Many social-media games turning into scams

I can't get into Facebook. I do have an account, though I use it more to communicate with some of my friends. And I can't see spending a lot of time on it to play the games.

I have some friends who are seriously into the Facebook games and applications. Farmville, Bejeweled, YoVille, and Mafia Wars are real popular among the people I know. I can't be bothered with that stuff myself. I go on Facebook maybe long enough to check my messages, say hello to a few friends, and log off to check my Twitter account.

At first glance the Facebook games seem to be harmless fun. I understand you play many of them in levels; you clear the first level and move up to the bigger and better stuff -- much like the old-school Mario Brothers game or Dungeons & Dragons. So far, so good.

But TechCrunch has been working on a series of articles on the social-media games, and writer Michael Arrington smells a lot more scam than score.

With a lot of these games, there are two ways to hit another level: Earn it by playing well enough to clear the level you're on, or pull a George Steinbrenner and buy a new level. With real money. Your real money.

Already you can see this coming, if you're half perceptive. The game gets you hooked. It's like any other "progressive" type of game, and I can vouch for that. I've spent many hours trying to crack the combination on FreeCiv, an open-source version of Sid Meier's Civilization. Next I know the sun's coming up, my legs are frozen in one position, my left hand is all cramped up from pushing the mouse around, and my butt lost all feeling hours ago. So I can understand that.

But crank in the buy-ins and the special offers, especially if you're frustrated at the %$&#! game and your brain is fuzzed over from a marathon session, then things get real interesting.

On Oct. 31, Arrington wrote this:

... these games try to get people to pay cash for in game currency so they can level up faster and have a better overall experience. Which is fine. But for users who won’t pay cash, a wide variety of "offers" are available where they can get in-game currency in exchange for lead gen-type offers. Most of these offers are bad for consumers because it confusingly gets them to pay far more for in-game currency than if they just paid cash (there are notable exceptions, but the scammy stuff tends to crowd out the legitimate offers). And it’s also bad for legitimate advertisers. The reason why I call this an ecosystem is that it’s a self-reinforcing downward cycle. Users are tricked into these lead gen scams ...

Here's one scam, according to Arrington:

... users are offered in game currency in exchange for filling out an IQ survey. Four simple questions are asked. The answers are irrelevant. When the user gets to the last question they are told their results will be text messaged to them. They are asked to enter in their mobile phone number, and are texted a pin code to enter on the quiz. Once they’ve done that, they’ve just subscribed to a $9.99/month subscription. Tatto Media is the company at the very end of the line on most mobile scams, and they flow it up through Offerpal, SuperRewards and others to the game developers ... nothing in the offer says that the user will be billed $10/month forever for a useless service.

Had enough yet? Here's another:

Video Professor ... users are offered in game currency if they sign up to receive a free learning CD from Video Professor. The user is told they pay nothing except a $10 shipping charge. But the fine print, on a different page from checkout, tells them they are really getting a whole set of CDs and will be billed $189.95 unless they return them. Most users never return them because they don’t know about the extra charge. Woot. Again, sites like Offerpal and SuperRewards flow these offers through to game developers ...

Slashdot, one of my favorite sites for geeky news, says this about the TechCrunch articles:

... the system is rife with scams, and many game developers turn a blind-eye to them, much to the detriment of the players and the legitimate advertisers — not to mention the games that rightly disallow these offers and fall behind in profits. The article asserts that Facebook and MySpace themselves are complicit in this, failing to crack down on the abuses they see because they make so much money from advertising for the most popular games ...

If you play these online games -- or if you're thinking about it -- I highly recommend these three TechCrunch articles, all by Arrington:

Part One - Social Games: How The Big Three Make Millions

Part Two - Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell

Part Three - Two Companies That Said No To Social Media Scams

I'm getting awfully tired of doing these pieces on Internet scams. I'd rather do how-tos and reviews any old day. You think these scammers can give me enough of a break to pursue this? C'mon guys ... at least do it for my convenience?

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Internet reaches middle age

Although few had even heard of this Internet thing (then known as the "information superhighway" until the early or mid-1990s, it got its real start 40 years ago this week.

