Image courtesy: Canadian Veggie

What do you think about a software engineer? Most probably you might be thinking that a software engineer is highly paid person and living a rich and enjoying life. But actually the truth is very different form that. I’m confident on saying that as I’m a software engineer myself. You might not believe what I explain in the following paragraphs of this post. But if you ask it from a software engineer, he or she will definitely give the same answer.

It is true that a software engineer is a highly paid person compared to other professionals in the same level in any country. But apart from the money he or she earns, it is a very small amount of time that a software engineer has for fun, be with loved ones, go for a vacation etc. A software engineer is like a robot who is working at least 10 to 12 hours per day. He or she doesn’t even have a time to have a good meal. Most often they are working with a huge mental pressure and stress. Software engineers are the best handlers of mental pressure and stress. They are very good with technical stuff but most of them are poor in general life stuff (I’m good with both by the way :-)). I just want to prove that from the letter added below.

This letter was published in the blog http://rakesh.in/2006/11/20/love-of-a-software-engineer/ . The blog author says that this is a true love letter written by one of his friend. I believe that this is a true love letter. So have a look at it and see how it proves my idea mentioned above.

Dearest $love,

I woke up in the morning to find every bit in my body waiting to be with you. It has been a very long wait for today. Although my heart has only your image, my brain has split itself into many threads each executing only your command.

I remember the first day we met. Our hearts reached consensus without any external memory. I was a dangling pointer containing your address but no ownership over you. As I tried to deference the location, I crashed. There were not one but many clients trying to connect to you. But this did not deter me. I relentlessly tried to reach you. My messages to you were sent through different routers but they were all prevented from reaching you. All my SYN packets were dropped. When finally I decided to close my connection, I received your ACK. The very thought of being preempted made my heart bloom like the heat generated by a million processors all in busy-wait. When you saw me you realized that I was not a spurious host. I was a trusted source as I was linearly separable from the rest.

But when our class separation decreased I saw more distinct features. However, I could neither decode your enciphered smile nor track your mosaiced lips. Your gaze brought me to your frontal view nullifying my external parameters. I stared at you as thousands of thoughts enqued in my memory waiting to be dequeued. No amount of data mining could have extracted the three simple words that you said to me then. Within no time, all my thoughts automatically dequeued. Those evergreen images registered in my mind instantly even though infinite amount of images would have been impossible to reconstruct the scene. It is on this day last year that we first met. My memory of the day has never got corrupted and when I think about you I also think about the first time that I met you. Compile me into you and I promise to link with you. I will load both your sorrows and happinessequally all my life.

Always yours,
J.Lo

Actually a software engineer’s personal life is in a very dangerous situation if his loved ones can’t understand his or her mind set, his duties and responsibilities. You might be a wife, husband or a child of a software engineer. If so please try to understand the situation that software engineer lives with. A software engineer is always working hard to deliver a software release on time. Almost about 100% of them do that on time. To make this a success he or she will need to work hard by using the time planned to be with the loved ones or to enjoy. Most of the software engineers do this to make their loved ones happier. This is a must that anyone should understand who has a software engineer in his or her family.

Image courtesy: mathowie

The seed for this post was an email I received yesterday. I’m a verified PayPal user using a Gmail address for the login user email address in PayPal.com. I haven’t made any transaction through PayPal within last 3 or 4 months. But I received an email to my admin email address of this website (admin@best-internet-guide.com if you are willing to contact me and don’t know my email address :-)), informing me that I have made a payment to a person having a PayPal login email id digishopbay123@macintosh.com and asking to click a link to dispute the transaction. The email I received is given below.

From: service@intl.paypal.com [mailto:service@intl.paypal.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 4:50 PM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: Dispute Transaction

Dear PayPal Member,

This email confirms that you have sent an eBay payment of $47.75 USD to 

digishopbay123@macintosh.com for an eBay item. 

———————————–

Payment Details

———————————–

Amount: $38.75 USD

Transaction ID: KSUGS10992LAKLLX0909

Subject: Pioneer Cd Player 138

Note:

If you haven’t authorized this charge ,click the link below to dispute transaction 

and get full refund

Dispute transaction (Encrypted Link )

*SSL connection:

PayPal automatically encrypts your confidential information

in transit from your computer to ours using the Secure 

Sockets Layer protocol (SSL) with an encryption key length 

of 128-bits (the highest level commercially available)

———————————–

Item Information

———————————–

eBay User ID: multimediacdplr

—————————————————————-

Michael Rotenberg’s UNCONFIRMED Address

—————————————————————-

Michael Rotenberg

879 Markenson  St. 

76649 Iredell, TX

United States

Important Note: Michael Rotenberg has provided an Unconfirmed Address. If 

you are planning on shipping items to Michael Rotenberg, please check the 

Transaction Details page of this payment to find out whether you will 

be covered by the PayPal Seller Protection Policy. 

