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Wednesday
Oct232013

Hoax?

Posted on DateWednesday, October 23, 2013 at 4:22PM AuthorDavid Walsh in ,

A customer received an email recently that went like this:

(I replaced several items with "xxxxxxxx" because I don't want to identify my customer here)

From: Bess Ni [mailto:bess.ni@pcdomainname.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2013 6:30 AM
Subject: Confirm: "xxxxxxxx" Registration
 
(Please forward to the President or Brand Owner, thanks)
 
Dear Brand Holder,
Sorry to bother you inexplicably. We are a China's domain name registration supplier, and there is one thing we would like to confirm with your company.  On October 22, 2013,  we received an application form online from a company called "Zong Yang trading co.，ltd"  who wants to apply for some domain names and brand name related to "xxxxxxxx" . In order to avoid confusion and  adverse impact on your company, we need to verify whether this company is a subsidiary of you or did you authorize them to register the related brand name and domain names? Currently, we have not formally accepted the application of that company, we need to get your company's confirmation. Please give us a timely response within 7 work days. So that we can better deal with this case. Thank you
 
Best Regards,
Bess Ni 
Registration Department
Office:0086-551-65120117       
Fax:0086-551-65123308
 
I think it's a hoax. On Google I found only ONE other post about this email. That person replied and received an almost immediate email back that contained domain registration forms and of course, registrations cost. The company that sent this email is an actual domain registrar called PC Internet Data Center (pcdomainname.net) in China but I suspect these emails are just a way to trick unknowing people into registering their brand with Chinese top level domains (TLDs). Normal TLDs would be .com, .net, .org but they'd try to get you to register .ch, .asia, .hk, etc. I've posted this here in the hope that it helps people make a decision regarding this company.
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Wednesday
Aug282013

What is a virtual machine?

Posted on DateWednesday, August 28, 2013 at 6:32PM AuthorDavid Walsh in

I get asked occasionally what a virtual machine is. This is usually when I'm proposing using them in a business. The concept is actually very easy: we're running multiple computers inside one physical computer.

Special software (called a hypervisor) creates a generic "environment" within the computer that allows the computer to run more than one operating system at the same time. The most common use of this is to run several virtual servers inside a single physical computer.

Why do we like this for even small businesses? Well, there are lots of reasons:

A virtual machine can be moved to a different physical computer with no reconfiguration (such as if you have a computer fail).

If you need, 5 servers for example, you can buy one big computer to run them all for less cost than buying 5 cheaper servers to run individually. By "big" I mean redundant, fast, lots of disks, lots of memory, etc.

Tasks can be separated easier: one server for files, another for email, another for printers, another for ... whatever you want. If you try to do this with physical servers, you have to buy hardware for each. 

Management is easier. We assign a server some drive space, some ram, a processor (or several) and start it up.  If it needs more of something, we simply assign more or assign it a higher priority with what it already has.

We can even convert a physical server to be a virtual server. This makes it so we can replace several old physical servers with a single new computer and still have the same "servers" running on the network. Nothing has to change from the users' perspective. 

Overall it takes less time, costs less, is more manageable, and we can use better hardware.

If you're looking to upgrade your servers you should absolutly consider virtual servers.

Lastly, note that I didn't mention "cloud". That's because "virtual" doesn't mean "cloud".

 

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Thursday
May022013

Press 1 to Update Your FREE Google Listing

Posted on DateThursday, May 2, 2013 at 6:12PM AuthorDavid Walsh in

Received this call?

How about "It's time to update your FREE Google listing"?

These are scams. They'll claim to have a special arrangement with Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing, etc and that they can get you to be the top listing on all these search engines under any keywords you want. They'll also say you have to act fast because the window of opportunity is closing.

Guess what?

They won't provide what they're promissing and they won't do it for free.

What will they do?

They'll charge you a lot...      and then they'll do nothing for you.

Be carefull to not get taken by this scam.

I haven't learned this from personal experience, but I have done research on it and learned from other people's experience. I received about 5 of these calls today. How many did you get?

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Thursday
Feb282013

Check for UPNP Problem

Posted on DateThursday, February 28, 2013 at 11:43PM AuthorDavid Walsh in

UPNP is a technology to make router configuration easier. It makes it so devices inside your network can automaticlly configure the router to allow various inbound services (easpecialy for online gaming).

There is a problem in many routers that exposes the UPNP service to the Internet, making it possible for someone on the Internet to configure your router to allow themselves access into your network. Of course, this would be a very bad thing to have happen.

You can check easily for this flaw by doing this:

  1. Go to grc.com/shieldsup
  2. Click on the Proceed button.
  3. Click on "GRC's Instant UPnP Exposure Test"

Most likely, you'll get a good result and you don't have to do anything more!

But if you get a bad result, you need to do something as soon as possible. The resolution will be to do one of these (in order of least expensive to most expensive, provided you can do it yourself):

  • Turn off your UPNP services in your router.
  • Update your router's firmware (and turn off UPNP).
  • Switch your router to different firmware (such as DD-WRT or Tomato) and make sure UPNP is off.
  • Replace your router and make sure UPNP is off.

And then you should test it again to make sure the problem is gone (if it's not, you should try one of the other options). If you don't know how to do these things and are unable to solve the problem, you'll want to hire a tech to do it for you. There is a lot more information about this problem at grc.com so feel free to read about it there or ask me about it.

If you're one of my customers and I setup your router, I've probably disabled UPNP anyway because I never trusted it and have been turning it off for several years.

Unfortunatly I've heard that in some routers, even turning UPNP off leaves it on and exposed to the Internet, so it's still worth testing.

Good luck!

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Reference1 Reference
Saturday
Feb232013

Success (in Chrome)

Posted on DateSaturday, February 23, 2013 at 10:52AM AuthorDavid Walsh in

For quite some time I've been using Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer (preference in that order). Lately, Firefox's memory leaks and crash behaviour have been pushing me away. When Firefox crashes it kills all my tabs. On the other hand, I've found that when Chrome crashes (rarely) it only kills the tab that crashed it. Of course, I've been moving toward Chrome more and more.

So now I've been trying to live without Flash Player...

It turns out that of those browsers, only Chrome supports HTML 5 video well enough for most videos on Youtube. What this means is that as long as I use Chrome to go to Youtube, I can watch videos without Flash Player.

I consider this a success, so far.

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