YouTube fake conversations to deceive the innocent onlookers

I encountered this identical conversation between 3 random people on two different videos in YouTube!

A friendly conversation between three strangers? Totally not.

I decided to dig a bit into this. It was easier to spot the deception than I thought. All three accounts were created on the very same day in 2020 (and magically appeared to make the same conversation twice in summer 2022). We can easily conclude that these three accounts were created by the same person or a computer script.

I looked further and found many similar fake conversations happening around topics of investment and crypto trading under popular YouTube videos. An unsuspecting onlooker could totally fall for these scams! All these fake conversationalists have no videos, very few subscribers, and created on the same day (as above) or within a few days/weeks apart - perhaps by a bot and stolen profile photos. Beware!

A similar, but longer "conversation" - but with better "participants" (with accounts not created on the same day). LOL.

Random spam and a train journey...

Kansas City, KS

Have you ever received a WhatsApp or a WeChat (WeiXin) message like, "Hello, I'm Stella, are you Mr. Jack, the costume designer introduced by Annie?" from someone with a Chinese woman as the profile picture but a US number?

My friends and I kept receiving those messages frequently. The template is always the same:

"Hello, I'm [a woman], are you [a man], [description to the man's job] introduced by [another woman / my colleague / my secretary]?"
A Google reverse image search on the profile picture will take you to the source - where they have stolen the image from.

For fun, we tried to reply to those to see where they would go. "Oh, sorry, you have messaged the wrong person." They respond, "my bad, at least you are kind enough." But these never proceeded further. They always sensed that I was trolling them and discontinued the chat almost immediately.

Train from Kansas City to ABQ

But managed to continue the chat a bit longer as I was on a long train trip. After this "wrong number," the person, who claimed to be a cloth designer from California, suggested I add to their Telegram since the WhatsApp is apparently for their work discussions only. So, I added them to their Telegram, a number from Indonesia. The person also introduced themself as a divorcee with a child and even shared a family photo (again, stolen from the Internet) after I shared a selfie from the train. They again shared the sketch of some cloth they designed and their lunch downloaded from the Internet. At this point, I can see how lazy these scammers are. They are not lazy. They just don't want to invest too much time on each potential victim as they cannot be bothered and have to function at large. Seriously, why can't they send an actual selfie of their lunch?

Anyway, in the beginning, they mentioned they also invest in crypto (they shared a selfie in front of a crypto dashboard - again taken from the Internet). At this point, I was sure this was either a crypto scam, romance scam, or a scam that would make me pay for their cloth design. This chat was dragging on over a couple of days as if they had formed a close and caring friendship with me. Usually, their conversation was in bad/broken English. But every time they talk about crypto, they get more professional and convincing - as if they were copy-pasting some paragraphs they wrote sometime back (not from the Internet. No text matches on the Internet). They even offered to help me invest. Ok, that is when I decided this was a crypto scam. My long train trip was coming to an end too. They also realized I wasn't falling for them - instead, I wasted their valuable scamming time. Their chat was getting repetitive with little time investment from them (just photos and videos stolen from the Internet). They stopped trying to convince me into crypto investments, and I blocked them.

Some arrests have been made on these crypto scams.

Sockpuppets and where to find them

The Disguiser. An unrelated scene.

Internet Sockpuppets are an annoying online phenomenon. 

* A sockpuppet qualifies as a fake account, when it assumes a fake identity -- typically with a real-sounding name, a physical location that sounds real, a random photo scrapped from the Internet ideally not of a popular person, and some profile text/story to create a persona that looks real to a non-suspecting reader. 

* A sockpuppet qualifies as an anon account, when it comes with minimal identifying information -- no real name, no photo, nothing personal or identifiable information.

So what exactly is a sockpuppet?

There are several definitions. My definition goes like this:

"A sockpuppet is a fake or an anonymous profile created by someone with an existing established profile in the same platform, when the new profile aims to boost the popularity/prominence of his/her established profile (i.e., the "primary" account) or attack those presented opposing views of the existing account."

The distinction needs to be made because, sockpuppets are typically attached to the hand of the owner. They cannot stray away. That is the same for the Internet sockpuppets too. They stay close to the primary account.

Why do sockpuppets exist?

1) To manipulate the social media democracy + meritocracy

Social media and online platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Wikimedia, and StackOverflow thrive by a combination of democracy and meritocracy. 

Each account usually has a single "vote". That means, you can typically "like" or "upvote" a comment/story only once. This is a democracy.

On the other hand, those who with most views/likes/shares/retweets receive larger reach and prominence in the discussions. As you receive larger reach, you are also rewarded by the platform. For example, you may get promoted to an "upper level" and receive additional capabilities such as moderating new posts (in case of platforms such as StackOverflow and Wikipedia). This is a meritocracy.

