Reinke Faces Life

http://www.apple.com/education/itunes-u/whats-on.html

*** begin quote ***

More than 800 universities have active iTunes U sites. About half of these institutions — including Stanford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, and UC Berkeley — distribute their content publicly on the iTunes Store.

In the Beyond Campus section of iTunes U, students and faculty can access a wealth of content from distinguished entities such as MoMA, the New York Public Library, Public Radio International, and PBS stations.

*** end quote ***

Stunning! 350,000 HOURS of lecture.

I’m doing a Yale University course now.

Did I mention “free”?

Yeah, you need a computer and an inet connect. That’s not free.

But ITUNES that “delivers” it is free.

It’s amazing.

Colleges and universities are in big trouble.

As are all Gooferment Skrules!

# # # # #

http://advisor.google.com/

Making financial comparisons easy with Google Advisor
Posted: 19 May 2011 12:13 PM PDT

*** begin quote ***

Financial decisions may be some of the most difficult decisions we face—whether it’s finding the right credit card or understanding the impact of paying an extra point on a mortgage. And these days, it seems like we have more financial options than ever.

To help solve these problems, we began testing a mortgage comparison tool in 2009 and have added other financial products such as credit cards, CDs, checking, and savings accounts. Today, we’re rolling these tools into one place: Google Advisor, a site designed to help you quickly find relevant financial products from many providers and compare them side-by-side. Google Advisor is currently only available in the U.S.

*** end quote ***

Google is a strange collection of interesting stuff. I guess that’s a business plan.

# # # # #

http://bigjournalism.com/pjsalvatore/2011/05/23/twitpic-inks-deal-to-sell-your-photos/

Twitpic Inks Deal To Sell Your Photos
Posted by P.J. Salvatore May 23rd 2011 at 1:14 pm in New Media

*** begin quote ***

World Entertainment News Network, a news and photo agency, announced this month that it had become the “exclusive photo agency partner” of Twitpic, a service with over 20 million registered users that allows people to upload images and link to them on Twitter. The deal allows the agency to sell images posted on Twitpic for publication, and to pursue legal action against those who use such images commercially without its permission, according to the agency.

*** end quote ***

Do these Users realize they are giving up control of their pictures?

# # # # #

From: apps-noreply@google.com
Date: May 2, 2011 4:00 AM
To: @letters2mychild.com, @gmail.com
Subject: Two week notice: Google Apps accounts will be automatically transitioned

Dear Google Apps administrator,

Google Apps accounts are undergoing an improvement, allowing you to give users access to over 60 additional applications from Google. We encourage you to transition your organization’s accounts on your own schedule now.

   * There are several advantages to transitioning on your own schedule: Make the change on your own timeline

   * Have time to try the new infrastructure with a subset of your accounts first

   * Use automated mailing lists and email templates to pre-notify your users

   * Get access to over 60 additional applications from Google right away

Start the transition today by clicking the “Get started” or “Transition more users” button in your control panel:

https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/

We plan to fully transition your organization soon — including all users that you have not yet transitioned yourself. If you have not transitioned by the week of May 16, 2011, we’ll complete the transition for you.

If you have questions about this transition, we encourage you to explore our Help Center documentation for administrators and for end-users.

Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team

————-

You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps account.

Please don’t reply to this email, as we won’t be able to review your response. You may file a case in your control panel if you need additional help.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043, USA

# # # # #

Suppose now is NOT convenient for me to do all this work or do all this testing!

And, don’t you just love the SPAMMY nature of this email. “Don’t reply” because we don’t care enough to even pretend to listen!

Great marketing message. What genius thought of that?

