Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Who you gonna free call in North America - 760-705-8888

760-705-8888 is Google's Talk number and hails from area code located in Escondido, California. Its' registered to MCI WorldCom Communications, California whose parent is Verizon Communications and being used by Google for all their outgoing calls for GTalk.

With Gtalk you can place free calls in North America, to cell phone or land lines.

So anyone using Gtalk, 
760-705-8888 number will appear as your incoming phone number. Note,but all calls will be redirected through this number, that means friends and foe can use this and you will not be able to tell the difference. 




Thursday, December 18, 2014

Phishing Email - Your Apple ID information has been updated.

Phishing Email Subject -  Your Apple ID information has been updated.

If you receive this crafty email similar to below, then it beware it's probably a phishing email attempt that is recently going around. What to do?  Report them, goto bottom of page.

Action > Report the Phishing URL to Google now, click this link
  1. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=langkawiswee.com



 
Subject : Your Apple ID information has been updated.



Dear
The following changes to your Apple ID were made on Thursday December 18 at 15:11:37 (GMT):
Credit card
If you need additional help, contact Apple Support.
Sincerely,
Apple Support



How to tell this is a Phishing email ?


  1. Is email is from you to you, then it's phishing.
  2. Hover over all links in email, if it's not from the apple.com site then forget it.

    In above example, all the links and source images seem to be from Apple website except the iforgot.apple.com link.

    You can test this
    in the above example, since I crafted that from source HTML of the phishing email. Try it, hover over links to examine the source URL. Note: I have re-coded iforgot.apple.com to report itunesgoold.com as phishing site to Google.

    In the original phishing email, hovering over iforgot.apple.com pointed to spam site 
    itunesgoold.com. The correct link when you hover over iforgot.apple.com should be http://iforgot.apple.com.
    Reading email in Outlook generated pop-up "Click to follow link"



  3. The best way is to look at message source, see below.


How to examine Email Message Source ?

Now lets look at message source
  1. Outlook.com->Actions->View Message Source. 
  2. Gmail.com->More (down arrow to top right)->Show original.

For this phony email, well look at the top 25 lines of the message, known formally as the "message header".





Invalid return-path:

At
line 23 you have Return-Path: hosting.windows@aruba.it
and is suspect because domain was registered in Italy (
.it) and nothing to do with Apple.

Aruba.it is being investigate for a Paypal phishing and has reported links to Italian Mafia.


These are valid return-paths for Apple 

  • Return-Path: do_not_reply@apple.com 
  • Return-Path: bounces@insideicloud.icloud.com 

Why look at "Return-Path"? When the e-mail is put in the recipient's mailbox, a new mail header is created with the name "Return-Path:" containing the address on the MAIL FROM command. So it's a quick hit to determine authenticity.


Report Phishing Email (not as Spam)

  1. Outlook.com->Junk (at Top)->Phishing Scam
  2. Gmail.com->More (downarrow to top right)->Report Phishing 

Report Phishing URLs at Google now 

If you have recievied this email take further action now by click these links

  1. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=langkawiswee.com

Report phishing at Microsoft and government agencies

  1. http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-faq.aspx

Report phishing emails to Apple 

Forward the email to abuse@icloud.com. This provides Apple's legal department and law enforcement with useful information to help prevent future phishing emails.

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Phishing Email - No Confirmed - iTunes Gift Card $100 to

Sample Phishing Email - No Confirmed - iTunes Gift Card $100 to ...

If you receive this crafty email similar to below, then it beware it's probably a phishing email attempt that is recently going around. What to do?  Report them, goto bottom of page.

Action > Report the Phishing URL to Google now, click this link
  1. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=itunesgoold.com



 
Subject : No Confirmed - iTunes Gift Card $100 to (robertfrost@outlook.com) Your receipt No.59999999 Your receipt No.1133944444
PayPal logo
11 DEC 2014 02:01:11 BST
Transaction ID: 4V999966CK3888N
 
You sent a $100 iTunes Gift Card to (robertfrost@outlook.com)
Thanks for using iTunes Store. To see all the transaction details, log in to your Apple account.