It was Oct. 29, 1969 when the first two nodes of ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California. And unless you were one of the guys on the inside, you really didn't know or care.

I was a bit of a late adopter. It was 1996 when I used a noisy modem to link into an Internet provider in a nearby city. My computer was an old Leading Edge XP, with an 8088 processor, Hercules graphics card, DOS 5, and 2400-bytes-per-second modem. I used Procomm to link up, and the text-only Lynx browser to surf.

This wasn't the first time I'd used a modem. By then I was an old hand at sending text files point to point over the phone lines. I worked for a newspaper in Kingman, Arizona at the time, and generated a lot of stories from my home office in Bullhead City, 40 miles away. I'd call the publisher, Matt, and tell him to set up the computer for incoming copy, give him five minutes, then send the stuff. Soon Matt would see my text streaming across his screen, a character at a time. One of my other reporters would send me his copy from his home office, I'd edit it from home, then send it to the home office the same way. I was even able to execute commands on my home computer (the Dos-driven PC) from the MacIntosh at work, using an old-school program called Telnet.

Once I got the knack of surfing the Internet, it became a bigger part of my life. And I remember telling my parents about my experiments. Dad was already good with computers -- we'd traded software for several years -- but he wasn't sure about this online thing. A curious toy, he concluded.

At the time, Netscape was the go-to browser before Internet Explorer nuked it in market share. There were rumors that you might be able to surf on the same infrastructure that your cable TV used, and much faster than dialup. Companies began building their own primitive Web sites, and ordinary people were cobbling together their own Web sites on GeoCities (which shut down a few days ago). It was a whole new world out there, the Wild Blue Yonder.

It's been 13 years since I fired up my first Web browser (Lynx, by the way, is still available and still text-only). But a lot has changed since then. Rather than write for print, my work shows up in the ether of the Internet and many of my readers are on the other side of the world.

I've developed friendships with people I'd never met, and who live in places I've never visited. I've discovered musicians I've never heard before and downloaded their music. I've downloaded entire a lot of software and quite a few operating systems -- and asked questions about the software online. I've communicated with a Linux developer in Australia and let him know how I was able to get his system to run on computers that even he wasn't sure could be done. I've debated many a subject online. I've set up the computer to download news from several hundred sources at a time.

I'm an experimenter, and can't leave stuff alone. Besides Netscape, I've used Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Seamonkey (which is what Mozilla has become), Opera, and Google Chrome. Firefox is my most-used browser now, but I notice Seamonkey is now in 2.0 and it deserves a look.

Instead of listening to a whining modem, I go straight wireless. I have about a half-dozen places where I go to do my work -- some indoors, some outside, and I'll unpack my netbook, hit a few buttons, and talk to the world. In fact, once I left dialup I had no earthly reason to even keep a landline -- a cell phone on my hip, wireless Internet close by, a second, Internet-based phone line through Google Voice, all my communications needs are met.

Even then, I'm a bit of a primitive. My cell phone merely makes calls and sends off text messages. It doesn't browse the Web. I can send short text messages to Twitter or this blog, even an email, but my single-function LG doesn't stack up to those iPhones or Crackberries that do everything.

When you consider the all-purpose cell phones, netbooks, laptops -- and I recently read about a pen that's really a computer -- you just may see desktop computers as another dying breed. Even hard drives may become a thing of the past, what with USB thumb drives and online file storage. Some of your netbooks work with just internal flash storage and USB drives, without a hard disk in sight.

The folks at UCLA and Menlo Park had no idea at the time what they'd started.

(Screenshot: The old text-based Lynx web browser, where I made my first forays on the Internet, is still around. It's shown here with Firefox 3.5.3.)

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You tell me: Remember your first time on line? Care to share? Use the comments section for your input.

Site outlines 10 ways to spot an Email scam

I've spent a bit of time looking at some of the nefarious things that can find themselves on your computer courtesy of the Internet. You can get bad programs, spyware, viruses, and some eerie email at the click of a mouse.