# # # # #

Publish | Buy | Services
	Dear Ferdinand Reinke, Lulu’s goal is a simple one: help you sell more books. This note is to tell you about an exciting new effort from Lulu to help achieve this goal by ensuring your work is able to reach readers across all devices, starting with the 130 million+ customers who own an iPhone®, iPad®, or iPod touch® and shop at the iBookstore℠. Over the coming weeks, at no charge to you, we’ll be making the title you have for sale on Lulu.com also available as an eBook edition on the iBookstore. If for any reason you don’t want your book available in the iBookstore, you can opt-out easily. Just send an email to ipad_opt_out@lulu.com with the subjectline Opt-Out of eBook conversion. If you wish to opt-out, please make sure to do so within 5 business days of receiving this message. Otherwise, you don’t have to do anything to have your book included in this program and we think it’s a great idea to join the ranks of Lulu authors who have already sold 60,000 eBooks through the iBookstore. We cannot guarantee the new eBook formatted version of your book will appear on the iBookstore, but we’re taking measures to ensure a high success rate. Here’s how the process will work: We’ll begin the process on your behalf by converting “Church 10?19?62” into an ePub formatted eBook – absolutely free. Next, we’ll submit your newly formatted eBook to Apple and request a listing in the iBookstore. In some cases we may need to make tweaks to your book’s catalog data* in order to meet Apple’s requirements. We will notify you once your eBook has been accepted by Apple and is available for sale in the iBookstore. At first, your book will be listed in the iBookstore with default pricing. We’ll place a new eBook project in your My Projects list on Lulu. You’ll then have full control over the project, and can opt-out of iBookstore distribution, change the default price, etc. at any time. Additionally, this ePub file will be available for you to distribute to our expanding list of eBook retail partners. To learn more about this exciting iBookstore program, visit our knowledge base. Thank you for your continued support of Lulu and our ongoing efforts to help you sell more books. Best, Lulu Enterprises, Inc. *Note: “Tweaks to book catalog data (metadata)” will be minor edits such as correcting capitalization problems. We will, of course, contact you before making any significant changes.

# # # # #

http://trace5.com/fb/fb/0F365CE6ECE11D44AA96CC4B1441D016ECD54962070B0526C755486C0D97C488/show.aspx

The answer: “Not much”.

That’s what’s wrong with a “put everything in the cloud” architecture.

# # # # #

Greetings from XXXXX – Alive and Well in Singapore
Posted by: “XXXXX”

Sat Apr 9, 2011 12:01 am (PDT)

HI Guys, Saturday, April 9th, 2011.

Greetings from Singapore.

I understand that on March 22nd an “Emergency Help!!!” SCAM e-mail was sent in my name to the Manhattan Prep 1964 Yahoo Group.

My apologies if it created any alarm.

However, I am sure that any Prepster who received this e-mail would have realized that the exaggerated emotional tone and piss poor grammar gave it away as a scam…

Here is the background on the scam…

On the evening of March 22nd, someone hacked into my Yahoo/Prodigy Account, hijacked my address book, which contained about 1,400 addresses and then proceeded to send out an “Emergency Help” E-mail asking for money. The hacker even changed my password and set up a forwarding address edward1.coll@yahoo.com to which all my incoming e-mails went so he could try and continue to perpetrate this scam.

Within a few minutes of the scam e-mail being sent, I started receiving phone calls and e-mails from all over the world from people on my contact list enquiring if I was O.K. and whether they should send money to me via a Western Union Office in London .

I told them that this was a big SCAM and to just ignore the e-mail and not even reply as the hacker had arranged to have all the replies forwarded to him. What an operator !!!

It was really frustrating as this hacker also changed my password so I could not initially access my account to see what was going on

I was finally able to get in touch with Yahoo’s Customer Service Department and spent about two hours on the phone with them to get my password reset so I could access the account and cancel out all the forwarding addresses that the hacker had set up.

The worst thing was that he erased my Yahoo Address book and the 1,400 names it contained. Fortunately, I had backed up the address book so I was able to re-import the contacts to my yahoo account.

I hope this matter is settled now. and that no one was duped into sending this hacker any money.

My e-mail address, {Privacy Invoked} should be secure now.

