Output Stream of Consciousness

Hey, there are scammers out there! If you got taken by one, then you're obviously someone we want to talk to: Attention, After proper and several investigations and research at Western Union and MoneyGram Office, we found your name in Western… more »

I've had it - I've just had it.The skeptical community has always had its ups and downs, but of late, many corners of the skeptical community have turned taking offense into an art form.One phrase that is often lauded by skeptics, including me, i… more »

You know those lovely scam e-mails promising you some great portion of millions of dollars from some dying or dismissed general or administrator if only you would help get it out of the country... just by providing one more payment for this and that?… more »

When trying to remote in to your machine, there are few things more aggravating than having it lead you through the motions, only to have a giant "A device attached to the system is not functioning" with a giant OK button. You don't get to argue with… more »

I have been very happy about the collective realization of e-mail software that automatically loading images puts you at risk for more spam simply by having tailored image tags expose to the spammer the fact that you read the e-mail.Online web mail h… more »

The comment spam was really picking up this season: 10, 20, 30 a day. I looked at adding my own field to the comment posting, but unlike the code for the forums (mwForum), with the blogging software, it seems comparatively hard to figure out how to code… more »

I must admit, a few months ago, we were bandying about the idea of changing our phone number. Why? The incessant barrage of telemarketers and scammers was getting to be too much. They outpaced our actual calls from friends and family by about a 4:1… more »

We got a call from a person wanting to buy a Jeep from us a couple of days back. That seemed pretty odd, but hey, wrong numbers happen. Then it kept happening. No huge influx, but 3-4 calls per day. I was home for one today, and decided to ask them… more »

A hearty thank you to the folks who do my hosting for catching this. A hacker or script kiddie managed to upload a somewhat nasty-looking package into my cgi-bin directory. I haven't thoroughly investigated the code yet, but from the looks of it, the… more »

Not content with letting me in on my European lottery winnings, or being a company representative, or helping ousted generals smuggle their money out of foreign countries, they have now outdone themselves with THE DEATH THREAT. Full text and very slig… more »

Just poking a quick heads-up here, since this particular scam isn't being caught by some anti-phishing filters. It's entitled "PayPal Resolution Center - Remove Account Limitations", and it points here. You get the typical bullshit that phishers use t… more »

Online IQ tests are ever so much fun, especially when you do well in them, especially after someone issues a challenge. Such was the case with the popular IQ Test on Facebook. Nevertheless, there was one question I didn't like - I've taken many such t… more »

I wish I had an original cite for this bit of Javascript that my wife found posted in a Fark forum, but it's fantastic fun, so I'm posting about it regardless. To operate it, you copy the entire paragraph below, navigate to a web page (Fark works pret… more »

Here's the text of the scam: Royal Bank of Canada Dear customer, Due to the recent upgrade of our servers, we have issued this warning message. It has come to our attention that some of our customers no longer have access to their banking… more »

Okay, maybe you have encountered this, maybe you haven't, but if you try going off and listening to a RealPlayer sound clip on a web site in Firefox... say, for example, of Mitch Hedberg, you might often get it coming up with a dialog asking you to open… more »