Category Archives: Internet

Everyone will be linking to Save the Internet.

The potential commercial censorship problem is real. The potential commercial prioritization of traffic is also worrying. So I agree with the cause. (Although I hate the name.)

I’m concerned about strategy. Because (as I’ve noted previously) I believe the whole “net neutrality” problem is due to a competitive failure, the existence of a legacy telco DSL/cable duopoly (at best) in most the broadband market. The source of that failure is a totally misguided regulation by the Bush administration which killed off competition in the DSL market; I think the solution is NOT some more regulations trying to undo the ill effects of the original rule, but rather the repeal of the rule that caused the problem, and return to the previous rule which made legacy telcos share some of the lines. The telcos hated this of course, and the Bush people li$tened.

It’s not clear to me how “Save the Internet” will come down on this. Regulating ISPs as to how they prioritize and deliver content is I think deeply second-best to true competition in the broadband services market for all sorts of reasons.

Here's a very interesting blog posting on why e-bay's “second chance” program is a move to the dark side.

Not Bad For a Cubicle » No such thing as a Second Chance: people have been looking for bargains and taking advantage of one another for thousands of years. What can be changed, however, is the information available to play the ebay game.

The mere existence of “Second Chance” is interesting because it indicates to me that ebay has significant enough outtrade and settlement risk issues that they’re losing a significant number of sellers, so they’ve created Second Chance as a mechanism to help sellers better mitigate settlement risk. Unfortunately, they’ve tilted the balance in favor of unscrupulous sellers in the process.

Look at the risks of Shill Bidding from the seller’s perspective. If they get too greedy, they will exceed the limit of their bidders and wind up “winning” their own auction. This costs them whatever the listing fee on the item was and they still have to re-list (and re-pay the fee), doubling their transaction cost and hope that they don’t overbid the auction again.

Now, thanks to Second Chance, ebay has effectively provided a safeguard which mitigates the risk to a greedy seller of exceeding the buyer’s maximum price. The dishonest seller can now safely discover the real winning bidder’s limit without having to double their transaction fee to obtain the information.

The sad thing about this problem is that there is an easy solution. Just add some transparency to the whole process. This would allow bidders to decide if a seller had a higher outtrade rate than they were comfortable with. Allowing the buyer to make an informed decision about whether or not a seller seemed to have an unacceptably high rate of outtrades or Second Chances would introduce a more objective mechanism than the reputational parody called feedback.

Lots more where that came from…

The ICANN Nominating Committee, of which (will wonders never cease) I am a part, has issued its 2006 Formal Call for Statements of Interest for the following positions:

• Three members of the ICANN Board of Directors
• One member of the Council of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO)
• One member of the Council of the Country-Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO)
• Two members of the At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC)

While I’m happy to answer what questions I can, please note that in order to be considered for one of these jobs you have to use ICANN’s official procedure for submitting a Statement of Interest.

Much of what the NomCom does is covered by very strong confidentiality rules, so I will not be posting much (if anything) about this other than the official announcements. I do welcome both public and private suggestions about what sort of person would be good for these jobs — the key thing, though, is to get good people to volunteer for them, so tell your friends and associates.

Full text of the official call below.

[Cross-posted from ICANNWatch]

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So this guy googles “X people are known for”, where X is various different races, and gets a set of cultural stereotypes that he posts as “Google Your Race”. Didn’t do much for me, I’m afraid.

But googling for “Google is known for” brought me to The Prejudice Map…which much more closely conforms to my stereotype of the world’s stereotypes.

I got a scam email, reproduced below. I was going to write a post about how phishers keep upping their game because, while I get tons of scam e-mail every week this is the first of its type I’ve seen, and it seemed to be a cut above the crowd. “I bet they catch a lot of people,” I thought.

But looking under the hood, it’s odder than I thought.

First, here’s the email (without the live links):

PLEASE READ THIS NOTICE CAREFULLY.

You have received this Notice because the records of PayPal, Inc. indicate you are a current or former PayPal account holder who has been deemed eligible to receive a payment from the class action settlement in accordance with PayPal Litigation, Case No. 02 1227 JF PVT, pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose.

In your specific case you have been found to be eligible for a payment of $48.99 USD.

The aforementioned settlement funds may be transferred directly to your bank account providing you have a linked card. The funds may not be credited directly to your PayPal account as this would render Paypal to be accumulating interest and thus profiting on litigation settlement funds which contravenes Federal law. Your bank account will be credited within 7 days upon submission of account details.

To credit your bank account please click here. [there was a URL attached to “click here”]

If you are seeking an alternate method of receiving your funds PayPal will be contacting those who do not submit their details by the 31th of March with instructions to receive a cheque in the mail. However this will incur a 7.5% processing fee deducted from the settlement amount and therefore PayPal only recommends this option to those users who do not currently have a bank account with linked Bank Card.

Please Note that under United States federal law credit cards are not a legally approved method of settlement for Class Action suits and cannot be processed for transferal of funds in this case.

This notice is a summary and does not describe all details of the settlement. For full details of the matters discussed in this notice, you may wish to review the Settlement Agreement dated January 11, 2006 and on file with the Court or visit https://www.paypal.com/settlement/. Complete copies of the Settlement Agreement and all other pleadings and papers filed in the lawsuit are also available for inspection and copying during regular business hours, at the Office of the Clerk of the Court, United States District Court for the Northern District of California, 280 South First Street, San Jose, California 95113.

PLEASE DO NOT TELEPHONE THE COURT REGARDING THIS NOTICE.

DATED: March 13, 2006

BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF U.S.A.

This PayPal notification was sent in accordance with your PayPal notification preferences. To modify your notification preferences, go to https://www.paypal.com/PREFS-NOTI and log in to your account. PayPal will not sell or rent any of your personally identifiable information to third parties. For more information about the security of your information, read our Privacy Policy at https://www.paypal.com/privacy. Replies to this email will not be processed. Copyright© 2006 PayPal, Inc. All rights reserved. Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners. PayPal is located at 2211 N. First St., San Jose, CA 95131.

To the trained eye it’s obviously a fraud. The paragraph about how paypal can’t hold the money is silly — if Paypal were paying it it would be Paypal’s money; if the funds were in escrow the interest would go somewhere agreed as part of the deal. And the last line is wrong too: “BY ORDER OF THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF U.S.A.” Um, what state please?

And anyone who went and looked at https://www.paypal.com/settlement/ would be redirected to the In re PayPal Litigation Settlement Website, where they’d learn the period for making claims ended years ago. So it’s a total scam. Even so, I could see how many people might be taken in by it and might “click here” without investigating.

But that’s not what I found so strange. Sadly, that’s all too commonplace. What’s odd is the URL that “click here” leads to is “http://12012068097/003.paypal.com” which isn’t properly formed. And the URL to which most browsers would proably default is 12012068097.com, which points to a site that doesn’t exist for a domain name that is not even registered.

I understand phishing exercises designed to get your credit card or banking info. But relatively elegant phishing exercises that just waste your time?