It may take a few moments for this transaction to appear in your account.


 
Seller
Apple Canada
Note to seller
$100 iTunes Code (email delivery)
Shipping address - NO confirmed
Dispatch details
The seller hasnt provided any dispatch details yet.
 
Description
Unit price
Qty
Amount
$100 CAD
1
$100 CAD
 
Postage and packaging
$100 CAD
Insurance - not offered
----
Total
$100 CAD

How to tell this is a Phishing email ?


  1. Is email is from you to you, then it's phishing.
  2. Hover over all links in email, if it's not from the apple.com site then forget it.
    Reading email in Outlook generated pop-up "Click to follow link"

    In above example, all the links and source images seem to be from Apple website except the iforgot.apple.com link.

    You can test this
    in the above example, since I crafted that from source HTML of the phishing email. Try it, hover over links to examine the source URL. Note: I have re-coded iforgot.apple.com to report itunesgoold.com as phishing site to Google.

    In the original phishing email, hovering over iforgot.apple.com pointed to spam site 
    itunesgoold.com. The correct link when you hover over iforgot.apple.com should be http://iforgot.apple.com.


  3. The best way is to look at message source, see below.


How to examine Email Message Source ?

Now lets look at message source
  1. Outlook.com->Actions->View Message Source. 
  2. Gmail.com->More (down arrow to top right)->Show original.

For this phony email, well look at the top 25 lines of the message, known formally as the "message header".





Invalid return-path:

At
line 23 you have Return-Path: hosting.windows@aruba.it
and is suspect because domain was registered in Italy (
.it) and nothing to do with Apple.

Aruba.it is being investigate for a Paypal phishing and has reported links to Italian Mafia.


These are valid return-paths for Apple 

  • Return-Path: do_not_reply@apple.com 
  • Return-Path: bounces@insideicloud.icloud.com 

Why look at "Return-Path"? When the e-mail is put in the recipient's mailbox, a new mail header is created with the name "Return-Path:" containing the address on the MAIL FROM command. So it's a quick hit to determine authenticity.


Report Phishing Email (not as Spam)

  1. Outlook.com->Junk (at Top)->Phishing Scam
  2. Gmail.com->More (downarrow to top right)->Report Phishing 

Report Phishing URLs itunesgoold.com at Google now 

If you have recievied this email take further action now by click these links

  1. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=itunesgoold.com

Report phishing at Microsoft and government agencies

  1. http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-faq.aspx

Friday, December 12, 2014

Phishing Email - You sent a iTunes Gift Card to - Examined

Sample Phishing Email - You sent a iTunes Gift Card $200 to ...

If you receive this crafty email similar to below, then it beware it's probably a phishing email attempt that is recently going around. What to do?  Report them, goto bottom of page.




Subject: You sent a iTunes Gift Card $200 to (teamtazdojo@gmail.com) Your receipt No.123456789

 
PayPal logo
12 Dec 2014 02:01:11 BST
Transaction ID: 4V999066CK355555N
 
You sent a iTunes Gift Card to (teamtazdojo@gmail.com)
Thanks for using iTunes. To see all the transaction details, log in to your Apple account.

It may take a few moments for this transaction to appear in your account.


 
Note to seller
This is a $200 itunes card or gift voucher.
Shipping address EMAIL - No Confirmed
teamtazdojo@gmail.com
Dispatch details
The seller hasnt provided any dispatch details yet.
 
Description
Unit price
Qty
Amount
Click here To Cancel This Transaction
iTunes Gift Card Item Number 333332959511
$$200 CAD
1
$$200 CAD
 
Postage and packaging
$200 CAD
Insurance - not offered
----
Total
$200 CAD

How to tell this is a Phishing email ?


  1. Is email is from you to you, then it's phishing.
  2. Hover over all links in email, if it's not from the apple.com site then forget it.

    In above example, all the links and source images seem to be from Apple website except the iforgot.apple.com link.

    You can test this
    in the above example, since I crafted that from source HTML of the phishing email. Try it, hover over links to examine the source URL. Note: I have re-coded iforgot.apple.com to report delnott.com as phishing site to Google.

