Saturday, 25 January 2014

Playing with the scammers

Got a friend invite on facebook this morning from a Kelly Anderson.  Name was a bit familiar so I accepted the friend request and thought no more of it.  Later that evening I received a message from him on facebook messenger.  What follows is the conversation that we had with some contextual information from me.
  • Conversation started today
  • Kelly Anderson
    18:31
  • William Yates
    18:32
    William Yates
    Hey. I got a friend request from you. Trying to figure out how I know you. Sorry I know that can sound rude
  • Kelly Anderson
    18:34
    Kelly Anderson
    i don't really know you but i got through your profile in search of my old friend
    my name is General Kelly Anderson, i am from United State
    i lost my wife 6 years ago.. i have a son i just want you to know me much better as a friend
    its my pleasure to know you
  • Kelly Anderson
    18:48
    Kelly Anderson
    i have a proposal for you
    i dont really know if i can trust you
    write to me pls its important
  • William Yates
    18:51
    William Yates
    Sure what's up
  • Kelly Anderson
    18:52
    Kelly Anderson
    i have been in Afghanistan 6 months now for peacekeeping
    and i have a son 11 years old in United State
    that is the only family i have
    we went for a mission some weeks back
    we found some cash which me and some four Generals shared
    but i have been looking for someone to trust
  • William Yates
    18:54
    William Yates
    And you want to transfer it to my bank to get it back to the us
  • Kelly Anderson
    18:55
    Kelly Anderson
    that is why i was searching for my old friend on facebook before i came across you
    yes i would love to do that
  • William Yates
    18:57
    William Yates
    Shouldn't that money be given to the government or the UN not kept by 4 generals. It sounds very inappropriate
  • Kelly Anderson
    19:00
    Kelly Anderson
    yes that is true.. but the money was found and shared in Syria after the mission was over, so i brought mine back to Afghanistan
    now i am looking for a trusted friend which i can send the money to because the money is not safe in Afghanistan here with me
 At this point we were just about to meet friends for dinner.  I only had my mobile on me so couldn't do the background searches I wanted to do but was absolutely sure that this was a scam.  I wanted to wind this guy up.  So I quickly unfriended him on facebook and carried on talking to him.  Thought I would give him a chance to confess about the true nature of his request.

I gave him his chance.  So lets help this man get some money to his son.

  • William Yates
    So how do we get this cash to your son?
  • Kelly Anderson
    19:07
    Kelly Anderson
    the bank cant accept such cash so i am using a company to send it direct to you.. i am gonna pay all the charges
    all you have to do is receive it
  • William Yates
    19:08
    William Yates
    What makes you think you can trust me
  • Kelly Anderson
    19:09
    Kelly Anderson
    i dont really know for now, all i need is your word and i will believe you
    that is why i wrote to you that somebody i can trust
  • William Yates
    19:10
    William Yates
    Would I get into trouble for doing this? Its just that last time with the Nigerians there was a lot of problems
  • Kelly Anderson
    19:11
    Kelly Anderson
    no its not going to get you into problems
  • William Yates
    19:12
    William Yates
    Ok cool
    So what information do you need
  • Kelly Anderson
    19:13
    Kelly Anderson
    your full name, home address, email, and mobile number
    and a scan copy of your id
  • William Yates
    19:14
    William Yates
    And my bank details I presume
  • Kelly Anderson
    19:14
    Kelly Anderson
    that is what the company needs before the money can be sent, they have to know the receiver
    so they will not be any mistakes
  • William Yates
    19:15
    William Yates
    The company I thought you were sending it direct
  • Kelly Anderson
    19:16
    Kelly Anderson
    the money will be deliver to you in your home
  • William Yates
    19:17
    William Yates
    What in cash?
  • Kelly Anderson
    19:17
    Kelly Anderson
    the company will be sending a diploma down
  • William Yates
    19:17
    William Yates
    A diploma down. Isn't that an educational certificate
  • Kelly Anderson
    19:18
    Kelly Anderson
    its a united nation diploma
    and the photocopy of his id will be giving to you also
    that is how things work here in Afghanistan presently
    and the company name is Skynet company, it is all over the world
  • William Yates
    19:21
    William Yates
    If I doing this for you can you do something for me in return?
    Skynet have you seen the terminator films
  • Kelly Anderson
    19:22
    Kelly Anderson
    they have assured me there would be no difficulty
    yes i have
    i will be giving you 20 percent from the money
    just let me believe in you

