Archive for ◊ October, 2009 ◊

Author: gita
• Tuesday, October 06th, 2009

Hi.

Today I have a guest post from the CEO of Agile Technologies – Romans Malinovskis (who also happens to be my husband). In case you have heard word “scammer” but are not sure what it is exactly – read on.

We were one of the several to be hit by the scam attack and I actually almost fell for it.

Dear AIB Ireland Bank member,

You have added blue7.cork@yahoo.ie as a new email address for your Aib online Bank account.

If you did not authorize this change, check with family members and others who may have access to your account first. If you still feel that an unauthorized person has changed your email, submit the form attached to your email in order to keep your original email and restore your Aib account.

This was the original email text. The email was sent from: AIB Bank <service@aib.ie> which seems to be legitimate. But of course you do know:

  • Email sender can be set to ANYTHING. There are no verification.

Content of email seems to be very skillfully created. However they do have some minor mistakes such as spelling “Aib” instead of “AIB” and also refer to “Aib NetBank”.

  • Scammers will use scare technique, which will make you panic and try to trick you into doing silly things.

Email is also very well composed to avoid being blocked by spam filters. Obviously should you receive email from bank it would be using full name and surname which scammers usually do not know.

  • Pay attention to “To:” field your email. If it does not contain YOUR email and your full name – this can possibly mean that it was sent to multiple people.

There is .HTML attachment. Attachment is basically this page: http://www.aib.ie/personal/current-accounts which have it’s content removed and replaced by a form asking for: 8-digit registration number, PAC number and home phone number. Also scammers ask to fill in all the digits from the code card. All that finished with blue button with lockpad.

  • Never trust email attachments.

I have looked inside the file. If you open it in the editor, scammers have entered a lot of newlines, which makes reading file very difficult. Search for “form” shows offending link:

http://www.advancecolleges.org/Editor/assets/test.php

of course the site have been compromised. (I tried to notify webmaster).

Script itself would record the details you have included on the form and would redirect you to AIB site.

Any of you know how to report this URL / site as offending and potentially dangerous? Modern browsers will verify domains you visit of being harmful.

I would appreciate if readers could direct me to scam report pages.

Category: web | Tags:  | 6 Comments
Author: gita
• Thursday, October 01st, 2009

Here is IT & Business event list for October. Don’t forget to add them to your diary

  • 6th Oct 14:00 / Launch of the National Digital Skills Week / The Digital Hub, free – I found this event quite advertised, however I wasn’t able to find any events related to digital skills week, which is pretty strange
  • 6th Oct 10:00 / Open Coffee Mallow / Springfort Hal, Bar & Lounge area – monthly opportunity for business people to meet in a casual environment
  • 7th Oct 18:15 / 121 Marketing Club / The Mint Bar, Westin Hotel, free – great to meet fellow marketers
  • 7th Oct 18:00 / FREE Business Owner Network / Bewleys Hotel, Dublin 4, free – good event for networking
  • 8th Oct 10:30 / Open Coffee Dublin / Science gallery, free – OpenCoffee Club is an informal event for web / business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
  • 8th Oct 08:00 / 3rd Annual Mid-West Entrepreneur Showcase / Limerick Institute of Technology, Millenium Theatre – 16 LEAP programme participants and more businesses
  • 10th Oct / Irish Web Awards / Radisson SAS Royal Hotel, 35 EUR – great place to learn best web practises and projects and have lots of fun
  • 11th Oct / Greenhouse Business Camp / Absolute Hotel, Limerick – for people who are self-employed, starting their own business or thinking about starting their own business.
  • 12th Oct 15:00 / FaceBook Garage Belfast / The Black Box, Hill St., Belfast, free – learn more about Facebook applications
  • 13th Oct 19:30 / Ireland Girl Geek Dinner / Ciao Bella Roma, €15-€20 per person – Girl Geek Dinners are a chance for ladies in technology to get together, enjoy some nice food and drinks, and have fun meeting other women in their field.
  • 13th Oct 08:00 / BIG IDEAS Showcase 2009 / Croke Park, Dublin, free – The event is being organised by Enterprise Ireland’s Research & Innovation Business Unit and will showcase the commercial opportunities emerging from Ireland’s Higher Education Institutes in the areas of: Life Science & Food, ICT, Industrial Technologies
  • 14th Oct – 20th Oct / Innovation Dublin – Innovation Dublin is a week-long festival of events highlighting and promoting innovation in the city. Check their website as they host some business seminars as well.
  • 16th Oct 12:00 / FWIB 10th Celebratory Lunch & Networking Event / Roganstown Golf & Country Club, Swords, 35 EUR non-members – join marvellous celebration of women in business and networking in Fingal
  • 20th Oct 19:00 / ALT.NET / Seagrass – talk about introduction to Python and possibly talk about DB
  • 20th Oct 19:00 / WebsiteSpark Lunch with TechLudd / Guiness Storehouse – Come along and meet new people, and make new contacts and have some fun too. The BizSpark and WebsiteSpark programs are run by Microsoft to help Startup companies with support, technology and networks.
  • 21th Oct 09:00 / IBM Storage – Doing More for Less / Conrad Hotel, D2 – The half day event will provide you with the details and relevant information that will help you to develop plans to to reduce your storage costs and use saved budget for other business critical elements of your infrastructure.
  • 29th Oct 10:30 / Open Coffee Naas / venue tbc – an informal event for business people to get together and chat about anything and everything.
  • 29th Oct 19:00 / Connector BTW Halloween party / venue tbc – connect with other businesses, usually includes free drinks and maybe some food.

I might be adding few later on, so keep an eye on the list.

Category: events | Tags: ,  | 6 Comments