The Nigerian Scams Come To Facebook Email

If Facebook is going to get into messaging in a big way as they said last week they need to stop these scams before they hit my inbox. The legacy email providers have already learned how.

I got a Facebook email from Jonas Ugwudekede today. Well, that’s what the return address said. The email was ‘signed’ by Kyrian Madunagu and included a ‘real world’ email link with yet another name. It makes no difference. Most likely none is the real name of the person who sent it.

Though the email offers $40,000,000 the sender really wants to extract cash from me. It’s a ‘419’ or advanced fee scam. Ground zero for these is assumed to be Nigeria. The scam itself is actually older than the Internet! These things used to come via snail mail.

This is the first time I’ve gotten a ‘419’ via Facebook.

To the scammer knowing my Facebook name is more valuable than knowing my regular email address. Facebook has some personal information and links to my friends you can’t easily get elsewhere.

If Facebook is going to get into messaging in a big way as they said last week they need to stop these scams before they hit my inbox. The legacy email providers have already learned how. For Facebook to have any credibility they’ve got to step up too… right now.

It’s Not That I Don’t Trust Facebook… OK, I Don’t

I’m not talking about posts in bad taste, but scams and links to viruses which pop up on my wall like dandelions in the spring! Facebook seems slow in stopping these

Facebook announced their new messaging plan yesterday. On the face of it it sounds great. Unified messaging without regard to platform.

That’s my clumsy way of saying what Facebook’s Joel Seligstein wrote:

Today I’m excited to announce the next evolution of Messages. You decide how you want to talk to your friends: via SMS, chat, email or Messages. They will receive your message through whatever medium or device is convenient for them, and you can both have a conversation in real time. You shouldn’t have to remember who prefers IM over email or worry about which technology to use. Simply choose their name and type a message.

Great, except I don’t trust Facebook.

I think Facebook does a terrible job of policing what its members post. I’m not talking about posts in bad taste, but scams and links to viruses which pop up on my wall like dandelions in the spring! Facebook seems slow in stopping these. With Facebook mail that problem will only get worse.

Facebook also drops the ball in policing the apps that run on its platform. Clicking a Facebook link shouldn’t lead to a scam, but it often does.

Beyond that Facebook has played fast-and-loose with privacy. Their money is made by selling your eyeballs! You are not Facebook’s customer and your concerns will always fall behind those who send cash Facebook’s way.

With a half billion members Facebook could become the Internet equivalent of too big to fail! We might be forced to put up with their shortcomings.

At the moment I will look warily at making Facebook the gatekeeper for my messages.

Is Buck Hollywood Proof Of My Hipness?

Seriously, you don’t know Buck Hollywood? What are you, my age?

Michael Buckley was in the station this afternoon. Until recently he was a worker bee for Live Nation the concert promoter. No more. Michael Buckley is Buck Hollywood.

Seriously, you don’t know Buck Hollywood? What are you, my age?

Here’s what the New York Times said:

Mr. Buckley, 33, was the part-time host of a weekly show on a Connecticut public access channel in the summer of 2006 when his cousin started posting snippets of the show on YouTube. The comical rants about celebrities attracted online viewers, and before long Mr. Buckley was tailoring his segments, called “What the Buck?” for the Web. Mr. Buckley knew that the show was “only going to go so far on public access.”

“But on YouTube,” he said, “I’ve had 100 million views. It’s crazy.”

All he needed was a $2,000 Canon camera, a $6 piece of fabric for a backdrop and a pair of work lights from Home Depot. Mr. Buckley is an example of the Internet’s democratizing effect on publishing. Sites like YouTube allow anyone with a high-speed connection to find a fan following, simply by posting material and promoting it online.

Of course The New York Times only counts so much. My 22 year old daughter is probably a better authority. She went slightly delirious and totally breathless when Michael sent me a message via Twitter. I have 806 followers. He has (seriously–no BS) 478,829!

There is no secret recipe to what Michael does in front of the camera. He is just a more frenetic, more amplified, more flamboyant version of himself. Think ‘reducing’ a gravy to enhance its flavor. In online video that really works!

Michael Buckley’s product is Michael Buckley, though a more concentrated version than you’ll meet in real life.

We, the denizens of a rapidly shrinking TV universe, marvel at his ability to make a living without worrying about whatever the boss is worrying about.

I think he looks at me as a historical artifact of television. I see him as the future of video. We’re both happily impressed.

Photo by Bill Koczocik

The Probama Saga: Small Changes

Oh, it’s still Probama under-the-hood. The screencap on the left is a small comparison between the original Probama and the Daria Novak site today. There are some cosmetic differences–not many.

Overnight I wrote about my discovery Daria Novak’s congressional campaign website was built using Probama, a WordPress ‘theme’ (which defines the site’s look) which claims:

A timely WordPress theme for supporters of Senator Barack Obama’s political career and presidential campaign. Built-in control panel options allow easy management of images, video, podcasts and other RSS info.

That’s somewhat ironic as Ms. Novak is decidedly not an Obama supporter.

