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I am seeing quite a number of these today in Facebook (see screen capture). First, it appears as some of my friends status message, and subsequently these friends start spamming my wall with the message. And when I checked back with these friends what’s so interesting about this site, they first expressed surprise and ignorance, before they disavowed of having done so. In fact, in all cases, they are adamant they didn’t log-on to Facebook to send those messages. (i.e. the status will show it was update 30 minutes ago, but this friend hasn’t even log in to Facebook for days!) |
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Out of curiosity, I clicked on the URL in Firefox and it led me to a site selling some kind of dried plant and I suspect it’s probably some kind of weed like marijuana. However, please refrain from visiting the site (especially with IE), not because of what it is touting, but a simple precaution against any possible ActiveX ‘niceties’ and malware that might be hiding behind it. Anyway, I am not very sure if those friends’ accounts were hacked to send these messages. The one friend I managed to convince to check out his Facebook account, said his password was not changed and he could still access his Facebook account. For good measure, he changed his password and I see that those messages have stopped. But for some of the others, I see an increasing number of walls of mutual friends getting spammed with this message. I could think of one possibility how something else can gain access to your password for whatever nefarious purposes. A scam which says it could reveal those blocked you on MSN Live Messenger has been making its rounds on the net previously and many have been fooled. Once a person tried checking on who has blocked them through this site, those on their contact list will receive a message touting this site, or links to dubious and questionable sites at random times. I suspect that if one has used the same ID – usually one’s Hotmail / Microsoft Live Mail email address – and password to sign up to Facebook, and have not changed their password since, then that same information could now be exploited by the same scammers. Whatever the case is, I would suggest that if you have been using a simple alpha-numeric password to login to any kind of online services, to change it and increase it’s complexity. A password like Passw0rd is definitely not good enough. You might want to consider a complex password like P@s5w0Rd+ instead. Of course, the most important thing is to remember not to sign on to some completely unrelated site on the wild Internet with a password belonging to another service, simply because the site appears to offer you something in return. In short, if www.kennasai.com says it could reveal to you who has blocked or deleted you on MSN Messenger, it’s simply common sense to ask just how www.kennasai.com is going to obtain that information from one of Microsoft’s servers. |
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Day: May 16, 2008
Donation Appeal
I am overwhelmed when I looked at all the photos coming out of the disaster zone in Sichuan, China on the newspapers. My only comfort was that the Chinese government has responded with utmost urgency, and put aside her pride to accept help from those who have offered.
China is indeed blessed to have a Prime Minister like Wen Jiabao, who is more or less directly involved in the rescue operations. Even though the fact that he has to be there personally to whip the local cadres into shape reflects badly on the command and control aspects of the Chinese government, the people will remember what is done right, and thus re-affirm the Communist Party’s right to govern the nation.
At the same time, Myanmar’s government response to her own cyclone disaster is appalling. It is a pity the cyclone did not drown the bastards in the junta first, as they have demonstrated they are completely unworthy to govern the people. (Much like a certain deputy of this country who not only can’t sing, and the arschloch who says China beer promoters help retained jobs for Singaporeans, are unworthy of their positions!)
It further disgusts me when I read that leaders lea-duhs in the junta put their names on the boxes of material given as aid to the people of Myanmar. This shameless attempt to fool the people into being grateful to them shows they appear to be more concern with politics instead of the well being of the people. That can be further seen in how much harder they are pushing their stupid little sham of a referendum while they continue to refuse help from the other countries.
Anyway, I am not really helping anyone by wacking away on my keyboard. The main objective of this post is not so much to rant, but rather to increase awareness on one of the avenues you can use to provide monetary aid to those affected.
The following link was found on the Singapore Red Cross website, a reputable non-old NKF kind of charity organisation. It contains instructions on how you can donate to help those affected and you will be guided to choose between giving to Myanmar or China.
My personal opinion is that no matter how you feel about charity organizations or the political conditions of the countries affected, do not forget giving money is the least we can do to help. It is just way better than doing nothing, and personally I would prefer to go to China to dig people out of the ruins if I can.
One last thing: While I understand that it is your right and your prerogative to donate or not to donate, I would generally prefer you keep your reasons to yourself if you do not intend to give. It is unwise to present an image of selfishness and heartlessness apathy – even when you aren’t such a person – and even more so when the reasons are made available on the public domain so some irresponsible jerks can now use to justify their own lack of empathy.
My thanks to everyone who heed this call to donate.