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March 26, 2007

What's a secure password?

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The other day I started getting eBay messages in reply to messages I had supposedly sent out. The messages sent under my name claimed to be from a company exporting electronic equipment from China, complete with email address (not mine) and a phone number. I sent a couple of messages to those who'd contacted me telling them that the messages were a scam and weren't from me. (Interestingly, none of them were abusive at all; one of them told me the prices were too steep, but there were no F words or insults.)

Anyway, I clicked on one of the messages in my Sent folder, and tried to click the "report this" button. I typed out a message saying that this message, and several others like it, had been sent under my name, but the system refused to accept the report, as the report and the offending message were under the same ID, i.e. I can't report myself. So I had to search for an email address, and after clicking the usual "contact us" link, I ended up sending a message to eBay through some other channel, which I can't remember (and I didn't get a saved copy; perhaps it was through an eBay web forum, perhaps through Yahoo mail), with a copy of the dodgy ad and a notice that I'd be changing my password, which I did.

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December 29, 2006

419 scammers using Yahoo Messenger

Has anyone else had 419 scammers try to chat them up using Yahoo (or any other) Messenger? Just now I had some idiot pretending to be one "Dr Lawson Koffi", whose supposed position of influence I didn't bother to check, not that it matters because I wasn't talking to Dr Koffi anyway but to an impersonator sitting in a Lagos cyber café. Anyway I allowed his messages, but then checked my email and found out why someone I did not know had added me to his buddy list. Of course, I know these people can be devious - they often appeal to you as a "brother in Islam" or "brother in Christ" - but it's the first time someone has tried to bother me on the IM system.