Truth is, if you read her bio, she is a very accomplished person. My blogging has nothing to do with her qualifications. She has done a lot. I just found the irony irresistible. I’d feel the same way if she were a Democrat using material designed to promote John McCain or George Bush.

Last night I wrote, “My bet is Daria Novak will soon have a new look on her campaign’s website–and again, it’s a really well designed site. I hope I’m wrong, but “Probama?” That’ll be difficult.”

Sure enough today the look is different. The background has been removed as has any reference to Probama in the code. That’s a shame because the original theme author, Darren Hoyt, who lets anyone freely use his work no longer gets credit. He isn’t totally surprised.

“Holy cow, that is really funny. I have actually gotten some email from people saying essentially, “I’m gonna use your theme to make an ANTI-Obama site, hahaha!” but I haven’t seen anyone using it quite this unknowingly/ironically.”

Oh, it’s still Probama under-the-hood. The screencap on the left (click it to enlarge) is a small comparison between the original Probama and the Daria Novak site today. There are some cosmetic differences–not many.

Here’s why I started this thread in the first place. I knew Ms Novak (or any Republican candidate) wouldn’t want to be associated with anything having anything to do with Barack Obama no matter how tenuous the connection. I’m guessing the same would apply to a Democrat in a similar situation. What she was using was well designed and suited her (and I assume approved by her)–it just made a positive reference to Obama.

Why does that mere fact make it bad?

If Candidate Novak can take anything away from this it’s that no one but me really cares. I posted a link to last night’s entry on Facebook and got no response from my 1,500+ friends. Same thing here, no comments.

Here Comes The Spam

Since the bog has been up with Wordpress (under 24 hours and only now beginning to be seen by Google) I’ve gotten 46 comments. 41 were spam!

While setting up this new iteration of the blog I made a decision–all my older entries would again be open for comments. A few years ago faced with a plethora of blog spam comments were shut off after a week or two.

You know what spam is, but blog spam? It’s much more insidious!

Did you create your own blog or did a program do it? Could you please respond? 18 – Leila Caracci

Looks harmless, right? Except Leila’s email address says she’s GailWoolfolk@aol.com. There’s more.

My blog’s comment form allows you to enter a website address. Leila/Gail has attached MLBH0TD0G.TK (I have sanitized the site by substituting zeros). There lies the rub.

If that comment had gotten posted, accompanied by that URL, the named website would get a little rub of my Google glory. It would rank a tiny bit higher in searches. Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of sites and the effect can become enormous.

I would have spotted this on my own, but WordPress comes with Akismet, a filter which performs the job silently and very well.

This blog is great. How did you come up witht he idea? 6 3 4

That’s another one appealing to my ego. Notice the random numbers at the end to try and throw off filtering. It didn’t work.

Great site! Your writing is so fresh compared to most other bloggers. Thanks for writing when you get the chance to, I’ll be sure to keep visiting!

That’s another with a non-matching email/name combo. The linked website soft sells French Press coffee makers with an affiliate link to Amazon. These folks are resourceful.

Any time anyone has something of value others want a piece of it, like my Google karma. What the Internet does is make tiny inconsequential pieces easy to aggregate. I would guess getting many Geoff’s to post your URL produces significant income for little effort!

Since the bog has been up with WordPress (under 24 hours and only now beginning to be seen by Google) I’ve gotten 46 comments. 41 were spam!

As long as Akismet holds its ground I’ll keep everything open. I am only marginally optimistic.

The New Blog Arrives

There will probably be things wrong with this site. I moved six years of stuff from one platform to another. It was tough and I was diligent but I’m no miracle worker!

It’s just about 4:00 AM. Things are quiet. I picked this as the right time to move my website. At least here in Hamden the move is a success.

There is no computer named geofffox.com or yahoo.com or any other URL. The Internet is really all about numbers and not even easily understood numbers! Each website is identified by four digits between 0 and 255. That’s too tough so a system was set up to translate more memorable words into the numbers. My wait over the past few hours was for my name to be associated with a new set of numbers.

There will probably be things wrong with this site. I moved six years of stuff from one platform to another. It was tough and I was diligent but I’m no miracle worker!

Switching from MoveableType to WordPress should make my life easier. I now have an app built into my iPhone which natively talks with the website’s ‘back end.’ The photo attached to this entry was directly placed by the phone. WP will also work better with video.

If you see stuff that’s not working, leave a comment or drop me an email.  I’m the web wrangler here.  I want to know.

Fix It Until It Breaks

The deeper I got into the site the more wasn’t working and I was finding stuff no one had found before. It’s not supposed to be like this.

screengrab-blog-redesign.jpgIt’s been like performing dentistry on myself! The goal was to make my life simpler by developing the new look for my website on a server installed on my desktop PC then move it to a commercial server when finished. Maybe it will be easier. It hasn’t been so far!

When I went to move it off the desktop machine to its final resting place the site responded with an error message. Later it was the “white screen of death.” Finally I could see the home page but all links, even links to log in, were dead!

