Life as I find it

I got this email from a friend.

ICICI bank’s net banking has a duplicate site as details given below. Please be careful while using ICICI net banking.
ICICI Bank Duplicate site-be careful

—–ICICI Bank Duplicate site —-

Genuine Site

Hi All,
An important piece of information.
Surprising both the sites have secured SSL from Verisign !!!!

beware !!
This is one of the worst phishing scam ever seen.
Here are the both the URLs, they are same, except there is a space (%20) at the end of the phishing URL.

The wrong one
https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/BANKAWAY?Action.RetUser.Init.001=Y&AppSignonBankId=ICI&AppType=corporate&abrdPrf=N%20
Actual ICICI Site
https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/BANKAWAY?Action.RetUser.Init.001=Y&AppSignonBankId=ICI&AppType=corporate&abrdPrf=N

Actually, that is not the thing. If you look at the images carefully, you will see that the ICICI url is icicibank.co.in while the fraud url in the image is icici-infinitysupport.com <—- Do NOT login here with your real ICICI details.

I checked out the url and it now seems to belong to an expired hosting in any case, but I bet the scam is not dead, but simply moved to a fresh url.

Beware.

I seem to be on a learning swing. Just back from the Group Relations Conference in Bangalore, and as I headed to my email, I saw that Cisco certification has a possibility for a review to be written. So I headed over to their site to take a look. No surprise so far.

What I found there was a relatively newish site with an eye for quality. This I admire. Further exploration led me to the learning center where the first article to cath my eye was one about soft-skills in IT managers. NOW, this is what I appreciate in an educational institution whether online or physical.

Just the last week, on an induction programme for young IT professionals in a leading organization in Mumbai, we had talked about how important it is to forget the competition orientation of education and learn to collaborate and achieve practical functionality.

The unfortunate fact of life is that people want to know what you know, and your own claim of competence is not an adequate measure in their eyes. So unless you are a mighty famous professional, it is important to have an idea of where your skills lie, build on them and get them officially acknowledged to certain standards to make them more visible and credible to those employers who have no clue of where your talents lie.

We had spoken of different ways to accredit and improve on this competence. In my opinion as both a consultant and an active webmaster, it is important to not just keep learning and updating our knowledge, but also to be able to apply it in a practical and functional way. One way of doing this is to step out of your comfort zone and take a risk to test your knowledge and get a stamp of acknowledgment.

The sorrow of much education today is that it doesn’t account for the human factor, which is what actually makes things work. To find a site that talks about soft skills while encouraging the certifications in various subjects makes me happy to be.

The online world is a good place to unfurl wings and chase development and growth in our chosen careers. This site is a useful tool for those.

The certifications themselves are well thought out and useful. In a world of competence, it is getting increasingly important to have skills verified and attested, which is exactly what this site helps you accomplish. Rather than duplicate the contents of that site to tell you everything about it, I invite you to actually experience it and perhaps you may want to share how you found it here.

I got this email:

Dear Administrator,

We inform you that your account is about to expire. It is strongly recommended to update it immediately. Update form is located here. However, failure to confirm your records may result in account suspension.

Confidential: Please be advised that the information contained in this email message, including all attached documents or files, is privileged and confidential and is intended only for the use of the individual or individuals addressed. Any other use, dissemination, distribution or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. This is the automated message. Please don’t reply. You tell me.

Talk of spam….. i don’t even know if I need to talk about this, except that it is sad that in this online world, it is so easy to defraus (or attempt to do so).

I had never heard of the company that sent me the email, forget buying something that needs updated subscriptions. Obviously a case of phishing or some get-rich-quick-illegally kind of thing.

I researched this message to see what experiences others had had and came across:

The write of this blog, some Ritesh Roshan has published it on his blog!!!

