Firefox Hangs with Gmail and Google Buzz

For days now I'm experiencing firefox crashes or hangups due to an unresponsive script while accessing my Gmail account. I found out it must be connected to Google Buzz, the Twitter-like service of Google added to Gmail

with several error messages and crash reports, I switched to HTML version (though you can also switch to the older version with chat) to remedy the problem until Google fixes it.

Using HTML version is also lightweight but you need to check your emails manually to refresh and update unlike the standard version.

I'm using the latest version of firefox and i initially suspected one of my add-ons messing up.

Microsoft Search Engine BING Meaning: Because It's Not Google

It was only recently In Sydney, Australia that I've learned that Microsoft has a new search engine demonstrated by our instructor. At first I thought it's an Aussie search engine that's why I inquired

then he showed me it's been quite a while MS renamed their search engine to BING and wondered why they chose to brand the new search engine as BING: Because It's Not Google! :P

2nd Quarter Google PageRank (PR) Update

I just noticed today that my main blog Budget Travel Philippines got its much deserved PageRank after almost four months of waiting since it got a PR0 (from the old Tutubi Patrol blog) for no apparent reason (the time when a lot of blogs got punished due to paid links)

My main blog PR got PR4, the old pagerank of Tutubi Patrol before the PR slash. PR of this blog was reduced to PR3 from the previous PR4.

No more complaints. Even if Budget Travel Asia has a PR0, there's no noticeable loss in traffic, in fact, referrals from Google increased making the theory that the PR has nothing to do with SERP (search engine results pages)

Now i'm seeing the increase in my earnings :P

Google Hates Paid Posts in Blogs: PageRank Removed

While bloghopping I noticed several blogs with PR3 or PR4 now with PR0 (no pagerank) according to my SearchStatus add-on of Firefox. One of them even blogged about her experience (in Filipino) when she received an email supposedly from Google warning her about paid posts (like Payutoblog and others) for $5/post or use the "nofollow" tag.

She deleted the alleged post complained of but found out the next day her PR was removed

several blogs linking to my main blog also got PR0 rating and I know my PR will alsobe affected since high-ranking blogs suddenly lost their PR. My backpacking philippines blog still has no PR due to it's being new. Hoping to get at least a PR3 or PR4 then aim for PR5 in conjunction with more quality posts

Note: I once applied for paid reviews at PayPerPost, got approved, but didn't continue with it nor write a single paid article.

Gmail Phishing Email from Hotmail

I received the email below supposedly from customeraccountverticate101@gmail.com asking me to send my username and password to them as if I have a Hotmail account
and i'm that stupid to fall to their lame trick

If you received the same email, click "report as spam" so Gmail/Google can act on it immediately

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
from Customer Service
to customeraccountverticate101@gmail.com,
date Jan 3, 2008 12:21 PM
subject Verify Your Account (Case ID:- GMAIL554USER99886IKPPPPC)
mailed-by gmail.com

hide details 12:21 PM (55 minutes ago)



Reply


Dear Account User

This Email is from Hotmail Customer Care and we are sending it to every Gmail Email User Accounts Owner for safety. we are having congestions due to the anonymous registration of Gmail accounts so we are shutting down some Gmail accounts and your account was among those to be deleted.We are sending you this email to so that you can verify and let us know if you still want to use this account.If you are still interested please confirm your account by filling the space below.Your User name,password,date of bith and your country information would be needed to verify your account.

Due to the congestion in all Hotmail users and removal of all unused Gmail Accounts, Hotmail would be shutting down all unused Accounts, You will have to confirm your E-mail by filling out your Login Information below after clicking the reply button, or your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.


* Username: ..............................

* Password: ................................

* Date of Birth: ............................

* Country Or Territory: ................

After following the instructions in the sheet, your account will not be interrupted and will continue as normal. Thanks for your attention to this request. We apologize for any inconveniences.
Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his/her account after two weeks of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.


Gmail Hotmail Scam, Social Engineering,

How to Secure Gmail: Switch to HTTPS

Incidents of Big Brotherish behavior seem to be present here in the Philippines where some individuals resort to wiretapping, illegal monitoring and unlawful interception.

To those not in the know, Internet browsing using plain HTTP is transmitted in the clear allowing snooping and wiretapping to be performed. Switching to HTTPS by enabling SSL encryption will eliminate the risk.

This is a quick guide to avoid other people from snooping your gmail inbox since by default, Gmail only encrypts the account login and not the contents during transmission allowing miscreants to read email in transit.

Simply follow the procedure to deter snooping by miscreants:

Requirements: Firefox browser with Customize Google add-on

1. Download and install Firefox browser
2. Fire up Firefox browser after installation
3. Visit Customize Google add-on page and click the Install Now link to download and install the add-on. You'll be required to restart Firefox
4. After restart, click Tools to display the dropdown menu and select the CustomizeGoogle Options.
5. Select Gmail on the list then click Secure(switch to https) checkbox. You may also select the remove ads and related pages

Note this will only provide encryption from your PC to Gmail's mail server. It will not protect the path between Gmail servers up to the recipient's PC unless the recipient is also using secure Gmail or any SSL-enabled emails.

Creating Spam Filters in Gmail

I got irritated with the increasing number of spam messages sent to my gmail address incidentally where I use to moderate various Yahoo! Groups

Spammers found a way to send email to group owners by sending tons of spam to addresses in this format: groupname-owner@yahoogroups.com

Yahoo's SpamGuard tags those spam messages correctly but alway get past Gmail's Junk Mail filters so I decided to create a filter to automagically delete those annoying junk mails

Note those messages tagged by SpamGuard has the following heading with them:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups SpamGuard has detected that the attached message to the
owner of the Yahoo! Group is likely to be spam.
For more information about SpamGuard, please visit our help pages:
http://groups.yahoo.com/local/spamguard.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------

All we have to do is create a Gmail filter that looks for the first few words of the SpamGuard message then delete any message that matches the criteria.

Here's how:

Login to your gmail account
Click the Create a filter link shown below


Copy part of the message that always comes with spam then paste into the Has the words form field (here I pasted these words "Yahoo! Groups SpamGuard has detected that the attached message to the owner of the Yahoo! Group")
Click Next Step button
Click Delete it checkbox
Click Create Filter button


Note with SpamGuard is that it's not perfect so sometimes you may catch and delete a legitimate message :(