Archive for the 'Tech' Category

Google Android User Agent

Monday, December 21st, 2009

Looks like someone with an Android handset visited cleverhack earlier today… Notice that Google has a special version of the search engine interface for Android (hint: click on the referrer). This seems to be the latest build of Android at 2.0.1, had no idea Google was using the AppleWebKit framework though. The screen size is also generous, too. Resolution : 854 x 480 Color Depth : 32 bits

Host: 75.209.219.99
*
/2007/12/10/hack-yahoo-fantasy-football/
Http Code: 200 Date: Dec 21 14:23:49 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 13396
Referer: http://www.google.com/m?gl=us&source=android-launcher-search&q=yahoo++fantasy+foot
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0.1; en-us; Droid Build/ESD56) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17

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Hey, thanks for the identity theft, Verizon Wireless

Monday, September 21st, 2009

So, today, I get this email from Verizon Wireless about their privacy policies for their wireless customers. At first I thought the email was spam because I haven not been a Verizon Wireless customer for OVER 2 years.

I imagine my shock when I see my old Vermont cell phone number on the email. A phone number I have not had for over 5 years.

The email has a different account number and a different name than mine. It looks like the job of a really bad email append. I hope. I checked the headers of the email, and it was sent from an internet marketing organization called Moxie Interactive, which looks legit. Here’s the Web version of the email.

From: verizonwireless@email.vzwshop.com
Subject: Important Privacy Notice
Date: September 21, 2009 11:26:59 AM EDT
To: [myemailaddress]@cleverhack.com
Reply-To: replyto@email.vzwshop.com

To ensure our emails reach your inbox, please add verizonwireless@email.vzwshop.com to your address book. Having trouble viewing this email? View online. En Español.

Phones & Accessories Plans Features & Downloads Messaging Support My Verizon

Re: Account Number ending XXXX
Dear JXXX VXXXXXXX:

At Verizon Wireless, we value you as a customer, and we know how important privacy is to you. As a company, we have a long-standing policy of guarding personal customer information. This notice contains information about Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI). Verizon Wireless needs your permission to share your CPNI within the Verizon family of companies, which includes our affiliates, agents and parent companies (including Vodafone), as well as their subsidiaries. This information allows us to better serve you by identifying, offering and providing the most appropriate communications products and services to fit your needs. You have the right to request that we not share such information, so please read this notice carefully. Regardless of your decision, your CPNI will never be shared by Verizon Wireless with any unrelated third parties.

As your wireless provider, Verizon Wireless may have certain information about you that is made available to us solely by virtue of our relationship with you, such as details regarding the telecommunications services you purchase, as well as the type, destination, technical configuration, location and amount of use of such services. This information and the related billing details are known as CPNI. The protection of your CPNI is important to us, and we acknowledge that you have a right, and we have a duty under federal and state law, to protect the confidentiality of this information. You have a right to request that your CPNI remain private, and may do so by clicking the Do Not Share My CPNI button below. Unless you notify us within 45 days of receiving this notice that you do not want your CPNI shared, we will assume that you give us the right to share your CPNI with the authorized companies described above. Please be advised if you allow your CPNI to be shared, your consent will remain valid until we receive your notice withdrawing it, or for two years, whichever comes first. You may withdraw your consent at any time through My Verizon. If you would like more information on CPNI and selecting Do Not Share, please review the frequently asked questions.

Sincerely,
Verizon Wireless

CPNI will not be shared within unrelated third parties. You may advise us not to share your CPNI by clicking the Do Not Share My CPNI button within this email, or you can sign into your My Verizon account and register for Do Not Share from the “profiles” page. Selecting not to share your CPNI will not affect the status of the services you currently have with us. In addition, we can disclose your CPNI to comply with any laws, court order or subpoena, or to provide services to you pursuant to your Customer Agreement. © 2009 Verizon Wireless.

Verizon Wireless | One Verizon Way | Mail Code: 180WVB | Basking Ridge, NJ 07920
This email was sent to [myemailaddress]@cleverhack.com and associated with you Verizon Wireless mobile number 802249XXXX. We respect your privacy. Please review our privacy policy for more information about click activity with Verizon Wireless and links included in this email.

You may easily adjust your subscription preferences from your profile information.

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Some real people feedback about bookmarklets…

Sunday, January 20th, 2008

On the MSNBC developer blog, the question was posed How do you share?. Not in the grade school way, but in the newfangled Web 2.0 way.

Overall, the comments from MSNBC readers were pretty… negative. Aside from the “I’ll just paste the link I want to share in an email” or the “I’ll just add the page to my browser bookmarks” or the “they’re tracking your habits for nefarious purposes” comments, other commenters cited just one or two social bookmarking sites (the most popular seeming to be either del.icio.us or digg.com). And a few other commenters wondered, “Hey, MSNBC, don’t you own Newsvine?”

It appears that the zen habits of social bookmarking hasn’t been widely accepted by the at large Internet populace.

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Apple TV

Friday, January 18th, 2008

For those of you with Apple TV, do you like it?

I’m thinking of springing for it, seeing as the idea of downloading movies and watching them on my (nearly outdated last of the mohicans CRT TV) does appeal to me. I don’t watch broadcast TV, I don’t have on-demand anything nor do I Netflix.