Then why doesn't this beautiful combination of democracy and meritocracy work flawlessly? This combination should work well in the physical world. But in social media, a vote typically means an account. Most platforms do not have proper means in place to ensure that a human creates only one account. In fact, several platforms allow and encourage owning multiple accounts for various purposes. I have maintained 3 bot accounts in my Twitter life so far (they are listed here), to automatically post updates from my blog and undergrad project. But of course, they are not sockpuppets. They are stand-alone bots. They are not fake, not really anon either as they have identifying information pointing to me. 

A sockpuppet, on the other hand, *will* interact with its primary in some way or another. Because that is their responsibility: making the primary appear stronger than it really is. With the "rich gets richer" scenario in social media, retweets by a large number of fake accounts (including sockpuppets) is expected to receive more legitimate retweets too. Sockpuppets, unlike typical fake or bot accounts, will organically interact with the primary account for the betterment of the primary account, through supportive comments, retweets, and likes.

2) To fight the opposing views without compromising the primary account's legacy

The sockpuppet, once created, will start traversing its primary account and respond accordingly. I have identified several sockpuppets in Twitter, from all sides of political spectrum.

Have you ever disagreed with an "influencer" and out of nowhere a "bot" pops up and insults you? Good luck. You have encountered a sockpuppet of the influencer. It will fight for its owner (i.e., his/her real profile).

Yes, I've spotted a sockpuppet in #LKA twitter right now.

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) July 8, 2020

This has happened to me a few times:
* An argument with an "influencer".
* Seemingly I'm winning.
* Suddenly a newly created "bot" pops up & fights me vigorously.
* I check bot's other posts. All are defending the owner.

I let this sockpuppet grow. Hard to judge a newborn puppet

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) July 8, 2020

Sockpuppet owners can be actually smart people. Don't underestimate them. That makes the sockpuppets smart too - but with no accountability (since they are a fake/anon). That is a dangerous combination.

A few things:

1. I have a website
2. I put my infographics in it
3. I wrote my own account of what eventually led to #GuGate
4. This is the last time I will ever mention that horrible human being
5. Hire me to tell you jokes
6. Donate to first descentshttps://t.co/N3JkLxvqtk

— Dr. Glaucomflecken (@DGlaucomflecken) July 13, 2018

Unlike the primary account, the sockpuppet will attack you vigorously, perhaps using racist, provocatory, or vulgar messages.

The problem I have with sockpuppet accounts is this: They are not held accountable. Especially when we are all open and vulnerable, fake accounts break that comforting boundary.

It is like letting a clothed man in a nudist colony.@lahiruDar @NisansaDdS @realshenal @ChrishanJay https://t.co/Wht3Jkb1qt

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) August 23, 2020

How to spot a sockpuppet?

In fact, it is easier to spot and confirm a sockpuppet than you expect. Sockpuppets are close to their primary. They respond positively to the views that support the primary. They will attack the opposing views with nastiest mean comments. They all follow a similar pattern, and leave obvious traces to connect with the primary. Typically, they will reply to the negative comments that haven't been replied by the primary adequately (if at all). Their replies will be uninhibited. This aims to maintain the neutral stance of the primary and to keeps the primary more professional. Sockpuppets will try to provoke you. They are a sockpuppet whereas you are in your main and perhaps the only account in the platform, which you may also be using for professional purposes and connect with your colleagues. Sockpuppets thus use your restrain as their strength.

However, sockpuppets fortunately have a big weakness unlike other fake accounts. That is, their proximity to the primary. They will first reply to the messages directed at the primary, or try to be smart and reply to the posts made by the opponents - but not directly on the same thread as the primary. Their language and timing usually will leave sufficient hints to tie the sockpuppet's identity to the primary. 

Some sockpuppets try to be too smart and alter their behavior. I once dealt with a sockpuppet (who is in real a software developer and a Twitter star) who pretended he did not know how to message via Twitter! This is a deliberate attempt to look different. Most sockpuppets will also casually talk with the primary (as in a dual acting by the same actor in a movie), to make it sound like they are different people. Sockpuppets also have a trait of deleting their old tweets to remove traces for future interactions. Because, unlike you, sockpuppets don't really have a reason to keep their tweets safe. Once they have served their purpose (for example, trolling their opponent), they can be deleted.

Every time I suspect a sockpuppet, I casually drop the name of the suspected primary, after sufficiently distracting the sockpuppet. The sockpuppet instantly panics and loses its cool and track/flow. Once, a sockpuppet stopped responding to my tweets for hours but instantly in 5 seconds replied with a nasty tweet once I mentioned the suspected primary's name as in "Hi [primary]!"Usually, if you publicly accuse the primary for being the same person as the sockpuppet, the primary will categorically reject the claim.

How do online platforms treat the sockpuppets?

Wikipedia bans sockpuppets outright. I love that. They trace the IP addresses and once they confirm the sockpuppets (ensuring that you are not merely two people from the same household), they suspend and ban the sockpuppet instantly. It ensures that Wikipedia is fair, especially when making important decisions: should we keep this new wikipedia page that is proposed for a speedy deletion, for one example. If a repeat offense is detected, Wikipedia will also ban the primary.

