they’re already spending the money in their head, a follow up Email usually includes the following catch.

“Have you had your domains appraised already? Can you show me your valuation certificates? As fas I know it’s a common practice to show appraisal of domain name (even without traffic and web site) before doing business.

Without appraisal I risk to overpay. In other words I won’t be able to make a profit on reselling this name. It’s very important for you and me to know the current market value of your domains.

Naturally, the Email contains a link to a site which claims to be a forum discussing various domain appraisal web sites. Not surprising, it’s a read-only message forum. While I haven’t done all the investigative work to connect the dots, it’s pretty clear the domain appraisal fee will be the only transaction that occurs. A number of victims have come forward to report after $100 or more in appraisal fees, the buyer changed their mind.

There are legitimate sites who will appraise your site and provide services to help sell your domain name but beware. Personally, I think parking a domain name just to resell it is wrong but it’s a pretty common practice.

So here are a few tips.

• If your name and other contact information shows up in a WhoIs request, you should check with your provider. Most web hosting services offer a feature to hide your contact information.
  


• If someone does offer to purchase your web site make sure the transaction is final before turning it over. Even certified bank checks can be faked. Just because your bank hands you the cash it doesn’t mean the check is good.
  


• Set your domain name to automatically renew without you doing anything. A lot of folks have tools which let them know the minute a domain name has expired so they can swoop in and register it.
  


• You may receive regular mail from a company telling you that your domain is about to expire with a handy return envelope to send a payment to renew your domain. This company probably isn't the one you used to register your domain and they're just trying to steal your business so you're registered through them.
  

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AOL Name Change to Advertising OnLine

I was sad to read that AOL in Dulles, VA has laid off another 2000 workers as part of a “incredibly complex and significant transformation“. Just last month AOL officially moved their headquarters to New York City not far from Madison Avenue. Until now, AOL had been the 2^nd largest employer in Loudoun County, Virginia.

It’s time I accept the reality, AOL is no longer the innovative online service that I once knew and loved. Our vision was to create a service that could be used by anyone and didn’t require knowledge of parity bits, baud rates and intricate commands. We were proud to provide clickable graphical content instead of black and white scrolling screens of text.

According to CEO Randy Falco in his letter to employees, “my vision for AOL is to build the largest and most sophisticated global advertising network”. This is change from the late 80’s when AOL employees laughed at Prodigy because their service had advertising covering the lower third of the screen. Now I wonder if AOL will be looking to purchase adware companies the likes of 180Solutions, Claria or Direct Revenue.

The point was hammered home last night when I received “Certified AOL Mail” from a travel search company called Side Step.

AOL Certified SPAM

I never signed up or requested Emails from Side Step. The Email was very careful to follow the minimum requirements of the Can-Spam Act of 2003. Having this Email “Certified” by AOL means nothing to me other than “Advertising OnLine” was paid by this company to spam my Email account.

These days AOL has little to offer besides a familiar interface and that’s slowly being eroded. This is a far cry from efforts like the original AOL Greenhouse designed to encourage unique and interesting content. The current AOL Greenhouse is an Add-on tool development group for AOL staffers only.

Previous AOL posts:
Ads in AOL Email
Remove AOL Free Email Advertising
Full Pay & Benefits for forum volunteers
Welcome to the End of the Computer Age

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Who is Responsible for URL Security?

Note: This post is more technical in nature than most.

There’s has been a big debate this summer over who should fix a possible security flaw outlined in Security Advisory 943521. Most examples use of malformed “mailto” tags to show how Windows passes along info to the function ShellExecute based on registered url handlers.

In the past, Microsoft has voiced its opinion that it should be the applications responsibility to verify any URL before it’s passed to Windows. Many have encouraged Microsoft to somehow create a global fix with a security patch in Windows.

This was a case where I was on Microsoft’s side of the argument. Of course my reason was selfish because I fear any changes could break the functionality of WinPatrol PLUS requests. This week Microsoft announced it would look at a fix on their end.

“Our plan is to revise our URI handling code within ShellExecute() to be more strict”. For the tech savvy, here’s what happens.

“With IE6 installed, ShellExecute() passes the URI to IE which accepts it and inside IE determines it to be invalid. Navigation then fails harmlessly. With Internet Explorer 7 installed, the flow is a bit different. IE7 began to do more validation up front to reject malformed URI's. When this malformed URI with a % was rejected by IE7, ShellExecute() tries to “fix up” the URI to be usable. During this process, the URI is not safely handled. IE7 rejects the URI, and on Windows Vista ShellExecute() gracefully rejects the URI. That’s not the case on the older versions of Windows like Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 when IE7 is installed.

