Confidence Trick | Social Media Blog

Feb
23

Pirate Bay faces Ban in UK

Category: Social, Technology Tags: Confidence trick, Copyright, Copyright infringement, File sharing, Filesharing, High Court of Justice, Internet service provider, London, NewzBin, P2P, Pirate Bay, the pirate bay, torrent Leave a Comment

The High Court in London has paved the way for what could become a nationwide ban on accessing the notorious Pirate Bay file-sharing website.

Japanese parliament hacked

Category: Social, Technology Tags: Asahi Shimbun, China, Confidence trick, Cyberwarfare, Japan, Lower House, Malware, New Zealand, Personal computer, Spyware, Trojan Horse, Trojan Horses Leave a Comment

The Diet is Japan's national legislature, resp...

Image via Wikipedia

According to local media reports, hackers were able to snoop upon emails and steal passwords from computers belonging to lawmakers at the Japanese parliament for over a month.

A report in the Asahi Shimbun claims that PCs and servers were infected after a Trojan horse was emailed to a a Lower House member in July.

The Trojan horse then downloaded malware from a server based in China – allowing remote hackers to secretly spy on email communications and steal usernames and passwords from lawmakers.

Read More Japanese parliament hacked (…)

Oct
22

By pratyushkp

Malware attack poses as bloody photos of Gaddafi’s death

Category: Social, Technology Tags: Agence France-Presse, Confidence trick, Death, Gaddafi, Libya, Libyan, Malware, Moammar Gadhafi, Muammar al-Gaddafi, RAR, Spam Leave a Comment

The death of Libyan dictator Colonel Gaddafi has almost inevitably resulted in cybercriminals taking advantage of the news story, and the general public’s seeming interest in viewing ghoulish photos and videos of his last moments.

Malicious hackers have spammed out an attack posing as pictures of Gaddafi’s death, tricking users into believing that they came from the AFP news agency and are being forwarded by a fellow internet user.

A typical message looks like this:

Read More Malware attack poses (…)

Oct
12

By pratyushkp

Shocking Study Reveals How Top Sites Use Your Personal Data

Category: Social, Technology Tags: BlueKai, Confidence trick, Cybersecurity, Doctor of Philosophy, Julia Angwin, Lotame Solutions, OkCupid, Online Privacy, Privacy, Privacy Oline, Stanford Privacy Study, Stanford University, Tracking The Trackers, Video, Wall Street Journal, website Leave a Comment

Image by hlwimmer via Flickr

By Julia Angwin, Wall Street Journal

A study released Tuesday shows that 45% of the top 185 U.S. websites transmit identifying details about their visitors to at least four outside websites.

The data transmitted was primarily a “username” – which is the name a person uses to log into a website – or a user ID assigned by the website to a user. It was usually transmitted through referrers – which is information about the web page transmitted automatically.

In some cases, the data went much further: the study found for instance that the online dating website OKCupid sent the gender, age, zip code, relationship status and ‘drug use frequency’ to two companies that sell personal data in auctions, BlueKai and Lotame.

Student arrested for hacking Prime Minister’s Twitter account

Category: Social, Technology Tags: Bangkok, Chulalongkorn University, Confidence trick, facebook, gmail, prime minister, Spam, Student, Thailand, twitter, Yingluck Shinawatra, Yingluck Shinawatra twitter hacked Leave a Comment

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

Police in Thailand have arrested a university student who is said to have admitted hacking into the Prime Minister’s Twitter account and posting messages accusing her of incompetence.

22-year-old Aekawit Thongdeeworakul, a fourth year architecture student at Chulalongkorn University, could face up to two years in prison if found guilty of illegally accessing computer systems without authorisation.

Thailand’s Prime Minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, had her Twitter account hacked last weekend – and her followers saw a stream of messages criticising her leadership.

Google’s Picasa and Yahoo! Groups used to spread spam

Category: Social, Technology Tags: Anti-spam techniques, Confidence trick, E-mail, E-mail filtering, email spamming, Flickr, google, Picasa, Picasa Web Albums, Spam, Vulnerability, yahoo Leave a Comment

One of the most effective techniques anti-spam products have to block spam messages from reaching your inbox is reputation filtering.

Yes, to a degree, anti-spam solutions may still look for v1@gr@and Mrs. Gaddafi offering you $40 million, but the biggest bang for your buck comes from reputation.

What do you do if you are a spammer? Figure out a way to get a legitimate mail provider to deliver your messages for you…

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