The “Find your stalkers” Facebook scam

Today I received a strange Facebook message. Supposedly one of my friends (an old classmate of mine in Germany) had posted on my wall, but the posting was in English. Now this German friend, unless he happens to forward me an English joke, always writes to me in German. There were several of these wall posts (please DO NOT CLICK on those links!):

23 February at 17:35:
According to http://goo.gl/6hr4J you’re my top stalker. Creep.

23 February at 17:35:
Secret tool shows who stalks your pics http://tinyurl.com/procreeper

23 February at 17:35:
Hey! This is awesome
Insane! Awesome tool to see who looks at your pics >> http://goo.gl/XsUqi

23 February at 17:35:
Hey! This is awesome
New FB tool shows who stalks your profile– http://goo.gl/FTx5T

23 February at 17:43:
Hey, whats happening?
Secret tool shows who stalks your pics http://goo.gl/DxvMD

So I contacted my friend and asked him if it was really him who’d written that or if his facebook account had been hacked. He replied that he wasn’t him.

I investigated the links, which use the Google URL shortening service to hide the
target URL:

tinyurl.com/procreeper => procreeper.info
goo.gl/6hr4J => theprochecker.info/?h
goo.gl/DxvMD => myprochecker.info/?i
goo.gl/FTx5T => procheckers.info/?e
goo.gl/XsUqi => theprochecker.info/?b

Domains procreeper.info, myprochecker.info, procheckers.info and theprochecker.info are all hosted at the same IP address (98.126.9.210, Krypt Technologies) and use the same name servers (ns1.imgurnot.com, ns2.imgurnot.com). The registrant is hidden behind a WHOIS proxy. The reverse DNS name of the host is “wowchatroulette.info“.

Here are other domains that appear connected to these domains (this is probably just the tip of the iceberg):

  • fb-creeper.info
  • fb-creeper.info
  • fbcheckers.info
  • fbcheckersnow.info
  • fbcreeper.info
  • fbcreeper.info
  • fbcreeperonline.info
  • fbcreeperonline.info
  • fbcreepers.info
  • fbcreepers.info
  • fbisfun.info
  • fbpromo.info
  • myfbcheckers.info
  • myprocreeper.info
  • newfbcheckers.info
  • omgfbisfun.info
  • procreep.info
  • procreeper.info
  • procreeperonline.info
  • procreepers.info
  • profilechecker.info
  • profileseek.info
  • profilespy.info
  • profileview.info
  • profileviewers.info
  • thefbcheckers.info
  • thefbcreeper.info
  • thefbcreeper.info

These sites have messages such as:

Find YOUR Stalkers

Find out who spends excessive time with your photos, reading your old wall posts, and looking at your friends list.

This is a scam designed to trick people into running a script on Facebook that will have a message sent to all their Facebook friends and to get them to also visit such websites. Anti-malware site TrendMicro warns:

Malware type : Spyware
Destructive : No
Platform : Windows 2000, XP, Server 2003
Encrypted : Yes
In the wild : Yes

This malware uses social engineering methods to lure users into performing certain actions that may, directly or indirectly, cause malicious routines to be performed. Specifically, it poses as a Facebook stalker finder to be able to infect Facebook user accounts

(…)

This malware may be hosted on websites that run a malicious script when accessed by unsuspecting users.

It poses as a legitimate Facebook application. It propagates by sending IMs and status messages with links to websites where it can be downloaded.

This spyware executes when a user accesses certain websites where it is hosted.

See also this TrendMicro blog post on the subject.

If you have received wall posts like that in the name of a friend, click on the X to the right of the posts to delete them and alert your friend! Do not click on any of the links in the malicious posts.

Outlook Express missing margins while printing

I recently had problems printing out emails in Outlook Express, the mail client I use on Microsoft Windows. Usually Outlook Express will leave about 2 cm blank between the edge of the paper and the start of the text. Instead it started so far to the left that the first character was cut off.

Outlook Express has no “Page Setup” option in its File menu to configure margins. So how come the margins had changed and how could I fix it? As it turned out, Outlook Express considers itself a part of Internet Explorer, components of which it shares for rendering text and other purposes.

The reason I lost the margin was that when I printed my nengajō (Japanese New Year’s Cards) for 2011 two months ago I had tweaked the IE printing margins to the minimum. Since I usually use Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome as a browser, I had not noticed I had left IE with those settings — until I came to print emails in Outlook Express, that is.

The fix was easy: Launch Internet Exporer, go to File => Page Setup => Margins and set Left / Right / Top / Bottom back to 0.75 if using inches or the equivalent in centimetres if using metric. Voila, OE will print with the standard margins again.

SoftBank Mobile “Home Antenna FT” – an update

About two weeks ago I fixed the wireless black hole that was my new home by installing SoftBank Mobile’s “Home Antenna FT” femtocell adapter. It provides indoors mobile phone reception for my family, connecting the small mobile phone cell to SoftBank’s network via my FLET’S Hikari Next broadband connection.

