Up & Running Computer Services

Information may not be reliable

This morning, a client forwarded an email to me, thinking it might be a fraudulent message (as, indeed, it was):

Of course, this is a fake; responding to it would be dangerous and very probably disastrous. I’m asked questions like this with some frequency, so I thought I’d share some thoughts on the subject. First a few general principles:
1) No legitimate company, service provider or merchant will EVER ask you for this information by email or at a website; you should assume that any request for your identifying information is fraudulent until proven otherwise.
2) Never use the links in an email like this; it’s possible to place a link on the page that states an address but takes you somewhere else. For example clicking on the following link: www.google.com will NOT take you to Google; try it … I’ll wait …
This is a fairly simple use of hyperlink misdirection; I did it with a webpage but it is just as easy in an email. The same principle holds true for email address links in emails and on websites. And if I can do it in 30 seconds using the most primitive of techniques, believe me, there are slicker methods out there.
3) My rule of thumb is that if my bank, internet service provider, credit card company, or anyone else with whom I do business ever wants something that badly, they can call me and authenticate themselves by telling ME information that only they and I would know.
4) If I ever think that a request like this may be legitimate, I call the firm directly, using the number in the phone book, NOT one given in the email (which, in the case of a spam or hoax, might well be fraudulent anyway) and ask them.
Or I go to the firm’s website using their web address, if I already know it, or Googling it to make sure that I’m going to the legitimate site for this firm; then if there’s information on that site that corroborates the information I originally got, I can proceed with some confidence, again, using the website I looked up; as I said above, never use the links in the email, which may be false.
5) I also look for grammar and usage in the email that may betray the sender as someone for whom English is not a native language, which is often a good indicator. The phrases:

as well as the quotes around the company name certainly convey the idea that the writer is not familiar with the grammar, syntax and level of professionalism that a technical writer or content professional would use. You cannot, of course, use this is a primary criterion because there will be hoax-sters with more sophistication and greater grasp of English than others, but this can be a significant piece of corroborating evidence.
You can also look at the email “header”. The header is a section of the email, usually invisible under normal conditions, that contains all kinds of information about the email such as the address it originated at, a list of the servers or computers it passed through on its way to you and various other bits of information. You can usually find an option in your email message’s ‘Edit’ or ‘View’ menu that will display this header information. Here’s part of the header information in the email my client got this morning:

X-Cloudmark-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=VtpIoHOd8CEA:10 a=KKiOUAaYztQA:10 a=ZlYnxlA6XxBI2NQjOcqQGQ==:17 a=7s-DNXl0AAAA:8 a=4gah6qo8FxDZ3pDJQicA:9 a=_K-MYw127GBc3rEXFsIA:7 a=zwBHuKQGca8JLwHLWjA6mzSuscEA:4 a=txvrPQ3NrNQA:10 a=_k6BP71vv7YA:10 a=Jz6db_7HcwPeSShJ:21 a=1-smVbazZm8F-kDG:21
From: “PROAXIS.COM SUPPORT TEAM”

Much of the the header information will be incomprehensible to you, but some bits, like the “From:” address and the “Reply-To:” address can be revealing. In this case, the hoax-sters used a believable “From:” address (helpdesk@proaxis.com), but the “Reply-To:” address (the address that any reply would be sent to if you hit the ‘Reply” button in your email program) showed something completely different. The email above showed the following ‘Reply-To” address:

ymail.com is the Yahoo! email server, so we know right away that this email did not come from Proaxis and that any reply would have been sent to a user account named database.no521766server1 on Yahoo’s mail server.
One last thing: If you have identified an email from your bank, internet service provider or some other service known to you that seems genuine and has been shown to be a hoax, like the one above, do yourself and your bank or servicer a favor and forward the email to them with a note letting them know that you got it. The email (and the knowledge that someone is imitating them) can help a firm in two ways:
1) They can use header information in the email to trace the email and can often get the fraudulent sender’s account (at Yahoo!, in the above example) canceled.
2) They can alert other customers (who may very well be getting this same email) that it is, indeed, a hoax and advising customers to disregard it.
Perhaps these thoughts can help you more easily spot fraudulent emails in the future. If so, I am glad to have been of some use to you.

