WordPress: Pingback Spam From Spammers and You!

I don’t really care much about pingbacks and trackbacks but I guess they have their usefullness to the blogging community. Its not just bloggers who use it, but spammers as well. They use this easy oppurtunity to get their site listed because Akismet won’t moderate pingbacks. You’ll need a seperate plugin just to block them completely. I do recommend using two plugins to combat two different types of pingback spam which we’ll go into detail below

Blocking Pingback Spam from Spammers!

The plugin I suggest using is Trackback Validation Plugin. Its pretty good and has been filling in the holes that even Spam Karma left behind. It places all pingbacks on moderation allowing you to not have to wake up each day worrying about how someone found your post interesting but they didn’t agree with parts of it.. ya right.. You can try out the Trackback Validation Plugin.

Examples of Pingback Spam include:

Thanks for the nice read, keep up the interesting posts…..

I can not agree with you in 100% regarding some thoughts, but you got good point of view…

May I use some of your content on my website?…

I Googled for something completely different, but found your page…and have to say thanks. nice read….

Man i just love your blog, keep the cool posts comin…..

Blocking Pingback Spam from You!

I am one of the bloggers who insist that pingbacks should only come from external sources, not your own blog. If you want to show related posts, you should instead use the related plugin. This isn’t really the point though, pingback spam from your own blog is irritating only because it automatically adds it self to the comments even when you just wanted to link to a previous entry. Since there is no internal option to disable yourself from sending pingbacks, you can instead use the no self pinback plugin.

So I hope you try those out because quite frankly I’m tired of this whole pingback mess.

Aim Buddy Updates Box Gone Missing?

Want to remove or delete Buddy Updates from AIM Buddy Info?
Click Here!

Usually, I consider this a bug but it has taken so long to get fixed that now I wonder if its actually a fix.

After upgrading from Aim 6.1 to Aim 6.5 the buddy updates box that shows when your away messages updated has gone missing. 

The buddy updates box now only shows for RSS feeds, Aim Share, and Aim Profiles. However, all update entries still show up at settings.aim.com, just not in the buddy info.

If you want something there to show up, just update your profile, add an rss feed, or even share a link, and the box will come back but only for those entries.

Note: If you add an Aim Share link, there is currently no way to remove it from listing until it expires and that can take a long time.

10 Things We Hate About AntiVirus Software

When it comes to antivirus software, I think programmers don’t realize they are unintentionally doing the same things they are trying to protect us from. They still produce pop ups and are hard to remove, it makes you wonder if these programs are viruses themselves. I did find that the majority of users hate their own AntiVirus software, and would gladly switch to another one if they weren’t so wary of the side effects. I know alot of you reading would chime in and say, they should use Grisoft or Avira, but this article is for us people with money, you know the ones who have jobs…

We’ll take a look at the Majors (Norton & Mcafee) and the Rookies (Kaspersky, F-Secure, Gri-Soft). More and more people are switching over to Kaspersky and F-Secure and I believe in the end they might become household names as soon as they start selling in Costco..

10. High Prices

If there’s anything that can deter you from buying any Antivirus Suite is its high price…

Product Name: Total Price/Amazon Price

Kaspersky Internet Security: $79.95/$49.99

Gri-Soft AVG Internet: Security $69.95/$54.99

Norton Internet Security: $69.99/51.25

Mcafee Internet Security: $69.99/$41.49

*F-Secure Internet Security: $59.90/47.92

I always say to myself, anything that costs more than a video game better be good. Its something we come to expect from software, and most of the time $49.99 seems to be the cap that most people would expect to pay. Keep in mind that these prices are for the 2008 internet security versions with up to 3 users. So its a good idea to retail below 49.99. F-secure was not listed on Amazon when this article was written, and its price is taken from its own website.

9. Toolbars And Junk

Aim Toolbar, Google Toolbar, Yahoo Toolbar, MSN Toolbar, Decline Decline Decline!!! I’m not sure why there is this big obsession over packaging your programs with toolbars. Maybe there aren’t much complaints about them, but everyone I’ve talked to just don’t know how the Fun Web Products Toolbar appeared on their browser. Its even worse when the program that is supposed to protect you from things like that, installs one anyway.

“The first thing you might notice is that is installs it’s own ‘Norton Toolbar’ into whatever browser you’re using. And it locks it in. Seriously, you cannot remove it without uninstalling Norton” ~Amazon Reviewer

8. Pop Up Ads!?

Previously when we bought any Internet Security Suite, some would come with a pop up ad blocker. Since the internet has changed and IE now has one built in there isn’t any need for all that anymore. But still (Mcafee! I’m talking about you) there is no point in having Pop Up Ads telling me to purchase some overpriced license renewal earlier in the year. These ads don’t come up often but periodically you’ll just see it there thinking your loaded and full of money!

7. Unnecessary Blocking

Blocking malicious websites might be a good idea for those of us who just stumble on them. But what happens when it starts blocking websites you know and love.

“One web site in particular (Home Shopping) will load OK…but if you go to the various topics (Jewlery, electronics etc.) it will not open them at all…and a blank screen is all you get…the only way to get those things to open is to COMPLETELY disable the Kaspersky program” ~Amazon Reviewer

6. Complicated and Hard to Find Settings!

You usually won’t see this problem in Norton and Mcafee, but as soon as you scurry away to the alternative antivirus software, they stop being nice and start being real! This is the Real World! F-Secure’s firewall really hates p2p programs by blocking every connection attempt. When I try adding some rules to the firewall, I feel like a complete idiot when its asking me about IPv6, UDP, and TCP. I only set those things up in my router. I never had to worry about that on Mcafee, but now I have to figure out what the hell they are talking about.  

