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.

No more hoaxes online, please!

ATTENTION!!!!!!!!! do not join the group currently on facebook with the title "becoming a father or a mother was the greatest gift of my life." it is a group of paedophiles trying to access your photos, this was on fox news at 5 last night. please copy and post!!! lets keep children safe (take a minute to copy and paste)

Do your facebook friends spread hoaxes? Knowingly or unknowingly people spread hoaxes online. Why do they spread hoaxes? Except for the one who initially created or engineered the hoax, the folks who spread it often have good motives, or at least supporting what they believe to be morally and ethically correct. The chain letters is one common form, which has now mostly been transformed into the Facebook status updates, messages, and wallposts.

I used to reply by just posting the relevant Snopes or Hoax-Slayer link whenever I see an annoying hoax online. But whenever I did that, I found that the friend who shared the link feels offended and starts to protect the hoax. In many cases, the folks who post those stuff may even be more educated or experienced than you. Some times they may even be your superiors in your office. They are knowledgeable; but they just don't have the time, need, or courage to confirm the validity of the message before posting it - their motivation is better to be careful, in case if the hoax is true.

Eventually, I have found an effective way of replying.

Thanks for your message. But seems that message is just a hoax, according to snopes. http://www.snopes.com/computer/internet/greatestgift.asp But pls keep us updated.

I am nowadays using the above message format (with the link replaced with the relevant link confirming that the status or the message is just a hoax). To my surprise, this has been proven to be extremely effective. 

Here the posters are actually kind hearted (refer to the first paragraph, which contains the hoax, warning about pedophiles). Hence I thank them for the care. Then I suggest them the link might be a hoax. Finally, I finish the message with "Pls keep us updated!" This avoids the feeling of being taught or advised something, which everyone hates of. I have seen many of the posters, indeed copy my above reply to the source where they initially found the hoax. This way the message spreads against the hoax, at the same speed of hoax. Finally the responses and facts are propagated both upstream and downstream. Everyone is safe!

Let's have a nice stay online! No worries! 

The birth of viral contents over the Internet

Popular Content

For a scientist to become popular, it takes a considerable effort and lots of dedication. But someone who creates some creative content and uploads it over the Internet, might probably get equally famous among a wider audience.

Getting Viral

A content grabs the attention of millions and becomes an Internet meme by becoming viral, shared and spread over multiple online media. The content can be a video, a blog post, an image, or even an audio clip. Some contents become popular due to their controversial nature, and the others become popular just because of the curiosity of the people. The social media interaction makes the popular content more popular. Once a content sparks some interest to a viewer, he might probably visit the content back (say, if that is a video or an audio clip), and also share the content over the social media for the people in his network to view. This leads to an exponential growth to the popularity of the content. If an influential person shares your content to his circles of friends, most probably your content will be viewed and further shared by his circle of friends too.

Creating controversy or inducing curiosity

If we take YouTube, the mostly viewed videos are not necessarily good ones. Most of these video clips have more 'dislikes' than the 'likes', as people get disappointed with what they just saw, because of their curiosity. When the thumbnail image of the video shows some "cute stuff", it is very hard to resist the desire to click and view the clip. A sexy title and an attractive caption will be an added advantage. However, when we realize that there is nothing such interesting material in that clip, than a mere ad, we 'dislike' it. Still the 'view' count increases, and the video remains popular. Some companies work for their clients or customers to make their content viral by creating controversy around them, by posing as multiple users, or simply by sharing that content over multiple media, using multiple accounts.

Sparking the interest

There are a few genuine attempts that become viral by the fans viewing and sharing them multiple times. The most commonly stated example is the YouTube clip, "Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow 1-8-10", where someone shouts and expresses his extreme level of joy, looking at a double rainbow.

The Double Rainbow

It has got 31,595,276 views, 206,997 likes, 4,549 dislikes, and 91,157 comments. This was also made into a song, which also has become equally viral, with almost same number of views and likes. Comics have been written around the "Double Rainbow" and many parodies have been created around. According to an article in knowyourmeme.com, a tweet from Jimmy Kimmel was the major reason behind this video clip becoming popular. However, I am personally not supporting any such claims without a strong evident. Who knows - many others too may have shared the content and enjoyed it parallel.