—————————————————————-

This payment was sent using your bank account. 

By using your bank account to send money, you just:

- Paid easily and securely

- Sent money faster than writing and mailing paper checks

- Paid instantly — your purchase won’t show up on bills at the end of 

the month. 

Thanks for using your bank account!

—————————————————————-

Thank you for using PayPal!

The PayPal Team

PayPal Email ID PP980

I was confused by hearing that I have made a payment which actually I didn’t. 

I was little curious and felt the scent of another probable scam. 

Therefore I thought to click that link and explore about this. 

The link which was asked to be clicked was having the URL given below.

http://mail.moraga.ca.us/users/manager/www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr.php?

cmd=_flow&SESSION=60-SQEaP_wWvhPmjul-DllC5OkU8dzThCY4mF5LzvZxGdMv

LhBSjCflCmUW&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1f02baca35d810c8ec1c019f6b4e949c

a66922b381ebbdcb08

It starts with http://mail.moraga.ca.us which is not http://www.paypal.com or a sub domain of paypal.com (Ex:http://dispute.paypal.com). My assumption was correct and I thought to explore further. When I clicked that link, I was taken to a webpage which I was stunned to see. It is added below.

It is identical to the real paypal.com home page except the URL. An average person will definitely click that link as he/she hasn’t made that transaction and visit this webpage. And he/she won’t notice that even though the home page is identical but the URL is different. Actually most of us don’t look at the URL of a familiar website. As I mentioned above, my real PayPal email (xxxxx@gmail.com, I will send you my real PayPal email address if you like to make a donation for me ), is not the same one which I received this email. Next part is the most interesting.

I wanted to check the mistakes these dangerous cheaters have done. Therefore I opened the real paypal.com webpage also. First I hit the submit button without entering the user email id or the password. A popup message box appeared as shown below.

Then I checked the same scenario with the real paypal.com website. It took me to another page and showed an error message which was embedded in the webpage (not a message box). The error message shown is given below.

You must enter both your email address and password. Please try again.

Then I hit the submit button only with the user email id. The fake PayPal website showed another error message box as shown below.

When I did that with real paypal.com, it gave the same error message mentioned above. If you noticed, you will find the title of the fake error message boxes have a URL http://mail.moraga.ca.us not something like http://dispute.paypal.com.

Then I added the email address a@a.com and password as 11111, which both are fakes. Surprisingly I was successfully verified and taken into another webpage which asks my credit card details to verify my payment and refund. That page is shown below.

If you don’t provide your real credentials to the real paypal.com, you will not be allowed to proceed further. My assumption was becoming a reality. I didn’t add my credit card details. Then I logged in to the real paypal.com with my real credentials and checked whether there are any pending dispute transactions. I couldn’t find any and I also checked all my transactions. But I couldn’t find any transaction related to that email address. I thought to do some research on this. But it didn’t take a long time as I found some information from the paypal.com site itself. They have mentioned about phishing emails and asked to report about those types of messages to an email address (spoof@paypal.com).

I forwarded the email received explaining everything as mentioned above. They replied me indicating that it is a phishing message. I have added the reply below.

—–Original Message—–
From: spoof@paypal.com [mailto:spoof@paypal.com]
Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 6:21 PM
To: Sampath Wijeratne
Subject: RE: Q510 - Thank you for your email to PayPal (KMM95898866V11853L0KM) :kf1

Thanks for taking an active role by reporting suspicious-looking emails.

The email you forwarded to us is a phishing email, and our security team

is working to disable it.

————————-

What is a phishing email?

————————-

Phishing emails attempt to steal your identity and will often ask you to

reveal your password or other personal or financial information. PayPal

will never ask for your password over the phone or in an email and will

always address you by your first and last name.

Take our Fight Phishing Challenge at

https://www.paypal.com/fightphishing to learn 5 things you should know

about phishing. You’ll also see what we’re doing to help fight fraud

every day.

————————-

You’ve made a difference.

————————-

Every email counts. By forwarding a suspicious-looking email to

spoof@paypal.com, you’ve helped keep yourself and others safe from

identity theft.

Thanks,

The PayPal Team

_______________________________________________________________________

This email is sent to you by the contracting entity to your User

Agreement, either PayPal Inc, PayPal Pte. Ltd or PayPal (Europe) S.à

r.l. & Cie, S.C.A. Société en Commandite par Actions, Registered Office:

5th Floor 22-24 Boulevard Royal L-2449, Luxembourg RCS Luxembourg B 118

349.