Yesterday I noticed that the antenna had stopped working and my Android had no reception. It had been shipped to us with a “Hikari BB Unit” broadband router.

When I first installed the Home Antenna FT I found that I could get it working by simply hooking it up on the LAN side of my existing broadband router. No luck this time. Wherever I connected it inside the LAN its status LED turned red and I didn’t give me any signal. As far as I knew nothing had changed in my LAN.

After some fruitless poking around and a half hour phone call to SoftBank’s hotline I had little alternative but starting from scratch, following the supplied Home Antenna FT setup instructions precisely. This involved connecting the following to an Ethernet hub (I used the four port hub on the LAN side of a spare router with its WAN side disconnected, but any cheap 4-port hub will do):

  • one of the Ethernet ports on the FTTH ONU
  • the WAN port of the “Hikari BB Unit” broadband router
  • a PC (I used an ancient notebook running Windows 2000)

Then I popped the CD-ROM that came with the FLET’S ONU into the latop’s drive and followed the SoftBank configuration steps. It involved installing some software for PPPoE, which Windows theoretically doesn’t really need, rebooting and then accessing a FLET’S website and entering a CAF ID and access key.

Not sure why, but after that the “Internet connection” LED of the Hikari BB Unit turned green and the Home Antenna FT started providing a signal after it was hooked up one of the LAN ports of the Hikari BB Unit. I could then remove the hub and laptop, directly hooking up the WAN port of the BB Unit to the FLET’S ONU and everything still worked.

Out of curiosity I once moved the Home Antenna FT back to my other router, but still no joy: It only worked with the Hikari BB Unit. So I moved it back there and it will stay there.

Today I am an Egyptian

Since the exciting events in Tunisia stirred activists and the masses in Egypt into action, I have been following the news with anticipation. Finally 82 year old dictator Hosni Mubarak has ceded power, opening the door to a more democratic future for over 80 million Egyptians.

At times Mubarak reminded me of a stubborn elderly relative refusing to give up driving even after multiple accidents. The amounts of money stolen by him and his family during his rule, even if it were just a fraction of the figures reported, are shocking. Hundreds lost their lives in recent weeks and thousands were arrested and tortured over many years.

Echoes of 1989

I felt reminded of the events of 1989 in central and eastern Europe, when in a matter of months and weeks regime after regime collapsed that once seemed cast in concrete for decades to come.

When the regimes in Eastern Europe fell it took months for free elections for a representative parliament and government and for comprehensive reforms of the apparatus of government. A lot of hard work still lies ahead and it will take patience and a lot of skill to solve the problems left behind by decades of violent oppression and mismanagement.

The Islamist bogeyman

Despite some understandable anxiety by some, Egypt 2011 is not Iran 1979. The Egyptian revolution was the work of a broad coalition of unionists, leftists, students, young people and other secular forces as well as Islamists. The Muslim Brotherhood was never at the forefront. This was a revolution about democracy and social justice, not Islamism.

Those stoking the fear of an Islamist takeover in Cairo do so for political purposes, but it is up to the Egyptians to decide how to run their country now. I hope they will do it as responsibly and maturely as they have shown themselves in the past weeks.

Democrats need not fear democracy

Israel, until now recognized by Freedom House as the only fully free country in the Middle East, should feel uplifted, not panicked at the prospect of living next door to another democracy. History has proven that in the long term democracies do make for much safer neighbours than dictatorships. Egyptians deserve freedom and justice as much as Israelis do, or Palestinians for that matter.

Supporting a brutal kleptocrat was never going to a stable basis for peace, because peace needs justice. My hope is that one day a future government of Israel will offer an outstretched hand towards a democratic Egypt and recognize it as a much better partner to do business with than Mubarak could ever be, and (I know this will take time) even as a friend.

Speech by US president Barack Obama on 11 February 2011

Good afternoon, everybody. There are very few moments in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking place. This is one of those moments. This is one of those times. The people of Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard, and Egypt will never be the same.

By stepping down, President Mubarak responded to the Egyptian people’s hunger for change. But this is not the end of Egypt’s transition. It’s a beginning. I’m sure there will be difficult days ahead, and many questions remain unanswered. But I am confident that the people of Egypt can find the answers, and do so peacefully, constructively, and in the spirit of unity that has defined these last few weeks. For Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy will carry the day.

The military has served patriotically and responsibly as a caretaker to the state, and will now have to ensure a transition that is credible in the eyes of the Egyptian people. That means protecting the rights of Egypt’s citizens, lifting the emergency law, revising the constitution and other laws to make this change irreversible, and laying out a clear path to elections that are fair and free. Above all, this transition must bring all of Egypt’s voices to the table. For the spirit of peaceful protest and perseverance that the Egyptian people have shown can serve as a powerful wind at the back of this change.

