http://www.castlecops.com CastleCops News Copyright © 2002-2005 2008-08-29T00:02:29-05:00 http://www.castlecops.com/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
Brothers who operated Web sites promising profits from work-at-home businesses have settled charges that they misled customers with false earnings claims, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission said.

The FTC filed a civil complaint against Eric G. Louie, doing business as Fastcashathome.com, Fastcashathome.homestead.com and Hometypers.com; and Calvin G. Louie, doing business as Moneymakingsecret.homestead.com, Realcashprograms.com, and Dataentrypro.com, in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Eastern Division, in November 2006. The six Web sites are no longer operating.

The FTC accused the Louie brothers of inflating earnings potential in work-at-home opportunities involving government grants, mystery shopping, online surveys and data entry.

In the settlement, announced Wednesday, the brothers are barred from further marketing work-at-home opportunities.

The settlement also imposes a US$4.9 million judgment that will be suspended if the brothers surrender assets frozen by the court in 2006; proceeds from the sale of two cars, a Lamborghini and a Ferrari; and any tax refunds for tax years 2005 and 2006. The full judgment will be imposed if they fail to meet the terms of the settlement, or if they are found to have misrepresented their financial condition, the FTC said in a press release.

The Louies charged consumers between $47 and $129 to access Web sites that included “money-making secrets," the FTC said. Their advertised programs either did not exist as represented or did not offer quick and easy money with little time or effort as promised, the agency said.

The case was brought as part of Project Fal$e Hope$, an FTC-led effort that targeted bogus business opportunities and work-at-home scams. The effort has resulted in more than 100 law enforcement actions by the FTC, the I.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and law enforcement agencies in 11 states.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.]]> http://www.castlecops.com/article-6924-nested-0-0.html http://www.castlecops.com/article-6924-nested-0-0.html General News 2008-08-26T04:13:15-05:00
Letters from “Verizon Financial” promise $750K
If the thought of Verizon offering to pay you $750,000 sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.

Verizon today released a statement warning consumers to be on the lookout for shady letters telling them that they have won a special sweepstakes and that a firm named “Verizon Financial” has authorized a payment to them of $750,000. The letters tell consumers that in order to cash in on their prize, they first need to pay a “processing fee” of $3,200. The scammers also include a phony check written in the amount of $4,500 in each “winning” envelope.

The scammers recommend that the sweepstakes “winners” contact a “claims agent,” who Verizon says will try to pry sensitive financial information from the consumer. The company says that it has no connection to any of the sweepstakes letters and recommends that consumers file a report with the United States Postal Inspection Service if they receive one of them.

The bogus Verizon sweepstakes letters aren’t the only scam that has been conducted by Verizon impersonators in recent months. According to the Newnan Times Herald in Georgia, scammers claiming to be representatives of Verizon Wireless are calling residents and offering them a new free Verizon cell phone if they provide the caller with their Social Security number. ]]> http://www.castlecops.com/article-6923-nested-0-0.html http://www.castlecops.com/article-6923-nested-0-0.html CyberCrime 2008-08-26T04:09:27-05:00
Attorney General Michael Mukasey has agreed to postpone implementation of new FBI guidelines, after four Democratic senators raised concerns in a letter Wednesday about proposed changes that they say could permit the FBI to launch investigations of American citizens without any individualized basis for suspicion.


The letter, signed by Sens. Russ Feingold (D-WI), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), concerned a draft of the Attorney General's Guidelines governing criminal and intelligence inquiries by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The draft itself has not been made public, though The New York Times reports that the guidelines could be released next month.

The proposed rule change, first reported last week, would loosen restrictions on information sharing between agencies, and allow investigators to begin gathering information for criminal or intelligence purpose, even in the absence of any particularized evidence suggesting that a target is connected to criminal activity.

The senators fear that the new rules "might, for example, permit the FBI to conduct long-term physical surveillance of an innocent American citizen; interview such an individual’s neighbors and professional colleagues, including based on a 'pretext' or misrepresentation; recruit human sources to provide information on that individual; or conduct commercial database searches on that individual—all without any basis for suspicion."

