I got around 100 spam messages a day before (it jumped to about 200 a day in the past month), and less than one a day arrived at my inbox. My Gmail address is the only one I don't obfuscate anywhere, for this reason.
My only worry is that in the hundreds of spam messages, there could a false positive - but the number of times this has happened so far can be counted on one hand, so it's not much of a bother. Just a cursory check through the subjects in the spam folder, and then I flush it all down.
The setup of multiple SMTP servers became a bit more convenient from 1.0 to 1.5 (requiring one less window to be opened). No notable change between 1.5 and 2.0, but it works well already.
It feels a bit odd that while each account's ingoing server is "attached" to the account's settings, the outgoing servers are set up separately. On the other hand, this does allow several accounts to use the same outgoing server, which I suppose is useful.
If those corporate users who use good passwords are also careful enough not to get phished, then the sample is self-selecting.
It might seem as though the same bias would affect the Myspace users, but only if both are equally well-informed about the nature of phishing attacks. Choosing a long password and being familiar with how the web works are two different things.
And that can decide whether you trust "www.gmail.com.freecash.com/login.html" with your Gmail password, or not.
What advantage would "Google Linux" have over other distros apart from a new colorful logo on top?
Given that both the Linux developers and Google are entities that strive to make their product as compatible with others as possible. The only possible way for Google to make its own distribution and make it a big success is through vertical integration a la MS - make their OS work best with their browser, their instant messenger and their web services, locking competitors out. Not happening (at least that is to be fervently hoped).
Add to this that Google is already worried about its trademark being diluted - I can't see how they would benefit from having it attached to an OS as well as a web service.
It would make more sense for them to encourage or support/sponsor development on existing distributions or to make their desktop software work better with Linux. This would also draw users over just fine. "Build-your-own" is fun, but it doesn't have any use for them.
> hopefully Zune 2.0 ditches DRM, plays all formats and breaks all of the rules iPods live by
And perhaps Vista 2.0 will be open-source.:)
That aside, what with "Zune" allegedly sounding like a Hebrew four-letter word (someone claimed this was based on fact, though I'm not sure), the error screen showing what looks like an orgasm, and now "squirts", I'm beginning to suspect that someone in the marketing deparment thinks he is being funny.
Whoever, without authorization, passes on information that falls under the Secrecy of Mail or Telecommnunications, and that he has gained as the owner or employee of a business providing Mail or Telecommunication services, will be punished by a jail sentence up to five years or a fine.
Legalese isn't my forte, but it gets the point across I hope.
(The "passes on" and "owner and employee" are verbatim - I'm not clear on this either. I presume there must be another clause that covers using the information for personal profit, or gaining the information without being entrusted with it - although the latter would probably be simply theft.)
I hate it when that happens - I post something sarcastic, get a response that seems to take it seriously, am halfway into typing out an explanation that I was being sarcastic, then realize the response was likely sarcasm too... I always fall for that one.
Well, Google(TM)'s lawyers would prefer you to capitalize Google(TM) to protect their trademark, and Firefox(TM) works closely with Google(TM). (Though that doesn't explain the 'googol' error.) --- On another note, would it be that hard for Google to use the "Accept-language:" request header if one is transmitted [i]first[/i], and then use the IP address afterward if it isn't? I checked, and my browser does transmit "Accept-language: en-us,en,q=0.5" in its request header, which should be enough for them to realize I don't want to be redirected to google.de, even without a cookie storing my settings.
Much like the RIAA and MPAA, they are allowed to do pretty much everything, or at least act like it. If they do something that seems like it's violating your rights, and you can pay a good lawyer, you can try your luck. Otherwise, well...
Just be glad they're not taxing ears for being able to listen to copyrighted music or radio yet.
Yes, if you/know/ this is an email address, you can parse it. But what do you look for to find this on a page? The usual identifier for emails is an @ character. For a very devious spammer, "(at)", "AT", "[at]" and such will suffice. But "at" is an English word. It will occur anywhere on a page with English text.
The "dot" could in extreme cases be used. But if it's replaced by a period (and placed such that it fits with normal syntax, following a word and followed by a space), that too becomes unrecognizable. It's going to catch an enormous number of false positives.
The only remaining vulnerability is to search for "gmail", "yahoo" or "hotmail". I'm afraid I don't know a solution for that one, unless someone knows a way to mask domain names as well?...
Somewhat off-topic, but the following isn't quite accurate in my experience (quoted from your Spambot article):
So if the guestbook posting form has no preview or confirmation page, then the spambot would leave a message simply by following this link! My guestbooks and message boards have a preview page, which is probably why I hadn't had any of this.