The United States will continue to be a friend and partner to Egypt. We stand ready to provide whatever assistance is necessary — and asked for — to pursue a credible transition to a democracy. I’m also confident that the same ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that the young people of Egypt have shown in recent days can be harnessed to create new opportunity — jobs and businesses that allow the extraordinary potential of this generation to take flight. And I know that a democratic Egypt can advance its role of responsible leadership not only in the region but around the world.

Egypt has played a pivotal role in human history for over 6,000 years. But over the last few weeks, the wheel of history turned at a blinding pace as the Egyptian people demanded their universal rights.

We saw mothers and fathers carrying their children on their shoulders to show them what true freedom might look like.

We saw a young Egyptian say, “For the first time in my life, I really count. My voice is heard. Even though I’m only one person, this is the way real democracy works.”

We saw protesters chant “Selmiyya, selmiyya” — “We are peaceful” — again and again.

We saw a military that would not fire bullets at the people they were sworn to protect.

And we saw doctors and nurses rushing into the streets to care for those who were wounded, volunteers checking protesters to ensure that they were unarmed.

We saw people of faith praying together and chanting – “Muslims, Christians, We are one.” And though we know that the strains between faiths still divide too many in this world and no single event will close that chasm immediately, these scenes remind us that we need not be defined by our differences. We can be defined by the common humanity that we share.

And above all, we saw a new generation emerge — a generation that uses their own creativity and talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears; a government that is responsive to their boundless aspirations. One Egyptian put it simply: Most people have discovered in the last few days … that they are worth something, and this cannot be taken away from them anymore, ever.

This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied. Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.

And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history — echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice.

As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, “There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.” Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.

Today belongs to the people of Egypt, and the American people are moved by these scenes in Cairo and across Egypt because of who we are as a people and the kind of world that we want our children to grow up in.

The word Tahrir means liberation. It is a word that speaks to that something in our souls that cries out for freedom. And forevermore it will remind us of the Egyptian people — of what they did, of the things that they stood for, and how they changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.

Thank you.

SoftBank “Home Antenna FT” (FEMTO AP-SR1-1) fixes weak mobile phone reception

We have four smartphones in our household, three Apple iPhones and one HTC Android phone, but for the last six months I basically couldn’t make calls indoors. This has now changed because of “Home Antenna FT”, a so called 3G femtocell.

Home Antenna FT access point

When we moved into our newly built home in Setagaya-ku, Tokyo half a year ago we discovered we had virtually no cell phone reception. Most of the time all four phones were out of signal range. If I left my phone leaning against the window pane in my office then I usually had enough of a signal to have it ring, but I couldn’t pick it up from there without immediately cutting the connection. I would then have to walk out into the street, wait to see some bars indicating a signal and then return the call to whoever had tried to reach me.

After several weeks I found out that SoftBank Mobile, our mobile provider offers a small device called “Home Antenna FT” for free to customers with connection problems. It acts as a low power mobile phone tower covering only the inside of one home, connecting to the SoftBank Mobile network using a broadband connection such as DSL or Fibre To The Home (FTTH) . The device is called FEMTO AP-SR1-1 and is made by SerComm Corporation in Taiwan.

I applied for one in September, but then later was told it couldn’t be used with J:COM, my then cable internet provider. I would have to change to NTT FLET’S Hikari (FTTH) or Yahoo BB (DSL). So I bit the bullet and changed provider in December, only to find out later that J:COM had also concluded an agreement with SoftBank Mobile. I wouldn’t have had to change after all.

Another month and a half passed until a box was delivered by Takkyubin (parcel service), which contained a broadband access router for use with the femtocell access point, but no access point. I already have a router and didn’t really want to replace it, but according to the instructions the new router was supposed to be connected in parallel to any PC that was hooked to the NTT Flet’s Optical Network Unit (ONU). I left it sitting on the shelf for a week until this morning when another, smaller box arrived. It was the access point.

I first hooked up the WAN port of the SoftBank router to the FLET’S ONU and the single network port on the FEMTO AP-SR1-1 to a LAN port of the router as per the instructions. I turned off / turned back on the mobile phone to make it seek a fresh base station, but initially had no luck. So I moved the access point to my office and and connected it to a small ethernet switch on the LAN side of my router. A little while later I had full signal strength on my mobile. Yeah! 🙂

I then moved the access point to a central location in my house, where I have with a WLAN access point with internal 4 port switch that is connected to the router using category 6 LAN cable and connected it to one of those 4 ports. Now the entire house is covered by the 3G signal. The unneeded SoftBank router went back into its cardboard box.

All in all, once I received the hardware it was a fairly painless experience.

Some people are concerned about cellphone radiation and having a micro version of “cell phone tower” right in the living room may be worrying to them, but in fact it’s a benign alternative to not having one: The further the base station, the more power the mobile phone has to emit to connect to it. By keeping the base station inside the home the mobile never never has to jack up the signal strength to levels that would penetrate exterior walls. If I do walk out of the front door, all bars disappear and only reappear when I stand far enough out in the street, indicating the device uses minimal power and only just covers the interior of our home.