Sunday, March 11, 2018

Beware of Phishing scams

In the last month I have been getting a large number of scam text messages telling me that there is a problem with my craigslist account, or my bank account, or that I have a text telling me that I have a message on Facebook, with a link that looks like Facebook, but isn't. The link looks like:


This scam is trying to get me me to give away my login name and password. The way you know it is a scam is to look at the domain name, which is the part before the ".com" or ".net" or ".info", which shows that the link is not from Facebook, or your bank, or whatever.

I can't think of a reason why anyone would need to click on a link in a text message. If your bank has a problem with your account, chances are they will send you an email. However, these kinds of phishing scams happen in emails too, and sometimes they are harder to spot in emails. What I do with an email is look at the who the sender is, which should be the same as the service, like "facebook.com". Even with these you have to be careful that it doesn't say something like "facebook.com.scammer.com".

I remember around 2004 I feel for a scam in an email, which was ransomware. I should have known better, but it is easy to slip up. It locked up my computer and then offered to sell me a "virus checker" to fix the problem. I took my computer to a repair shop instead.

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Tuesday, March 6, 2018

20% of people in federal prisons are illegal aliens

The Department of Justice's Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has an operational process for maintaining data regarding foreign-born inmates in its custody. On a quarterly basis, BOP supplies this information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE, in turn, analyzes that information to determine the immigration status of each inmate and provides that information back to BOP.

Out of the 185,507 inmates in BOP custody, 39,455 (21 percent) were reported by BOP as foreign-born. Further details regarding these 39,455 foreign-born inmates are as follows:

20,240 (51 percent) were unauthorized aliens who are subject to a final order of removal;

14,979 (38 percent) remain under ICE investigation;

 2,374 (6 percent) were unlawfully present and now in removal proceedings;
 
1,852 (less than 5 percent) were lawfully present aliens
​.​

Monday, March 5, 2018

one-party autocracy

​"​
There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.
​"​


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/opinion/09friedman.html

On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 2:00 PM, John Coffey wrote:
>
> I was trying to find a related article where Rush Limbaugh quoted the author as praising China for being a dictatorship. 
>
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/opinion/trump-china-trade.html

CNN ATTACKS PJW!

Trump Lies. China Thrives.

I was trying to find a related article where Rush Limbaugh quoted the author as praising China for being a dictatorship.  I couldn't find the article.






Youtube censorship

Re: Learned a new word

Larry,

Seems to me that there is a continuum, from a very oppressive society that tries to regiment all behavior, to an anarchist or nihilistic one where people lack any sense of purpose.

In my view, society should regulate and encourage behavior that is respectful to the rights of others.   By this, I mean we should teach children about civil liberties and respecting freedom.

As a logical extension of this, I also believe in courtesy.  

Since we do not share the same religious beliefs, I assume that we would disagree on what is moral and what is not.  I draw the line at respecting the rights of others.

​One of the many reasons I do not believe in anarchy is that there has to be some standard way of defining, for example, what is property ownership and what rights are.​

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On Mon, Mar 5, 2018 at 9:36 AM, utahtrout  wrote:

Anomie



From this article describing social anomie...





If Disney did the Prequels... [Star Wars]