    In the original phishing email, hovering over iforgot.apple.com pointed to spam site delnott.com
    . The correct link when you hover over iforgot.apple.com should be http://iforgot.apple.com.
    Reading email in Outlook generated pop-up "Click to follow link"


  3. The best way is to look at message source, see below.


How to examine Email Message Source ?

Now lets look at message source
  1. Outlook.com->Actions->View Message Source. 
  2. Gmail.com->More (down arrow to top right)->Show original.

For this phony email, well look at the top 25 lines of the message, known formally as the "message header".





At line 23 you have Return-Path: hosting.windows@aruba.it
and is suspect because domain was registered in Italy (
.it) and nothing to do with Apple.

Aruba.it is being investigate for a Paypal phishing and has reported links to Italian Mafia.


These are valid return-paths for Apple 

  • Return-Path: do_not_reply@apple.com 
  • Return-Path: bounces@insideicloud.icloud.com 

Why look at "Return-Path"? When the e-mail is put in the recipient's mailbox, a new mail header is created with the name "Return-Path:" containing the address on the MAIL FROM command. So it's a quick hit to determine authenticity.


Report Phishing Email (not as Spam)

  1. Outlook.com->Junk (at Top)->Phishing Scam
  2. Gmail.com->More (downarrow to top right)->Report Phishing 


Report Phishing URLs delnott.com at Google now 

If you have recievied this email take further action now by click these links

  1. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=delnott.com

Report phishing at Microsoft and government agencies

  1. http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-faq.aspx

Monday, December 1, 2014

Paste image into Gmail not working?

Are you having an issue pasting (ctrl-v) an image into Gmail message, no matter how many time you try to paste an image and it's just allowing you to add an image, but you can paste text ?


You most likely have plain text turned for composing emails in Gmail, but this is not obvious since it's really not indicated anywhere and if you slip into this mode you be frustrated that it's not indicated.

You can display your current default authoring mode by selecting this down arrow that is located to the right side of the garbage can when you compose a New Message in Gmail.

Plain text mode enable - this does not allowed images to be pasted!

Solution: You have to turn on Rich Text emails, which means makes sure Plain text mode is NOT selected.

Disable Plain text mode
Now you will be able to paste images into Gmail emails.



Saturday, November 22, 2014

Cost of 1 code change and myth of multi-tasking

At Sprintly, we have a lot of data on developer cycle time. We track how long it takes them to complete different types of tasks (Stories, Tests, Bugs), as well as different sizes of tasks (S, M, L, XL).


The sample size was 147,494 items that had been both accepted & scored. 


Patterns we seen at Sprintly


1.  Developers are remarkably average. Our ticket data shows that across all of our users, cycle times are very similar: 
75% of all tickets in our system are started and completed in about 175 hours.
1 ticket to close on ~ 175 hours or 21 work days or 1 elapsed work month!
2. Most of the variability occurs before a ticket has been started (Someday to Backlog). This is the stage when stakeholders are figuring out specs and prioritizing work. In the Kanban world, this is typically called reaction time (the amount of time from when the ticket is created to when it is prioritized). There’s a lot of time wasted at this stage:
Developer cycle time variability by Sprint.ly
3. it also appears that teams have a hard time transitioning from “done” to “tested and ready to be deployed” (look at Completed to Accepted above).
Context switching introduces huge costs
For example, we have a Lead Developer who does a lot of code reviews, pairing, going to meetings, and fighting fires.
Here’s a graph that shows cycle times for developers on our team:
Lead developer who switches contexts
In this case, it’s the nature of the Lead Developer’s role that affects the amount of time it takes him to complete tasks.
The problem arises when you, as a manager, switch your developers to new tasks mid-stream. If your priorities are always shifting, you’re introducing huge costs to your team.
Thanks for this article, we need more metrics like this...
https://sprint.ly/blog/your-developers-arent-slow/

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

How to embed PDFs in Webpage 2014 - Word Online Document Viewer

A super feature of OneDrive is it has the ability to quickly view entire documents in your webpage without leaving your browser. That's right the you can embed entire Office documents including PDFs to be view in your webpage, without downloading the document. Office guys really nailed this functionality down!

