Been Phished?

Zeyad Jabra

November 6, 2008

Mrs. Yerks

Comp 106

Been Phished?

Social phishing would not exist as a phenomenon, if there was not a social group that had fallen victim to the scam. Many factors supplement the success rate of phishing websites such as: the familiarity of a website, the legitimacy of the url of the website, and the layout of a web epage. It is important to carefully monitor those three areas, because they are the aspects which make it more likely for a victim to be phished. Although it is possible to help prevent phishing, it is never possible to eliminate phishing from our society completely.

When a website that wishes to scam you resembles a site that you frequent, you will be more susceptible to believing it is legitimate. In 2005, an example of phishing occurred when a familiar e-mail was sent that thanked customers for purchasing a product, which they never truly purchased. Rather than have you directly input the information, the site sneaks into your computer. If you delve into the website any deeper, it creates a Trojan horse in your computer, and causes it to count your keystrokes. The victim has no reason to be concerned all the while, because the site they visited seems credible, and causes no suspicion. Much like a facebook phishing scam, which took people to a facebook page that was slightly altered. Many people did not notice the change, and fell victim to being phished, because they felt numb to the familiarity of a facebook page, but didn’t notice that it was “Facebook AU.’

The Url of a website often gives away its identity, or can help to mask it. A site is better adapt to phishing if the url resembles a familiar address path than be a series of numbers. This happened with the face book fraud, when the url would just read a series of numbers, rather than state facebook, making it obvious that it was a phishing site. Also the title in the command bar of the window, often gives away a secret to the website that you might not see in the rest of the site. Url’s have the potential to be anything, which makes it hard to limit your mind to what a url should look like, because the room for variable is so large. Usually though, if the site you are dealing with is large enough, the url should have something to do with the subject matter of the website, which is an easy way to find legitimacy in websites.

Often time, the layout of a webpage may help to provide a secure roaming area online. On certain pages that require special information, a security code generator is created to limit phishing, because it makes the whole process of entering in information more manual. The security codes cannot be created by computers when it is filling out forms, because it is not in a text field; security generators really help in prevent phishing from occurring. Also, the questions a website ask can often dictate whether is it a legitimately run website or not. If it asks too many questions, or questions that seem like extraneous information, it probably is extraneous. It is best to judge the questions when answering them and decide, does the company need to know this information? One should never give out information that they don’t need to.

Although phishing is a problem in the World Wide Web, it is not impossible to avoid. When understanding the aspects which make it more likely to succeed in phishing someone, it is easier to avoid being phished. Getting inside the heads of the criminal is the only true way to prevent a crime. Whether it is inspecting familiarities for errors, or examining the url, or even feeling out layouts of websites to secure the legitimacy of them, certain aspects can be evaluated and used to feel and be secure online. And although we live in a society that breeds ignorance, phishing seems to be a subject well known enough by the general mass, that it can be avoided. Understanding the reasons why it works, and avoiding the ins and outs of a successful phishing is a simple challenge, that can help you from dealing with a lot of pain later. Social phishing, does exist thus, and it actually works; without the techniques developed and explained, phishing would have a much harder time being successful across the span of the World Wide Web. 

I'm a lover not a fighter

Zeyad Jabra
Comp 106
Professor Amy Erks
October 2, 2008
I’m a Lover not a Fighter
War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! We live in a world where war surrounds us; the spectrum includes: video games, T.V. shows, movies, and 22 on-going wars at the present time. In a society where war has become so desensitized, I’ve decided to present my advocacy of pacifism and a general love for humanity, between all of humanity, not defined by race, ethnicity, beliefs, or personal benefit. I present the War on Iraq as the main issue requiring change. I present economic, social, moral and personal structures that are being affected by the war, and the necessary reasons for change.
The presentation begins with a slide covering the cost of life in war. I present the hard facts to begin with; the death totals of the Iraqi War and Vietnam are illustrated in the facts. I also note that those numbers are not only the immediate lives lost, but that their offspring will also never exist. I include a picture of an egg bearing a child, and the egg then becomes empty, signifying that will the loss of the parent, the offspring will cease to exist. The background image depicts a graveyard of soldiers, to make a greater impact on the value of life to the audience.
The next slide begins with a graph of the rising cost of the Iraqi War from 2002-2008. The economy has not been as bad as it is now, since the Great Depression, which can be attributed to many things, one of which includes the War in Iraq. Not many facts are presented in this slide, besides the ridiculous amount of money that has been spent on this war. The cost of this war as of January 2008 is estimated at $500,000,000,000.00. To add a greater effect, I present the amount spent as a bullet. Every bullet following on this slide includes the same text, increasing in size with each bullet. The final bullet covers the entire page and changes colors, to add greater emphasis to the amount spent, hopefully increasing awareness by the audience.
Unemployment is also an increasing problem in our nation. The next slide connects some, but not all of our unemployment issues with the War on Iraq. Based on research, I found a number, 670,000, of jobs that have been lost as a result of the War on Iraq. In order to present this material, I first presented a chart that shows the change in unemployment from 2007 until 2008. Following the chart, I present the facts of the change in unemployment due to the war. I also introduce the idea that we as a nation are attempting to enhance the security of a foreign nation’s land, at the expense of our own people’s lives, which leads me to believe that there must be ulterior motives to the war.
The next slide covers morals that we go against in fighting this war. The first moral law that we break deals with the murder of innocent people. We are fighting a war in order to prevent the death of innocent people, but more people have died in this war, than ever would have during Sadam’s regime. Also, I point out the fact that we are deciding what is right and wrong as far as the governing body’s decisions of foreign nations. I point out that what we say is right, has to be right for Iraq. But the Iraqi way, which was right to them, is wrong, because we decided so. To push the fact that we are acting as hypocrites, I attached a comic to the slide. The comic presents the irony of the situation that we as a nation have put ourselves in.
The next slide includes a few ideas on the war. First of all, the fact that we never found any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is presented. Secondly, the fact that we are still looking for Osama Bin Laden, and that in this effort to find him, we’ve spent more money and lost more lives than we did during 9/11, the reasons for searching for him. I include a comic strip that pokes fun at the politics of the search for WMD’s in Iraq, as a satire.
Finally in the slides, I present a personal story, to bring the idea of war close to the audience. I present my life story, and my growing from Iraq and riches, to a poor America, and the struggle I faced, that wasn’t necessary until the war tore apart my life. The point of this is to bring an emotional side to my advocacy to help sway the opinion of the audience.
After presenting personal, economic, social and moral structures for my advocacy, I hope to influence the audience to become more peaceful and loving towards the rest of humanity. If I can affect one life, than hopefully that life can affect one more, and continue the cycle through a chain. The ultimate goal is to end the need for war, but a closer goal is to spread awareness of the war prominent in our lives, and better inform America, to create a more educated democratic public I said War! Whoa, Lord; what is it good for/ Absolutely nothing! Listen to me.