The % is a very special character. It can be used to hide and embed potentially dangerous code. It can also be used to represent characters which in my case, I want to pass in the parameters of an url. For instance, %20 represents a space character which is safer for me to send and easy to parse on our server. It’s also used so I can pass & and ? characters within the parameters of my URL request.

Microsoft has not announced a time frame for any fix so I’ll be keeping an eye on this one and my fingers crossed. I’m guessing I won’t be the only one affected by a major change in how ShellExecute handles an Url. If you read my previous post “Windows Versions Are Like SnowFlakes” you’ll see why these changes scare me.

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Rumors About Google, NBC, Microsoft

Ever since I started to Blog I’ve been the recipient of plenty of news tips and rumors. Most are easy to spot as some kind of hoax or as viral marketing. Some are so juicy I really want to write about them but without verification I’d rather not look like a jackass.

Occasionally I get tipped off and it turns out to be true. It wasn’t long ago that someone told me that the security company Webroot had made a deal with IAC to distribute the Ask.com toolbar with their Spy Sweeper program. I considered that one to be really stupid yet it turned out to be true!

Sometimes the rumors are almost true. Earlier this year I had a reliable source tell me that Microsoft was working on various plans for ad supported software. One idea included the sponsorship of Windows Updates. Can you imagine who many people would view the ad? The next week I almost panicked when Microsoft announced they would be acquiring advertising firm aQuantive Inc. Luckily for all of us the tip wasn’t true. (Yet)

This week I received another fun tip. A friend with General Electric informed me that Google was in talks with GE to purchase NBC Universal. Immediately, I had memories of AOL’s purchase of Time Warner. Googles net worth on paper could actually make the deal possible. I wouldn’t bet on this one but it’s still so fun to imagine so I included it in today’s post. I’ll probably wait until I hear it from Jay Leno before I believe it.

Thanks to all. Keep ‘em coming.

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Task Scheduler Provides Malware Hiding Place

One of the least used features of Windows has been its control panel applet, Task Scheduler. In 2003, I added a feature to WinPatrol 6.0 which monitored Task Scheduler jobs and warned users if some kind of malware injected itself in the Scheduler list. In the past, I found few incidence's of malware using this as a method to run programs which might take over a system, replicate or just do nasty stuff. This has always surprised me since most Anti-Malware programs won’t alert users to newly created scheduled tasks jobs.

I have noticed more legitimate programs finally using Task Scheduler but unfortunately many obnoxious programs are also taking advantage of this poorly monitored launch location. There is a variant of the nasty Adware called “Lop.com” that now adds a program to the Scheduled Task list. Malware frequently creates file names using random letters like IS-HDKEUL.exe. Lop is distinguished by file names created by random words like “BASH ACE STUPID.EXE”, “EXIT FIVE GLUE.EXE, sometimes without spaces between the words.

Some recent detections to watch for in the Task Scheduler include:
RVHOST.exe – Yahoo Messenger Worm
At1.job – Multiple worms installed using old Windows vulnerability
BLASTCLNNN.EXE – Sohana/YahLover Worm
WUNAUCLT.EXE – Possible Zoih A Trojan
WINMDS.EXE – Porn Dialer Trojan
And many LOP type using file names created with random words.

Anyone who reads this Blog knows how I feel about AutoUpdates, especially when they run in the background all the time. The Task Scheduler is an ideal place for autoupdate programs. These programs shouldn’t run constantly but it couldn’t hurt to have them scheduled to check for updates on a regular basis and then shutdown.

Some of the annoying auto updaters that need to be moved to Task Scheduler come from Google, Adobe and InstallShield which looks for updates of any programs that used InstallShield as their setup package.

According to recent requests for PLUS Info, the following are now using Task Scheduler.
MPCMDRUN.EXE – Windows Defender
SOFTWAREUPDATE.EXE – Usually Apple/iTunes/Quicktime
SYSTEMOPTIMIZER.EXE – TuneUp Software GMBH
MSFEEDSSYNC.EXE – Microsoft IE7 RSS Support
WALIGN – Window 98 File Optimizer
MSNTBUP.EXE – Microsoft Live Toolbar

Microsoft has made radical changes in Task Scheduler for Vista. This has encouraged many developers to take advantage of its power. It also has appeared to provide a little better security so that malicious programs will have a harder time infiltrating systems this way. You’ll still be surprised by how many unnecessary services run here slowing you down when you least expect it.