Twitter does the same too, but not that vigorously. Because, Twitter indeed allows multiple accounts. But if the sockpuppet is proven malicious, then Twitter bans it. Make sure to report the suspected sockpuppets to Twitter when they become disruptive. Twitter will check the pattern and suspend them if confirmed.

The first step in winning a sockpuppet is to identifying one, and then making sure the sockpuppet does not emotionally attack you to make you a weaker persona than the primary. Let's keep the social media clean and sane. Peace!

Twitter bots, trolls, fakes, parodies, and anonymous

Twitter indeed has numerous bots. But not every weird account that you encounter on Twitter is a bot. There is a clear difference among the bots, trolls, and fakes, though often the demarcation is vague.

First, a bot is not necessarily bad, though often bots are deployed with malicious intent, such as distributing propaganda and making viral content out of useless posts. Twitter bots are an economic model, with companies such as Devumi selling them to like, retweet, comment, and share your posts automatically for a price. 

 

I had two bots Llovizna and @on_my_way_home to tweet every time I post something to my blog. I stopped these accounts and their posts in 2016. I could have made these automated posts directly to my main Twitter account Pradeeban. In 2009, I chose to create proxy accounts to tweet my blog posts to keep my Twitter account under my entire control, with no automation.

People often confuse a bot with a fake account and an anonymous account. An anonymous account is usually genuine. It hides the real identity of the user but does not try to create an alter-ego or another personality for the human behind the user. An anonymous account may have 0 to 100% of identification information of the user. On the other hand, a fake account is intended to misrepresent someone. If I create an account with no information at all to post on sensitive topics, that is an anonymous account. On the other hand, if I pretend to be a princess from Sweden in my Twitter profile, that is a fake account. 

Some fake accounts acknowledge they are fake, and often function with a touch of humor, faking the identity of a known person, such as politicians, leaders, and actors. They are parodies, as long as they acknowledge this in their profile, so as not to mislead an unsuspecting follower.

A bot account is still a complete account. By logging into the account, a human still can post tweets as in a regular account. However, usually interacting with a bot account is fruitless.

Trolls can be a regular account, though more often than not they are fakes, parodies, or anonymous accounts, as the repercussions of being a troll are imminent in the current sensitive world. It is often advised not to involve the trolls, as the more you interact with someone over the Twitter in their timeline, more visibility they get.

I have seen arguments on Twitter, where a verified user or a user with several followers discrediting the other party by their number of followers. "She got only 50 followers. She must be a bot" or "He got only 30 followers. He must be fake". These arguments are flawed for several reasons. First, if someone is making an intelligent communication, it is (still) not possible to be a bot. Second, you cannot judge a person fake by their number of followers. The person can just be someone who is busy with their real life than harvesting Twitter followers in a shady practice followed by many popular and verified accounts (more on this in my previous post, Twitter is inherently flawed and unfair - and "Influencers" are ruining it).

I also noticed that those who use the "number of followers" as a measure to judge the validity of someone's tweets are the ones that pay for fake/bot followers, or use the shady practice of "follow and unfollow after a follow back" used by accounts such as @cammipham and @IAmJeffEmmerson. 

Twitter bots are not necessarily bad. They do some specific useful tasks, such as creating news syndicates and reporting weather alerts. Therefore, disabling the potential for bots is not a good idea. However, it may be a good middle ground if Twitter makes it mandatory for the bot creators to explicitly identify and acknowledge them as bots and offer to identify information to the creator. Such restrictions are already in place for parody accounts - you must self-identify your account as a parody if you are impersonating someone (usually a famous person). Otherwise, your account may be terminated by Twitter. We need similar measures to bots to ensure ethical use of bots.

Fake accounts can be entirely fictitious or imitate a real living person to some degree such as using someone else's identity or photo. Fake accounts are often harmful and are malicious in intent (for example, consider someone faking as a minor/child, or someone faking as a racial or sexual minority to make a political statement). They need to be controlled too. Twitter needs to improve a lot. Their workflow is flawed. Their verification program is broken and harmful. I still appreciate the simplicity of Twitter, despite its shortcomings. It is always an excellent platform to share your thoughts publicly, even if no one is listening.

Twitter is inherently flawed and unfair - and "Influencers" are ruining it

Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook are a few of the social media platforms that are frequented by the "Influencers." LinkedIn and Facebook have a more balanced approach than Twitter and Instagram. I am not a user of Instagram. So I will limit my focus to Twitter now.

Twitter is very light-weight. Anyone can join, in several capacities. This lead to companies such as Devumi selling fake followers - followers created with the help of bot applications in a significant amount.

Twitter, knowingly or unknowingly, has created a class hierarchy with its verification program. Any journalist, a public-facing person, an author, or an "influencer" can become verified, proving a significance or importance. All these definitions fall into a million shades of gray. 

Twitter intentionally has kept its platform with minimalist features. For example, you do not even know who unfollows. This is similar to Facebook. However, Facebook unfriend is different as it is two-way. When someone unfriends you, they also lose you. This is not the case for Twitter. You would not believe how many verified Twitter users with blue/white ticks follow you, and later unfollow you once you have followed them back. Many of us have blogged about this before. There are tools such as Fanbase that automates this ill practice, making it even easier.