In a speech earlier this month, Mukasey defended the change as a helpful clarification and harmonization of the rules that would better codify existing practices and eliminate "artificial distinctions" between criminal and intelligence inquiries. But Michael German, a former FBI agent now at the American Civil Liberties Union, offered a more skeptical take, calling this characterization a tacit admission that the Bureau had already been ignoring its own guidelines.

Pointing to the case of Stephen Hatfill, whose reputation suffered after he was identified as a "person of interest" in the FBI's investigation into the 2001 anthrax attacks, German said that "opening an investigation against someone has real consequences." While probable cause would still be required to conduct more intrusive searches, German noted that the resources of the FBI could permit it to gather large amounts of nominally "public" information about a target that would be unavailable to a normal private entity. Calling increased reliance on data mining a symptom of "lazy law enforcement," German said that the proposed guidelines are "one more example of the government's failed policies that aren't getting any results, but are eating up a lot of resources and having an affect on innocent people who haven't done anything wrong—it's like a trifecta."

In a response to the senators' concerns addressed to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Mukasey agreed not to sign off on the new rules until after mid-September hearings at which FBI Director Robert Mueller will testify. Mukasey set a target date of October 1 for making the guidelines effective.
]]> http://www.castlecops.com/article-6922-nested-0-0.html http://www.castlecops.com/article-6922-nested-0-0.html FBI 2008-08-26T04:07:18-05:00
People who fall for so-called Nigerian scams aren't victims at all—in fact, they're greedy and should be jailed, according to Nigerian high commissioner Sunday Olu Agbi. He said today that Nigeria has gained a bad reputation because of the scams perpetrated by a minuscule number of people, and that those who find themselves involved with the scams are equally as guilty as those running them.

The Nigerian Government frowns very seriously on these scams... and every day tries to track down those who are involved, Olu Agbi told the Sydney Morning Herald in response to a previous article on Australians falling for Nigerian scams. People who send their money are as guilty as those who are asking them to send the money.

Out of the 140 million people in Nigeria, Olu Agbi said that fewer than 0.1 percent were involved in Nigerian scams. The scams, also referred to as 419 scams or advance-fee fraud, predate the Internet, but have exploded in recent years thanks to the proliferation of e-mail and instant money transfers. Although the scams can take on many forms—from payments for products sold on eBay or Craigslist, to deposits on houses and purchases of plane tickets for rue love on the other side of the ocean—they all follow the same general theme.

Scammers send huge checks to unsuspecting victims with some story attached to explain the overpayment, and the victim is expected to wire back the difference immediately. Eventually when the checks are deposited, they bounce and the victim is out a lot of money. Sometimes, victims are tricked into thinking they'll eventually be paid back and continue to participate in this endless cycle of sending money, especially if the scammer is wooing them romantically (which happens more commonly than one might think, to both men and women).

Although this kind of fraud originates from all over the world, it seems to have an unusually high concentration in Africa and, specifically, Nigeria. This has, unsurprisingly, cast Nigeria in a negative light. Olu Agbi said that Nigeria's reputation for being involved with the scams has even hurt the country's ability to land business deals. [T]hose who want to transact business with us are always very suspicious, he told the newspaper.

Still, Olu Agbi's "blame the victim" mentality won't help Nigeria win any friends, but education on how to spot 419 scams and avoid falling for them can certainly go a long way in curbing their growth. After all, once victims stop blindly forking over cash, scammers will have to figure out some other way to make money.
]]> http://www.castlecops.com/article-6921-nested-0-0.html http://www.castlecops.com/article-6921-nested-0-0.html CyberCrime 2008-08-26T04:05:01-05:00
Long-time 'pump-and-dump' stock spammer turned fugitive 'Fast Eddie' Davidson, who walked out of minimum-security prison camp in Florence, Colorado where he was serving a 21-month sentence for tax evasion and falsifying email headers in pump-and-dump spam, apparently shot his wife and three-year old daughter to death on Thursday before turning the gun on himself. A teenager shot in the neck ran from the scene and is now being treated in hospital.

Said U.S. Attorney Troy Eid: What a nightmare, and such a coward. Davidson imposed the 'death penalty' on family members for his own crime.]]> http://www.castlecops.com/article-6920-nested-0-0.html http://www.castlecops.com/article-6920-nested-0-0.html SPAM 2008-08-26T03:59:27-05:00
One of Tuesday's Microsoft patches causes ZoneAlarm users to lose Internet connectivity. The patch appears to be MS08-037 (Vulnerabilities in DNS Could Allow Spoofing), which was part of an Internet-wide fix of a common design flaw in DNS implementations.

