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Security Category – Posts relating to online security, spam, and phishing. Also posts related to black hat SEO techniques.

Malware Stats for Irish Web Hosting Companies

Posted in: Security by Richard Hearne on August 25, 2009

If these figures are representative of actual levels of malware infestation on Irish hosting networks then many, many Irish webmasters need to take extreme counter measures. In fact, perhaps the hosting companies themselves may need to review how they protect their infrastructure and the sites they host.

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Serious SQL Injection Vulnerability

Posted in: Security by Richard Hearne on April 28, 2008

Massive SQL injection exploit in the wild – if you run IIS and MS SQL you need to know about this as it is already infecting Irish sites.

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Golden Spiders Best Spammer Award Goes To…

Posted in: Security by Richard Hearne on December 20, 2007

Irish Web Awards have been beaten black and blue of late. But when the organisers of Ireland’s most prestigious web awards get caught spamming people…

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Technorati Wiki

Posted in: Blogs,Security by Richard Hearne on July 31, 2007

Quick funny about Technorati’s developer wiki getting spammed to death…

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Euro Business Guide Scamming Again

Posted in: Security by Richard Hearne on June 26, 2007

Euro Business Guide have been spamming and scamming for many years now. They are at it again.

Will they ever be shut down for their continuous attempts to scam people?

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Unison.ie Cloaking – Will They Be Banned From Google?

Posted in: Search Engine Optimisation,Security by Richard Hearne on March 23, 2007

If you cloak you run the risk of being banned from Google.

Apparently no one told Unison.ie (Irish Independent).

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Ireland .ie ccTLD Safest In The World

Posted in: Domains,Security by Richard Hearne on March 17, 2007

A recent report from McAfee Site Advisor ranks Ireland’s .ie ccTLD as the second safest TLD in the world.

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A Dose Full of Comment Spam, Long Copy Referrer Pages & SEO Tools – What Do YOU Think?

Posted in: Blogs,Keywords,Security,SEO by Richard Hearne on February 26, 2007

It’s a fact of life that spammers wouldn’t be in business if they weren’t making a dollar. Another fact of life is that very often SEO and spamming live very closely.

This is a post about some particularly well-known SEO tools that were pushed through comment spam left on my blog. A mini-rant? Yes, and a look at the effectiveness of ‘long copy’ pages to sell products.

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Forresters Fund For Children – Vardis Scam Warning

Posted in: Security by Richard Hearne on February 14, 2007

If this bunch call you take up as much of their time as you can. Go and stick the kettle on.

While they’re wasting their time on you you’ll be saving the poor next guy’s money.

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I Sense Some Hackers Sniffing About

Posted in: Security by Richard Hearne on February 8, 2007

Strange Google search referrals can often point to some less than friendly attention.

I wonder what this guy is up to?

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Hacker Threatens Digg.com, Targeting SEO-Related Sites

Posted in: Blogs,General,Security by Richard Hearne on January 16, 2007

After taking down GreyWolf’s blog, a hacker threatens some of the biggest webmaster-related sites on the Internet. Digg.com included on the threat list.

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How Safe are Search Results?

Posted in: Search Engines,Security,Statistics by Richard Hearne on December 14, 2006

New report from McAfee SiteAdvisor on study comparing the safety risks of the sites listed in the top results for 1,500 search queries.

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Spammers Target Moscow Children’s Hospital – savechilds.net Nasty Xmas Scam

Posted in: General,Security by Richard Hearne on December 7, 2006

How low will they go?

Spammers target Moscow Children’s Hospital with slick charity website and copious amounts of spam asking to ‘HELP SAVE THE CHILDREN!’.

NASTY

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If You’re Going To Steal Someone’s Design…

Posted in: CSS,Security by Richard Hearne on December 6, 2006

…you had better not leave blatently obvious tracks :D

[WARNING: not workplace safe]

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Dublin Might be Ready for Vista, But is Microsoft?

Posted in: Browsers,Marketing,Security,Technology by Richard Hearne on December 5, 2006

ready for a new day?

Er, um, well, maybe. I’m not so sure Microsoft was though.

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Spammers Crack Me Up

Posted in: Blogs,Security by Richard Hearne on December 1, 2006

Sometimes spammers can put a smile on your face.

For me today is one of those days :mrgreen:

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More problems for MSN Live!

Posted in: Google,Search Engine Optimisation,Search Engines,Security by Richard Hearne on November 21, 2006

Unofficial MSN Live! page removal tool. What’s the big deal with that?

Well it’s not only your own pages that can be removed. This is a terrible, terrible hole in MSN’s algorithm.

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Does Google Know Your MSN & Y! Searches?

Posted in: Browsers,Google,JavaScript,Search Engines,Security by Richard Hearne on November 17, 2006

Very interesting find by SEO by the SEA. It appears that your browser is sharing your search history with all and sundry.

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Ever wonder Who Really Does Send You All That SPAM?

Posted in: General,Security by Richard Hearne on November 16, 2006

Ever wondered who actually does send you all that spam every day?

Meet the culprits.

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Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 Critical Bug

Posted in: General,Security by Richard Hearne on November 13, 2006

It appears that there may be a critical bug in the latest version 1.5.0.8 of Mozilla Thunderbird.

This bug could result in the permanent lose of data.

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Euro Business Guide Spam and Scam Warning

Posted in: General,Security by Richard Hearne on November 10, 2006

Beware the Euro Business Directory spam and scam emails.

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Did Someone Say That Internet Scams Were Becoming More Sophisticated

Posted in: Browsers,General,Security,Technology by Richard Hearne on November 1, 2006

Using some reverse psychology to sell your phishing scam. Now if you could just get a decent English speaking copywriter you’ll be emptying those PermanentTSB accounts in no time.

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How To Block IE7 in Windows Update (if you’re not too late!)

Posted in: Browsers,General,Security by Richard Hearne on July 27, 2006

How to block Windows Update from automatically installing Internet Explorer 7.

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Keeping your PC safe

Posted in: General,Security by Richard Hearne on July 19, 2006

I recently had to investigate an issue with a client’s website reported by a customer who was unable to use the website’s navigation….. Guess what? In 2006 they were still using Internet Explorer 5.0….. Here’s an outline of some of the practices and software available that will help keep your PC safe and clean.

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