For example -  see this amazing post by Matt Navarra: Twitter is being spoiled by one type of user. 

Consider a case you receive a follow from two of these Twitter users:

User A with "10 following and 20 followers."

User B with "5,000 following and 1.25 Million followers."

Who would you follow back?

If you are an innocent Twitter user such as the below kid, you will follow back the user B. After all, B has 1.25 Million followers, and he has chosen to follow you first. Such a humble person!

Fig 1. The innocent kid was followed by an "influencer" author with fame and money in his mind.

But you know what? He/she would unfollow you within a period (anywhere between a week, to a few months), once you have followed them back. Of course, they would unfollow you even if you did not follow them back - but that is fairer relatively.

This is more of a numbers game - the same play by the pickup artists (PUA). Follow 1000 users every day. 100 will follow back. Repeat. At some point, you will have anywhere around 10,000 - 1 million followers. Now you can continue your following game. But at the same, keep unfollowing at intervals. As you reach thousands of followers, the naive users will follow you back more when you follow them first. No one really notices that you unfollowed anyway.

Unfortunately, Twitter does not alert the unsuspecting Twitter user when someone unfollows. Of course, there are applications such as Tweepmaps. But not many are aware of it. Even those who are aware of it, do not know the economics behind this numbers game.

Jeff Emmerson, followed me when he had just 5000 followers. He continued his follow-and-unfollow loop to harvest 1.25 million followers, while "following" only a few thousands at any time. In Figure 1, he followed the kid first. The kid followed him back. But as usual, our Jeff Emmerson unfollowed the kid later.

Fig 2. How to become an "Influencer."

Anyone would question me. Why does this matter? Am I looking into a silly thing? Who cares - who follows me and unfollows me? Right? Wrong.

This is a power play and economics. Someone such as Jeff Emmerson who authored a book needs to show that he is indeed an influencer. When he followed me and around 9 of my connections, we followed him back since he looked genuine. But he was just promoting his upcoming book (probably his biography with some fiction. Did not read it). Then he also started to promote other brands. Each such promotional tweets with 1 million followers can be as expensive as 2,000 - 20,000 Euro! This is real money. You are just a number in this pool.

Fig 3. One of the advertisements, among many, for the same brand.

When I politely questioned Jeff Emmerson on this, all he did was just blocking me. Interestingly, I found at least another user having experienced the same!

Fig 4. Blocked by someone claiming to be a "mental health advocate!"

It is plain wrong. Someone claiming to be a mental health champion follows people with interest in mental health. Those posts on Twitter on tags such as #depression #mental #health #adhd #bipolar. Then unfollows them after they follow back. Very helpful, dear verified influencing best-selling author!

Well. To be fair, Jeff is not the only "influencer" that follow this pathetic Twitter loop. I found many. .@JetsetterDiary did the same thing and blocked me when I found this.

CamMi Pham (@cammipham) is another interesting case. She followed me. I followed her back. She unfollowed me in a day or two! I unfollowed her back. She followed me back in a month or so. (It is hard to forget these people with the same profile picture and verification). :) Giving the benefit of doubt, I followed her back. She unfollowed me again within a week or so. I unfollowed her again, confirming that she indeed is a Twitter parasite. Guess what? She followed me again after some time. I did not follow-back. She unfollowed soon after. She did not follow me again yet. :P Interestingly, the Twitter community has indeed noticed her tactics - and a hashtag #Cammispam has appeared to call her out on this shady practice.

Fig 5. CamMi Pham, the one who spams you with frequent follow-unfollow

As you see above, I am not the only one spammed by CamMi Pham's frequent follow-and-unfollow loops. :D

Fig 6. Some replies to CamMiPham

As you can see above in the replies, you can see some identifying her tactics of "bait and switch" or "follow to unfollow." However, Twitter hides these negative replies under "More replies" tag where they show up only if you click, once the profile owner (i.e., CamMiPham) hides them. So this works in favor of the owner of the profile.

Some other individuals following this shady practice are listed below. There are many. I did not trace everyone:

@chris_meares,

@TheFinalGallery,

@NadiaShapiro,

@johnhall

@Polycor is not really an "influencer" per se. but a company with the same shady practice.

Twitter is taking notice of fake accounts and trying to shut them down. However, it does not seem to take any action against those who use the bots or manual malpractices to increase their follower count unethically. Even Twitter accounts such as Amitabh Bachchan, the most popular Bollywood actor, care about their follower count! :D

Fig 7. The Bollywood Veteran is not so happy about the loss of followers.

I asked myself, why would someone need to unfollow. Why can't they just follow people and keep following those accounts? At least, keep following the accounts that followed you back. Isn't that more ethical? After all, they did not know you before YOU followed them first. I found the answer from CamMi Pham's promotional webinar material.

Fig 8. The secret sauce of becoming an "influencer."

