This week’s Loose Wire column answers readers’ questions on Bluesnarfing, the unpleasant term for the unpleasant process of remotely stealing the data from a Bluetooth-equipped cellphones, the wonders of PowerDesk and ExplorerPlus, and browser wars. Full text at the Far Eastern Economic Review (subscription required, trial available) or at WSJ.com (subscription required). Old columns at feer.com… Read More »
Just in case any of you thought I was making up the domain names in this week’s column, here’s an email I received just now which illustrates how it all works. It’s from the same bunch of guys as all the domains listed in the column, and it looks like this: We received an email… Read More »
Further to an earlier post about whether you could trust a software provider enough to buy anti-keylogging and anti-spyware programs from them if they also sold spyware and keyloggers, here’s an interesting list from Spyware Warrior: programs that claim to be spyware removers but in fact install spyware. Most of these have a commercial bent, but… Read More »
Speaking to Well Fargo Online’s Wendy Grover this morning, I realised there’s a dimension to the debate about pop-ups that hadn’t occurred to me before: Phishing. The central argument used by companies such as Wells Fargo in their long-running litigation against the likes of WhenU and Gator (now Claria) is that they confuse the user.… Read More »
Here are a couple more tools designed to thwart phishers: EarthLink, a U.S. Internet provider, has today added something called ScamBlocker to its Toolbar, and made it available to all users, not just subscribers. ScamBlocker will “alert you before you enter a Web page that’s on our list of fraudulent sites”. SpoofGuard, from a team… Read More »