Online Scam – Don't Be Its Victim

A week or two ago, one friend of mine asked me to lend him fifty thousand rupees. I agreed but not before asking him what is the reason behind that. Then, I came to know that he was up to some business and in further interrogation, he said that he's going to get one million pound from a UK-based financier for which he received a mail. Not only that, he also said that in another mail he was told by a software development company based in Singapore that he has been shortlisted for a job by them and for that he should prior to joining the company make a payment of $250.

When he was excitedly explaining, I remembered that there was once an advertisement for such online scam and I told him everything. Thank God!! I saved him and my money too. I saved a friend from being fooled but not all people who are victim of such scams. Today's post is for them.

The next time you open your email, you check you junk mail and you find some anonymous bank telling you that you are selected as one amongst the many who will be rewarded a huge amount of money. Don't be excited but think, have you ever applied for any competition or a lottery. If not, why should someone just give you free money. In this selfish world of today, it's impossible. My friend which I talked about is working in an IT outsourcing company and God he was almost fooled.

To avoid such spam mails and scam mails, you may stop registering in untrusted sites. Think twice before you provide your credentials to any individual or company and do not click on any unapproved advertisements. These are the source from where scammers and spammers harvest emails. And one thing you should also remember is that, these scams happen not only through emails but text messaging (SMS) and calls too.

I know, this post has no relation to what I have been posting since months but it is worth reading for those who are unaware of such online scams. Visit back for more.

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

Securing Your Network – Hardware Firewall

My working in a softwaredevelopment company has made me aware of all the pros and cons of everything related to software and the internet. Continuing my post on network security today I will be writing about securing your network using Hardware Firewall.

Similar to software firewall, a hardware firewall also works as the former in securing your network but it has certain advantages. The advantages as for instance can be placed as this. A software firewall needs to be installed on each computer system in your network while in the case of a hardware firewall, it centralizes all connections' control between the internet and your network. This makes you sure that all the systems in your network are secured and are playing their roles without any performance depreciation. This is the reason why not just a single IT outsourcing company go for the hardware firewall but all major companies.

In terms of port filtering and encryption tasks, hardware firewall use their own processors. This means that you get better gross performance since there is a negligible drain of resource in your network. Not only that, there are firewalls that allow setting up VPN connections to your personal LAN from the internet. Which means you can ensure that your network can be accessed in a secured way while you are on the road.

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

Securing Your Network – Software Firewalls

What is software firewall? I'm not asking the question, you may think, despite working in a software development company that I don't know what is meant by software firewall. That was just another PJ.

Software Firewall

Whenever you browse the internet, opens your email or chat through Instant Message there is a transfer of data and other information between the server and a particular port on your computer. For instance, when you open an email message, the server of the email is sending data to a port on your computer. Likewise a web server uses another port on your computer in sending you a web page and is also the same when an instant manager sends you a message. We know that there are ports but we can't see them and if this flow of data is not managed properly, it can be real dangerous. I have seen a friends IT outsourcingcompany going down to ashes and the reason being not properly managed data flow from and to his company's computers connected to the network.

The role of a firewall is to manage the data traffic coming and going from your computer and other ports on the internet. It manages data by allowing and blocking data to get through or pass from specific ports on your computer. Some software firewalls allows you to manage flow of data yourself giving you maximum flexibility.

Here are some things you may consider about Firewall software:

• Ease of installation
• Phone support
• whether it comes with antivirus software

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

Securing Your Network – Antivirus Software

It is a fact that a computer at home and workplace makes your work easier and swift but there is also one risk, the risk of losing your important data on your system due to virus attack. One of the most important thing if you have your computer connected to the internet is the antivirus software. Today's online world is filled with viruses, malware and spyware. These things can harm your computer and the important files stored in it. Each and every company today like our softwaredevelopment company installs antivirus to make systems safe and secure.

If you want to keep your system and network secured from the attack of viruses, malware and spyware, you should install antivirus software. It makes your network and system immune from such malicious attacks. Antivirus software detects eradicates malicious software and viruses before such programs can harm your network and spread to other computers and your system. And if you are looking for an IT outsourcing company, make sure that the company you are hiring has appropriate antivirus installed in all their system and network.

So, if your system is not protected by antivirus software, get it now today. Make your system and network safe and secure.

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

Securing Your Network

If you are running a business, even if it is a home-based business, you may need to secure your network so that you may have no problem of intruders or malicious software attacking you network. Today I will be posting on how to secure your network. However, it is the components and layout of your network which determine what you need to do to secure your network but my posts on securing your network are some basic measures that will considerably help you in protecting your data and system. How do I know this? It is because I am surrounded by many computer geeks of Oglacs, the software development company and I learnt quiet a lot from them.