Best regards,

# – # – #

I’m glad you’re OK. It’s not that we have any fellow alum to spare.
On a technical note, were you able to determine, how the hack was accomplished? I’m interested from an InfoSec pov. The default assumption was that someone kept “knocking on the door” with passwords until it opened. It’s not hard to imagine a bot (software robot) doing that. But, it’s also possible that it was malware on your computer or malware on a site you visited with an old browser.
Interesting?
May I suggest that you, or anyone, have your own domain? The common wisdom, or is that common whizdumb, is to own your own name as a domain name. I own “reinke.cc”. (I like saying “sea sea me at reinke.cc”! me@reinke.cc will actually work!)
I can send you some links to stuff that I’ve posted on my blog “Reinke Faces Life” about how to “do” email to avoid such unpleasantries. It’s neither hard not expensive.
Unfortunately, having a yahoo, gmail, or hotmail account makes you are target for the black hats. Eventually they find everyone who has one of those “free accounts”.
At the very least, one can hide by using a very long random string password. I use twenty characters. Of course, I use tools like roboform, last pass, and even the infamous yellow stickie to remember them.
But I doubt anyone has as many unique ids and passwords as I do. I’m a little nuts about it.
I’m now off to change my Yahoo password to something longer. I’m sure someone is listening.
:-)

# – # – # – # – #

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/04/epsilon_hack.html

Schneier on Security
A blog covering security and security technology.

April 5, 2011
Epsilon Hack

*** begin quote ***

I have no idea why the Epsilon hack is getting so much press.

Yes, millions of names and e-mail addresses might have been stolen. Yes, other customer information might have been stolen, too. Yes, this personal information could be used to create more personalized and better targeted phishing attacks.

*** end quote ***

You should shift to your own domain. Sorry, but yahoo, gmail, and hotmail make you a sitting duck for this hack.Your own domain just moves you out of the target zone.

Alpha spammers just keep trying every id from AA@yahoo.com to ZZZZZZZZZ@hotmail.com and then they turn around and repeat.

So you get “MYDOMAIN.COM”. (You can even push all the email to GMAIL for free.)

Then you create a spreadsheet or use a tool like LASTPASS, ROBOFORM, or such.

Now you assign email addresses to your correspondents. And, add a magic random string to the name, like, k7sa yk2k3 ggfn a2zq

Best Buy ==> BestBuy_k7sa @ MYDOMAIN.COM
Target ===>  Target_yk2k3  @ MYDOMAIN.COM
Verizon ===> Verizon_ggfn  @ MYDOMAIN.COM
Walgreens ==> Walgreens_a2zq @ MYDOMAIN.COM

You can then write email filters that will quarantine emails that arrive without the proper address.

If Best Buy messages come without the “k7sa”, you know that it’s not the address that you gave them.

If non-Best Buy messages come in with the “k7sa”, you know that it’s a compromised email address.

Go change your address at Best Buy and write a filter to trash any “k7sa” email.

It’s just like having unique passwords for all accounts.

# # # # #

A good reason to use unique email addresses for each of your “special” correspondents. Just like passwords, unique. A little bit of trouble to administrate, but it certainly isolates the trouble. And, it’s trivial to do when you have your own domain. You can even subcontract the email to GMAIL if you want by repointing a few records. It also automagicaly detects financial spam, when a message purporting to be from “your bank” arrives on the “wrong email” account. Wish I could teach this technique to more people. We could have email “security” even if the ISPs don’t want to do IPv6 or email providers, like Yahoo, won’t authenticate when email arrives from outside labeled as if originated from Yahoo itself. (I even tried to sell them a consulting engagement but they said “it wasn’t their problem”. With an attitude like that, no wonder we have problems.)