Plan to Advocate

I am advocating a pacifist style of life, to further the human race in an attempt to achieve peace. The topic I chose to present as a modern issue is the Long War, on a personal, ecomonical and politcal level; I would like to understand what we really are doing in Iraq. Understanding what we are occupying the country for, may lead to a better understanding on the steps we can take to bring the oppression to an end.
The primary target audience are the students registered for my Composition 106 class. The reason students are the most important target is that they are the future of our Country; we can not only bring this war to an end, but also prevent future massacres from occuring. If my project can affect half of the class, the hope is that a "pay-it-forward" chain will occur, and a greater population will be affected and educated. Also, with an election in the coming, a more educated audience will have a greater effect on deciding which candidate will lead the country most successfully.
I plan on presenting my personal story attatched to the war, as I was born in the midst of the original Gulf War, and my life has been effected in a irreversible manner, may it be for better or worse. I also would like to present the economical repurcussions that have occured because of the war, and how that directly relates to our economical collapse as of late. Finally, I would like to show the political background of the war, and discover the true reasons for invading a country, while we claim to be "maintaining the safety of our nation."
I do not want to dictate to the class whether the war is necessarry or not, I would just like to provide the class with the tools to decide for themselves whether we should change any policies our government has initiated.

While creating my Onenote Notebook, I decided to take a screen shot of my work. A Onenote Notebook is a digital notebook, containing seperate folders and seperate binders for all of your subjects. This recreates all the simplicity of a binder, without the madness of clutter. In this digital workspace, everything is clear, and defined. Things can be tagged, or easily serached for by simply pressing find ( Ctrl+F ) and searching for words that are scattered throughout the notebook. In a world where everything has become digitilized, Onenote is a step in the right direction, it seems. The only flaw to digital composing, is you lose the ability to write your notes exactly the way you want them, some of them must become more "organized' but in a sense, less legible to the writer, who has been taking notes a specific way for years on years. Overall, the Onenote Notebook is a time saver, and a great way to keep things organized.

Activity 1!

4c.) There may be no limit number of tags that are available, but a few that came to my mind for the first tagging image are: "Grand Theft Auto parody video game Rockstar busytown."
6.) After searching through three websites, altavista.com, google.com, and yahoo.com I discovered differences and prefences amidst the three. The Google logo is the most beneficial and productive logo. It seperates itself from yahoo and altavista by removing the clutter and links that surround it, andmoves them to the top left of the screen. The least preffered website, AltaVista, takes a very nuetral stand. While Google remains simple, the yahoo homepage is a breeding ground for links, allowing for sites that you may never have seen, to come to light. Alta Vista, neutral as possible, possesses a mixture of clutter and emptiness to allow very a very uneasy feeling. My favorite website between the three is Google, and my least favorite is Alta vista.
13. There are many things to be wary of when dealing with the credibility of websites across the internet. In my years of inter-cyber travelspace travel, I've found a few key things to help keep me aware of the credibility of the sites I may be gazing upon. The first, and most important piece of advice would be, don't ever trust a site on the internet. Everything posted online has been created by somebody, so rather you don't have to believe everything you read on the internet. A second piece of advice, to validate the sites you believe are credible, would be to find facts, and search a multitude of sites in the same topic, to verify these facts across many channels. A third piece of advice, is stay away from peer-to-peer forums for facts. Sites that have no regulation on the information involved can lead you far away from the truth.

Paper for Plastic???

In awe of not having some composition, demanded by higher authorities, I present you with this explanation of my blog's title. I came across an incredible emotion while walking the path of an empty chicago avenue; I held two pieces of paper marked twenty, that could get me a good dinner and a spot at the hippest hookah lounge in Chicago, Samah's. Those two papers had the capability to take me to my hotels, or buy me a ticket to an after-party to Chicago's great Lollapalooza. That paper backed by, well, nothing. No gold, no jackpot at the end of the rainbow. Two simple papers that society has deemed valuable, can buy me most things plastic, and I'm not quite sure how that works.

Paper for plastic?