The preview page is just an additional URL - if the spambot can follow that by accident, it can just as well follow the confirmation link. To prevent bots (legitimate search engines too) from accidentally submitting forms, use the POST method instead of GET, and make sure that if the submission page is visited directly (without post parameters filled out) the submission is dropped.
It won't stop spambots that are deliberately out to submit spam (those can use POST just fine), but it will stop "accidental" submissions (including duplicate posts from people who reload the page.
If you didn't have this problem, it was probably because your form was better written, not because of the preview page.
Alarm bells went off in my mind when I read the words "genetic upper class". Can we be sure that this is scientific and not another case of racial delusions?
An open standard for sharing personal information, interests and contacts, possibly?
Like vCard, only more extensible (and in XML! </obligatory>).
The unique identifier is one of the bigger problems - most social networks will issue you an incrementing or random number, or otherwise just identify you by your login name (first come, first served). Email addresses change (and some people - I included - have dozens). No other services (ICQ, AIM, etc.) are used by everyone.
So a service needs either a central registry to issue ID numbers (defeating the purpose), or it has to identify profiles by email addresses, which risks having duplicate entries for persons, and forcing people to re-create their profiles when their email address changes.
In the "Organize Bookmarks" dialog, I can drag and drop folders just as well as links (using RC3, but I'm quite sure this was added at least a few versions back).
It's a bit obvious from the number of major additions described, but the "phishing protection" and "new Windows Installer" are just new features of 2.0, which were already in earlier release candidates. Compare the announcements of RC3 and RC2 on the developer blog.
The release notes page itself seems a bit misleading, since they specifically talk about "Firefox 2 RC3" even in places where they mean Firefox 2 - perhaps someone saved time with a search & replace.
--
So while this announcement probably means they fixed bugs and are another step closer to the final release, the major features aren't news.
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Indeed, Gmail's filter is the best I've seen.
I got around 100 spam messages a day before (it jumped to about 200 a day in the past month), and less than one a day arrived at my inbox. My Gmail address is the only one I don't obfuscate anywhere, for this reason.
My only worry is that in the hundreds of spam messages, there could a false positive - but the number of times this has happened so far can be counted on one hand, so it's not much of a bother. Just a cursory check through the subjects in the spam folder, and then I flush it all down.
The setup of multiple SMTP servers became a bit more convenient from 1.0 to 1.5 (requiring one less window to be opened). No notable change between 1.5 and 2.0, but it works well already.
It feels a bit odd that while each account's ingoing server is "attached" to the account's settings, the outgoing servers are set up separately. On the other hand, this does allow several accounts to use the same outgoing server, which I suppose is useful.
Wait, how did you know my password if all it shows you is "*******"?
If those corporate users who use good passwords are also careful enough not to get phished, then the sample is self-selecting.
It might seem as though the same bias would affect the Myspace users, but only if both are equally well-informed about the nature of phishing attacks. Choosing a long password and being familiar with how the web works are two different things.
And that can decide whether you trust "www.gmail.com.freecash.com/login.html" with your Gmail password, or not.
> are in possession of the evidence
Without trailing off into philosophy or metaphysical concepts...
If the data you possess is useless to you without further information (ie. the key), do you actually "possess" the information the data contains?
I suppose this can only really be true for One-Time Pads - where it is actually impossible to recover the information without knowing the key.
What advantage would "Google Linux" have over other distros apart from a new colorful logo on top?
Given that both the Linux developers and Google are entities that strive to make their product as compatible with others as possible. The only possible way for Google to make its own distribution and make it a big success is through vertical integration a la MS - make their OS work best with their browser, their instant messenger and their web services, locking competitors out. Not happening (at least that is to be fervently hoped).
Add to this that Google is already worried about its trademark being diluted - I can't see how they would benefit from having it attached to an OS as well as a web service.
It would make more sense for them to encourage or support/sponsor development on existing distributions or to make their desktop software work better with Linux. This would also draw users over just fine. "Build-your-own" is fun, but it doesn't have any use for them.
Having read this as "Windows Live and Piracy", that was my initial reaction too.
> hopefully Zune 2.0 ditches DRM, plays all formats and breaks all of the rules iPods live by
:)
And perhaps Vista 2.0 will be open-source.
That aside, what with "Zune" allegedly sounding like a Hebrew four-letter word (someone claimed this was based on fact, though I'm not sure), the error screen showing what looks like an orgasm, and now "squirts", I'm beginning to suspect that someone in the marketing deparment thinks he is being funny.
