Thursday, December 12, 2002 :::
How to turn off colour behind the text of the desktop
An example of a program that does this for Windows 9x and NT4 computers is called DeskColor, which you can find at totalshareware.com. (And don't worry, this program is free!) I didn't forget about you Windows 2000/XP users out there... for you, I recommend SetColor, which works for every version of Windows and is available at 12ghosts.com.
::: posted by Muhammad at 4:44 AM
Wednesday, December 11, 2002 :::
How Websites Can Grab Our Email Addresses
Some browsers pass a header with your e-mail address to every Web server visited (using the HTTP_FROM header that browsers send to the server). Most browsers don't have this ability.
When you download and install freeware programs, some sneak spyware into your system, where it hides and communicates information without your knowledge or permission. Unfortunately, firewall software isn't enough defense to prevent this from happening. Our favorite 007 agent for tracking and destroying spyware is the free Ad-aware program from LavaSoft.
JavaScript can be a culprit. When a mouse rolls over a specific area of a page, the browser could be forced to send an e- mail without a warning, unless the browser is configured to avoid it.
Anonymous FTP isn't completely anonymous when a browser hits a bad guy Web site, where one of the images is fetched through an anonymous FTP connection. The person's e-mail address is often configured into the browser as the password for the anonymous FTP account.
IRC offers no TLC; some IRC hosts provide an e-mail address to anyone who requests one. Also, there are utilities that can obtain the screen names of folks in the AOL chat rooms. Spammers target AOL users because of its reputation as being the newbie's ISP of choice.
Daemons, pronounced "demons," are run in the background of many UNIX computers. Daemons allow other computers to identify who connects to them. When surfing from such a computer and connecting to another computer through a Web site or server, it can connect the person's computer back and ask that daemon for the person's e- mail address. Another type is the "finger" daemon. Conducting a finger query asking for Joe@host produces a list of login names for all Joes on that host. A query for @host produces a list of all currently logged-on users. Devilish, isn't it?
::: posted by Muhammad at 10:25 PM
