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, 2010 – An 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 Messaging › Yahoo! 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 ...

Smartphones: DOs and DON'Ts

DON'Ts:

1. Don't use it to do major writing, such as wiring a message longer than a few characters.  Remember smartphones don't normally come with a keyboard or a mouse.
2. Don't use it to check your mails, browse the web, etc when you are walking.  It is unsightly and dangerous.
3. Don't use it when you should be talking to strangers,  friends and family.
4. Don't disturb others when you use it as a phone. 

DOs:

1. Use it as an alarm clock, a count down timer and a stop watch.  In short use it as an all-purpose timer.
2. Use it as a sort of a swiss army knife.
3. Use it to check weather.
4. Use Evernote to compose shopping list
5. Use Google Map to locate things and prevent from getting lost
6. Use its camera to take pictures.  Note that this camera is no substitute for a good camera with stabilizer.  For example, the quality of the pictures will be poor if used on a whale-watching cruise.  Note that if you choose, the pictures when uploaded will have a google map alongside.  
7. Use it as a flashlight.
8. Use the cell network to provide Internet access to your Notebook computer when there is no Wi-Fi, such as when you are taking a bus.
9. Use it as a USB drive as you would a flash drive.
10. Use it as an iPod to listen to music, audiobooks, etc.  Use a stereo bluetooth headset for this.
11. In a store, use your phone to scan a bar-code just like the casher, to find information or do comparison shopping.

參與一個網路連署需要多少時間?

How about four seconds?  四秒!

假定你使用 Google Chrome, 或者 Firefox with add-on such as LastPass, 軟體會記得你以前填表用的資料, 而在你寫下你的名字的第一個字後, 就自動幫你把整個表填完.  At this point, you have used half a second.

剩下的 3.5 秒是用來做  CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test 來証明你是人, 不是程式) test.

這裹有兩個連署湏要你 8 秒鐘的時間:

讓陽光照穿蔡衍明濫用傳媒公器的陰霾──呼籲 (demand) NCC舉行正式聽證會 (338 as of now)
連署聲援成功大學零貳社同學二二八行動 (282 as of now)

Salman Khan: youTube 上的 Salman 比真的 Salman 好

 
不管你多年輕或多老, 你可以從 Salman Khan 學到東西.  Watch this 18 minute TED video.  Start your life-long learning from this video, here and now.

Smartphone ownership: Japan 4%, US 35%,Taiwan 50% says Ma II

This is a follow-up of my post yesterday
Smartphone ownership: Japan 4%, US 35%,
Taiwan 50% says Ma [1]

First, let me summarize three pieces of data from [1] and add a new piece of data from Tae Matsumoto to show that there is a phenomenal surge of smartphone ownership in Japan:

1.  Global Smartphone Penetration by Region 2009-2014  (2010-06-20) predicted a 5% Japanese smartphone ownership in 2011.
2. Tae Matsumoto (松本多恵) of Nara Women's University (奈良女子大學) in a survey of 125 students in the first two months of 2011, found only five owning smartphones.  This suggests a ownership rate of 4%, similar to the above forecast.
3. iPhone drives Japan smartphone penetration to over 20% (2010-09-09) observed that
   smartphone penetration jumped to 22.6% in July from 12% a year ago, according to market research company BCN.
4. Tae Matsumoto did another survey in Nara Women's University on 2011-04-30 with 300 students participating, and found the ownership number jumped from the 4% of two months ago to 13%.

Peter Ro wrote

台灣人很愛使用智慧型手機
Taiwanese love to use smartphones

presumably responding to the 30% IDC number or the 50% Ma Ying-Jeou number for Taiwan in my previous post.