[Update: Zone Labs has released new versions of their programs to address the problems:


* ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite

* ZoneAlarm Pro

* ZoneAlarm Antivirus

* ZoneAlarm Anti-Spyware

* ZoneAlarm Basic Firewall

]

ZoneLabs has issued a workaround for users suffering from the problem. You have three options:


Option 1. Move Internet Zone slider to Medium

1. Navigate to the oneAlarm Firewall panel<
2. Click on the Overview tab
3. Move the Internet Zone slider to medium

Option 2. Uninstall the hotfix

1. Click the Start Menu
2. Click Control Panel, or click Settings then Control Panel
3. Click on Add or Remove Programs
4. On the top of the add/remove programs dialog box, you should see a checkbox that says show updates. Select this checkbox
5. Scroll down until you see Security update for Windows (KB95174
6. Click Remove to uninstall the hotfix

Option 3. (advanced technical skills required): Add your DNS servers to trusted zone

1. From the Overview panel, select the Firewall panel then click on the ones tab
2. Click Add, then select IP address from the shortcut menu. The Add IP Address dialog appears. Select rusted from the Zone drop-down list
3. Type the IP address and a description in the boxes provided, then click OK
4. If you are not sure what IP addresses to add:
   1. Click the Start Menu
   2. Click on Run. Type cmd.exe
   3. In the command prompt type: ipconfig /all. Look for DNS Server(s) in the output of the command
   4. For each IP address listed, navigate to the ones panel of the Firewall tab, add the IP address, select Trusted Zone, and press Apply
   5. After you are done adding DNS servers click the Apply button

]]> http://www.castlecops.com/article-6919-nested-0-0.html http://www.castlecops.com/article-6919-nested-0-0.html Cyber Security 2008-08-26T03:53:45-05:00 http://www.castlecops.com/article-6918-nested-0-0.html http://www.castlecops.com/article-6918-nested-0-0.html CastleCops 2008-07-19T04:59:12-05:00 http://www.castlecops.com/article-6917-nested-0-0.html http://www.castlecops.com/article-6917-nested-0-0.html CastleCops 2008-07-10T13:50:08-05:00
I have spent the day troubleshooting over 20 PCs and have found all installations to have the install date of 9 July 2008, which in my part of the world is tomorrow. I think that as of tomorrow it should work. If not then MS broke something again, but we are used to that.]]> http://www.castlecops.com/article-6916-nested-0-0.html http://www.castlecops.com/article-6916-nested-0-0.html Microsoft 2008-07-09T02:22:57-05:00
Copyright holders shouldn't have to prove that an unauthorized distribution of their work occurred in order to collect damages, according to the Motion Picture Association of America.Both sides realize that the stakes are high and are throwing everything they've got Judge Davis' way. At the time of the Jammie Thomas trial, Thomas was found liable for $9,250 in damages per song for a collection of 24 songs that she made available online, for a total of $222,000 in total damages. In May, however, Davis said that he may have made a manual error of law when instructing the jury.

In its filing, the MPAA says that the mere act of making available a copyrighted piece on a P2P network should serve as sufficient evidence of copyright infringement. Therefore, anyone who makes files available over P2P networks should be deemed to have satisfied the requirements of actual distribution, even if proof of that actual distribution doesn't exist. It sees arguments to the contrary as mere technicalities designed to make it harder for rightsholders to prosecute infringers.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation shot back with its own amicus brief, arguing that the Copyright Act does not grant a making available right to copyright owners. It also said that trade groups shouldn't be allowed to claim that an actual distribution took place based solely on downloads from their own investigators.

According to the MPAA, providing this level of evidence is just too hard. It is often very difficult, and in some cases impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise, writes the group.

Another hearing on the case is scheduled for August, at which time Thomas may get the new trial that she has been asking for since last October. ]]> http://www.castlecops.com/article-6915-nested-0-0.html http://www.castlecops.com/article-6915-nested-0-0.html General News 2008-07-08T02:27:20-05:00