# – # – #

Dear Valued Customer, On March 30th, we were informed by Epsilon, a company we use to send emails to our customers, that files containing the email addresses of some Walgreens customers were accessed without authorization. We have been assured by Epsilon that the only information that was obtained was your email address. No other personally identifiable information was at risk because such data is not contained in Epsilon’s email system. For your security, we encourage you to be aware of common email scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Walgreens will not send you emails asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information. If ever asked for this information, you can be confident it is not from Walgreens. We regret this has taken place and any inconvenience this may have caused you. If you have any questions regarding this issue, please contact us at 1-855-814-0010. We take your privacy very seriously, and we will continue to work diligently to protect your personal information. Sincerely, Walgreens Customer Service Team PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. This is a system-generated Walgreens email. Replies will not be read or forwarded for handling. This message was sent to Contact Us | Unsubscribe | Update Email Address | Privacy Policy Copyright 2010 Walgreen Co., 200 Wilmot Road, Deerfield, IL 60015-4620. All rights reserved.

# – # – #

For our Chinese-speaking customers: As a valued Scottrade customer or someone who previously provided us with your email address, we want to make you aware of a situation that affects your email security. We have been notified by Epsilon, a company we use to send emails, that an unauthorized person outside of their company accessed records that contained your name and email address. This incident occurred at Epsilon. We want to assure you that Scottrade’s systems were not affected and your account information remains secure. The security of your information is important to us and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. You may receive an increase in spam email as a result of this incident. We encourage you to be cautious when opening emails, links or attachments from unknown sources. Scottrade will never ask you for personal or account information in an email. Please visit Scottrade’s Security Center http://www.scottrade.com/security/ for more information on online security. Sincerely, Scottrade Customer Support Email is not a secure communications channel. Please do not reply to this message with sensitive information, such as account number, social security number or password. Privacy Statement  Scottrade Security Center Brokerage Products and Services offered by Scottrade, Inc. – Member FINRA/SIPC. To ensure Scottrade emails do not get blocked from your inbox, please add scottrade@email.scottrade.com to your address book. This email was sent by: Scottrade, Inc. P.O. Box 31759 Saint Louis, MO 63131-0759

# – # – #

<!– NOTE USE OF TD PADDING TO CONTROL LINE WRAP IN THE FOLLOWING TEXT… No
–>

To ensure our emails reach your inbox, please add email@info.verizon.com to your address book.

Dear Verizon Customer, We have been informed by Epsilon, a provider of Verizon’s email marketing services, that your email address was exposed due to unauthorized access to its systems. Verizon uses Epsilon to send marketing communications on our behalf. Epsilon has assured us that the information exposed was limited to email addresses, and that no other information about you or your account was exposed. As always, you should be cautious when opening email links or attachments from unknown or suspicious parties, or emails purporting to be from Verizon and asking for financial or account password information. It is our policy to never ask for this information in emails. If you receive such emails, do not reply to them. You can report suspect or unwanted emails to Verizon at abuse@verizon.net and can obtain more information on how to protect against spam and phishing attacks on Verizon’s Privacy Policy page by clicking on “Tips for Guarding Your Information” located at the top right hand corner of the page. Our privacy policy can be found at Verizon.com/privacy. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you. Please be assured that we take the privacy of your information very seriously. Sincerely, Verizon

Having trouble with the links in this email? You can also copy and paste the following address into your browser to view your account: Ensure Verizon emails reach your inbox by adding reply-isnot-monitored@verizon.com to your “safe” email list. Your email or Internet provider can provide instructions on how it works. This email has been sent from an auto-notification system that cannot accept incoming email.

©2011 Verizon. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy Verizon Online – PO Box 33056 / St Petersburg, FL 33733

# # # # #

I knew it, I knew it. “Cloud Services” are subject to network and hosting issues.

AMAZON CLOUDPLAYER just had a “brain fart”. For at least three minutes.

For me listening to music sadly, who cares. For folks betting their ranch on a cloud strategy, they better care.

It’s back now. Let the finger pointing begin.

# – # – # – # – # 2011-Mar-30 @ 10:59