A Ontario COVID-19 Benefits Email #Scam Is Making The Rounds

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 16, 2023 by itnerd

Residents of Ontario seem now to be the target of a COVID-19 email scam that is targeting your personal information.

Here’s the email that you get:

Well, it does look convincing. Other than the rather poor grammar that is. The links “About”, “News”, and “Terms of use” actually go to an Ontario Government website. You’ll also note that it says at the bottom “© King’s Printer for Ontario, 2012–23” which given that this is an email, makes no sense. Though I will note that the King’s Printer for Ontario does exist. Now besides the grammar, the email address is a big tip off that this email is fake:

That should be enough to have you run in the other direction. But because I want to show you how these scams work so that you can better spot them, I went down the rabbit hole and clicked “Apply Now” which by the way, you should never ever do.

Looking at the address bar, the website is “Ontario-ca.com” which is not an Ontario Government website address. The real Ontario Government address is “Ontario.ca”. But the scammer is hoping that it’s close enough that you will fall for it. What follows is a form that has you fill in your name, address, and date of birth. Which is all the information that the scammer will need to steal your identity. I put in some bogus information and got this back:

It’s a success for the scammer as they are likely off to steal your identity.

It’s a very simple scam that given how close this website looks to the real Ontario Government website, I can see people falling for it. But I am hoping that by getting this out there, you won’t be a victim.

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Here’s Why Twitter’s Revoking Of Third Party API’s Is The Reason Why Twitter Will Die Sooner Than You Think

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 15, 2023 by itnerd

Late last week I reported that third party Twitter clients stopped working all of a sudden. That appears to be due to the fact that the API’s or Application Programming Interfaces that those apps rely on seem to have been revoked. This has been confirmed by Musk who are a pair a well known software analysts:

And to go further, 9to5Google is reporting that this revocation is intentional:

According to The Information today, a senior Twitter engineer internally communicated this week that the “Third-party app suspensions are intentional.” Other internal (Slack) communications seen by the publication reveal that Twitter is working on “approved talking points” for partners, but it’s not clear when they would be ready. That “3party clients revoked access” exchange occurred on Friday morning, and it’s unclear whether that information is for impacted third-party developers or advertisers.

Since then, Twitter, including the usually vocal Elon Musk, have not announced the removal of third-party apps. The company has no PR team, while developers of those clients have been similarly kept in the dark, and have resorted to their own messages explaining the situation.

The Information notes that “most of Twitter’s employees, including most people working on Twitter’s developer platforms” have been laid off.

Here’s why I believe that he’s doing this other than he woke up one morning and thought that this was a good idea as he does have a “ready, fire aim” mentality. He is likely using this to force people to abandon third party Twitter apps and use the native Twitter app as that would help to drive monetization as he desperately needs money.

Here’s the problem with that. Taking away choice from individuals is a sure way to drive them off the platform. But it’s worse if you’re a business. That’s because you may use a third party app to do a deep level of social media monitoring. As in what is the sentiment of your customers? Or are there issues that are trending related to you that you need to address? Even how stuff appears on Twitter is controlled by third party apps that businesses use. That sort of functionality isn’t going to be found in the native Twitter app and businesses would be less than pleased about being forced off the social media tools that they use. In fact, it seems to me that the number of Tweets from brands appearing on Twitter seems to have fallen sharply since this whole thing started. Now that’s just anecdotal to be clear. But if this is actually fact, then Elon has a huge problem on his hands. Revoking these APIs might be the final straw for businesses and advertisers who didn’t immediately head to the exits when Elon took over Twitter. Those businesses and advertisers will quit Twitter, depriving Elon of money and send Twitter into a death spiral that there will be no recovery from. And I don’t think it will make any difference if Elon gets a clue and restores API access tomorrow. He would have burned the last bridges with the people he needs to give him any shot at making back the $44 billion that he overspent to buy Twitter. And here’s the key thing. This will all happen very quickly. So quickly that Elon won’t know what hit him.

Great job Elon.

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Review: Anker 60W PIQ 3.0 & GaN Tech Dual Port Charger, PowerPort Atom III 

Posted in Products with tags on January 15, 2023 by itnerd

Compact chargers are becoming increasingly common. And I tend to have a few of them on hand with different wattage capabilities to fit whatever use case that I have. One of them that I have is this Anker 60W PIQ 3.0 & GaN Tech Dual Port Charger, PowerPort Atom III charger:

In the box you get the charger as well as a decent quality USB cable. This is a charger that is ideally suited to someone who needs a fast charger for their phone. Or they have a MacBook Air and another device that they need to be charged. The size is pocketable due to the fact that they the charger uses GaN technology to keep the size down. You get a USB-C PowerIQ 3.0 port and a USB-A port equipped with PowerIQ 2.0. The former does 45W which is good for charging everything up to a MacBook Air. The latter does 15W. I tested this with a MacBook Air and I was able to charge it from 30% charge to a 75% charge in a little under an hour. That was impressive to me.

