Happenings

Let me catch you up on what has been happening with the NC Grissom's.

Friday night Michelle and I went to a Duke Women's basketball game with the Girl Scouts. It was not much of a game. Duke just annihilated Holy Cross. It was fun non the less.

Well, we are still waiting for the shower glass to be installed. It is supposed to be today. We shall see. In the mean time I bought a shower door for the kids bathroom and installed it. We are all currently sharing that shower. And the shower curtain is less than effective when it comes to keeping water off the floor. Also it gets a little claustrophobic in there. The new glass doors provide a little more elbow room and also allow you to see out and light to get in. That is what I did most of Saturday after noon and evening. Of course I had to buy some new tools to install the doors. I needed a hack saw. Mine somehow got misplaced. I also needed a metal cutoff blade for my miter saw. I would still be there doing it if I had to cut those pieces by hand.

Tyler tried out for the NC regional concert band last Saturday. He rode with friend to Greensboro for the auditions. He did not make it. He took it in stride.

Sunday Karen Tyler Melodie and I played a round of Disc Golf. Tyler won as usual. The rest of the day was spent helping Howard and Nancy move a Cable TV jack from one side of the room to the other. I installed the jack in the room a couple of years ago but they bought new furniture and re-arranged so they needed to move the jack. Other than that the day was spent cleaning and fixing small things around the house.

When Monday came I felt like I needed to go to work to relax from the busy weekend.

Not too much happening at work. Bob and Michelle went back to school this week after the holiday break. Tyler and Kyle received the second quarter report cards. Tyler's was exceptional. 5 A's and 1 B. Kyle's was good too. He was really struggling with english the first part of this quarter. In fact he had an F on his mid terms. Well he manages to bring that grade up to a Solid C. The rest of his grades were 3 A's and 2 B's (I think). I am very proud of how hard the kids are working in school this year. Particuarly Tyler.

Karen's Bowling team finished out the first half of the season in first place, edging out the next team by something like 3 pins after yesterdays games.

This weekend Jordan HS is hosting the NC East regional State Jazz band auditions. This is Tylers first year in jazz band so he didn't feel he was prepared to try out this year. But hosting the event requires a bunch of work. Tyler Karen Michelle and I will be providing various duties throughout the day. Karen and I are in charge of concessions. I think Tyler will be an escort or something of the sort. Michelle will help out where she can.

Well gotta do some productive work. Check back later for the next update.



Sunday I re-adjusted the shower doors and cleaned up the tub. then spent the

Phishing for data

I don't know about you but I receive a BUNCH of junk e-mail or SPAM. Nortel's filters keep much of the spam from getting to my Nortel e-mail account but I receive anywhere from 12 -30 spam a day in my roadrunner account. I receive a good amount in my Yahoo account as well but I really only use that for just that purpose, I give that e-mail address when I suspect an on-line vendor or service will sell my account to others. As a result I get more SPAM there but Yahoo's spam filters catch most of that and put it in the junk mail folder.

Anyway, forgetting all of the on-line Pharmacies, male enhancement, and mortgage company spam, recently I have been receiving some pretty scary things. The e-mail appear to be from companies like E-bay, or PayPal, CitiBank or other reputable companies, some of which I really have done business with. The emails have legitimate corporate logos and official sounding text usually informing me of a problem with my account that needs immediate attention. There is always a link to their web site to follow in order to address what ever issue being reported. To read the link text it indeed looks like it is going to take you to E-Bay or PayPal's web site. BUT if you look at the links actual URL address (the web page it will take you to) it points either to a web sight with a similar name OR some obscure web address.

These e-mails are what is called Phishing. The senders are phishing for personal data, credit card information, Account numbers, account passwords etc. The web sights will look very official and as you to log in. They might ask you to update your credit card information etc. If you give it to them... Well look for a trip to Mexico or Paris to show up on your next credit card bill.

I like to think I am smart enough not to fall for such a scam. So far I don't think I have jeopardized any sensitive personal information. But as these thieves become more and more clever It will become more and more difficult to distinguish the real from the fake, the good from the bad.

What can you do about it?