These are the times that try men’s souls. I had achieved Helaine’s oft spoken fear when I delve too deeply. I’d fixed it to the point of breaking it!

In an earlier entry the subject of the “WordPress Community” came up. WordPress is the platform on which the new site will be built. The community was there for me tonight, though not in the flesh. There is a treasure trove of archived forum posts online.
If something can be broken it already has been! I was able to go to school on other poor schlubs.

I wrote what you just read around 3:30 am. Before I could start patting myself on the back things broke so badly I had to stop writing. I didn’t get to bed until nearly 6:00 am.

It’s now after 1:00 pm. Where were we?

The deeper I got into the site the more wasn’t working and I was finding stuff broken no one had found before! It’s not supposed to be like this.

I started deleting plug-ins, which add functionality. That’s the typical response to this kind of problem and it usually works. Not here.
I will spare you my tooth gnashing. The problem seems to be a version of php, a programming language critical to blogging (and other dynamic sites). The blog was built with php5, the current version. My web host offers php5, but defaults to php4. They are not the same–think Latin and Pig Latin.

Worse still, when I finally found and put in the fix (the line “AddType x-mapp-php5 .php” was inserted in a hidden file called .htaccess) I left out the space between php5 and .php! Now the site was so dead I couldn’t even get to the administration screens!
It’s all fixed now and the site is up, but hidden in plain site at a different web address for the time being. There are still cosmetic fixes that need to be made. Sometimes text gets larger and smaller for no apparent reason. Mostly though I accomplished what I set out to do and I hardly pulled out any hair.

The new look debuts this weekend–maybe.

Why My Blog Traffic Exploded Today!

A confluence of circumstances conspired to raise my totals. The first says a lot about the power of Google

On March 11, 2010 NBC announced this documentary would re-air. More details here.

My blog is my entertainment. I enjoy writing. I enjoy seeing how many people read what I write. Recently that number has been between 1,200 and 1,500 page views a day. Not too shabby, especially when you consider it’s never been mentioned on-the-air during our newscasts! Today I’m at 9,000 11,621 and counting!

A confluence of circumstances conspired to raise my totals. The first says a lot about the power of Google.

brokaw-google.pngI watched the Tom Brokaw documentary about Gander, Newfoundland on September 11, 2001 tonight (and wrote this about that remarkable doc). On a Saturday afternoon there aren’t too many people writing abut what’s on TV, but there were a lot of people interested in this documentary.

When I ‘publish’ an entry word is automatically sent to Google and its competitors. My pages are in Google’s index in minutes. Usually on popular topics I’m drowned out by more powerful websites. Today, if you searched for “Brokaw, Gander” this site was number one or two (it changed during the day).

I experienced this once before when I wrote about Ashlee Simpson’s lip sync debacle on Saturday Night Live. My East Coast entry was up early and pulled lots of traffic. As Sunday progressed and the story was picked up my search position kept falling–as you’d expect.

This Brokaw doc brought thousands of page reads for both the EST and PST showings!

The second traffic driver was an entry I wrote in 2004. A friend sent me a note about terrible storm damage in California. Attached was a photo of a deck chair on its side. It was pretty funny.

Today someone on Fark.com attached directly to that same picture with a link reading: “Tsunami damage photos begin trickling in, not for the weak of heart (geofffox.com).” I guess that was funny after Hawaii prepped for a tsunami that didn’t come.

I only ‘saw’ that traffic by accident. Since Fark’s link was directly to the photo it didn’t register through my normal counting mechanisms. It was only because of my checking on the Brokaw doc that it was caught.

Linking directly to a photo without linking to my site’s content is like running your house off my electricity! That upset me.
Luckily it’s easy to command this server to redirect photo traffic to the original entry.

They still get a joke and now a little of my site too. I can live with that.

By Monday my traffic levels will return to normal.

On the other hand, links from other sites plus Twitter and Facebook mentions will help Google think more highly of me. This is how traffic is built.

There’s A Boatload I Don’t Know

It’s going to be a long night. There’s a boatload I don’t know and will only learn while banging my head against the wall!

Helaine and Stef are in California. I am in Connecticut. Actually, the more important “I am” sentence would be: I am in pajamas! This is a day at the computer hacking code.

If you’ve been following along you know I’ve become somewhat obsessed with changing my website–moving it from Moveabletype to WordPress and updating the look. A few weeks ago the job was 85% done. Then I did a design for a friend’s blog and the idea of designing from scratch became appealing.

Designing from scratch is a term with a multitude of definitions. If you’re a woodworker do you have to grow the trees too? In this case too scratch doesn’t start at zero but reasonably far down the chain. I am using 960BC with provides the minimal link between WordPress and the 960 Grid System.

For me this has become a methodical process. I’ve installed a small server and database manager on my PC. That allows me to do all my work locally without moving files to and from the remote server the project will end on. It also forces me to follow proper procedures in keeping the code ‘server agnostic.’

If I code for this server, instead of any server, the website will break when I move it to its final home.

It’s going to be a long night. There’s a boatload I don’t know and will only learn while banging my head against the wall!