OK he isn't getting my address, ID card, email address or anything.  But I'm not too keen on 20% plus lets throw some other words in there to see if we can throw Kelly off his script:

The address I gave was for the US Embassy in london, the phone number and email are fake.  Also dinner was nearly over so I left and then did some research when I got home.  A google image search for Kelly gave me lots of hits to scam warning websites and lots of other names for 'Kelly'

  • Kelly Anderson
    20:35
    Kelly Anderson
    fuck of me now
    i am a citizen of US
    you can only report me when my money is in your hands
  • William Yates
    22:46
    William Yates
    Hi Aaron Ramos
    that picture has been re-used by so many other scammers
    get a new fake picture dude
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Tuesday, 7 January 2014

Be EPIC

Just a small poem. I wanted to write something to express that as people make and break new years resolutions that personal growth isn't always about massive changes such as joining a gym 

Be EPIC

Don't just sit and wait
Do something
Anything
Be EPIC


Cook something
Eat something
Enjoy the fruits of your labour


Build something
Create something
Doesn't matter if it doesn't work


Learn something 
Teach someone
Share what you know


Write something
Read something
Does it matter if it rhymes


Don't just sit and wait
Do something
Anything
Be EPIC
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Thursday, 2 January 2014

Taking back the web

Back in the good old days when your modem only supported 28.8kbps and accessing the local BBS didn't allow you to 'like' posts, there weren't the rich services that we no benefit from such as free mail, cloud storage, hosting etc.  If you wanted any of the above you had to build a server yourself.  These servers were big grey boxes with large monitors.

Now in 2014 I have decided to build a server myself and use it to host 'something'.  This is itself isn't a real technical challenge.  Most modern linux distributions allow the user to install a preconfigured LAMP stack with a single command.  Neither is building a web site, thats just a bunch of HTML, CSS and other scripting languages.  I however want to do this for NO MONEY!  I will only use hardware and services that I have either had donated or have free options.  The point of this is that to prove that anyone with a bit of knowledge can 'take back the web'  by building the infrastructure and hooking it up to the rest of the internet. This post consists of 2 parts:

  1. The web server
  2. Domains / DNS and port forwarding.
At the end I will have a basic HTTP server running on some hardware and available on the internet.  Future posts will discuss the services I will build on this stack.

The web server

I like my smartphones, for the past 2 years I have had a Samsung Galaxy Nexus.  I love this device.  It was my email, calendar, music, communication device and it went everywhere with me.  Over Christmas I upgraded to a Nexus 5 and for the first time felt a pang of pain as I removed the SIM from my old device and turned it off for the last time.  I have never felt like that before with some electronics.  Deciding to turn it into a web server somehow eased the pain and is a nice example of upcycling a device.  In some ways it is a great choice:
  • Silent running
  • low power consumption
  • Small physical footprint
It's not going to be able to serve the next facebook or wikipedia. but to host some personal stuff it works absolutely fine.  If I ever require something with a bit more capacity then I can always find some other devices and use them as database servers or content servers to lighten the load.

I am using a web server called kWS which is free in the play store.  it is just a basic HTTP server with pro features in the paid version.  Right now it fits my requirements as in it serves basic HTML and is free.  Later on I might need to change to a different server.

Because I have not rooted my android device I am not allowed to bind to any port running <= 1024 so therefore I am using port 8080.

Domains / DNS and port forwarding

I don't have my own domain and buying one would be outside of the rules so I have used the free service of:
www.noip.com which provide a free dynamic DNS service.  They host the domain and I am allowed to update the associated IP address using a small client running either on my ADSL modem router or on my web server.  

My router (provided by sky) only supports dynamic dns updating if you are using the dyndns product.  However this is no longer free.  I am using a small client that sits on my android web server and uses the no-ip.com api to update the DNS record.  I am not expecting the external DNS to change much, but if it does I am covered.