What with the speed and ease with which one can send off mass emails, the scammer has all the tools he needs to separate many people from their dollars. And you've probably seen a few of these messages showing up in your inbox -- maybe even a few this week.

From switched.com, here are 10 red flags that the email you've received is probably a scam:

Look for things like requests for personal information, lots of misspellings, clickable Web links, innocent-sounding surveys, that "hot tip" you don't remember requesting, unsolicited attachments, and you-must-act-now pitches.

From Switched:

If you see the phrases "verify your account," "you have won the lottery" or "if you don't respond within XX hours, your account will be closed," it's a scam – every time. Hit the delete button and don't look back.

This is one you should delete, kill, whatever you do with it.

It's a jungle out there. But then you already knew that.

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Facebook password-reset email carries a virus

Sheesh!

These writers of viruses and other nefarious code will stop at nothing to spread the love. But while you can see many viruses coming a mile away, I understand this one looks official.

This one, a Trojan horse dubbed Bredolab, comes dressed up as a "Password Reset Confirmation Email" from Facebook. In the email you click on the link to -- you think -- get your new password. That's when the fun -- if you can call it that -- starts. That link downloads system-destroying files, such as rogue "anti-spyware" programs that inject their own spyware, into your computer.

Considering some of the problems Facebook has been encountering -- partly from increased traffic and partly from its own recent redesign, this email almost sounds plausible.

I haven't seen this one myself; I got the details from Mashable! and MXLab.

According to MXLab, here's the body of the message:

Hey vguysville ,

Because of the measures taken to provide safety to our clients, your password has been changed.
You can find your new password in attached document.

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

Here's the drill. If you see something like this from Facebook, watch out. It's probably not from Facebook. Bear this in mind:

- If you didn't request a password change from Facebook, you have no reason to receive a reset confirmation. Don't bother opening it; dispose of it immediately.

Enjoy your computer, don't be skeered of the virus bogeyman, but be wary when you go online. Cool?

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Computer issues being resolved

I can say it now: The laptop is back among the living.

Most of my software is back up. I've knocked off most of my to-do list. I'm writing this column on it, and soon I will upload it and download email and news. I'm extremely pleased.

One of the things I noticed is that, with the new configuration, it's handling power better. I haven't checked to see if I'm getting any better battery life, as I tend to forget about things like time when I'm online. Gee, I could fly a passenger jet ...

But I have noticed that it's running much cooler when it's plugged in to the A/C adaptor. Seriously. It's not like I took its temperature (I'm not sure where to stick the thermometer), but I can tell the difference. I take that to mean the CPU isn't working as hard, a good thing.

From my master list, I still need to locate a program that will put the computer into sleep mode when I close the lid. My temporary operating system had that, so this shouldn't be difficult to find or install. From there, most of the work is either convenience or cosmetic -- like rebuilding my menus so they'd be a little more intuituve.

I still want to find an uncorrupted version of the Windows system file I blew out (hal.dll), but there's no rush there.

For the geekus extremis among us, here's a printout of some of the basics. If your eyes glaze over when someone mentions "CPU," feel free to skip over this part:

-Computer- Processor : Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60GHz Memory : 1022MB (267MB used) Operating System : Unknown distribution Date/Time : Tue 27 Oct 2009 01:31:22 PM GMT+5 -Display- Resolution : 1024x600 pixels OpenGL Renderer : Unknown X11 Vendor : The X.Org Foundation -Version- Kernel : Linux 2.6.29.3 (i686) Compiled : #1 Tue May 19 23:43:56 GMT-8 2009 C Library : GNU C Library version 2.9 (stable) -Current Session- Computer Name : epulsifer Desktop Environment : Unknown (Window Manager: Fluxbox) -Misc- Uptime : 17 hours, 5 minutes Load Average : 0.23, 0.15, 0.15

This "uptime" is interesting. Keep in mind, this is a laptop and I don't have that sleep-mode switch fixed, so it's been running, powered and plugged in, with the lid closed.

Just for yuks, I checked to see how long my desktop (which also runs on Linux) unit has been booted up without a restart:

7d 17:46

OK. I rebooted that computer a week ago. I usually only shut the desktop down when I'm experimenting with another computer (not enough power cords to go around), replacing a part, or moving the unit.