On the other hand, the iMac is in the family room too and I could, I suppose, hook that up to the TV negating the need for another product from Apple.

Thoughts?

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SWSE - Semantic Web Search Engine

Sunday, December 23rd, 2007

This particular crawler is being deployed from the Semantic Web Search Engine (SWSE) project, which is attempting to crawl the nascent Semantic Web, including RSS and FOAF data.

This is yet another reason why deploying RSS is a good idea for any Web presence.

Here’s a link to the SWSE search demo.

Host: 140.203.154.196
/wp-rdf.php
Http Code: 304 Date: Dec 18 14:56:27 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: -
Referer: -
Agent: multicrawler (+http://sw.deri.org/2006/04/multicrawler/robots.html)

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MSN Live Search - New activity

Monday, December 17th, 2007

Has anyone else seen some different activity coming from MSN? What I mean is that I’m seeing the following entries in my search logs, but it doesn’t appear like traditional MSNBot crawler behavior.

Why this activity is different:
1) The originating IP address is from the MSN netblock.
2) There is an alleged referrer that looks like it is from an MSN search http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=keyword&mrt=en-us&FORM=LIVSOP
3) The user agent is showing as a browser.
4) This activity is showing very close to when I see MSNBot entries in my logs.

And no, the behavior does not appear to be a real life user.

Host: 65.55.165.38
*
/2006/06/17/live-blogging-from-the-philly-blogger-meeting/
Http Code: 200 Date: Dec 17 02:59:16 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 40839
Referer: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=podcasts&mrt=en-us&FORM=LIVSOP
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

Host: 65.55.165.42
*
/2006/06/20/how-e-commerce-will-be-affected-by-ie-7/
Http Code: 200 Date: Dec 17 03:13:02 Http Version: HTTP/1.0 Size in Bytes: 43238
Referer: http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=podcasts&mrt=en-us&FORM=LIVSOP
Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)

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Email Deliverability - trends for the end of 2007

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

Two trends I’ve run across recently in the email deliverability world.

First, and this is for you designers who have to work on HTML email campaigns, the Email Standards Project. Because, let’s face it, the need to use old school HTML 4 for compatibility with current email clients makes baby jesus cry.

It’s been kind of quiet on the spam filtering front, aside from the proof of concept .ogg and .mp3 spam. In real deliverability terms, from what I’ve been seeing, there seems to be an increased reliance on URL filtering and on sending IP reputation.

And with that in mind, I was sort of amused to get the following text based email body in my inbox last night. It seems that the spammers are giving up on live URLs and are hoping you’ll be intrigued enough to open a Web browser, find a stock trading site and buy a penny stock.

Hi from Christian . Hope your Friday is cool and happy holidays. Something big for [SOME STOCK] over next few weeks. Check otc boards. Keep an eye out for it and get in early.

Hey, I’m just impressed the guy wished me happy holidays.

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iConcertCal

Sunday, August 5th, 2007

iConcertCal is a neat little plug in for iTunes that will scan your iTunes music library for artists and generates a personalized calendar of upcoming concerts and new CD releases. Pretty cool.

It’s such a clever idea, I just have to wonder why Apple hasn’t included it already in iTunes.

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iPhone wifi madness

Monday, July 30th, 2007

Well, not madness, but something definitely weird.

I was wondering if anyone has seen any iPhones getting onto networks they should not be on. I am aware of a situation where an iPhone jumped on a wifi network with WEP and MAC Address filtering enabled.

The thing is, the iPhone only had the WEP key, but the iPhone MAC address hadn’t been authorized and iPhone still was granted an IP address via DHCP.

When I tried my iPhone on the network with the WEP key and but no MAC address authorization, I could not get on.

Another wrinkle is that the successful iPhone had been synched to a Mac laptop that was previously allowed on that network. Could that be it?

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Google Start Page for iPhone?

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

I was hit with this referrer string by an iPhone using visitor… URL makes me think that it’s an up and coming iPhone specific Google start page. The IP was from the AT&T network.

http://google.com/uds/samples/iphone/isearch.html

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iPhone battery update

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

One thing to note, I think I’m getting better battery power now after a few full battery drains and then leaving the iPhone to charge overnight. Once I fully charge the iPhone, I am getting the power plug icon.

Yesterday, without wifi on and without using the iPod, I got about 24 hours worth of standby/active email/Web time.

Still not awesome, but better than what I have been seeing. It looks like I will have to charge every night. Here’s hoping that the battery time improves as I drain/recharge it.

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iPhone’s built in RSS Reader

Sunday, July 15th, 2007

Why yes, there is an RSS reader built into the iPhone. To access RSS feeds on the iPhone, all you need to do is enter the RSS feed URL into the Safari address bar. The feed is seemingly fetched through http://reader.mac.com. Radical, huh?

In fact, one of my readers clicked through my RSS feed and I was able to capture the referrer and user agent.

/2007/07/15/some-iphone-camera-pics/
Http Code: 200 Date: Jul 15 17:21:13 Http Version: HTTP/1.1 Size in Bytes: 9887
Referer: http://reader.mac.com/mobile/v1/http://www.cleverhack.com/feed
Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

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