A Little Freeware Keno

I was looking for some keno games for my wife and thought I'd share with you what I found. There's quite a few out there of course. I'm no keno expert, however if anyone is, she is. So I'm gonna let her pick the best. And the winner is Mike's Freeware. There's single and multi-card versions. And quite a few to choose from. Not only are the prices very reasonable, the 4-card keno (pictured above) is only $4.44, there are playable demos that you can download. Still not interested, did I mention that there are several completely free versions. If you care for keno at all, these are worth checking out.

If there are any keno games out there that you know about, please let us know in the comments below.

2 More Phishing Scams

Here's a couple more phishing scams I came across today. The first one is another paypal scam. Here's a screen capture from my gmail account. As you can see by the big red box warning you that this is a scam. That was added by gmail and obviously isn't in the original e-mail.

The second one is supposed to be from Wells Fargo. It tells you that you have to update your information and that you will only have limited access until you do so.

As always, never respond or click on any links in e-mails that ask you to update any banking or personnel information

FCC Says No To Comcast Port Blocking

As you know, I'm not one of those bloggers who looks for news stories, writes a couple lines about it and then gives you a link to the original story. I don't have anything against those types of blogs. It's just that there is more than enough of them. Once in a while I will pass on a news story to you, if I feel it's important enough. Recently there has been a couple and this is one of them.

If you haven't followed this story, here is what has been going on. When you use your computer on the internet, it communicates through ports. The ports are like channels that are used for certain types of data. For example port 21 is used for ftp, port 80 is used for websites, and it goes on and on. There are certain ports that are typically used for p2p or file sharing traffic and torrents. One could argue that torrents and p2p programs are used for illegally sharing software, music and movies. While this may have been true in the beginning, it is no longer the case. Many people and companies are using p2p and torrents for legal file transfers. There's lots of linux distributions, video blogs, and even the BBC is using it for legal distribution of media.

Apparently, Comcast decided that they would cut down their traffic by blocking ports that are commonly used by p2p and torrents. Comcast also realized that their customers would be pretty upset when they found out that they were paying $60+ a month and didn't have access to the entire internet. So what did Comcast do in the wake of tens to hundreds of thousands of irate customers calling them to find out why they all the sudden couldn't use p2p or torrents? They did what any honest company would do, they lied. Comcast told customers that they weren't doing it. If you called Comcast to find out what the problem is, they denied it had anything to do with them. When a company the size of Comcast tries to lie to the public about something like this, it isn't long before people working for said company come forward and let the cat out of the bag. Which is exactly what happened. This got the FCC interested.

After Comcast got caught trying to deceive it's customers the FCC started looking into it. So when a public hearing was held at Harvard, Comcast payed people off the street to fill seats. This way, when people who actually cared about what was going down, came to the hearing, they couldn't get in because the seats were already filled.

Today, the head of the Federal Communications Commission announced that Comcast, who is the largest Cable company in the nation, violated federal guidelines when it blocked and degraded Web traffic. This is a real victory to consumers. Finally, the FCC is standing up for the consumers and not just big business.

For more details here's a couple different links.
Wired

PCMag

GigaOm

Google AdSense Phishing

Looks like the phishermen are at it again. There must be plenty of phish in the internet sea. However, you don't have to be one of the phish attracted by their lures.

Phishing is what they call those e-mails that attempt to trick you into giving up personal information, usually financial, which is then used to steal your identity and rape your bank account and or credit cards.

The latest one, I have seen, is using some old tricks but with new bait. The e-mail appears to come from Google's Adsense program. It warns you that you will not receive any more payments, unless you update your information. Which you can do with the link provided in said e-mail.

To the average user, everything might look ok at first glance. However, if you try to reply to the e-mail, it will bounce back. If you click on the Google AdSense link that is provided, you will most likely end up at a domain that has google and adsense in it. But on closer inspection you will see there is more to the domain, like a .tw or other domain. Don't be fooled by how the page looks like the real thing.

So if you get one of these e-mails, don't click on it. And if you do have a Google Adsense or any other account, that you have received an e-mail informing you that it needs updating, never click on the link in the e-mail. It's very easy to forge a link in any e-mail and is common in phishing scams. Type the address directly into your browser, or use google or some other search engine to find it for you.

Stay tuned for an article on how to spot phishing scams.

State of this Blog

What's going on here? There's good news and some not so good news. The good news is, I am going to continue adding to this blog. I will also finish the previous articles that I started. Since I now have the NewEgg link at the bottom, and if want to help support this blog I encourage you to click on the "Where I buy everything" before you make any purchase from NewEgg, I am able to see what kind of traffic I am getting here. I got to admit, I was pleasantly surprised. There's more people reading this than I thought. Due to the lack of comments and with how irregular I have been posting here, I figured I was just going through the motions for myself and a few other people. However I am getting quite a few views a day and a definite spike when I do post something new. I'm not expecting to reach thousands of people a day, but there are some of you out there who are reading this and that is encouraging. I will start updating more often.

Now for the not so good news. My wife's mother has become gravely ill and bed ridden. Rather than put her in a rest home to be forgotten about, we are taking care of her at her home. This requires round the clock attention. Which leaves me little time to write the in depth articles that I wanted to. So for the time being, I will only post small bits of news and information. When I have more time, I will get back to the larger in depth articles I had started.