Just try doing that with Windows.

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(Pictured is a screenshot from the laptop. OK, you may not recognize a lot of this stuff if you're a Windows user. The interface -- Fluxbox -- is pretty minimal, but it stays out of my way.)

Resurrecting laptop took plain & fancy fixes

OK. I think I'm back up and running.

Was out of the loop for a few days; my main access to the Internet went south until I was able to fix it.

This laptop is my mobile workhorse. Although I do much of my writing on the home computer, it's strictly a standalone unit that doesn't conect to the web. To upload and download, I use my Acer netbook for all the dirty work.

The Acer was victimized by my tendency to experiment. I'm not even sure what I did. I jiggled when I should have joggled, and corrupted a couple of system files. Now, that computer is driven by Windows XP, which doesn't lend itself well to evil experiments. Anyway, when I boot up into Windows, an error message pops up letting me know just what I'd b0rked, and won't let me go any farther than that. A dead computer.

Thanks to some other experiments I'd run, the netbook wasn't dead in the water for very long. I have a few quick-and-dirty solutions that brought it back to the land of the living, but I'm not done yet. Working on a "final solution," but the duct tape and spit will work for now.

From quick-and-dirty land:

I have a Linux system installed on a 1-gigabyte thumb drive, and I set up the laptop's BIOS to look there first before booting anything else up (instructions are on the screen). I'm using a variant of Puppy Linux, which is great because it runs in memory. Once I'm booted up, I can pull the thumb drive and work without that thing hanging out of the computer. It's probably an OCD thing.

If you're a Linux user, you can set up any version to run with a program called Unetbootin. It's very cool. You grab the .iso image file of whatever Linux version from the Internet, install it to the thumb drive via Unetbootin, fire up the computer with the thumb drive installed, and you're running Linux. You'll be able to access the files on your hard drive as before. The only caveat is that, unless your version of Linux is designed to run completely in memory (such as Puppy Linux), you won't be able to remove the thumb drive without screwing things up.

On that USB drive, I have all the goodies I need -- wireless fixins, a Web browser, text editor and word processor, and a program to play mp3s while I work. I'm all set there, at least for now. And I have the same system installed on a smaller, 256-megabyte USB drive that stays in my cell phone case, so I have a backup.

That was my temporary fix, and it served me well. But it wasn't the final solution. The good news is that over the weekend I got much closer to something more permanent. A newer, more expandable version of Puppy Linux is now installed on my hard drive, and I can boot directly into it without using the thumb drive. Much cleaner, much more permanent.

One of the limitations of Puppy Linux is that its ability to install newer software is a little squirrelly. The developer, a nice Australian guy named Barry Kauler, built the system for speed and a small footprint, and many of the add-in programs had to be adapted for that system. But, through the "woof" project, one is able to import software from Ubuntu repositories or the Slackware-based .tgz format.

I know this means nothing to non-geeky types, but here's the upshot: Newer, better software. With the old Puppy Linux, I'm limited to version 2 of Firefox; now I'm able to grab the newer -- and in this case better -- version 3.5.

OK. Almost there. But something's still missing:

I'm a news junkie, and a big part of my blogging is my ability to capture all the news I need. Plus, I want something that would give me some flexibility. I want to be able to move all this news from my laptop to the desktop at home.

In short, I want a portable RSS reader that I can use online or offline.

For those who don't know about such things, an RSS reader is the world's greatest invention for news junkies such as myself. You subscribe to your feeds, download the news you want, and read it at your leisure. Most news websites and blogs -- including this one and The Column, Reloaded (which I highly recommend) -- allow you to subscribe; but some will just give the partial feed, a paragraph or two, while others give the full text and graphics.

My own feeds include a handful of news outlets -- Yahoo! News, CNN, Newsweek, the BBC, ESPN. Plus many blogs. I have tons of political blogs in my feeds -- Daily Kos and the Huffington Post on the left, The Heritage Foundation on the right, and the libertarian Cato Institute. Although my politics are pretty well defined, I like to see what all sides have to say.

