I can't live without the Internet.  Here at work, where the Internet goes down frequently, every moment without it is like denying your body oxygen!  All work here comes to a halt when the Internet goes down!  The funny thing is that it affects you wither you needed it to do your task or not, it's become a mental thing.

 

In other ways the Internet sucks!  SPAM, Phishing, porn, viruses & worms, sexual predators, terrorism, etc.  It's just not a safe place and there is no way to make it safe for everyone.  The under-prepared will suffer and have a very poor experience on the Internet.  Well, today I found another way we can be screwed on the Internet.

 

You see, I am trying to sell my 2005 Suzuki Forenza because we only want one car payment and the Suzuki is not that car.  I listed it on Autotrader.com and KSL Cars.  I got a text message (how did they know I listed a cell phone number?) indicating that they were interested in the vehicle.  I emailed information, pictures, and anything else you can think of!  He replied back that he was going to buy the car for a client (was he some kind of dealer?) and that it was going to cost like $7,000 to have the car shipped up to Canada (wait, I thought he was from New York).  He indicated that a cashiers check was on the way, in the meantime I did not take it off Autotrader.com, don't do that until you have a sale!  He sent me an email instructing me that someone would be by to pickup the car and the balance.  Almost 3 weeks later I get the check via FedEx overnight mail.  I took it to the bank and told them to process this transaction with the up-most care so they put a 9 business day hold on the check.  No problemmo!  He made me wait 2 weeks just for payment!

 

Anyway, he smelled like a rat from the beginning and when I got an email asking me to send the balance via Western Union I knew it was Fraud!  I contacted the local FBI, looking to catch this guy in the act, but they didn't seem all that interested.  They claim that there is no way to catch them and they didn't even try.  They said that I should add it to the http://www.ic3.gov database for statistical reasons but that at least I didn't fall victim.  Well duh!  Even if my credit union didn't put a hold on the funds (which I think is a fabulous idea), I know (and so should you) that a check is not a "permanent" or "final" source of funds.  They can be reversed and they can bounce.  Western Union *IS* a one-way funds transfer and once you have sent money via WU, there is no way to get those funds back!

 

So the scam works like this:

1) They look for motivated sellers (for cars or probably almost anything else)

2) They offer to buy it

3) They send you a forged cashiers check for much more than the value of the item (in this case almost double)

4) They make some excuse (in this case shipping cost of the vehicle) to have you send some of the money back to them or to a 3rd party.  (They need to pay the 3rd party themselves!)

5) You send the money

6) They may be brazen enough to pick up the car and the title!

7) The check bounces or is in some other way reversed and you are out all of the money you tried to transfer

 

I also did a GEOIP lookup on the IP address and discovered this guy was sending email from Saudi Arabia!  Also, he used words that a person from that area uses that are uncommon like "Kindly".  The email was carelessly typed with spaces missing between words and chars missing in words.  Also, no one in America (unless sending an email to your Bishop and probably not even then) signs a mail with "God Bless".

 

Unfortunately, this is a very common scam!  The FBI agent that I spoke with indicated that they have seen a very dramatic rise in this particular scam since November 2006.  They are specifically targeting people who are trying to sell their car on-line because the excuse of "shipping fees" is a good one to send you a check for more then you are asking.  Just remember, checks are *not* a guaranteed form of payment!  Cash is almost the only guaranteed form (watch for counterfeits)! :) 

 

Nathan Zaugg

 

P.S. - Does anyone want to buy my 2005 Suzuki Forenza w/ 31k miles; 100k transferable warranty; only asking $8.5k

 

 

 

I was recently horrified when I realized that I did not make a blog entry in the month of July!  I didn't make a contribution to MSDN forums (there goes my once a day goal) and I did not even read my ever-backlog of RSS feeds. Of course, I have plenty of excuses.  The best one is that we had our third child early in the month of July.  Other excuses include building a new house, trying to get our current home up for sale, and other miscellaneous family matters.  Well, assuming the little boy sleeps at night, I'm almost back to full capacity. 

 

Back to the topic at hand.  The other day me and my friend Phil were working like crazy trying to get some stuff done late at night during one of our all-night code-a-thon's.  He was looking for something very specific (SQL Server Express 2005 Installation Parameters) and was using google to try to find the page he is looking for.  He spent well over half an hour and could not find the page he was looking for.  We had recently had a discussion about how I feel that google has been loosing favor in my mind and that I have declared that I was switching to Microsoft's Live Search.  He decided to try it out, and poof!  Like a magic trick the page he was looking for appeared!  He even stated that he is considering switching from google. 

 

Before I go on, one observation I have noticed is that if your are looking for something Microsoft related, google isn't the product for you!  It's almost like they have black-listed any Microsoft site in favor of anything else!  This is a strange shift as the it used to be that google was the best way to search Microsoft's site, not Microsoft search!

 

I have been convinced for some time that Live search is better and have even changed my default page in IE7 (yes, I prefer IE7 to Firefox, and I am not the only one), but one thing still plagues me.  Whenever I sit at someone else's computer and need to do an Internet search, I always navigate to google.com and after not finding what I am looking for use live.com.  Why do I do this?  In fact any time I have to type the URL google.com is always what I type.  When I suggest to someone that they need to look for something on the Internet I don't say "You should Live search that", I say "You should Google that".  Old habits sure die hard!

 

I believe that one of the hardest things for Adults to do is to change something about themselves.  It doesn't matter what...something, ANYTHING!  I have been saying for some time that the hardest thing to change is your spending habits but it's much more than that.  Your hair style, your daily routine, your brand of soap, deodorant, brand of toothbrush, your mannerisms, your reaction to stress, your style (still in the 80's?), your job, your eating habits, your political positions, your values & morality, your relationships, or your eye color!  Some of these things can be more easily changed than others but they are all--to some extent--difficult for us to change.  My first thought was that this is horrible!  How do we ever better our selves if we can't change!  To some extent, that is exactly right.  In fact, it's a good thing!  It would be really hard to improve if everything about us was random and unpredictable.  We can choose to focus our energy on improving one aspect and the rest should remain relatively unchanged.  It is difficult to change!!  Keeping in mind that all of these things are part of us.  Our personality in essence is the combination of all of these things about us, it makes  sense that as adults we find change so difficult.  Most of us have well defined strong personalities and those are the hardest kinds to change.  It's tough to change anything that is working and prove successful. 

 

May we all have the drive and diligence to improve ourselves, and may we all switch back to IE! :)

 

Nathan Zaugg