Why this Kolaveri

Why This Kolaveri Di Full Song Promo Video in HD has got 6,263,365 views, 73,595 likes, 3,058 dislikes, and 30,361 comments within two weeks since it is posted. Like all the other addictions, "Kolaveri" is proven yet another rising addiction. Once watched, everyone keeps watching it multiple times, and then starts sharing. This leads to an exponential popularity growth. If this continues, it will very soon overtake the mostly known viral video - "Double Rainbow" shout. It is a song sung by the Tamil actor Dhanush, a son-in-law of the Tamil super star Rajinikanth. This song is sung in Tanglish, a Chennai slang of Tamil + Broken English, with simple words.

The girl in the green top in this clip is Shruti Hassan the heroine of the movie "3", to which this song belongs to. She is a daughter of Kamalhaasan (an award winning Tamil actor and long time competitor of Rajinikanth). The other girl in this song is Aishwarya Dhanush - Dhanush's wife who directs this movie. The debuting music director, Anirudh, a nephew of Rajinikanth can also be seen in this video. Everyone expected this song to become popular among the Tamil cinema fans due to this stardom. Nevertheless, no one including the producers of this song/movie expected it to become viral globally. The fact that the song is indeed sung in English, but with a south Indian accent and a touch of Tamil, must have helped the song becoming popular among the non-Tamil speakers.

how to ignore someone you love

For a content to become viral, it should reach the common men, and should not target a narrow niche. Among my blog posts, how to ignore someone you love can be stated as somewhat viral. It is the third mostly viewed post in my blog, along with the highest number (46) of facebook likes. I, myself didn't expect that post to become popular, since I wrote it without much effort unlike the technology blog posts, that I wrote with much effort. The attractive blog title, with the interesting common area of discussion - "ignoring facebook invitations", must have attracted more readers in, unlike the posts that are focused on a niche.

Creating a viral content is not that much easy though. No one has properly found a formula to estimate how the human brain functions. We can create some interesting content, but the audience decides its success.

Is Delete() == Hide() for Facebook?

As you all may have noticed facebook was having some problems today, as mentioned here. Interestingly when I tried to delete my status message today, the prompt I got was as usual, "Delete post: Are you sure you want to delete this post?". But when I clicked yes, another message popped up "Unable to hide minifeed story: Failed to hide mini-feed story". After trying thrice it did delete. But what does this error message point out? Facebook never deletes stuff in real; it just hides them from your view.

So I feel unlike twitter, facebook deletion is not a permanent delete, but a mere hide. Once you put it there, it will be there for an unknown period of time. Of course, it is obvious that there is no way of permanent deletion* of facebook accounts. Aren't these a violation of user-rights? I'd better go and read the user agreement of facebook (only if I am that much jobless).

* Update: Seems they have enabled the permanent deletion option at the moment. Give it a try!

DroneBL

Today morning, while trying to log into my irc account on freenode using xchat, I was getting the message,
"(notice) *** Banned: You have a host listed in the DroneBL. For more information, visit dronebl.org/lookup_branded.do?ip=124.43.238.174 Please contact kline@freenode.net with questions. "
The message was repeating itself, as it tried to connect with different Freenode servers.

So I visited dronebl.org/lookup_branded.do?ip=124.43.238.174
It was saying
"There have been listings for the host, 124.43.238.174 found in DroneBL. To get removed from our DNSBL, you will need to address all of these incident listings.



I got it! Since we are given dynamic IP from the service provider (Sri Lanka Telecom), an abusive usage of someone else has caused this trouble to me. I used the request removal option.

Removal results for 124.43.238.174
You are requesting the delisting of incident 532599 involving 124.43.238.174. Please confirm that you are human.

It was quick and removed the ban promptly, without any fuss.
Removal results for 124.43.238.174
This incident has been removed from the DroneBL. Please make sure that you have fixed your problem, or it will reappear here. Have a great day.
You may have other incidents in DroneBL reported, in which case you will need to remove them.

I learned more about DroneBL from its blog. "DroneBL is a realtime monitor of abusable IPs, which has the goal of stopping abuse of infected machines."