Friday, June 29, 2012

Computer illiteracy shortens lives and makes unhappy people

A computer illiterate person uses computers less efficiently.  For example, it might take him 5 hours to do something that takes someone else one second.
She might be using a MacBook Pro with a i7 quad core processor and two gigabyte memory, and constantly sucking her thumb wondering why the machine was taking a minute or two to load a Word file.

Effectively, a computer illiterate person lives a shorter life because day in and day out, he wastes so much time.  And time is life.

But I worry that with their significantly shortened lives, they also are less happy.  Here is why.

In this lightening fast changing time of the Internet age, to be computer illiterate is to be behind our own time.  To be behind guarantees unhappiness.  Imagine a caveman having dinner with sophisticated social elites in a French restaurant.  The caveman is likely to feel inadequate and have difficulty keeping up a conversation.

As a person falls behind, she begins to have hard time coping with responsibilities such as allowing her email messages to pile up unorganized and unattended, and neglecting to reply to messages from friends and colleagues. 

People, fight back to live a long and happy life!

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Massive spams from yahoo.com email accounts and why we should be shocked

Over the years, I received thousands of emails from friends and acquaintances reporting that they got stranded in a foreign country, such as Spain or England, and asking that I please send money.  Almost all such messages are from yahoo.com email addresses.  A sample follows:
Hello,                          

I'm writing this with tears in my eyes, My family and I came down here to Madrid, Spain for a short vacation, unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card and mobile phone were stolen off us but luckily for me i still have my passports with me.

I've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and my flight leaves any moment from today but we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let me leave until i settle the bills,

I'm freaked out at the moment.....I need your help out i need some cash to settle the hotel bill promise to refund it back to you all i need is £1,750.00 GBP or any amount you can afford .will be going along in helping me out

Thanks.  Dennis.
This long-standing attack intensifies in recent days.
Three things worth noting:
  1. Very, very few of the yahoo.com email account holders complained or expressed concerns about their addresses being used to spam others.  Their names are used to do potentially damaging things such as mass mailing pornography; but they don't care enough to speak up.
  2. Almost all these yahoo.com email account holders continue to use their compromised yahoo.com accounts.  This is as if a person continues to use the same bank account after a stranger had transfered $10,000 out of that account to a Dubai bank.
  3. It is unlikely I am the only person receiving such attacks.  That is, others are being massively attacked as well.  Then why is it that I cannot find useful information when I search Google for something like "spam from yahoo.com", with or without quotes?  This is as if googling for twin towers two months after they were destroyed and obtained no matches.   I include the first page of such an unhelpful Google search at the end.
Another massive spam attack from yahoo.com accounts has the appearance of promoting one web site or another, like so:
awesome you should check this out wow http://www.finance15tanews.net/biz/?news=1265628 
The first page of an unhelpful Google search for spam from yahoo.com on 2012-06-12 follows:

  1. Why Am I Getting So Much Spam from Yahoo ? | The Big Picture

    www.ritholtz.com/.../why-am-i-getting-so-much-spam-from-yahoo/
    Feb 22, 2010An inordinate amount of pharmacy spam is coming my way from Yahoo.com. Why aren't they doing any spam filtering? And if they are, why are ...
  2. Groups Help | - SLN2520 - Receiving spam from a Yahoo! group

    help.yahoo.com › Groups Help
    Apr 9, 2012 – Groups provides a number of tools and systems to enable you to block unwanted messages and spam. When you report spam to Yahoo!, we ...
  3. Reporting Spam or Phishing | Yahoo! Abuse Help

    help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/abuse/spam/
    Abuse > Reporting Spam or Phishing. Yahoo! Abuse Help Topics. Password and Account Security Issues ... I want to report spam being sent to a Yahoo!
  4. Yahoo! Account Help | - SLN2068 - What to do if your account is ...

    help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&id=SLN2068
    May 14, 2012 – What to do if your account is sending spam. ID: SLN3417. Refers to: Yahoo! Account , Mail , Mail Classic , Mobile Mail , Messenger 11.5 ...
  5. How to stop spam from coming into your Yahoo! Mail ... - Help - Yahoo!

    help.yahoo.com › Mail Help
    May 25, 2012 – Yahoo! Mail automatically filters for spam (and sends suspected spam messages to your "Spam" folder), but sometimes unwanted messages ...
  6. How to Block Spam on Yahoo! Mail: 5 steps (with pictures)

    www.wikihow.com › ... › Email and Instant MessagingYahoo! Mail
    May 30, 2012 – How to Block Spam on Yahoo! Mail. Are you tired of getting all that spam in your Yahoo email? Here are some quick ways to get rid of all the ...
  7. Stop Spam From Yahoo!

    jondreyer.org/yahoospam.html
    Jan 14, 2003(I tried, just for fun, to set it to deliver spam to abuse@yahoo.com but it was clever enough to reject the address!) Click "Save Changes". You're ...
  8. something is emailing my yahoo address book with spam, sending it ...

    https://getsatisfaction.com/yahoo/.../something_is_emailing_my_yah...
    Mar 17, 2009 – Someone is spamming about 1/3 of my yahoo address book contacts with online casino gambling spam. I have: removed one malware ...
  9. Security Fix - Spam From Hijacked Webmail Accounts

    voices.washingtonpost.com/.../spam_sent_through_hijacked_web.ht...
    Apr 29, 2009 – A family member called last night, upset and embarrassed that his yahoo.com account was used to blast out spam to all of his contacts. A quick ...
  10. postfix - How can I filter spam from yahoo's servers? - Server Fault

    serverfault.com/questions/.../how-can-i-filter-spam-from-yahoos-serv...
    In the last few months my mail server has been getting massive amounts of spam from yahoo.com's mail servers. Each one appears to be from a different Yahoo ...