The description of this blog says:

“THIS BLOG IS CREATED TO EXPRESS THE FEELING & CURRENT RESEARCHES OF
SCIENCES. THESE EXPRESSION LEADS IN THE SPREAD OF KNOWLEDGE ABOUT
SCIENCE. THESE KNOWLEDGES HELP IN DIFERENT SCIENTIFIC DISCUSSION.
FURTHER, PRAYING FOR EVERY PERSONS WHO CLICK FOR MY PERSONAL BLOG AND
THOSE WHO DIDN’T CLICKED THIS FOR ANY REASON. YOUR’S FRIEND RITESH
ROSHAN”

Some exploration led me to:

For a moment, I thought that this was some student from Patna running a scam. Then I thought it must be some student who had been convinced to pass on a scam as a genuine message.

Then I looked at all the posts in the blog. The posts list looks like my spam box. All sex spam and scam. Yet, the description didn’t sound spammy.

Now I am wondering what happens when a spammer gers someones “email to blog” ID and runs it through a regular spam bot without the benifit of spam filters and stuff a normal email account would have.

And there are other people like this. Lazy to hunt for links at the moment, but there are plenty who create and abandon blogs and get careless with stuff like logins and blogging email IDs

For me, this post highlights two major concerns:

• What does it do to a person’s reputation if a spammer is running sex and scams in his name on his blog and what can be done to prevent it
• How are these scams still operating in a world of computerized banking and tracking of fraud?

Might be worthwhile making a preventative measures kind of post about this later.

Fly like an eagle to the sea
Fly like an eagle let my spirit carry me!

I just love this song. A friend told me about her ebay shop and when I visited it, this is the song I wanted painted. To my mind, if there is any one song that inspires a visual, this is it.

Take a look whether you buy an artwork or not, come and tell me what song YOU would like painted.

A most interesting weekend. Raka had gone to do his ALHP with ISABS. I thought that after a week of sensitivity training kind of stuff, he might appreciate the opportunity to find some peace before returning to the bustle of life.

So, I went to Modi Resort on the evening of the 5th which was the party night for their event. I knew over half the community there, and was made very welcome and enjoyed the opportunity to connect with people I knew. We danced for a looooong time.

I spent the next day lazing around, and finally, when Raka was free from the event, we went to a friend’s bungalow near Neral, at a place called Keki Baug, which is full of well maintained bungalow plots for people to relax in. This place belongs to Harsha Joshi, a friend of a friend of ours called Raghu. Actually, Raghu stays there more than Harsha.

Raghu is this nature lover, who once was a business partner with Harsha in some electrical business, which is now Prolite Autoglow. Raghu is famous with all the women, because he is an amazing cook, a bachelor with no intentions of marriage and an amazingly caring heart. Raghu often keeps an eye on this place (and enjoys it) for Harsha.

Harsha is the guy heading Prolite Autoglow, the head of a joint family of fourteen members in Mumbai in todays day and age, a guy whose circle of loved ones expands with each person he comes across.

So, we went there for a spot of peace and quiet and romance before heading to the chatter of the city. It was fabulous.

The house itself is in a well maintained lawn on a slope, with a stream like fountain with a bridge across it. Very picturesque and peaceful. At the foot of the property, there is the backwater from a dam and the season meant that they vally is absolutely beautiful……

What’s even more beautiful is the people. Harsh and family bring “open door policy” a whole new meaning. An example would be that Raka had never met them before, and a day after we arrived, they arrived with some friends from abroad expecting and empty house, and we all had a great time together when they found us there. How many people can bring special guests home to find people they don’t know settled happily and be genuinely happy to find them enjoying the space?

We felt that it was our home too, and indeed it reflected in all we did, from caring for the place to planning future visits…..

More than the land and the home, it is this inviting nature that had us feeling so…. healed. In a world where people are so focused on owning their properties that they forget to enjoy them, Harsha’s attitude enriches all it touches.

We ate pakodas to celebrate the rain and spent a most enjoyable evening with Roxanne joining us for a while. Roxanne is a story in herself. You shant there and do nothing and she happens to you. She tells you about things, asks stuff, and answers herself too…. an animal lover and the manager for the property, Roxanne is one interesting person to meet. May be I’ll write about her separately.