I never bothered counting the number of news feeds I have, but I have more than 1,00 news items to sort through every day. Some, obviously, are good for little more than a glance at the headline. Others I'll read, mark, prioritize, quote from, and link to in my blogs. And still others I'll forward to friends.

If you're a Gmail user, you have access to Google Reader, which fits most of the bill. But I wanted my news to be more portable than that. Google Reader does have offline capabilities, but that's still experimental.

I considered using a second, 8-gigabyte thumb drive that I use as my mobile storage disk. That's where I keep my work files, plus my Portable Apps suite.

I love Portable Apps. That's where I have a handful of to-go programs. There's Firefox, Abiword, Thunderbird, a few games, and Open Office, all on a flash drive that I can plug into anyone's computer, do my work, and leave no trace. I wrote about Portable Apps in my other blog, and it's one handy tool. The developers have some great programs available, but no RSS reader. And I'm ticked. In a pinch Thunderbird will work, but it's a poor option at best. And, these Portable Apps programs are Windows-based, meaning I need to use an emulator -- such as WINE -- to run them. Useful as WINE is, that's one layer of software I don't want to mess with for something as crucial as gathering the news.

While running my temporary system from the thumb drive, I experimented with several Linux-based RSS readers, and none were satisfactory. But with the freshly-installed Puppy Linux I tried the multi-platform, Java-based RSS Owl, and so far the interface works. While uploading this blog, I will test my installation to see if it actually downloads the news. I hope so. RSS Owl was my go-to news reader on Windows, so there won't be any real learning curve.

Fast update: It's working! I'm excited!

OK. What's still unresolved is my ability to share my RSS news with my desktop computer. The only real solution I see -- and this is theoretical -- is to score a router and network the two computers. But that's another project I'll study on later. My plate is already piled so high it's ready to tip over.

Here's my to-do list:

- Laptop lid switch - fix. (One problem with my system right now is that it doesn't go into sleep mode when I shut the lid. This means I either leave it powered up, or shut the whole thing down.
- Firefox 3.5 (Will download this in a few days.)
- Thunderbird, with calendar (My favorite mail reader, and there's a calendar add-on that, well, keeps me organized. Shoot, keeping myself organized is a losing battle most of the time, but let's not go there.)
- A couple of games (I'm not real big on that, but it's not all work and no play, and I do like a lightweight game or two every once in a while.)
- Gantt (This is a program that I use for planning, when time is important and there are definite steps to be taken. The one I use on my desktop is a Java-based program, and it's a simple download and install.)
- RSS reader!! (As I mentioned, this is being addressed.)
- qt3 (This is a series of library files that are needed to run Scribus, an open-source page layout program.)

That's the more important stuff. The rest of the list is something I can attack later:

- GIMP (This is an open-source graphics and photo-manipulation program, on a par with PhotoShop.)
- Audacity (This is a simple sound-editing program. I've used the laptop to record band rehearsals. Also need to come up with something better than the lousy condenser microphone that came with the laptop, but that's not an immediate need.)
- Open Office (I do have that, via Portable Apps, on my thumb drive. In truth, I don't use it all that much.)
- TweetDeck (This helps me organize my Twitter account, and it's quite useful. Twitter, by the way, is great for keeping up with the absolute latest news, but it's also the biggest time-waster since the Internet was invented.)

Enough already!

Scareware a big business, but fake virus 'protection' can be removed

Viruses and spyware are a real concern when you spend any time on the Internet, and some people are feeding on your fears for big bucks.

But while there are quite a few legitimate anti-virus programs out there, there are more that not only do not get rid of your viruses and malware, but install more of the same on your hard drive.

Symantec, which owns Norton, says more than 40 million people have fallen victim to the "scareware" scam in the past 12 months. According to the BBC, "online criminals make millions of pounds by convincing computer users to download fake anti-virus software." Which translates into an awful lot of dollars, not to mentioned the number of computers that are trashed by this cottage industry.