_______________________________________________________________________

I hope that everything is clear for you now. Millions of PayPal users might have been trapped into this when you are reading this post and they might have lost millions of Dollars. I thought that informing others by posting this post will at least save some of their money. If you don’t believe what I mentioned here, just visit that URL and enter a fake user email address and password. You will experience the same what I experienced. But NEVER add your credit card details. If you think that this will be interesting for your friends, click the topic of this post. Then you will be allowed to tell a friend about this by sending an email. I will come with another interesting topic like this with the next post.

Image courtesy: ToastyKen

I just received another email asking for help to transfer a big amount of money. I thought that it is very good to inform you about this email request. Here is the email that I received.

FROM THE DESK OF :MOHAMED ADAMS
AUDITING AND ACCOUNTING SECTION,
BANK OF AFRICA(BOA),
OUAGADOUGOU BURKINA-FASO,WEST AFRICA.

Private E-mail:(mohamed_adams200@yahoo.fr )

(PLEASE SEND ALL INFORMATION BY EMAIL FOR THE SECRET OF THE TRANSITIONS / THE BANK INFORMATION’S PHONE NUMBER - 0022676634733)
( CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS)

.Dear Friend,

This message might meet you in utmost surprise, however,it’s just my urgent need for foreign partner that made me to contact you for this transaction. I am a banker by profession from Burkina faso in west Africa and currently holding the post of Director Auditing and Accounting unit of the bank.I have the opportunity transferring the left over funds ($5.5million) of one of my bank clients who died along with his entire family on 31ST October 1999 in a plane crash.

You can confirm the genuine of the deceased death by clicking on this web site http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/859479.stm
Hence,i am inviting you for a business deal where this money can be shared between us in the ratio of 60/30 while 10% will be mapped out for expenses.If you agree to my business proposal.further details of the transfer will be forwarded to you as soon as i receive your return mail and phone call. have a great day.

With Best Regard.

MR MOHAMED ADAMS

Image courtesy: Ben Lawson

World Wide Web (www) and the search engines have changed the whole world I guess. These two have changed lifestyles of many people around the world. Actually these two have participated for the development of the world business and improvement of life style of many people. I won’t say that it doesn’t have bad effects. But comparably these two have been more helpful.

From now on I will call World Wide Web as www. In the infant stage of the www, it has basically informative and study oriented. But with the unbelievable rapid expansion of www, it has become the world’s most powerful and best business medium. Money transactions are done by trillions of Dollars per day and it is continuously increasing. Search engines have become the main information provider for many needs like educational, business and entertainment. Google has the most popularity on information based search. Google has developed complex search techniques using more complex algorithms to show the most suitable web pages for a searcher.

With the higher user interactions and visits, the internet has become a major advertising and marketing medium. Businesses make profits with internet advertising and webmasters like me earn an income by displaying ads :-). The internet and search engines have made many people rich. They have a very powerful way of attracting people and businesses.

This post is a short one compared to others. I wanted to express my ideas on the internet and search engines. In the next post I will explain you about another interesting thing in the internet, the parts of a search engine.

Image courtesy: Erling Steen

If you have read my previous posts on SEO, you might remember that I mentioned somewhere that we can’t optimize a webpage 100%. Even if we can do that, it won’t be a successful effort as the search engines don’t like fully optimized web pages. They always try to find the webpage which satisfies maximum of the searcher’s requirements, NOT the best optimized page. In this post I will explain you about the mistakes that you must avoid when doing SEO.

If your website page title and <H1> header has the same word phrase exactly, all the links to that page in other web pages of your website and links to that page from other websites contains the same word phrase used in the Page title description, the search engine bots will identify that you have done SEO more than required. They will degrade your search results and the frequency of crawling will be reduced. You have to make sure that you don’t do this mistake.

There is another concept called “Avoiding poison words”. Poison words are a set of words that search engines don’t like to see in a web page which have been used for SEO purposes. For examples, words like “link exchange”, “add URL”, “Forum”, “Guest book” or “link partners” which are commonly used in link building. If you want to use these words, make sure that you use other words for this. I hope that you can find many other words or phrases as the English language has many . Then you can avoid the bad reaction of search engines for poison words.

Google is more interested on improving their search system to facilitate informative search while Yahoo is more interested in business search. You have to consider this also when doing SEO according to the niche of your website.

You must always try to make a natural appearing website with SEO techniques used, rather than a highly optimized one. If your website can provide valuable information that people like, they will definitely link you back. By doing this you can build a good brand for your website and which will ultimately improve your ROI (Return on Investment). What I believe most is that, as long as your website appears natural, informative, original and useful, you will find new visitors and loyal customers. If you do SEO more than needed and copy others work, you will lose everything after some time.

I hope that you gained something from this post. In the next post, I will explain you about the www and search engines.