“The worst thing is after I block a certain activity, there’s no way to go back and find out where to unblock it. Ok, if you are computer expert, I think you will figure out a way to unblock it. I’ve gone through help file, searched google, and forums for answers and still could not find the solutions.” ~ Amazon Reviewer

5. Constant Alert Pop Ups

You’ve seen those Mac commercials where PC has to allow or deny everytime something happens. Most people think Vista’s UAC is annoying, well why not add another layer on top of that when you install Norton, Kaspersky, and F-Secure. Norton doesn’t trust what your doing. Kaspersky wants to ask what muscle your going to use next, and F-Secure thinks everyone your inviting over is High Risk! I think Mcafee handles this somewhat well and tries to keep it to a minimum.

“…Apparently, this program has no brain. For example, I have the Live Search Toolbar installed in Outlook. It had to ask me if it was OK to run that dll file. In fact, each program that called up a process from a shared dll has to ask permission before it could run… ”

4. Tech Support

Tech Support should be the last and final straw for any problems you have. Just hope they are not outsourced, otherwise expect them not to help you since ”its not our fault.”

“I had to pay three dollars a minute to use the technical support telephone number. Of the seven minutes I was on that call, I was on hold for more than half the time (still being charged). When the technician finally emailed me instructions to resolve my technical issue, I quickly discovered he had sent me instructions for an issue completely unrelated to mine. In essence, I spent 21 dollars on hold music. ” ~Amazon Reviewer

3. Hard to Uninstall

Its always easy for spyware to install on your computer, but why is it soo hard to uninstall… hmm. In essence the same thing happens with Mcafee, Norton, and Kaspersky. Try removing them and you learn you’ll need an additional uninstaller to uninstall where the uninstaller left off…

“…you have to use an uninstaller from the Symantec web page, to guarantee that you remove its hidden installations that the uninstaller from the Add/Remove programs from the control panel will miss.” ~Amazon Reviewer

2.  Resource Hog

Nobody likes a hog, the ones who don’t play fair and doesn’t share. Mcafee, Windows Defender, Kaspersky, Norton, are all resource hogs. They come in, dump their tub o lard and take your precious time loading some obscure feature for whatever reason.

“Internet loading will be drastically crippled. Expect frequent system choppiness due to automatic downloading and background processes.” ~Amazon Reviewer

1. IT KILLS YOUR COMPUTER!!

It has happened to me, and many others. For some reason whether its our fault or not, the program just can’t take it anymore and boom, blue screens of death, constant crashing, and in my case, java just went up and left.  The last thing you want to do is call tech support, so off we go reinstalling Windows. I know the Mac user is laughing their butts off but you know your day will come soon! *SHAKE FIST*

“You’re better off with a virus than this POS. Two days after loading this tumor it was doing an update and froze my computer like a two week old penguin turd…Way too busy, not allowing you the use of your own computer. Had to run a recovery on my system” ~Amazon Reviewer

Aim 6.5.7.20 Released

Aim 6.5.7.20 was released this week, and features the ALL NEW… actually nothing really is new, its just bug fixes. It does add a new module called “Hot Searches” which recieved a lukewarm response from the beta testers. I think they didn’t care much for it, quite personally. There are some UI changes to the buddy info and thats about it. All skins on this site will be updated on the weekend, so check back when they are ready.

McLovin12Four on your AIM Buddy List

So who is McLovin12Four, and how did he get on your buddy list? McLovin12Four is another Official AIM Bot that advertises for the movie Superbad.

If your buddy list has the category “AIM Bots” you should see him on your buddy list today.

If you do not want to see AIM Bots on your buddy list, delete the category by doing the following.

1. Click to Highlight the Aim Bots Category.

2. Right Click and Press Delete

More Myspace Phishing Attempts with MyspaceTV

Click her Booty and Win Free Stolen Account!

We’ve seen this phishing attempt many times, but here is another one using MyspaceTV screenshots that can lure an unsuspecting victim to a phishing website that looks exactly like a login page.

When a user clicks on the image they are redirected to”myispaceverify” domain.

As such, we always recommend not to click on pictures and links sent through messages and comments.

This link was not caught by the Msplinks filter yet so this may prove that Msplinks takes a while to catch every comment or they figured out a way to bypass the filter, but lets not jump to any conclusions yet.

The hyperlink :

(http)myispaceverify(dot)com/index.cfmfuseaction=

login.process&MyToken-wed2c1crexf3-2af0-21-ac41-f7545c34f5c32.htm

Click for Larger

Use AIM in GMail

Today, Gmail released their first integration with AIM. You can sign into your screen name and it will display your most popular contacts. Gmail will automatically store all conversations so you’ll never lose any logs, it also supports friendly names. That’s all there is to it. Its not something spectacular but at least they did something.. and this took over a year to do.. Still there is no way to contact Gmail users using Aim 6.5, and there hasn’t been any news on the plan to completely integrate AIM with Gmail. In unrelated news, AOL plans to roll out a brand new update to their message board system. Almost daily, AOL’s message board system receives very critical responses about their lack of features and their use of annoying advertisements.