"Twitter followers:  963K.  Instagram followers:  66.5K.  That merely touches the iceberg of CamMI Pham’s global fan base.  How did she do it?  Join us Wednesday, February 7 from 11:00 a.m. Central time until 12:00 p.m. (noon) Central Time and listen to CamMI talk about “Dare to Be Bold!"

This is her business. She lives out of this. It is essential to show that she has a million followers - as in an idol.
Madonna has 2 million followers when she follows less than 50 accounts. Everyone knows and adores Madonna. But is that the case with these unknown "influencers"? These unknown influencers also want to be Madonna. So they must unfollow, even those accounts they followed first. It is also like the restaurants in the touristic area. It is a known scam. In some places, they populate the shop with their friends to look popular. Once you look popular, more crowd will follow. "Fake it till you make it," they say.

Regardless of several complaints, Twitter does not seem to improve at all. Just the way fake reviews ruin websites such as TripAdvisor, these influencers continue to ruin Twitter for everyone. I might consider leaving Twitter. But it still remains as the ideal platform to complain about a company or a politician. So for now, we have to live with Twitter, though it sucks. I am of course tracking these "influencers" in Twitter itself.

I am going to tag every "influencer" that follows me, and unfollows me within a week after I followed them back, into this thread. ;)

— Pradeeban (@pradeeban) August 8, 2017

In summary, next time if a "popular" user follows you out of nowhere, remember that they are just adding you to their affiliate marketing pool. No need to follow them back unless you know them already, or if you think their tweets are valuable to you.

Protecting web sites from the "foreign powers".

OK, this is controversial. :P I found that some websites actually do not function properly outside their intended audience. This (see the screenshot) is what I found when I tried to access trump.com from Portugal. This works well inside the US. Interestingly the Georgia power electricity cooperation web site was malfunctioning from Portugal too.

The Internet from China

The Internet from China

I was more prepared with a proxy/VPN software during my first trip to China. However, I was careless this time, and went unprepared. During my visit in 2014, I had a VPN/proxy configured to take care of the great China firewall. Just because I wanted to make sure I was still connected to Facebook. Following my Facebook deactivate, this time I was under the impression that this is not needed anymore. I was wrong! A long list of other web sites and services have been blocked in China, in addition to Facebook.

Interestingly, Google (search), Gmail (in basic HTML mode), Skype web beta, and duckduckgo worked with a simple proxy service (such as Eduroam). However, they did not work without them. Still ShareLatex, Skype application, Yahoo search, Amazon AWS, Wikipedia, and Meetup worked even without a proxy.

In addition to Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox (the web site as well as the application), Google+, Blogger, YouTube, and Google Docs did not work at all. It was interesting that, from a foreigner's perspective, a list of useful sites were blocked. Yahoo search was not blocked, while even duckduckgo was blocked (unless used with a proxy). Probably duckduckgo is a bigger threat than Yahoo?

P.S: Lately I found Shadowsocks. I am yet to test it.

Home is where the passport is..

A night in London

When I came to Lisbon for the first time, it marked my first time long-term stay outside my country. To keep track of my life in the foreign country, I wrote weekly blog posts. Before coming to Lisbon, home meant our home in Sri Lanka. It remained the same for a few weeks, even after moving to Portugal. Eventually, I got used to living abroad, and started calling my apartment in Lisbon, "home". I did miss Sri Lanka, specially when I am not well. Not everything works in the same way everywhere.

An interesting observation was, I could not order any other natural juice other than orange juice in Portugal in many of the restaurants and cafe, despite the fact that they had all the fruits to make fruit salad. Probably this is because they make orange juice using the specific juice maker for oranges, and they do not have a regular blender at all. Moreover, if you just order "sumo da laranja" or "sumo da ma maçã", you will be given artificial juice in cans. You will have to ask "sumo da laranja natural" specifically. There were many similar small differences.

I like to travel. Erasmus Mundus came with a mandatory mobility. That means, even if you are not really interested in moving around countries, you will have to. :D My mobility for my masters was Portugal for the first year, and Sweden and Portugal for the two semesters of the second year. Moving from Lisbon to Stockholm was pretty smooth. However, whenever I came to Lisbon from a short vacation from Stockholm, I had the feeling of home. My stay in Stockholm was limited to just 4.5 months compared to my 2+ years in Lisbon.

Then I came back to Lisbon. Now with my doctorate, which is also an Erasmus Mundus program with a mandatory mobility. Unlike the early days, I do not write the weekly posts anymore. One reason was lack of time. The other is, the life abroad has become a norm, than something different to document. Even this post is a summary of many thoughts of the recent past, that does not include any specific event to highlight. 

I always enjoyed travelling with conferences or some work-related travels. They come right in the middle of the heavy work load. I get to travel and enjoy the new city for a very short period, while doing something productive actually. Unlike the summer vacations, these trips come with duties. Presenting the paper, networking, and attending the conference talks and social activities. There were many occasions where I was in the middle of lovely cities, with very little time to go out and enjoy it.

