picfriender.info IM spam
Posted by Saša Bodiroža | Filed under internet
I have just received a link from a friend over MSN instant messenger that pointed to “her” website on picfriender.info. I clicked it, and saw a homepage which asked me for my MSN username and password. Why would they need it? If I needed an account to visit her website, I would need to make a new one. So, the only logical thing is they would use it to get access to my account. Well, it seemed like a spam company, so I googled them. Strangely, Google knows nothing about them for now.
Then I noticed a link to their Terms of Service, and I wasn’t surprised to read this…
“We may temporarily access your MSN account to do a combination
of the following:
1. Send Instant Messages to your friends promoting this site.
2. Introduce new entertaining sites to your friends via Instant Messages.”
It doesn’t smell only like spam, it is spam. Sort of legalised, though. I hope they will be closed soon. Be sure to not give them your account information, unless you want them to send annoying links to your friends. Some of them may fall for this too… And the chain reaction begins.
In case you already gave out your personal information, the fix should be simple. Just change your password over at MSN Passport/Windows Live ID website.
Update: I have just checked the information about this website, and I found out that it was registered less than 10 hours ago. It’s logical why Google still knows nothing about it…
Update #2: It seems that this is not new, Aeriff wrote a blog post on this on March 15th. The only difference is the more logical domain name (picfriender.info vs. rkntbp.info)…
Tags: im, instant messaging, internet, messaging, msn, phishing, picfriender, picfriender.info, scam, spam, threat
Facebook spam
Posted by Saša Bodiroža | Filed under internet
I had a MySpace account, got irritated over time by its terrible design and decided not to use it anymore. I didn’t want to give Facebook a chance, because I was expecting something similar to MySpace. Another reason was because of all the spam it sends. I heard my friends complaining about all the e-mails they got from Facebook’s applications. A friend even made a label in Gmail called “Facebook spam”.
And now, I got my first Facebook notice by e-mail, even though I don’t have the account. It’s an OK one, a friend of mine tagged me in a photo and I got a link to it. Quite polite on first glance. I clicked on the link and got “You have not been tagged in any photos yet.” The usual login fields were on the left side of the page. Should I create an account in order to see the photo? Well, I surely won’t. And it’s not very friendly not to give an explanation why someone can’t see a photo. Is it because someone deleted it? Or maybe you should login? It would be more useful if they sent “Hi, click this link to see the photo. You have to be registered.” sort of message. Or a notice on the page that the photo doesn’t exist anymore. Still, you only get the message that is not helpful (and probably not true).
So, no Facebook for me.
Tags: facebook, internet, network, rant, social, social networking, spam