This charger goes for $50 CDN on Amazon and I’d recommend it if you need a charger that doesn’t take up a lot a space. The price and size result in me having this in my assortment of gear.

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Norton Password Manager Accounts Have Been Pwned…. Change ALL Your Passwords ASAP

Posted in Commentary with tags , on January 15, 2023 by itnerd

Bleeping Computer is reporting that Norton LifeLock’s Password Manager accounts has been pwned:

According to a letter sample shared with the Office of the Vermont Attorney General, the attacks did not result from a breach on the company but from account compromise on other platforms.

“Our own systems were not compromised. However, we strongly believe that an unauthorized third party knows and has utilized your username and password for your account,” NortonLifeLock said.

This username and password combination may potentially also be known to others.”

More specifically, the notice explains that around December 1, 2022, an attacker used username and password pairs they bought from the dark web to attempt to log in to Norton customer accounts.

The firm detected “an unusually large volume” of failed login attempts on December 12, 2022, indicating credential stuffing attacks where threat actors try out credentials in bulk.

By December 22, 2022, the company had completed its internal investigation, which revealed that the credential stuffing attacks had successfully compromised an undisclosed number of customer accounts.

Norton has since reset passwords on impacted accounts, introduced additional measures to fend off attacks, and advises customers to enable two-factor authentication on their accounts. It also offers the use of a credit monitoring service. But if you want my opinion, given this and the LastPass gong show, using an online password manager now seems to be a really bad idea. And if you’re a user of one of these services, you might want to reconsider that decision.

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Elon Musk’s Price Cut On Teslas Angers Current Owners

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 14, 2023 by itnerd

When I posted this story on yesterday on Tesla cutting prices significantly, I was wondering if I should post the story or wait as I was thinking that there would be blow back from this move. So, why was I expecting blow back? Tesla had some really significant incentives coming into the New Year to move cars. So if you were one of those people who took advantage of that, and then found out that Tesla cut prices by 10% or 20%, you’d be mad.

In the end I decided to push “Publish” on the story. But I really didn’t have to wait very long to see the blow back from this as a simple browse of Twitter showed examples of owners not happy with Tesla and Elon Musk:

https://twitter.com/sonalim85557361/status/1614324327637487616

Now I get why people are ticked off. If you just leased a Tesla, you won’t care. But if you just bought a Tesla, it’s just dropped the value by a significant degree overnight. And you will never, ever see that price recover. And if you’re trying to sell a Tesla right now, you’re going to have to sell it for less because used Tesla prices are now going to drop as a result of this price cut.

But at the same time, and to be clear I am not defending Tesla, but what are they supposed to do? Anytime there’s a price cut of some sort regardless of what the product is, people who bought the product at a higher price not to long before the price drop are not going to be happy. Having said that, Elon’s current situation and personal “liabilities” are going to make this situation worse than it would be for pretty much any other company on the planet.

If I were to give Elon some free advice, I would give anyone who bought a Tesla in December when their aggressive incentive program was in place some free Supercharging credits to take away the sting for really recent buyers. Like say $5000 – $7500 worth or Supercharging credits. Because that’s the group that are most likely going to be very upset. Everyone else would unfortunately have to take it on the chin. It sounds harsh, but the reality is that Elon has created a situation where there is no possible way for him or Tesla to make everyone happy. Thus Elon has to take a very targeted approach and hope for the best. Because I suspect that given the situation with Tesla and Elon Musk, some of these people won’t be buying an EV from Tesla ever again because of this price cut.

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The LCBO Has Been Pwned…. Data Stolen By Hackers

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 13, 2023 by itnerd

The Liquor Control Board Of Ontario or LCBO for short is a provincial crown corporation that distributes and sells alcohol in the Province of Ontario. And it put out a statement saying that its website and mobile app were taken offline due to a “cybersecurity incident” on Tuesday:

LCBO has experienced a cybersecurity incident, affecting online sales through LCBO.com. Immediate steps were taken to contain the issue, including disabling customer access to both LCBO.com and our mobile app while we engaged with third-party experts to conduct a forensics investigation.  

At this time, we can confirm that an unauthorized party embedded malicious code into our website that was designed to obtain customer information during the checkout process. Unfortunately, customers who provided personal information on our check-out pages and proceeded to our payment page on LCBO.com between January 5, 2023, and January 10, 2023, may have had their information compromised. This could include names, email and mailing addresses, Aeroplan numbers, LCBO.com account password, and credit card information. This incident did not affect any orders placed through our mobile app or vintagesshoponline.com. 

We are continuing our investigation into the incident to identify the specific customers impacted so that we can communicate with them directly. Out of an abundance of caution, we recommend all customers who initiated or completed payment for orders on LCBO.com during this window monitor their credit card statements and report any suspicious transactions to their credit card providers.