Here's how:

1. Uploaded your desired document to Microsoft's OneDrive

2. Click on interested document to open in detailed view. PDFs will open in the Word Online detail view.

3. Click on File

sample is a PDF file
4. This will bring you to a File Menu and click Share and then Embed


5. Choose embed size and click on chevron (down arrow) to reveal start on page and additional options.


6. Grab Embed Code and paste into your webpage.

7. Sample embedded code demo

However, I did notice that it's not obvious in the above control that you can scroll through pages of the embedded document. You can right-click the doc for zoom factors, but not ability to scroll to a specific page, a slight oversight.

8. Add the following caption

TIP! Scroll Pages by mouse wheel, page up/down or up/down arrow, remember to click on doc first.

Here's the code for the tip.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Gmail Sweepstakes Lottery Spam - Obvious scam, but here for the record

Another obvious Sweepstakes Lottery Scam, but I documented here for the record as I found only one other hit for this message.

Do not download and open this document nhfp.docx from your hard drive, because it contains malicious virus.  Again, best practice is upload  to  Microsoft OneDrive  or   Google Drive.  I would recommend doing that with any questionable document such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDFs etc.





This is the text for search engines:

Congratulations this is to certify that your Gmail address have won you $500.000.00
USD and an Apple laptop for this 2014 annual sweepstakes lottery, that were 
organized by GMAIL & MICROSOFT OUTLOOK LOTTERY INC, & WINDOWS 
8.MICROSOFT WINDOWS collects all the Gmail addresses of people that are active 
online; among the people who subscribed to Gmail and Outlook. Gmail, we only 
select five people every year as our winners through an electronic balloting system 
without the winner applying. We congratulate you for being one of the people 
selected.

NOTE: CONTACT THE EMAIL GIVEN BELOW WITH YOUR INFORMATION.

Contact Email: gmalpt@outlook.com

1. FULL NAME: 

2. HOUSE ADDRESS:
3. OCCUPATION: 
4. SEX: 
5. AGE:
6. DIRECT PHONE NO:  
7. STATE:  
8. COUNTRY:

Thank you and accept my hearty congratulations once again!

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Microsoft's URL Shortener (beta) service now at Bitly

I recently been using Bitly to shorten URLs from Microsoft Onedrive, and I noticed today that the shortened URL looked different.

Looks like the Microsoft URL Shortening is now active, in partnership with Bitly which has been rumored for awhile now.

For example, this OneDrive URL 

shortened  to a cute domain of 1drv.ms

For those that don't know, the Bitly default domain name is bit.ly

but this URL works as well.

So its solutions seems to be an URL domain alias.



NY Times uses Bit.ly as well (still working in 2017)


https://nyti.ms/2jHV1mn

https://bit.ly/2jHV1mn
 



17-Jan-17 Update
Microsoft apparently did not like this reverse engineering of its shortening service and now produces this obscure link


https://1drv.ms/i/s!AvOyviiXZJmPlSc1CjtKuwc_gqVu  


But using reverse engineering short links and get 

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=8F99649728BEB2F3!2727&authkey=!ADUKO0q7Bz-CpW4&ithint=photo%2cjpg






From here you can get a Onedrive direct download link for this file, check out my original post on this. If you need to share big files directly, you'll want to read it.





Reverse Engineer Shorted URL
Paste any shortened URL into to get original long URL. 

  1. Link Expander (http://www.linkexpander.com/) gets you a preview of link.



Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Phishing Email - Your Apple ID was just used to download xxx - examined

Sample Phishing Email - Your Apple ID was used to download

Recently the "Your Apple ID was used to download xxx" email has come in many flavors, and if it matches the items below, then there a good chance it's a phishing email. But I'll walk you through a process on how to tell for sure. This crafty email has been making it's way through the big 3 email (google/outlook/yahoo) email spam filters. For a background on phishing email read on wikipedia.

What to do?
Report them, hover over the iforgot.apple.com link (in your email) and match the URL and click on the match link to report them as phishing to Google.