• Be suspect of ANY e-mail that comes into your mail box regardless who it is from. A cyber-thief can 'spoof' any e-mail address easily.
• If an e-mail contains a web-link, specially to some sort of financial or commerce site, do not click on it. If you are interested in the product or service, the cut and past the URL into your browser's address field or just type it in manually. Verify that when you actually open the web page that the final address matches or at least is similar to the one pasted or typed in. Sometimes Legitimate web sites redirect their web pages so this will not always be a red flag but if the resulting web address is ubiquitous then be-ware.
• If you receive a spoofed e-mail phishing for data. The best thing to do is to find REAL web page for the company being spoofed and they usually will have an 'online security' link that will provide an e-mail address that you can forward the offending e-mail to. This will help the company track down the offending parties. I have sent 3 so far this week.
  
• Finally if you are buying something online, try and find a phone number. If possible order the item's over the phone and give your credit card that way as opposed to filling in a web form. I don't do this always, specially if it is a company I have dealt with in the past like Barns and Noble etc. But after hearing some of the horror stories from co-workers and friends of stolen credit card numbers etc. I have started being MUCH more careful.

My geek lecture for the week.

Have a good week.


An Addendum to this post:
As I was writing this blog I received another spoofed e-mail. This time from "Citizens Bank"

Here is an example of the type of e-mail I am talking about:

Dear valued Citizens® Bank member,

Due to concerns, for the safety and integrity of the online banking community we have issued the following warning message.

It has come to our attention that your Citizens® account information needs to be updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and renew your records you will not run into any future problems with the online service. However, failure to confirm your records may result in your account suspension.

Once you have confirmed your account records your internet banking service will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

To confirm your bank account records please click here.

Thank you for your time,
Citizens® Financial Group.

	Privacy | Security © 2005 Citizens Financial Group. All rights reserved. Terms of Use | Site Map

Now if you look closely at the URL in the "CLICK HERE" line it points to 'http://61.220.7736/CitizensBank/OnlineBanking/index.html'

This URL even look reasonable exept for the 61.220.7736 in the address.

All of the other link and images etc come directly from the citizen bank web site for instance the
logo at the top of the page comes from the URL 'http://www.citizensbank.com/img/header/cb_logo.gif' Even the web page style sheet comes directly from the legitimate Citizens Bank web site.

See what I mean. It is getting more and more difficult to determine the real from the fake. For me, this one was easy because I have no accounts with Citizen's Bank. Others may not be so lucky

Back to work :-(

Well it had to end sometime. Nortel let me off early Christmas eve. I have been off since. It's gonna be REAL tough getting up tomorrow at 6:40, driving the kids to school and then myself to work.

So in retrospect the highlights of the vacation...

Tyler received a gamed named 'Puerto Rico' It was one of the most popular of the gifts this year. The first game we played took probably 4 hours. The last game we played, last night, took only around 1.5 hours. You can follow the link above to read more.

Another popular gift was a playstation game called 'Katamari' . Even Karen got into it. The game basically involves rolling a ball around that picks stuff up as it goes. It gets bigger and bigger as it picks stuff up. The bigger it gets the bigger the stuff you can pick up. It sounds simple but it is kinda addicting.

You should have seen Michelle's face when she opened up her saxophone. Technically it was not a Christmas present. We just gave it to her Christmas morning. After all we bought the boys all their instruments. But the look on her face was priceless.

Kyle and I received black leather jackets. Pretty snazzy. Now we have to be careful if Karen, Nancy, Howard, Kyle and I walk down the street someone might mistake us for a Durham Gang.

We had our carpet installed Wednesday. It looks good. Unfortunately it is not the color we ordered. After it was down it just looked well... a little goldish. We did not want gold we wanted more... coffee or toupe. It does not look bad. It actually matches all the tile we just put in. Anyway we went to Lowes and they agreed it was not really very close to the colored ordered. They are going to talk it up with the carpet mill and see what they say. There are a few little issues with the installation, some slightly visible seams etc. so the installers are coming back to take care of the 'punch list'.

Karen and I spent new years eve stripping ... the wallpaper off the bathroom wall. We finished painting today. We are still waiting for the glass but I THINK after that we are done.

Bob has been home a couple of week... I think. We have not seen much of him between work and his friends.

Well that's about it for now.