July 2009 Entries

Dramatic Spike in URL Shortening by Scammers

Back in May I wrote "Dirty URL Tricks" about the increasing risk presented by the rise of URL shortening services like Bit.ly and TinyURL, driven largely by short messaging services like Twitter.  I closed the article by predicting that scammers were going to start aggressively exploiting these services as a means of masking their malicious URLs. Judging by the dramatic spike in URL shortening service usage by spammers and phishers the following month, I'd say that the entire scamming community must be reading my blog.  However, since I'm quite in tune with the number of readers I have, and I'm fairly...

Back Online

Took longer than I expected for ComCast to bring my business-class Internet connection into the house, but I'm back online as of tonight. Oh, and for the record, my Chrysler transfered my data at the rate of 230Kb/s.  It would have been faster, but the 98mph speeding ticket I got on the way through Colorado spooked me for the rest of the trip.  I spent the rest of the drive going about 5mph over the speed limit.