Today I got to work on a MacBook Pro, Apple’s top-flight laptop. Working on a Mac is a rare experience for me because they very seldom have problems. Of my 450+ clients, between 70 and 90 have Macs but I rarely get to work on more than one or two per year.
This laptop had a broken ‘return’ key; a victim of physical abuse involving a cat who wanted to compute and an anxious owner who didn’t want her to. It is surprising how complex a laptop key is; it usually has a small but complicated scissors-action undercarriage that holds the key up and parallel to the keyboard, so they can be tricky (and in some cases very difficult or even impossible) to install. And MacBook keys are special in that they are backlit in dim light; that’s right, in a dim or dark room, the keys actually light up so that you can more easily see what you’re doing.
Upon examination, I found that the undercarriage of the key in question (the ‘return’ key) had been slightly damaged and would need replacement. Knowing that I was driving to a nearby town where there was a Mac store and thinking that I might just pick up a key while I was there (if I was lucky), I called the local Mac dealer and asked to talk to the technician. I know her and trust her and it’s almost invariably better to go to the source; the sales people may know a good deal but the tech knows just how the process works and what its attendant hazards may be. (Having said that, I should point out, from personal experience, that every minute a tech is on the phone is one less minute they have to work on a client’s computer, so be warned and understand if they don’t want to spend much time on the phone.)
Unfortunately, I got a likely lad who ran interference and told me that I ‘would have to bring it in’ as there were several models of MacBookPro and the key’s availability and the feasibility of replacing it could only be determined by a visual inspection of the particular laptop in question. This may have been well-meant and sincere, but the idea was ridiculous. I have repaired hundreds of laptops, by almost every major manufacturer (including Apple) and I can tell you that, for a given laptop model, keys are either replaceable or not replaceable and the keys are available or not.
Abandoning the idea of trying to push my way through to the technician, I did a quick bit of research and found this excellent site which has service parts for most Apple laptops. At this site, keys for the MacBookPro 15″ (the model I was working with) cost $8.95 each. I ordered the ‘return’ key immediately and will add a postscript to this article to let you know how it turned out.

Firefox was recently updated and I urge all of you to upgrade to Firefox 3.5.7 for a faster, safer and more secure Web experience.

The need to transfer a users documents and settings is a regular occurrence in a shop like mine; a client may be upgrading from one machine to another or replacing a failing hard drive. The ability to transfer documents and settings from one computer or drive to another can be very useful. Today was a good case in point.
A local graphic arts firm brought me a laptop running Windows XP Pro (SP3) that was acting up; it exhibited display problems that were, it turned out, caused by a manufacturing defect. The screen would only display at 800 x 600 and then only in Safe Mode.
The manufacturer sent a new laptop as a warranty replacement. In fact, they sent a better model than the original. The new machine came with Vista installed on it.
When I tried to transfer the users documents & settings using the Vista version of the migration wizard (migwiz.exe), I found that the wizard would not run on the old laptop because this version requires 1024 x 768 resolution and wont run without it, while the old laptop cannot display more than 800 x 600.
I found I could run the XP (SP2) version of the migwiz tool on the old machine, as it runs at the lower resolution but I wasnt sure whether this version would perform properly in Vista. I found, however, that it could (and did); all files and settings appear to be in their proper places. I dont know what compatibility limits there are between OS/SP (operating system/service pack) versions and migwiz versions, but have found that, when possible, it’s best to use the migwiz version on the OS disk for the destination machine. It’s also important to use the same version of migwiz on both machines.
This strategy solved a problem for me; perhaps it will for you too.

I feel like a new homeowner walking around my new house for the first time! My web designer, Janet, owner of Personal Geek (www.thepersonalgeek.com) has done a wonderful job setting up my new web space and I can hardly wait to start adding content! She set me up with a site driven by WordPress and, I have to say, Im impressed with the power and flexibility of this web management environment. And so glad I got the right designer!