Report Phishing
 URLs at Google now 

If you have recievied this email take further action now by click these links

  1. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.pharus.com
  2. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=aruba.it
  3. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.sumanakeerthipiriwena.com
  4. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=haroldmkingsley.com
  5. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=amarturismo.com.br
  6. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.azizanali.com
  7. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=lovingcoco.com
  8. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=langkawiswee.com
  9. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=tradeajeet.com
  10. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=trypromocodes.com 


Subject: Your Apple ID was just used to download Candy Crush Saga or Grudge Match (2014) or "Falls Away" by Childhood or Cado HD $5.99 or Lunar Module 3D or Camera Plus Pro $2.99 or StationDigital $9.99 or Summer Games 3D, v1.2 (4+) $8.99  ... from the App Store on a computer or device that had not previously been associated with that Apple ID. Your receipt No.1145624532


Your Apple ID was just used to download Candy Crush Saga or Grudge Match (2014) or  "Falls Away" by Childhood or Lunar Module 3D or Camera Plus Pro $2.99 or StationDigital $9.99 or Camfrog PRO 6.99$ or Summer Games 3D, v1.2 (4+) $8.99 


If you initiated this download, you can disregard this email. It was only sent to alert you in case you did not initiate the download yourself.

If you did not initiate this download, we recommend that you go to iforgot.apple.com to change your password, then see Apple ID: Tips for protecting the security of your account for further assistance.

Regards,
Apple

How to tell this is a Phishing email ?


  1. Is email is from you to you, then it's phishing.
  2. Hover over all links in email, if it's not from the apple.com site then forget it.

    In above example, all the links and source images seem to be from Apple website except the iforgot.apple.com link.

    You can test this
    in the above example, since I crafted that from source HTML of the phishing email. Try it, hover over links to examine the source URL. Note: I have re-coded iforgot.apple.com to report pharus.com as phishing site to Google.

    In the original phishing email, hovering over iforgot.apple.com pointed to spam site pharus.com or 
    www.sumanakeerthipiriwena.com. The correct link when you hover over iforgot.apple.com should be http://iforgot.apple.com.


    Reading email in Outlook 2013 generated pop-up "Click to follow link"
  3. The best way is to look at message source, see below.

How to examine Email Message Source ?

Now lets look at message source
  1. Outlook.com->Actions->View Message Source. 
  2. Gmail.com->More (down arrow to top right)->Show original.

For this phony email, well look at the top 25 lines of the message, known formally as the "message header".





At line 23 you have Return-Path: hosting.windows@aruba.it
and is suspect because domain was registered in Italy (
.it) and nothing to do with Apple.

A geo location of the ip address confirms it comes from Italy using http://www.ipligence.com/geolocation

Your IP address is 62.149.133.122
City: Soci
Country: Italy
Continent: Europe

Aruba.it is being investigate for a Paypal phishing and has reported links to Italian Mafia.


These are valid return-paths for Apple 

  • Return-Path: do_not_reply@apple.com 
  • Return-Path: bounces@insideicloud.icloud.com 

Why look at "Return-Path"? When the e-mail is put in the recipient's mailbox, a new mail header is created with the name "Return-Path:" containing the address on the MAIL FROM command. So it's a quick hit to determine authenticity.


Report Phishing Email (not as Spam)

  1. Outlook.com->Junk (at Top)->Phishing Scam
  2. Gmail.com->More (downarrow to top right)->Report Phishing 


Report Phishing URLs at Google now 

If you have recievied this email take further action now by click these linksHover over the iforgot.apple.com link and match the URL and click on the match link to report them as phishing to Google.

  1. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.pharus.com
  2. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=aruba.it
  3. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.sumanakeerthipiriwena.com
  4. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=haroldmkingsley.com
  5. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=amarturismo.com.br
  6. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=www.azizanali.com
  7. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=lovingcoco.com
  8. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=langkawiswee.com
  9. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=tradeajeet.com
  10. https://www.google.com/safebrowsing/report_phish/?hl=en&url=trypromocodes.com
If you don't see your URL here add a comment below.

Report phishing at Microsoft and government agencies

  1. http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-faq.aspx