With a thorough review and testing of the website complete, including enhanced security and monitoring measures in place, LCBO.com and our mobile app have been restored and are fully operational. We have also reset all LCBO.com account passwords. Registered customers will be prompted to reset their password on login. 

Wow. This is not trivial. This is actually the absolute worst possible case scenario that could happen. Seeing as this is a crown corporation, meaning it’s run by the Provincial Government, I would hope that there is a full investigation and detailing of how this could have happened and what steps are being taken to not only stop this from happening again, but what its doing to protect those who were affected by this. If you’re an LCBO customer, that should be the least that you should expect from them.

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Windows Defender Update Deletes All Start Menu And Desktop Shortcuts…. Yikes

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 13, 2023 by itnerd

Happy Friday The 13th. Unless you are running Microsoft Windows because an update to Windows Defender is apparently making the rounds and has some catastrophic effects. Specifically Windows users and system administrators worldwide are complaining that application shortcuts have disappeared from Start menus, desktops, and taskbars. You can read more on places like Reddit for example.

The problem appears to be related to a malfunctioning attack surface reduction (ASR) rule issued with Windows Defender security intelligence update 1.381.2140.0.

For what it’s worth, Microsoft has acknowledged the issue:

The good news is that regular Windows users and consumers aren’t affected by this bug. The bad news is that it will only affect managed machines inside organizations. Which is still hundreds or thousands or even millions of machines inside big businesses that rely on Microsoft’s threat detection security. Thus this is not a trivial issue and it will be interesting to see how Microsoft addresses this.

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People Using Third Party Apps Can’t Log Into Twitter At The Moment

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 13, 2023 by itnerd

If you are using a third party Twitter client, chances are you can’t use Twitter right now.

9to5Google reports that the errors are happening on all third-party Twitter clients. Confirmed by this guy:

I agree that Musk would be signing the death warrant for Twitter if its option number two. We’ll just have to watch and see what the deal is.

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Tim Cook Takes Massive Pay Cut…. That’s Not Good News

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 13, 2023 by itnerd

The news is out that Tim Cook who is the CEO of Apple is going to be taking a massive pay cut. How massive. According to the company’s proxy statement, Cook earned just under $100 million. But according to Bloomberg, he’ll be taking a roughly 40% pay cut this year based on “balanced shareholder feedback, Apple’s exceptional performance and a recommendation from Mr. Cook”.

That’s not good news.

The thing is that this might be a hint of things to come when Apple announces their earnings for the September to December quarter, which typically is the time of year that they print money. Given that they had huge issues with getting iPhones out the door during that quarter, and the global economy is not in a good place, Apple and Cook may be getting ahead of what is likely to be a bad earnings release. Or even worse, layoff announcements. Imagine if Apple laid off a ton of people and Cook was still making $100 million a year. The optics of that would suck. And keep in mind that Apple has suffered from bad optics over riots in their Chinese iPhone factories. So this company is likely hyper sensitive to how its being perceived at the moment.

While I am not a financial analyst, I’m going to suggest that you might want to buckle up as this is going to be a bumpy ride.

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Tesla Has Just Become Another Car Company As Prices In The US For Their Cars Are Slashed

Posted in Commentary with tags on January 13, 2023 by itnerd

Tesla for years has tried to position itself as not like every other car company out there. But that’s clearly changing as news has come out that prices for many of their cars have been slashed:

This follows similar price cuts in China. The question is why are they doing this? I think the answer has many aspects to it:

  • Inventory: Tesla is likely sitting on a lot of inventory. They didn’t ship as many cars in 2022 as they had hoped. Thus they need to get rid of those cars. And fast.
  • A Slowing Economy: People are less likely to splash out the cash to by a big ticket item when the economy is slowing. Thus Tesla needs to give people an incentive to buy now rather than wait and see if the economy improves. Especially since this pricing change makes some of their cars eligible for tax credits which might make someone spring for a Tesla.
  • Elon Musk: The behaviour of Elon Musk has to be a factor here as there were stories of people cancelling their orders of Tesla vehicles because of the stuff he’s said and done over the last few months. That has to have cost Tesla a number of sales.
  • Competition: Tesla is no longer the only game in town when it comes to EV’s. GM, Audi, VW, Hyundai, Kia to name a few companies are all in this game. Which means that EV shoppers have options and Tesla won’t come out on top by default.

In short, Tesla has just become a car company who has to cut prices and offer incentives to get people to buy. And that’s a habit that’s hard to kick if you’re a car company because consumers just get used to incentives on new cars. Which is why I don’t know if they can get past this. I’m personally thinking that Tesla is in deep trouble here, and these price cuts are just the tip of the iceberg as they really don’t have a whole lot of cards that they can play here. But as always, I am free to be proven wrong.

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