Whenever I go to a new place for travels, starting from the second day of my stay, I feel more and more comfortable to that location. Travelling to a new country or city gives a new perspective of the things. The short stay gives a complete new experience compared to the regular days. The days pass pretty quickly, while leaving pleasant memories. It is like a life inside the life.

I don't travel much due to my studies and/or work. However, I like to travel, whenever possible. I have enjoyed random walks alone in the forests, roads, and beaches. Winter gives lesser opportunity to travel than the summer, specially in the southern Europe. I would prefer a winter vacation in the northern Europe though. :D

 

It is interesting to note how the Internet and digital media documents and records our life. I started my blog, Facebook account, and Twitter in 2008. I had email accounts since 2006 when I owned my first computer, and started taking digital photos since 2008. So basically my digital / social media life started in 2008. 7 complete years have passed since then. Many things have changed within these years. Improved storage, better media with larger size, more processing power, memory, and resolution, more usable Linux (still remember that Mandrake Linux!), and more bandwidth.

I like the flights. The small cities, green patches, and blue oceans from above let me see how we are small in a relatively huge world. The empty blue sky lets me have a free mind for some serious life questions. :P Only one thing I like least about the travels is the visa applications. I dream of a day when all the countries will be freely accessible for everyone without requiring a visa.

Anatomy of a scam site

Initially..

The Internet has its own share of scam sites. Their intention is to manipulate human emotions to the personal benefit of the web site owners. Websites focus to make the viewers stay longer. They use click baits for this purpose, where attractive and often misleading titles are used for otherwise an ordinary or boring article. Websites also wants to make the viewers subscribers. This is to ensure that the users will return. If there are free subscription plans, the focus will be to make the subscribers upgrade to a premium plan that would require a monthly fee.

If a networking site requires monthly fees just to connect to other users or even to read and reply to the incoming messages, it surely is a scam, in my opinion. These sites may employ fake profiles to lure men and women to register for their premium services. Scam sites display their advertisements over the other websites. They also often just comment on the forums with their links, hoping innocent guys will end up in their site, after reading the comment.

Recently, I was browsing an apparently scam web site full of ads and pop ups, which displayed a timer indicating I should buy the offer within 11 mins and 57 s to qualify for a 75% discount. After a few minutes, I just refreshed the page, which set the timer to 13 mins and 39 s again. Virtually, I was able to keep the limited 'discount' opportunity forever, by merely refreshing. I am sure, you may find that 'discount' almost everyday.

After a refresh

Some of the scam sites which claim to be free, require a credit card, just to 'verify' your age. However, once they got the credit card information, it won't cost them much effort, before they start charging you the first month usage fee. Most of these web sites accept the credit card without verifying. They verify only when they decide to scam your money. You may use a fake credit card number generator to see whether the site fails for it. Most of the scam sites indeed fail this simple test. Even the legit looking sites may have some scam elements in them. Just be careful when you use your credit card in the Internet.

Change and Growth

Since the Internet became popular, many sites has come and gone. Orkut, a social networking site from Google once popular in the Indian subcontinent is going to die on the 30th of September, 2014. Recently, I was going through an old promotional video to the Internet. It looked a bit odd and irrelevant, though it could be a useful guide for the kids in 1997, 17 years ago. We do not honestly know when will the current Internet giants see their end. Probably, one day they will. Hope the transition will be gradual, and when that happens we will be given option to download our data from the sites.

Many of the sites have disappeared since they made this video. Yahooligans was a search engine for the kids. Sometimes, I do not understand why a few websites disappear, even when they are backed by an Internet giant such as Google or Yahoo. This probably could be due to their lack of ROI. They could at least consider donating these web sites to some open source projects, as Google did with Wave, instead of killing them. Some of the web sites mentioned in the video, such as nick@nite and ticketmaster still exist for more than 17 years. Juno has changed its business since then, from free email provider to dial-up internet service. Interestingly, the not-so-fancy online virtual frog dissection tool still exists, without modification or improvement. An equally interesting video was a compilation of Microsoft advertisements from Windows 1.1 to Windows 8. The early advertisements indeed look goofy, with lack of professionalism compared to the current standards.

I remember, buying a computer of 40 GB disk on the 6th of January, 2006, which was perfectly enough for Windows XP and Mandrake Linux dual boot. This February 11th, I bought a laptop of 1 TB, and having a dual boot of Ubuntu 14.04 LTS - 64 bit and Windows 8. I have already filled up half of the space! Same can be said about the memory and CPU, where those days tinier resources were more than enough for running all the applications. I used to store documents in 1.44 MB floppy disks, downloaded from the University internet. Now not even a single document can stay inside such a small space. These changes were within 8 years. Probably, by 2022, I will have more to say here, that is, if Blogger still exists by then.

Are you allowed to choose your *name*?

Facebook, Google+, and probably many other sites do not allow accounts to be registered under a name that looks "artificial". That means, you can register an account only on a name of a human. The reason given is, they do not want to have people registering *fake* accounts, and welcome only the *real* persons to be in! 