Over my years of surfing on the Internet, I've seen plenty of this. An ad shows up on a Web page I'm browsing, offering to scan my hard drive for free. Or flashing a message that would make even the most savvy Web surfer sweat -- that viruses have been detected.

The idea is that you click on the ad and it will scan your disk, or install a virus-protection device. That's what you think, anyway.

In reality, the scan or program is useless at best. At best.

At worst, the program or scan will install its own spyware, or its own virus, and really make hash of your hard drive -- and maybe even bill your credit card in the bargain.

Welcome to the rogue security software. They either are disguised viruses, trojans or are nothing but a sales pitch, trying to push another product to the user.

Call it scareware, because it's designed to frighten you into buying its product or download its own viruses, Trojan horses, or spyware.

Most of my Internet work is with this netbook, using Windows. But even while using Linux I've even seen these ads come up. I'm talking about the ads saying that viruses have been detected on my computer.

Which told me right away the claim was a bunch of horsesqueeze. For several reasons, Linux is not prone to viruses or spyware. Nor is MacIntosh, really.

OK. Time to check your computer. See what kind of virus protection you have. If it's from this list, you're in a bunch of trouble:

Cyber Security
Alpha Antivirus
Braviax
Windows Police Pro
Antivirus Pro 2010
PC Antispyware 2010
FraudTool.MalwareProtector.d
Winshield2009.com
Green AV
Windows Protection Suite
Total Security 2009
Windows System Suite
Antivirus BEST
System Security
Personal Antivirus
System Security 2009
Malware Doctor
Antivirus System Pro
WinPC Defender
Anti-Virus-1
Spyware Guard 2008
System Guard 2009
Antivirus 2009
Antivirus 2010
Antivirus Pro 2009
Antivirus 360
MS Antispyware 2009

These are rogue programs, according to ghacks. And if you have one of these, you'd better get rid of it awful fast. You probably clicked on something, downloaded what you thought was virus protection, and you may have noticed your computer running like crap.

So what do you do?

There's an article in ghacks which mentions "Remove Fake Antivirus," a portable software program for the Windows operating system that has been designed to uninstall 27 different rogue antivirus software programs from the computer system. You can download Remove Fake Antivirus here, and it's free.

I downloaded and ran it, though for me the on-the-workbench test was inconclusive. This is probably because I know the likelihood of me actually downloading and installing some of this scareware is really slim. The dialogue box showed, though, that it was removing each of these antivirus programs. My assumption was that this is the "default" dialog box. After running the program, you will be asked to reboot.

In truth, I'm a little chary of installing a virus-protection program from a non-company website (this is from a blog, how sketchy is that?) but sites like Download Squad (which gave it really lukewarm reviews), Softpedia, TechForums, and CNet (which rated it two-and-a-half stars out of five; not that great, and none of the readers reviewed it) carry links and product descriptions. Plus, I've never found reason to fault the information I get from ghacks.

A caveat: Here's one of the Download Squad reviews:

Well, I ran it, and it killed my main windows service and forced a restart. When the PC came back up, I had no internet connection. Warnings should be posted.

With that in mind, I checked things out when I rebooted. The Windows security service flashed a warning saying I had no virus protection, but I see ClamWin had loaded itself in the system, per normal. A glitch, perhaps? The good news was that my wireless Internet ran just fine. But be careful!

Menawhile, there are several good virus-removal programs out there. Some -- Norton and McAfee -- are the kind you pay for, while others -- AVG, ClamWin, and Avast! -- are free. The for-pay ones are probably a bit better than the free ones, but any of these are good for the computer and your peace of mind. That is, if you update them every so often -- there's always some idiot thinking that if he builds a better virus, the world will beat a path to his door. These viruses seem to be coming down the pike faster and faster. A virus protection program is only as good as its updates, and it's also useless if you don't run it regularly.

For spyware removal programs, only two are worth downloading -- AdAware by Lavasoft, and Spybot Search And Destroy. And neither one is perfect. But, unlike antivirus programs, you can have both installed and running on your computer. I highly recommend you run both, one after the other, as part of your regular security regimen. What spyware program one doesn't catch, the other one probably will.