Think before you mod. Adding inflections left and right does not archaic English make.
> luckily they've stayed away from horoscopes for now.
The "personalized homepage" portal allows you to add a (third-party) Horoscope widget, as does Google Desktop.
> I wonder if he can pay the fine in e-mail promotion services? "c0ur1 dec1s1ons & 1njunct10n5! 100% gu4rant33d!"
Sorry about the linebreaks (or lack thereof), I forgot to switch off the html formatting.
Area: 9,984,670 km Population: 32,623,490 Density: 3.2/km If this is your definition of full, you should come to Europe some day.
Ouch.
I hate it when that happens - I post something sarcastic, get a response that seems to take it seriously, am halfway into typing out an explanation that I was being sarcastic, then realize the response was likely sarcasm too... I always fall for that one.
Yes, finally. Copying text field contents into notepad to find a word got old fast.
Of course, an actual search & replace (and replace all) feature would be even nicer. I've searched for an extension, but haven't found any yet.
Well, Google(TM)'s lawyers would prefer you to capitalize Google(TM) to protect their trademark, and Firefox(TM) works closely with Google(TM). (Though that doesn't explain the 'googol' error.)
---
On another note, would it be that hard for Google to use the "Accept-language:" request header if one is transmitted [i]first[/i], and then use the IP address afterward if it isn't?
I checked, and my browser does transmit "Accept-language: en-us,en,q=0.5" in its request header, which should be enough for them to realize I don't want to be redirected to google.de, even without a cookie storing my settings.
They are a group who regulates media access.
Much like the RIAA and MPAA, they are allowed to do pretty much everything, or at least act like it. If they do something that seems like it's violating your rights, and you can pay a good lawyer, you can try your luck. Otherwise, well...
Just be glad they're not taxing ears for being able to listen to copyrighted music or radio yet.
One failsafe is to use "user at domain. com".
/know/ this is an email address, you can parse it. But what do you look for to find this on a page? The usual identifier for emails is an @ character. For a very devious spammer, "(at)", "AT", "[at]" and such will suffice. But "at" is an English word. It will occur anywhere on a page with English text.
...
Yes, if you
The "dot" could in extreme cases be used. But if it's replaced by a period (and placed such that it fits with normal syntax, following a word and followed by a space), that too becomes unrecognizable. It's going to catch an enormous number of false positives.
The only remaining vulnerability is to search for "gmail", "yahoo" or "hotmail". I'm afraid I don't know a solution for that one, unless someone knows a way to mask domain names as well?
"Protect your email address: Write in leetspeak!"
The preview page is just an additional URL - if the spambot can follow that by accident, it can just as well follow the confirmation link. To prevent bots (legitimate search engines too) from accidentally submitting forms, use the POST method instead of GET, and make sure that if the submission page is visited directly (without post parameters filled out) the submission is dropped.
It won't stop spambots that are deliberately out to submit spam (those can use POST just fine), but it will stop "accidental" submissions (including duplicate posts from people who reload the page.
If you didn't have this problem, it was probably because your form was better written, not because of the preview page.
Alarm bells went off in my mind when I read the words "genetic upper class". Can we be sure that this is scientific and not another case of racial delusions?
An open standard for sharing personal information, interests and contacts, possibly?
Like vCard, only more extensible (and in XML! </obligatory>).
The unique identifier is one of the bigger problems - most social networks will issue you an incrementing or random number, or otherwise just identify you by your login name (first come, first served). Email addresses change (and some people - I included - have dozens). No other services (ICQ, AIM, etc.) are used by everyone.
So a service needs either a central registry to issue ID numbers (defeating the purpose), or it has to identify profiles by email addresses, which risks having duplicate entries for persons, and forcing people to re-create their profiles when their email address changes.
In the "Organize Bookmarks" dialog, I can drag and drop folders just as well as links (using RC3, but I'm quite sure this was added at least a few versions back).
It's a bit obvious from the number of major additions described, but the "phishing protection" and "new Windows Installer" are just new features of 2.0, which were already in earlier release candidates. Compare the announcements of RC3 and RC2 on the developer blog.
The release notes page itself seems a bit misleading, since they specifically talk about "Firefox 2 RC3" even in places where they mean Firefox 2 - perhaps someone saved time with a search & replace.
--
So while this announcement probably means they fixed bugs and are another step closer to the final release, the major features aren't news.
Of course it does! Just look at Internet Explorer - it collectively owns all other browsers ever made - because it is inextricably built into Windows.
Oh wait...