Names such as the below are not allowed or at least challenged.

1) Kathiravelu பிரதீபன் - You can't mix two language scripts, though this one indeed is my name, where the first name is written in English, and the last name in Tamil script.

2) Prad33ban, Pradeeban_, or Pradeeb@n - Numbers or special characters are not allowed in the names. Only the alphabets of a single script are allowed.

3) Pradz or PradROX - Suspicious name, most probably a fake!

4) Rock Buddy, Superman, Monkey Gurl, or Fen0023 - Doesn't look real.

5) Pearl Kitty or Brownie - Kitties and puppies aren't allowed!

6) K.K, PDN, pra, or pdn - Initials, pen names, or pseudonyms aren't allowed.

7) Dr.Vijay - Salutations aren't allowed.

8) Sucker - Sounds offensive.

9) kaThiRaVeLu PrADeeBaN - Improper capitalization.

10) Fxx or Bot - Bots are not allowed.

11) Double Rainbow, Firefly, or Stone - Natural objects and insects! No!

12) Colombo Library, Llovizna&Sons, or OpenGroupForum - Libraries, Companies, or organizations aren't allowed to create a profile. Use a 'group' or a 'page' instead.

This regulation has gained severe opposition from those who prefer to have their online identity to be hidden or are interested in having a second life. Some of them choose to have a second life an independent one from their real, offline, or *first* life. They have a valid reason to have a different online identity, I feel. Whatever the name, let it sound like a bot, library, or a kitten, still there is a human behind the name. What matters the most is, no one's privacy should not be violated.

However these rules do not prevent the fake profile creators anyway. They just create fake profiles under real names. People are getting more into deeper fake stuff - SCIgen is an example, which allow you to generate fake papers, mostly used for a good motive of course - to identify the fake conferences by getting the fake papers auto-generated accepted.

Copyrights - "Safely ignored"s in the Internet

I recently found an exact copy of one of my blog posts in another blog, without any credit or pointer to my blog. I tried to comment on his blog post with the link to the original post. He never approved my comment. Hence I decided to report his blog to google, for the copyright violation.

In the topmost banner of the blogger blogs, you can see "Report Abuse". I just clicked, and reported the post.

Google replied with,

Thanks for reaching out to us!

We have received your legal request. We receive many such complaints each
day; your message is in our queue, and we'll get to it as quickly as our
workload permits.

Due to the large volume of requests that we experience, please note that
we will only be able to provide you with a response if we determine your
request may be a valid and actionable legal complaint, and we may respond
with questions or requests for clarification.  For more information on
Google's Terms of Service, please visit http://www.google.com/accounts/TOS

We appreciate your patience as we investigate your request.

Regards,
The Google Team

After within a few hours, Google took the page that violated the copyrights down in accordance with DMCA (The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998), and sent me this message.

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out to us.
In accordance with the DMCA, we have completed processing your
infringement complaint and the content in question no longer appears on
the following URL(s):
http://{blog-name}.blogspot.com/ 2011/07/{post}*.html
Please let us know if we can assist you further.
Regards,
The Google Team

* I have removed the blog url to avoid harassing the blogger who copied the blog post.

Llovizna by Kathiravelu Pradeeban is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. 

One of my friends mentioned, why would I report that person's blog post. My friend mentioned that the person who copied my post is indeed helping me by spreading my thoughts to the followers of his blog. 

No, it doesn't work that way. If someone finds his post in web search instead of me, further interaction with the reader will not be possible. If my view point is challenged in the blog post of that person, he will not be in a position to advocate for my thoughts. Most probably he himself would have forgotten the original post that he copied from, leaving the discussion to a nowhere-zone.

In print, everyone takes utmost care about the copyrights. But when it comes online, it is taken for granted that anyone can violate others' copyrights. It is common to see posts that are copied from the web, even in newspapers as "Thanks: The Internet" or "Thank you: The web". No one bothers to give the exact url or the author of the post, which is in fact a bad practice, and offensive just like any other pirated material.

I, however support open knowledge. Some restrictive licenses prevent others from using the content at all, than merely reading and understanding it. Licenses should be open, just like the open source licenses. In "Llovizna" (and wherever online/offline), I made sure to use only the content or images that are in the public domain, or made sure to provide the credentials to the original license holder, whenever I reused others' contents. Many images with supportive licenses, or those are in the public domain can be found in wikipedia or wikimedia. We need more of them.

Sharing is not just a copy-pasting. It should provide value to the original content, while giving the appreciation that it deserves, and engaging with the content.

URL Shorteners - Why should we care?

I have seen many (and also used some) sites offering the web service that provides short aliases for redirection of long URLs. They mostly use very short domain with a short top level domain of a country, like .ly of Libya and .in of India.

TinyURL, bit.ly, shorl, doiop, and lnk.in are some of them. These services provide us an easy way to share the links, when the space is limited. I have used tinyurl service to send urls to friends in SMS and in the profiles where space is limited.

t.co

"Twitter uses the t.co domain as part of a service to protect users from harmful activity, to provide value for the developer ecosystem, and as a quality signal for surfacing relevant, interesting Tweets." 

