Al in geen tijden heb ik meer een blog post gemaakt, dit komt niet door een gebrek aan ideeën, maar vooral omdat veel dingen waarover ik zou willen schrijven het internationale publiek wat ik hoopte te bereiken niet zal aanspreken.

Daarom zal ik mijn blog iets persoonlijker maken door er ook gewoon alledaagse posts op te maken in het Nederlands. Ik heb dan ook twee categorieen aangemaakt Dutch en English om onderscheid te kunnen maken tussen de twee talen/doelgroepen

Last month i got this really nice looking Darth Vader USB hub from one of my best friends. He brought it all the way from Japan. This was the best present he could have given me, since i really like Starwars. Also i was really in need of a USB hub on my desk. When i got home the first thing i did was hook it up. Darth makes sweet Darth Vader sounds and wiggles its head when you turn him on or attach a USB device to it.

Darth can’t stop talking!
The next day it’s time for work. Since i work from home most of the time Darth is staring at me. I turn on the computer and Darth even starts talking to me, nice! Five minutes later Darth starts talking again and wiggles his head. I think what did i do wrong? Five minutes later again! and again! and again! HELP! Darth tell me, what did i do wrong?

At the bottom of Darth i found an off switch for the sound. So i turned Darth to silent mode. Finaly i can get back to work. Oh-no! He still wiggles his head every five minutes. Damn, this still makes a lot of noise! I gave up, disconnected my new friend and put him in the corner.

Which designer creates a device like this? “Let’s create something that drives our users crazy!?!” Smart thinking… It’s a shame, now i have to look for a new USB hub. The USB squid looks nice, no moving parts!

Screwdriver to the rescue!
Today i decided to disassemble Darth. Maybe i can solve the noise problem and use him anyways. The first problem is that Darth is assembled pretty good and tight. I really have no clue how to open him. Google was no help, since nobody tried disassembling Darth, yet. Screwdriver to the rescue! Tried to break it open, but that ain’t working. Darth has some round covers at the back, and trust me they won’t come loose with a screwdriver.

Drilling some holes in the round screw covers did the trick and i was able to remove the screws that held Darth together. After opening him i did some trial and error to see which power cords were used for the motorized head. It was the orange cord at the back. I disconnected those, taped them up with some duct tape. Then put everything back together. Darth is still working, awesome! The only problem left is Darth isn’t making sounds anymore when you connect a USB device. Though he does still make a sound when you connect him to the USB itself. Now every morning Darth talks to me, but after that he shuts up so i can do some work.

You want your own Darth Vader USB hub? You can buy them at ThinkGeek.

This week i tried to sell my old mobile phone (T-Mobile MDA Vario a.k.a. HTC Wizard) on Marktplaats.nl, which is something like the Dutch eBay. One of the first bids was from some women named Jane Mayer. She offered 200 euro’s, but since i only asked 40 euro’s it sounds like a scam. I instantly removed the bid, since i guess that noone else will try to bid a reasonable price of someone all ready bid 200 euro’s. Then i mailed Jane to ask if she didn’t make a mistake. She replies and asks me for the state of the phone and what the price is. I reply that the condition was cleary described in the advertisement and that she can have the phone for 40 euro’s. She replies with the following email:

janemayer_01@yahoo.com writes:
I really appreciate your good response back to me.I’ll pay you €40 euro and i have also verified from the shipping from TNT / TPG heading to working €30 euro for the shipping cost through Registered Airmail postal address to my friends who work in Nigeria as director in Oil and Gas Company I’m buying this item for my friend as Birthday present gift ..I’m presently in Australia for official assignment so i will like to have your paypal account as to made the payment or bank to bank wire transfer for your payment of €70euro to be transfer into your account so you Immediately we ship the item after i made the payment into your account.i want you to ship the item to my friend address in Nigeria.
Am waiting for your reply immediately because i want this item to be ship as soon as possible.
Regards
Jane

If this isn’t a scam then what is, does she really think i am that stupid? Which director of a oil and gas company doesn’t have a office mobile phone which is way better then my four year old mobile, come on! So i replied her to get lost with her scam. But what kept me wondering is what her business plan is? How are they making money out of this. They want me to send the phone without paying? then sell the phone? I know some company that buys phone’s like this for 15 euro. Thats not worth your time now is it? They want to abuse my paypal account? How? Damn, why didn’t i go along to get more information. If you know how this works please leave me a message or comment.

After some thinking and being sad about the fact that i will never know how they make money with this scam i decided to get in contact with Yahoo! abuse. I filled in some form at their site and after a day i got a message back that they have taken appropriate action against the
Yahoo! account in question. Good, so not only do they need a new phone, they also need a new free mail account. Hope i saved some poor sucker from losing some funds in a shady transaction that they where having with Jane Mayer at the time they closed the account.

update 12 feb: So the next day i get a new e-mail. Now from Miss Adora Smith wanting to buy my phone, again its a scammer, the third this week! I opened a fake PayPal account. She sends me more e-mails after i gave her my PayPal account. She is sending me phising mails: This is to inform you that we receive your payment from Miss adora and your payment has been deducted from his/her account ready to be credited to your PayPal account as soon as we receive the shipment tracking number from you today.. With the content of the phishing mails i found other people who posted their whole mail conversations on the Internet. I think i know how they try to make money with this now. After you send them item they say something has gone wrong. PayPal has send you to much money and demand you send their money back. Read this forum post for more information.

update 13 feb: And the story goes on. Yesterday, i mailed Miss Adora telling her to stop this scam. I asked her to tell me how many people fall for this trick as compensation for my wasted time. Instead of a reply with the requested numbers i got this fake mail titled “Collaboration Complaint From Credit Europe Bank To FBI” it had some nice FBI logo’s and bank stuff, but again it was originated from a gmail account. It started with: It is important we know the status of the item bought otherwise, legal action may be taken against you since you have not replied to the confirmation of payment made to your account by our client miss adora via PayPal.We request for the Scanned Receipt and the Tracking Number to prove postage of the item in less than 24hours and we will fund the money into your account or face the consequences of LEGAL ACTION. So i created a picture that could look like a TNT package sending paper. Put it on my webserver and included it in my returning email, which read something like “How could i be so stupid, send the package right away.” I got a nearly instant reply that my PayPal payment was now transferred to my account. The log files showed that the email was opened from a IP-address in Germany. Seems its from a company called Your Freedom. They give people tools to use the web “anonymously”.

update 25 feb: Your Freedom said they would care and they did. They don’t want people to spam from their accounts, because ISPs could block their IP-adresses. This would be very bad for their legit customers. At first i send them my server logs. This was not enough for them to find the offending user. So i wrote a mail to them explaining which mail i got from who and on which time and date. Now surprisingly the scammer used the same e-mail address to sign up at Your Freedom as they did to contact me. Yes, the same hotmail address. Wow, to easy. This was the responce of Your Freedom: Well, you’re serving on a tablet, figuratively speaking. In fact this email address is in our database. Our systems have found already that the account is an incarnation of another account that has been used for fraudulent activity and it is already shut down. I have added a note that will be seen by support staff if there is a reactivation request — it won’t be answered positively.

Guess this is the end.