Category Archives: Internet

Should I Surrender?

Posted on June 18, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

There’s this company that calls my office over and over. And over. And leaves messages asking me to go on their site and ‘claim my profile” that they have already concocted for me. It’s been going on for weeks, always at times I happened to be out. Note that it never sounded like robo-calling, but rather like call-center humans.

Finally, I happened to be in the office recently and answered a call from them (it was a human). I asked, begged, pleaded, to be put on their Do Not Call list. 1

Begging didn’t work. There’s a message from them on my voice mail again today.

So far, I’m standing strong, not giving in, not registering on their web site. Even if would shut them up. But I’m also a bit afraid to name them here, because it seems to me that that given their less-than-perfect authentication methods–which include linking to social media on which I do not have accounts–there is a substantial impersonation risk.

Should I just give in and ‘claim my profile’?

  1. This leaves aside the question whether the calls violate state or federal ‘do not call’ rules; I’m signed up for both, but since they are not actually selling anything or asking for money, they might be off the hook?[↩]
Posted in ID Cards and Identification, Internet | 1 Comment

Tracking Protection Greatly Speeds Firefox

Posted on May 25, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

Firefox’s optional Tracking Protection reduces load time for top news sites by 44%.

How to turn on Tracking Protection:

  1. In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter.
    • The about:config “This might void your warranty!” warning page may appear. Click I’ll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.
  2. Search for privacy.trackingprotection.enabled.
  3. Double-click privacy.trackingprotection.enabled to toggle its value to true.

This will turn on Tracking Protection. If you later want to turn it back off, repeat the above steps to toggle the preference back to false.

Posted in ID Cards and Identification, Internet, Software | Comments Off on Tracking Protection Greatly Speeds Firefox

No Joke

Posted on May 24, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

As The Wall Street Journal recently reported, “There’s an Uber for everything now. Washio is for having someone do your laundry, Sprig and SpoonRocket cook your dinner and Shyp will mail things out so you don’t have to brave the post office. Zeel delivers a massage therapist (complete with table). Heal sends a doctor on a house call, while Saucey will rush over alcohol. And by Jeeves — cutesy names are part of the schtick — Dufl will pack your suitcase and Eaze will reup a medical marijuana supply.”

I thought MoDo had been played, but it’s all true, even if some of them only serve Seattle and Silicon Valley.

Posted in Internet, Shopping, So-called Sharing Economy | Comments Off on No Joke

Box.com requires TLS 1.0, 1.1 & 1.2

Posted on May 22, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

In order to get box.com to work on my computer, I had to enable TLS 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2 in Internet Explorer, even though I almost never use IE.

I had turned off all three versions of TLS on security grounds. As a result, I kept getting an error message when I tried to log into Box Sync on my computer (“Cannot connect”).

Box.com help desk’s explanation for the requirement — amazingly — is that SSL 3.0 is not secure so they don’t use it. It’s true there have been issues with SSL 3.0, but TLS, as I understand it, has the same issues plus much worse. [UPDATE: Dan Riley explains why I have it all backwards in the comments.]

On the positive side, I only figured out the source of the problem thanks to efficient and friendly work from ‘Ashley’ at the box.com help desk, so they are doing something right.

Posted in Internet | 3 Comments

A New Online Dating Scam

Posted on May 7, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

Bentham’s Gaze:

We identified three types of scams happening on [Chinese dating site] Jiayuan. … Another interesting type of scams that we identified are what we call dates for profit. In this scheme, attractive young ladies are hired by the owners of fancy restaurants. The scam then consists in having the ladies contact people on the dating site, taking them on a date at the restaurant, having the victim pay for the meal, and never arranging a second date. This scam is particularly interesting, because there are good chances that the victim will never realize that he’s been scammed — in fact, he probably had a good time.

Would be a nice tort problem if I taught fraud (and I should).

Spotted via via Schneier on Security: Online Dating Scams.

Posted in Internet, Tort | 3 Comments

Plus Ça Change (ICANN edition)

Posted on April 28, 2015 by Michael Froomkin

ICANN staff are trying to sabotage the IANA transition process in order to maintain ICANN’s monopoly over the DNS in perpetuity, reports Milton Mueller in ICANN wants an IANA functions monopoly – will it wreck the transition process to get it?.

This sounds awfully familiar…

Staff shenanigans like this seem to be part of ICANN’s DNA. It’s a real shame.

I don’t write about ICANN anymore, but some relevant past papers include Almost Free: An Analysis of ICANN’s ‘Affirmation of Commitments’, ICANN 2.0: Meet the New Boss, ICANN’s UDRP: Its Causes and (Partial) Cures, Internet Governance: The ICANN Experiment (Or, Three Paradoxes in Search of a Paradigm), and especially Wrong Turn in Cyberspace: Using ICANN to Route Around the APA and the Constitution and the related Form and Substance in Cyberspace.

And then of course there was ICANNWatch.

Posted in ICANN | Comments Off on Plus Ça Change (ICANN edition)