Finally I just needed to reserve an IP address for the MAC address of my phone ensuring that my new web server always gets allocated the same IP address.  One small hole in the firewall allowing inbound traffic on port 8080 to go to the IP address on my phone and I was all ready.



The site http://hobbit1983.no-ip.biz:8080/ is now live and running from my smartphone!
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Tuesday, 24 September 2013

Answering email while on vacation

I'm probably just wierd

I love my job.  I feel very lucky to do a job which I really enjoy, however this does mean that switching off is very hard.   So even while I am on holiday I still want to know what the rest of the team are up to and how things are progressing.  Over the last few years I have tailored my behaviour to try and get as much rest as possible while still staying 'in touch'.  I have been through both 'complete detachment' and 'office holiday' phases and think I have found a nice middle ground.

Complete Detachment

This is what a lot of my friends and colleagues seem to be able to achieve and in some ways I really envy their ability to disengage completely from the office and just enjoy their time away.  No work email, no phone calls, just friends, family and fun.  I did try this and the worst part was getting back to the office to an email inbox that was incomprehensibly full.  I like to keep a clear inbox most of the time and the sheer amount of (spam/outdated/irrelevant) emails surrounding the few interesting email would worry me even while I was away on holiday.  Trying to be completely detached made me nervous and I would try to steal time away to secretly check my email, a bit like a child secretly eating a smuggled chocolate bar 

Office Holiday 

This is the complete opposite.  Mobile phone pinging each time a new email comes through.  Calling colleagues to get updates.  Although I felt that I was still in touch with the team this did nothing for my family life.  My wife felt that she wasn't on holiday with me at all and was (quite rightly upset with me).  The upside was that there was no deluge of email to wade through on my way back to the office.   I needed to break this behaviour but not go back to the nervous ticks of complete detachment.

Once a day email triage

This is where I currently am.  Once a day (usually in the evening but sometimes early in the morning) I will spend 1-2 hours working, however I have STRICT rules:
  1. No work related instant messaging 
  2. Only urgent coding or technical 'fixes'.  URGENT is only stuff that cannot be delegated and is holding up people if it isn't completed.
  3. Answer only the simple emails, if something needs deeper discussion or thought and it can wait then leave it in the inbox to deal with when you return
This allows me to stay in touch with the office, avoid the bulging email inbox when I return and still have fun while away on holiday.  I think my wife prefers this middle ground and I hope that those who think that I need to learn to 'get a life' can at least understand my point of view.
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Saturday, 21 September 2013

Rational procrastination

I have my aunty and uncle coming over this week. This involves converting our two craft/office/dens into two bedrooms.   Its nice to have them over but clearing the rooms is a bit of a hassle.

I am procrastinating nerd style.  I have split the day into 3 hour iterations and used the free version of rational team concert to plan epics and stories to plan the work that needs to be done.

I have story pointed the work so I can see my velocity.  Its like an over engineered task list but I love it!  My wife won't ... She just wants the work done :(

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Monday, 29 April 2013

Connecting a kindle to a linux machine

I have a 50mb pdf that I want to read on my kindle.  I cannot use the email to whispersync bridge that amazon provide as the 50mb attachment is too large.

I tried to connect the kindle to my linux laptop and apart from the kindle charging there was no recognition in KDE that I had plugged a device in.  A quick google later discovered that the kindle uses the MTP protocol rather than Mass Storage Device Class protocol like most other USB devices.  Installing MTP support is easy:

sudo apt-get install mtpfs

Plugging in the kindle now gets KDE all excited and allows me to view the content.

Except after unmounting the kindle I couldn't see the PDF on the menu screen.  I re-attached my kindle to the computer and could see the file still there, so why didn't the kindle like it.  The file I copied was called:

10_PRINT_121114.pdf

After renaming it to:

Print Code.pdf

It started to show on the kindle screen.  All I can think of is that the kindle doesn't like files that either start with a numeric or have a '_' character in their names.  After some more renaming I can conclude:
The kindle doesn't like underscore characters in file names.  I ended up just changing the "_" to a " " and everything works fine now.

For those interested the book I am copying to the kindle is called:

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

From 10print.org.  This book tells the story of computer code in society and culture through the lens of a single line of C64 basic code.


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