Securing your network can be done in four main steps and they are:

• Basic Security
• Antivirus Software
• Software Firewalls and
• Hardware Firewalls

Today I'll post on the first step basic security. It is the first step to securing your network and this involves using the standard features that comes with your system. It is a known fact that most networking devices come with security features that will protect your network against hackers and other threats. It begins with your buying a broadband router. When you are buying the same what you should do is to look for a router that comes with a NAT firewall and MAC address filtering. The first of the two which runs automatically requiring no configuration hides your network behind the router and the latter allows you to grant or deny access to your network to specific network users or machines by entering the MAC addresses of the devices you want to deny or allow.

If you are into wireless network, you may have known that wireless networking devices comes with WEP or WPA encryption of which the latter is much more secure than the former. An IT outsourcing company would prefer the latter too. To implement WEP or WPA, you will have to provide and encryption key on each wireless device on your network and the steps to do this is usually provided in the users manual.

The remaining other steps will be covered in my next posts. Till then, Keep in touch.

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

How are Emails Harvested by Spammers (Part 12)

This post of today will be the last of the 12 parts blog topic “how are email harvested by spammers”. Of the many methods used by spammers in order to harvest emails what I am going to speak of today is on the method “using social engineering”.

Using social engineering is a method used by spammers to convince people into giving them a valid email address using hoax. Illegitimate companies uses this method but I guarantee you that we are a software development company worth trusted.

A perfect example is Bill Gate's (fake) chain letter telling people that they will be rewarded with certain amount of money to those who receive the email if they could forward the mail to live addresses as long as it is CC'ed to the sender's email address. The mailing address hence harvested would be either used for spamming or sold to spammers.

With this, my post on how emails are harvested by spammers comes to an end. But stay with Oglacs' blog for more updates on solutions related to IT outsourcing company and other enterprises.

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

How are Emails Harvested by Spammers (Part 11)

White Pages and Yellow Pages is from where one can get information of others online. There are various websites that serve as named people directory. There are sites that even gives email directories. Not just a softwaredevelopment company all types of companies put up their company's information on yellow pages so that people can reach them easily. But what they don't know is that these types of addresses are tempting target for spammers.

These so called white and yellow pages provides addresses of people from various sources such as UseNet. Another case is when you register in Hotmail your email address will be automatically added to BigFoot making your address available to the public. The same case happens not only to people but also companies like a struggling to survive IT outsourcingcompany.

There is hardly a way to avoid spammers but we can considerably reduce it by taking appropriate steps to counter the way they harvest our emails.

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

How are Emails Harvested by Spammers (Part 10)

Email Harvesting :D

There are numerous ways by which means spammers harvest emails. Some are things which we can easily guess and avoid while others can be something which is not thought and can easily hit you in the back. Working in a softwaredevelopment company has made me a wise guy in terms of dealing with spammers and I think sharing you my experience would be of great help to those who find spamming is quite unavoidable.

The simplest of all methods of harvesting emails adopted by spammers is guessing email addresses and sending a text mail or the spam itself. By doing this they make sure whether the email they guessed is live or not by waiting for confirmation of delivery on reading. The email headers hence used are Return-Receipt-To: <email address> and X-Confirm-Reading-To: <email address>.

Another method of confirming a valid email address is sending HTML in the email's body embedding an image in it. When the email client opens that email, it require to decode the HTML.

However this method of harvesting email affect less to companies like IT outsourcingcompany. It is rather targeted to common human name as for example firsnam.lastname@domain.

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

How are Emails Harvested by Spammers (Part 9)

Harvesting email from Finger Daemons is one technique used by spammers in harvesting emails. This daemon at one time was used by any IT outsourcingcompany in order to gain emails but not to be used in the wrong ways as it is done by spammers.

This daemon works in a very simple way. By asking a query like david@host will produce list of information like login names of users by the name David on that host. And a query @host will produce list of all currently logged-on users.

In this way, spammers use these information to get large number of users from hosts and the emails hence harvested are generally live and are easy target for spam mails.

Spammers also harvest emails from domain contact points. As a person working in a softwaredevelopment company, I understand that every domain has one to three contacts points known as administration, technical and billing and all these contact points contain email address of the contact person. As these contact points are freely available spammers easily get these email addresses and make them easy target for their spam mails.

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

How are Emails Harvested by Spammers (Part 8)

Do you use IRC and Chat rooms looking for new friends or just to past the time? Now it's time that you think over if you are receiving loads of spam emails.

One bad thing about using IRC and chat rooms is that IRC clients at times give out users' email addresses when asked even to spammers. Spammers in this way harvest emails from IRC clients and send spam emails to the emails hence harvested. There is not just one software development company who use the method of spam mailing in order to gain traffic to their site and improve business.

