OT: PSA For anyone with a Gmail account

[Nikolai]

What I do is check the email address of the sender. If the domain's is wrong, it goes to the junk folder. If the domain looks correct, I still don't click on the link, but rather log into that particular account using my browser.

Just want to say, this is the way.

Get any email from any one of your accounts for any reason? Open a new window and type in the domain name yourself and then log into the account. If there's actually an issue to resolve, you'll learn all about it on the site.

There's an old adage in the cybersecurity world....don't click ****.

 

[Gumby]

Anyone seeing crap pretending to be from meta etc thru Whatsapp?
Daughter just told me about something asking for her & my apple passwords (I am the screen time control on her phone) in order to update the App itself & that she only has x days to respond. Haven’t checked it out yet, but it sounds suspicious.

 

[BTTA]

Anyone seeing crap pretending to be from meta etc thru Whatsapp?
Daughter just told me about something asking for her & my apple passwords (I am the screen time control on her phone) in order to update the App itself & that she only has x days to respond. Haven’t checked it out yet, but it sounds suspicious.

Yeah, 99.9% odds that that's BS. Apps don't need passwords to update, and creating false urgency is a hallmark of a scam.

 

[n1997y]

This stuff could have been so much more bullet proof if decades ago, but it would have involved more messaging under the covers to confirm the sender was who they said it was, and the big players didn't want to pay for that.

In fact the easier they make it to spam the more paying traffic they get, and the harder they make it to spam the more unpaid work they need to do.

Pretty easy choice for the ****head MBA "winners" who make the decisions.

Not quite right. It would’ve required throwing away a lot of existing work and starting over with a clean sheet. That would’ve required a big investment when it was possible to get by without such investment by building with existing pieces. Plus that maintains backwards compatibility and interoperability, which would’ve been impossible with what you suggest.

There is a lot of additional messaging behind the scenes in DKIM and SPF, but it’s all built on stuff that already existed and was ubiquitous.

There’s also a good question whether the approach you suggest would have ended up just substituting a different set of problems. A huge body of work exists showing inability to produce secure systems, and not much shows any success at building such systems. Personally I believe we will have these same security issues until we fix human nature.

 

[borisman]

Does anyone know where I go to find a "saved draft post"? I can't find one I saved as a draft. Dummy.
Also, not the appropriate thread for this question as well but wanted to post it in low traffic thread.

 

[Bill Lee]

Not quite right. It would’ve required throwing away a lot of existing work and starting over with a clean sheet. That would’ve required a big investment when it was possible to get by without such investment by building with existing pieces. Plus that maintains backwards compatibility and interoperability, which would’ve been impossible with what you suggest.

There is a lot of additional messaging behind the scenes in DKIM and SPF, but it’s all built on stuff that already existed and was ubiquitous.

There’s also a good question whether the approach you suggest would have ended up just substituting a different set of problems. A huge body of work exists showing inability to produce secure systems, and not much shows any success at building such systems. Personally I believe we will have these same security issues until we fix human nature.

I'm talking about the early/mid 1990s. There was an interoperability argument even back then, but still "just believe they are who they say they are" was understood to be incredibly stupid even back then, yet no one had the clout to put on the brakes and fix it. There were plenty of research papers on how to address it but we had already begun to drink the go-go juice, especially some people in Redmond who thought making your email executable code by default was a good thing.

 

[Ian]

Does anyone know where I go to find a "saved draft post"? I can't find one I saved as a draft. Dummy.
Also, not the appropriate thread for this question as well but wanted to post it in low traffic thread.

It’s usually in the reply box of the post you started it in. I’ve run into that before and I’ll see if I can set up something that helps make it easier to find those.

 

[madmarcus1960]

I got a rather looking official text from Easy Pass telling me I owed $.28, the only toll I have taken in the past month is the Newport Bridge and that toll with Easy Pass is $.83.... but have to wonder how many folks fall for this phishing effort???

Multiple marks of it being a scam. 1 - EZ Pass states on their website about the scam and that they do not send text messages. 2 - the texts I've received have had a group chat, that would not happen even if it was legit. 3 - I've blocked the number, yet a different number sends me new scam EZ Pass texts. I get people can be naive with Tech, but sometimes it's pretty obvious.
A lot of bad actors out there.

 

[n1997y]

I'm talking about the early/mid 1990s. There was an interoperability argument even back then, but still "just believe they are who they say they are" was understood to be incredibly stupid even back then, yet no one had the clout to put on the brakes and fix it. There were plenty of research papers on how to address it but we had already begun to drink the go-go juice, especially some people in Redmond who thought making your email executable code by default was a good thing.

Yeah. I was dealing with such problems a far back as the mid ‘80s. Interoperability and backwards compatibility were constant design constraints even then. So by the 1990s there was a very intractable issue with anything that broke the existing installed base. It was a problem long before anybody in Redmond had gotten much clout, even before Tim Berners-Lee created the www. The concerns about identity really became serious only after the Internet became the Internet, with non-edu users, which was after all that.

 

[Bill Lee]

Yeah. I was dealing with such problems a far back as the mid ‘80s. Interoperability and backwards compatibility were constant design constraints even then. So by the 1990s there was a very intractable issue with anything that broke the existing installed base. It was a problem long before anybody in Redmond had gotten much clout, even before Tim Berners-Lee created the www. The concerns about identity really became serious only after the Internet became the Internet, with non-edu users, which was after all that.

Thanks for your insights. Bottom line to me is early/mid 90s was when we were making that transition from the Internet being used mostly by boffins to it being driven by MBAs with dollar signs in their eyes, so it was the last time IMO there was a decent chance of do something more than just believe the sender is who they say they are. From what I recall of the discussions anything that required extra round-trip messaging was shot down by the ISPs.

 

[signbabybrady]

I killed my first laptop about three weeks into my first college semester with the Paris Hilton virus. That was fun.

 

[Guts]

Click on the email.
You'll be millionaires

 

[n1997y]

Thanks for your insights. Bottom line to me is early/mid 90s was when we were making that transition from the Internet being used mostly by boffins to it being driven by MBAs with dollar signs in their eyes, so it was the last time IMO there was a decent chance of do something more than just believe the sender is who they say they are. From what I recall of the discussions anything that required extra round-trip messaging was shot down by the ISPs.

That transition was a key point, for a lot of reasons. I saw it coming but didn’t get into the action to take advantage of that foresight. If I had I’d be like my former colleague who is selling his yacht to get a larger better custom built cruiser, instead of haunting this board…

 

[Bill Lee]

That transition was a key point, for a lot of reasons. I saw it coming but didn’t get into the action to take advantage of that foresight. If I had I’d be like my former colleague who is selling his yacht to get a larger better custom built cruiser, instead of haunting this board…

I was one of those boffins, glad to be comfortable and not focused on getting rich, but knew some who were and who did. My closest call was an interview I took at Qualcom in the early 90s before anyone knew who they were. It was a perfect fit on the tech side but I simply did not want to leave New England. D'oh! I think I did OK overall, but now I wonder what would happened if I had the interest and the aptitude to focus more on the financial side of things.