Could McAfee (and Firefox) kill spam?

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Today I received the most convincing phishing email yet to hit my inbox, to the extent that it inspired enough doubt in my mind that I clicked on one of the links (making sure my security software was up to date first, just in case!).

Why was I fooled? For one, it actually had my name in the email, and for another we as a magazine have been focusing on eBay for the last month or two as part of the investigative cover feature that adorns the current issue (eBay exposed). Could it be some sort of malicious attack from an eBay devotee, a paranoid part of my mind wondered?

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Help, somebody’s stolen my company!

Wednesday, September 17th, 2008

The online world is a strange, wonderful and unsafe place. In this week alone, I’ve received two emails detailing abuse of the PC Pro Recommended logo on websites: one by a company called innoIT, the other for a product titled WebWatcher (I won’t give them the dignity of a web link, for obvious reasons).

The implication, of course, is that we’ve recommended their products. In one case, that we awarded them the title of Software of the Year 2007. And an innocent browser may be fooled – both sites look professional, with good design and a truckload of commendations.

Except, of course, that they’re commendations about an entirely different company. In the case of innoIT, the page of “genuine” quotes from customers actually bears a stunning similarity to those on the wholly reputable site from PC Specialist – which has actually earned any awards it displays.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Colleagues from our sister site IT Pro were shocked to see a site with a not too dissimilar URL that had pretty much lifted the site wholesale, not even bothering to change the name of the staff who were writing the stories.

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