Here, t.co is a url shortener that is used by twitter by default, such that whenever we post a url, it is shortened by this service. This ensures that our tweets with urls fit into the 140 character limit. Since t.co is part of twitter and is not open for the public to shorten their links, no one can customize their shortened url's, unlike some other services like bit.ly. This might be a minus point, as it prevents the possibility of having descriptive urls such as http://t.co/mobileplatform, forcing everyone to use what is provided by default, like http://t.co/V99uVV3K. This also eliminates the misleading urls. For instance, http://t.co/mobileplatform needless to be a page on mobile platform at all. 

fun.ly

Funky one. Comes with ads, letting you earn a few bucks while using this service. But I personally do not like this one for professional uses. Who needs a few cents, than providing the users with the content immediately? Reader satisfaction is more important. Why waste their 10 seconds with advertisements? Mostly they won't click the link at all. Some of the advertisements often include broken links too, which I faced recently, also providing a never ending loop. So nothing earned either. Loss-loss deal. For personal or enterprise uses, I don't recommend displaying an advertisement before the content, unless advertisement is your major revenue, than the actual content provided.

bit.ly

Bit.ly provides the option to register an account and keep track of the url history for the user, providing options to track and monitor the clicks. It also lets us customize the url, instead of providing default random urls with meaningless text  like http://bit.ly/V99uVV3K.

I was just impressed by the way bit.ly redirects when a wrong url is entered.

Page Not Found

Uh oh, bit.ly couldn't find a link for the bit.ly URL you clicked.

Maybe one of the pufferfish ate it, or maybe there are some extra characters on the end of the URL.

Most bit.ly URLs are 4-6 characters, and only include letters and numbers. Manage your URLs

Try it yourself by clicking the link http://bit.ly/gmapfSG/

When I see something weird or meaningless text following a web url, I simply get to know that those will redirect me to somewhere else. There is a nice option in many of these services, where we are allowed to choose our own name to be appended, thus providing an option to choose meaningful names.

Till very recently I haven't seen the other side of these services, other than the links those redirect us to personal blogs. I had to think much on this when I received spams with messages such as "Really Interesting! Wanna have a look!!", with shorter urls, which direct us to shock sites. For these reasons, some social networking sites including facebook have banned the usage of some of these services.

Yes, I know we have the preview option before literally going to the site. But in reality, how many of us are ready to spend time on this?

CSE - IT Awareness Seminar Series

The CSE IT Awareness program by the Computer Science & Engineering Department of University of Moratuwa went quite successful, with 11 seminars all over the island in Tamil and Sinhala media. Final year undergraduates of the department along with a staff member visited the destinations and carried out the seminars. The seminars held at the 11 schools went quite well. I joined the team which went to the Jaffna peninsula, where we conducted the seminars in Tamil medium in 6 schools - Putthur Somaskandha College, Kopay Christian College, Kokuvil Hindu College, St. Charles M.V, Urumpurai Siva Tamil M.V, and Chullipuram Victoria College. I did my talk on இணையம் (The Internet). A handout was also distributed among the participants as a supportive learning material.

It was really nice to see the students showing a great interest in learning new technologies. It is our responsibility to make the country an IT hub through similar workshops and seminars. Information Communication Technology (ICT) is offered as an optional subject for Ordinary Level Students where they  also have the option of doing Agriculture or some other subjects instead. What I could notice it, the number of students doing ICT is much lower than the students choosing other modules. The reasons may be the score - They may feel ICT as a difficult subject, or there may be some limitations due to the limited resources. Obviously not all the schools are ready to have ICT as a compulsory module. More resources are needed. It should also be noted that GIT is yet another module provided for the Advanced Level students.

A seminar of three hours can never cover all the necessary stuff as a basic course. But it can provide a flavor to the students and make them more interested towards learning computer science and IT. I am pretty sure we have reached this goal. The interest  was shown very clearly by the students. Now we have to go forward carefully with the success of this initial attempt.

Given below is a short video capture of a drama practice of the students of Chullipuram Victoria College, which we were able to witness during our visit. :)

Windows Security alert on Ubuntu OS!

I was checking out some cites while preparing for the upcoming ICT seminar of 06CSE that to be held in Jaffna. Suddenly a pop up took me to the site freescanreveals.org. The site was showing a nice screenshot of 'my computer' showing the list of affected files, repeatedly prompting me to install the anti-virus to cure the virus attack. Funny! It has faked a Windows XP OS nicely on my Ubuntu 9.10. [ROFL]

Anyway the fake messagebox was so real that can scare any of the windows operating system user by using "System Security Antivirus" messages. It was a loop, so I had to forcefully shutdown the browser. Finally I confirmed from Spamhaus that freescanreveals.org is a reported attack-site posing as providing an anti-virus software.

Please make sure your virus identifies my operating system and acts accordingly.