Beside the IRCbots this method is being used by spammers by sending random messages to IRC and chat rooms regardless of who is and not participating.

Knowing that using chat rooms is the first step for social network newbies, spammers makes them an easy target for these newbies are not experienced in dealing with spams.

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Posted in: Internet Security,software development company

How are Emails Harvested by Spammers (Part 7)

As a representative of a software development company, I understand what people feels when spam mails flood their emails. This is the seventh part of my post on how spammers harvest emails and I hope my previous posts would have been of help to you in understanding the techniques of spammers harvesting emails. To continue my post on the same topic, here is another technique use by spammers and that is harvesting email by using the HTTP_FORM header that the browser sends to the server.

In some browsers' case, a header is transmitted with you email address when you visit any web server. Knowing this, I am asking you to make sure that your browser doesn't do this. When you open you email or read your emails through web browsers or email client that understands HTML, you should be aware of active contents like Java applets, VB, Javascript as well as web bugs.

When you receive an email containing HTML, it may contain a script that automatically sends email to any email address on your address book. I have heard of a friend who works in an IT outsourcing company complaining that the same happened to him and in his case it was the Melissa Virus, a script that can steal not only the email of the recipient but also all the address on the recipient’s address book.

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

How are Emails Harvested by Spammers (Part 6)

Spamming as I always said, is one a problem which most internet users face. One will try to get rid of it using many techniques but most techniques prove futile. Knowing that, I being a representative of a reputed software development company today continues my post on how spammers harvest emails. Hope my post on their techniques can be of help to you.

Spammers also harvest emails through the Ident Daemon.

What is Ident Daemon? Ident Daemon is a program mainly run on Unix computers in the background which is generally initiated by the system administrator. It is a program which is intended to allow computers identify people or other computer connected to it.

It works in a way that whenever a person connects to a website or a server, the site or the server can connect to the user's computer and retrieve the user's email through the daemon.

The problem occurs when these emails hence retrieved are given out to spammers.

I have come across an IToutsourcing company that approached us asking for solutions of spamming problem and the problem in their case is triggered through IRC of which I will speak about in my next post.

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Posted in: Internet Security,IT outsourcing company,software development company

How are Emails Harvested by Spammers (Part 5)

It is indeed frustrating to have your email still filled up with hundreds of spam mails the next time you log in. I have given some methods on how to avoid them. I even posted about the techniques adopted by spammers in order to harvest emails. One more method of harvesting emails is from a web browser. Nowadays, web browsing is done both on mobile devices as well as computers.

Whether you are using a mobile device or a computer, there are sites that use tricks to extract users email address from the web browser and this at times happens without you even noticing it. Mobile technology developers and software developers are trying to bring out solutions that can stop it.

How can a site extract our emails? Here are the techniques they use:

• Making the browser transmit images of the page via a FTP connection to the site you are visiting
• There are browsers that would make your email itself the password of the email you have configured with the browser and in this way your email is leaked.
• These kind of browsers herein mentioned would even allow emails to be sent to anonymous users or spammers when the mouse passes over a particular part of a page.

All these can be avoided if you use a trusted browser or if you properly configure your account with the browser. And for mobile internet surfers, there are many applications by mobile apps development companies worldwide that provide trusted software. You should only have to make sure that you use only trusted software and applications. And when you are browsing, use secure connection most of the time.

Stop Spamming

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Posted in: Application Development,Internet Security,Mobile apps development,Mobile Technology,Software Development

How Are Emails Harvested By Spammers? (Part 4)

The next time you fill up any web form or any paper forms you should think twice for today as a continuance to my previous postings, I will yet tell you another method Spammers use to harvest emails. The method which I am talking about is harvesting of email through web forms and paper forms. Many top 10 software companies in India have fallen victim to this kind of email harvesting.

How is this possible? There are sites you should be aware of. These sites have forms for you to give your contact detail. Cases have been there in which the emails hence provided by site visitors are being sold by the company to spammers. Therefore, you should make sure that the site is trusted before you give them your email address or you should make sure that by providing them your email address, it is not going to be available in the world wide web. By saying this, I don't mean that all sites that have web forms are untrustworthy. As for instance, Oglacs being one trusted top software company has web forms in the contact us page but we spam proof all our pages and there is no chance for spammers to get through it.

There are programs that spammers use to get email addresses from such web forms. You should also watch out for sites that sell email addresses to spammers. Emails are also made available to spammers through paper forms. Organizations and companies also sell these papers which has email address of individuals to spammers when they can no more make use of the papers.

Whom do we trust now?? The worlds has indeed changed. Now that you know, you can be aware of such actions by companies and sites.