To this, I have two comments:

1. Ma stated  on 2011-02-10, without justification, that the smartphone penetration rate in Taiwan was expected to reach nearly 50% this year.  Less than a month ago, in  Taiwan smartphone penetration set to hit record high: IDC, an IDC senior analyst said
   

   Smartphone shipments in Taiwan, which accounted for between 21 percent and 22 percent of total mobile phone shipments last year, will increase to between 29 percent and 30 percent this year

   That implied that smartphone ownership is less than 30%.  Ma should tell us why his number 50% is so at odds with IDC's number, and completely out of line with any other prevailing forecasts. 
2. All the numbers we quoted are about smartphone ownership and market penetration, not about usage. Ownership and market penetration are different from usage.  For example, many Taiwanese own iPhones, but they use them as expensive cell phones to feel good, to show off, or to make a statement about their social status.  Few understands how a smartphone differs from dumb phones and few realizes that a smartphone is a powerful computer.  It is a rare Taiwanese smartphone owner who knows how to tether or even what it means.  I have even helped many to turn on their GPS.   See Two things to do in 2011: Use smartphone and dump Microsoft for more.  Taiwanese leave their smartphones' tremendous power untapped just as they leave their computers' tremendous power untapped.  This is as if I own the empire state building, but decide to use just one room on the first floor, and nowhere else.  Why?  Because I don't want to learn to use other rooms.

Smartphone ownership: Japan 4%, US 35%,Taiwan 50% says Ma

I saw a very surprising 2011 survey result from Ms Tae Matsumoto of Nara Women's University (奈良女子大學), as follows:


Thus, less than four out of 100 (or one out of twenty five) Nara Women's University students have smartphones.  Can the number be this low in a Japan university?

This 4% is in line with Global Smartphone Penetration by Region 2009-2014, but is a far cry from the 23% given in iPhone drives Japan smartphone penetration to over 20%.
 
For US numbers, see Pew research smartphone ownership.  They are 35% overall and 52% for young adults:

Smartphone penetration has reached more than half (52%) of 18-to-29-year-old US adults, according to a July 2011 study from the Pew Research Center Internet & American Life Project. The study also reveals that 45% of 30-to-49-year-olds own smartphones, and this figure then drops by almost 50% to 24% among 50-to-64-year-olds. Overall, 35% of US adults own smartphones.

The US numbers pale when compared to Taiwan's, according to president Ma Ying-Jeou:

"The smartphone penetration rate in Taiwan is expected to reach nearly 50% this year based on a similar figure in Hong Kong, where smartphones have become very popular," Ma told reporters at a press conference.

For people unfamiliar with Ma Yin-Jeou, he is a man constantly making unsubstantiated statements such as this, and making promises he could not keep (think 6-3-3). 

In Taiwan smartphone penetration set to hit record high: IDC, we read

Smartphone shipments in Taiwan, which accounted for between 21 percent and 22 percent of total mobile phone shipments last year, will increase to between 29 percent and 30 percent this year, higher than the global average of 26 percent, IDC senior analyst Joey Yen (嚴蘭欣) told reporters at a news conference.

Serious problems with Facebook

 
Unlike Google, Facebook's contribution to human knowledge and useful dialog seems to me negligible.

First, you can like someone's post, ignore it, but never dislike it.  This has the effect of distorting reality, and strongly discouraging those dissenting individuals from participating.

We can reference a blog entry and its comments, or a web page trivially using their URLs.  In contrast, it is not obvious how to reference a Facebook comment.  We can conclude that Facebook comments have little reference values.  For example, researchers using  Zotero to collect references will find few if any Facebook comments in their collections.

I found a Facebook public event named 連署要求NCC對《三立》假新聞開罰，勿再縱容惡質媒體!!
I left a comment, encouraging event supporters to provide evidences to garner more support.   My comment was removed within minutes.

An event participant 董倫輝 wrote

馬總統完全在狀況外，被惡質的三立擺了一道。

It would be useful for the society to ask why he knows, given Ma Ying-Jeou's notoriety.  See 我們家沒有人有綠卡; 我有綠卡, 女兒是美國公民.
Another,  杨垂沿 wrote  

这就是国民党永远做不出来的事！偏偏就有一群人会吃这一套！

中國國民黨/共產黨 如何摧毀人性 How KMT/CCP destroy human decency presents facts after facts of such evil-doings and worse.

At this writing, there are 466 event participants in this Facebook public event named 連署要求NCC對《三立》假新聞開罰，勿再縱容惡質媒體!!.    I asked these people to explain why Dr. Jerome Keating was wrong by having a different opinion at Taiwan, the Ma Government Wants the Media to Serve it.  My question was deleted within minutes.

Overall, Facebook is transient and provides little of lasting values.