Death of the (Reasonably) Intelligent E-mail Scammer.

It's been almost five years since I last took a serious (?) look at online scammers. In those days, I would contact a scammer that had sent an email to one of my accounts. As long time followers of this blog recall, I would answer a scammers email while posing as Lucy Ricardo, or Fred Sanford or Misty Meaner, to name just three of my on line characters.

It has been my experience that the intelligence of these Internet scammers has been over rated. None seemed too terribly bright to me. How someone could be taken in by some of these guys is beyond me.

Now, my opinion of the intelligence on line scammers has fallen even lower - I would not have thought that possible.

Pictured above is a screen shot of a recent phishing scam email I received in one of my Gmail accounts. The scammer wants his victims to believe the email comes from Google, but the email address of the sender is mbay.net - It would obvious to even the most Internet challenged that an email from Google would not come from some placed called mbay.net - an email from Google would come from an address with google.com in the name.

Duh.

Have the scammers become so stupid that they believe their potential victims are complete imbeciles?

This particular scammer - colonel6 - must really be a complete airhead; too stupid, in fact to make goofin' on him enjoyable.

Wuthering Heights

Charlotte Brontë's classic Jane Eyre  is one of those books that we're told we need to read but, somehow, neglect. I corrected that mistake by reading the novel last year.

This month, I wanted to correct another error on my part, by finally getting around to reading Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. I'm half-way through and I have to say that the novel is not at all like I expected. Frankly, I didn't know what to expect from the novel, but it is certainly creepier than I imagined it would be.

Of course, the novel is a classic and well worth my time, but no doubt about it,  Wuthering Heights. is the strangest novel I've come across in quite a long time.

To me, Kaffka's got nothing on Emily Brontë.

News From Nowhere

As I mentioned in an earlier post, after reading Edward Bellamy's dreadful Utopian novel, Looking Backward: 2000–1887, I started on a novel written in response to Bellamy, News from Nowhere by William Morris, in 1890.

The complete title is - News From Nowhere or An Epoch of Rest being some chapters from A Utopian Romance.

Like those in Bellamy's novel, the ideas in Morris' work may have been considered revolutionary in the 1890's, but I found both books to be boring in the extreme, condescending and pretentious. The fact that neither book has a interesting plot doesn't help.

By an act of insanity, Morris' novel has managed to make Harold Bloom's  The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. Insanity has to be the only reason that such a worthless piece of drivel should make a list of essential reading.

I don't considered myself to be better off having read News From Nowhere. At one time , I would have stopped reading any book as bad as this early on. I promised myself, however, that I would do my best to finish every book I start.

I should get a medal for having finished News From Nowhere.

Changes for the Old Website

For several years, I've owned the domain name dumaguetecity.net. For the first few years, I had the web hosting done by the same company that registers my domain name. However, when company A began charging too much for their web hosting, I changed over to company B for the hosting while keeping the registry with company A.

I recently received an email from company B letting me know that my current billing cycle would end March 15 - the dreadful Ides of March, no less. The price to renew was much more than I was willing to pay to continue having the hosting done by company B.

My original goal with this website was to try and make a few bucks with Affiliate ads and Google ad sense. For a couple of years, this was breaking even. I was getting enough revenue to, at least, pay my web hosting fee. Unfortunately, the web site has not brought in any money in quite a long time.

To make matters worse, my web design capabilities have not kept up with the upsurge in mobile web surfing. I was never able to get the hang of designing a site that was "mobile friendly".

I looked at the situation, and decided to cancel my hosting account with company B at the end of the current billing cycle and use Google's blogger.com (where this blog is located) to host the domain name as a "blog".

It's free....and free is good.

After setting up a new blog called dumaguetecitynet, I was instructed by Google to go to the domain registry site and change the DNS (CNAME) in order to redirect traffic from dumaguetecity.net to the blogger.com address.

Easier said than done.

I went onto company A's website and made the changes as given by Google. I was told changes could take 24 hours. After 36 hours, I began a live chat with a rep from company A. I was told that I'd have to contact company B to make the changes. I was to contact the hosting company not the company that registered the domain name.

After a couple of on line chats with Ron, the tech from company B, I was finally able to get everything up and running.

Now, when you go to dumaguetecity.net, you're led where I want you to go.

Fortunately, the website is now mobile friendly.

Upcoming Website Changes in the Works.

I have had difficulties with my website, www.dumaguetecity.net.

For the most part, I've been trying to design the website myself with my limited knowledge of html. Unfortunately, with the rise of mobile usage and the overall decline of desktop pc surfing, I've haven't done such a good job keeping up. Google has let me know in uncertain terms that the website is not mobile friendly.

It will be three years in March since I last renewed my account with a web hosting company and the agreement expires on March 15. I've decided that rather than renew the account, I will cancel my business relationship with Webhostingpad and use Google's blogspot site to host dumaguetecity.net from now on. I've been using a different company to keep my domain name registered. I'll continue to use that 2nd company.

Using the blogspot site with their themes, I'll be able to have the website both mobile and pc friendly, although I'll need to made a few adjustments on how I manage the pages. That will take some thought.