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Posted in: Internet Security,top software company,top10 software companies in India

How Are Emails Harvested By Spammers? (Part 3)

How do spammers harvest email? This is the topic I have been talking about and will for some days. This is because I understand the frustration email users undergo when their email account is filled with spam. Not only individuals but also top 10 software companies in India too undergo such bad feelings.

Continuing the topic today I will speak about another method spammers employ to harvest emails and that is:

From Web Pages

Spammers uses programs which can crawl or spider through web pages looking for email address mentioned in HTML tags. In this way they can harvest emails from web pages. The question arises, is there any remedy for such step?

My answer would be, “yes”. Even the top software company uses this method to avoid spam. The technique hence used is the “poison” CGI script. This script creates a page with numerous phoney email-addresses and a link to itself. When such spam spiders or software visits the page and try to harvest emails, it will harvest the phoney email follow up the link which is linked to itself hence get caught in an infinite loop.

Check out form more in the next post. If there is any query or suggestion, just leave a comment.

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Posted in: Internet Security,top software company,top10 software companies in India

How Are Emails Harvested By Spammers? (Part 2)

As a continuation to the previous post, I will here today talk on another way how spammers harvest email addresses. The way of harvesting email here I am talking about is “from mailing lists”. This method doesn't spare even the top 10 softwarecompanies in India or elsewhere.

In order to get maximum number of emails, spammers usually attempts to get access to mail servers. Upon request by the spammers, some mail servers will give those to the spammers. Most email addresses gained this way are valid only some of which are masked and invalid.

For mail servers that are configured to refuse such request, spammers use another trick to gain the list of emails. The trick hence used is to send an email to the mailing list with headers X-Confirm-Reading-To: <email address> or “Return-Receipt-To: <email address>. This way spammers will know when the sent email has been read by the recipient or delivered.

Another technique of spammers is requesting mailing list server to give them the list of mailing lists. If in case a mailing list server accepts the request, the spammer send the spam to the mailing list address and the rest is done by the mailing list server.

As said before, even though Oglacs is one top software company, some email addresses of the company are not spared by spammers.

Still to continue......

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Posted in: Internet Security,Software Development,top software company

How are Emails Harvested by Spammers? (part 1)

You may have heard about spamming and also email harvesting. The first simply means the method generally adopted by illegitimate online marketers that involves sending multiple messages to number of email addresses. And email harvesting is one method used by spammers to get numerous live emails. This is one issue which even the top 10 software companies in India are trying to get rid of for years.

The question here is, how do spammers harvest emails? There are certain ways spammers can get your emails. Here is one of the many which I will discuss in the blog today. This method is:

Getting Emails from Posts to Usenet using your email address

Spammers are so smart that they know where and when internet users post on forums and other topic under discussion in the internet. Spammers scan Usenet to gather email from article, press releases and other web contents. They use ready-made email harvesting programs. These programs herein mentioned are well designed to recognize email. It is also programmed to select all content containing the character @ and get a possible email out of it. It also happens that these days there are programs that can even undo email masking i.e. removing “nospam” from emails.

Being one top softwarecompany, Oglacs is also trying to solve this problem of spam flooding in your inbox. More on how spammers harvest emails will be posted in the subsequent posts. Come back for more on the topic.

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Posted in: Internet Security,Software Development,top software company

Spam Avoiding Tips

It's really annoying when your email, you IM and even your personal forum is filled with spams. Here today I am posting some methods to avoid spam flooding your email. Here are the methods and mind you, these methods are effective and are used even by top 10 software companies in India and elsewhere too.

Masking your e-mail address

The most common way to keep away spam from your email is to mask your email. By masking your email means the putting of a word or phrase in your email address so that it will bluff harvesting computer programs but not human. As for instance your email is “marktwain@jingle.com” you may mask it as “marktwain@spamaway.jingle.com”

Using a Pseudonym During Chat

If you are someone who use chat rooms for chatting, make sure that you use a different name which is not related with your email address. This will not allow spammers to know your email address while chatting.

Use Disposable Email Addresses

This is a method used by even the top software company, it is also considered one of the most effective ways to keep away spam. Use disposable email service that allow you to create separate email addresses but forwards the mails to your permanent account. If any of the the addresses you created starts receiving spam you can get rid of that address. This will not affect your permanent account.

Use Unique Email address

By unique email address, I mean to say that the email you will be using in public should contain both letters and numbers. This will stop those spammers who use “dictionary attacks”, a way to email to all name combinations within a large email service.

If you follow the above methods of avoiding spam, you will considerable reduce the amount of spam flooding in your email or even put a stop to it.

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Posted in: Internet Security,top software company