You’ll definitely want to keep an eye on your Scheduled Tasks either by using WinPatrol or occasionally opening the Task Scheduler applet in the Windows Control Panel. It might help explain where that “Do you want to update…?” message appears to come from.

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Music Available only $9,250 a song

The biggest news story today was a guilty verdict against 30 year old, Jammie Thomas of Minnesota. This story was even picked up by the Aljazeera Network. You know how evil those American women are!

A jury found in favor of the Recording Industry Association of America and ordered the mother of two young boys to pay $220,000 or $9,250 per song that she allegedly shared over the Kazaa P2P service.

Clearly, a single song isn’t worth ten grand but the verdict wasn’t based on Ms. Thomas downloading music to her personal computer. The RIAA didn’t even have to prove the files still existed on her computer. The price tag was based on a simple premise that by making these files available she was a distributor of copyright material.

According to the judges instructions to the jury #15

“The act of making copyrighted sound recordings available for electronic distribution on a peer-to-peer network, without license from the copyright owners, violates the copyright owners’ exclusive right of distribution, regardless of whether actual distribution has been shown.”

The penalties for just "making a file available" to millions is judged to be a more serious infringement then just illegally downloading a song to your own computer. Given this hotly debated instruction, proof of any transfer didn’t even need to be proven.

If you read Bits from Bill because you’re interested in my personal opinion I’m not sure there is enough room here to share all my thoughts.

Do I think the judgment is excessive?
Yes. It’s very unlikely a sufficient number of those who may have downloaded a file from Ms. Thomas would have ever made legal purchases of the song to generate $9,250 in revenue.

Who are the real winners?
Lawyers, ITunes and other pay download sites, not necessarily the music industry or artists.

Message from Jammie Thomas

"Some of you have sent me messages asking where to send money to assist with paying this debt. I must tell you first, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you for your kindness. Now, this debt isn't finalized. There are more options available my attorney is currently seeking out before I am stuck with this ridiculous bill from the RIAA. We'll worry about the debt part once it's finalized that I will have to pay it. Also, other's have been asking where to send money to assist with an appeal (I'm not saying there will be one yet, but there might be). If you feel you would like to help with an appeal, any correspondance can be sent to my attorney, otherwise known as Batman :D, at the address below. IF you decide to send something (and please do not take this as me asking, I know alot of you are in the same financial boat as I am, so I could never ask you to send money), please send it marked with my case number 06cv1497 Capital Records v Jammie Thomas, to:"

Chestnut & Cambronne
Attn: Brian Toder
3700 Campbell Mithun Tower
222 South Ninth Street
Minneapolis, MN 55402

Apologies to regular readers and Email readers for any duplication of this information. My last post was flawed by my efforts to report news and try make a point which really didn’t apply to this case.

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Yahoo! Surprises Me with Improved Search

Three months ago I spent some time researching the major search engines and concluded that Google remained the best search engine available. (More Info). Recent ratings have also showed that Google leads business of Internet searches. Yahoo! Inc has announced new search enhancements including something called “Search Assistant”.

Press Release…

"The new Yahoo! Search is focused on getting consumers the most relevant information as well as providing the best user experience. We know that consumers want a complete answer, not a bunch of links, and the changes we've made are focused on getting people to the best answer -- whether it be a Web link, photo, video or music clip -- in one search," said Vish Makhijani, general manager and senior vice president of Yahoo! Search.

Unlike Ask.com who tried to lure new users with an expensive ad campaign about its algorithm, Yahoo! actually improved their search engine. Using my traditional “Pytlovany” search test the results from Yahoo! improved since early summer and now exceed the results from Google. For now, my testing is preliminary and I have found at least one invalid result but this appears to be a big step for Yahoo!

I’m not sure if Yahoo! has raised the bar on search technology but they appear to have grabbed onto it. This should cause the folks at Google to focus a little more on enhancing their search advantage. While both companies have diverse offerings, search is still the entry point to their business. I expect we’ll be hearing more about the “Search Wars” in the future.

Update: A little more research shows that Yahoo! may have put the cart before the horse on their new search technology. I found that while they may have increased their search results, Yahoo! fails to properly screen out some potentially dangerous sites. While my Safe Search options were set to “Filter out adult Web, video, and image search results” it didn’t work. I was sent to a couple sites with porngraphic videos asking me to download ActiveX files to view the video.

While some make argue this is not their responsibility safe searching is one enhancement even Google could improve on.

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