Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s prostitute scandal is still big news in New York. In February earlier this year, the former Governor was caught in a federal wiretap arranging to meet with a high-priced prostitute at a Washington hotel.

The story quickly swept the tabloids, all of who soaked up Spitzer’s downfall with little mention of how and why his crimes actually came to light.

Spitzer was originally flagged when a series of Suspicious Activity Reports - reports that banks must to file with the Treasury to assist in investigating anything from money laundering to terrorist activity were submitted.

The prostitution ring that counted Spitzer as a customer had been responsible for shady bank accounts, checks and wire transfers of up to $400,000, they soon became under-investigation.

According to the FBI’s complaint:

“In or about October 2007, the FBI and the United States Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigative Division (IRS-CID) began an investigation focusing on an organization suspected of conducting prostitution and money-laundering crimes in the United States and Europe.”

The investigation began with a suspicious activity report on Spitzer. According to the Wall Street Journal, Spitzer’s transactions were regular and always kept under $10,000. A pattern that the Feds class as suspicious.

“There has been a massive federal crackdown on money laundering in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and banks have been extremely diligent in filing such reports. Those reports often include details of transactions done by innocent people.”

According to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) there have been 4.7 million SARs filed as of June 30, 2007.

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With email providers giving away more and more online storage space, many people have taken to using their email account to store personal information.

While being able to access your details using an internet connection may seem like a good idea, an inbox/outbox or folder with passwords, bank account numbers, account usernames and other crucial information is a jackpot bonanza for identity thieves who manage to hack your email.

Even if you are careful not to store this type of information in your email account, you may still be inadvertently revealing personal information in emails conversations between family and friends.

The worst of it all is that you may never even know if your email is being hacked. A hacker can easily read an email then mark it as unread, if nothing appears to be different how are you going to know?

The easiest way to find out if your email is being hacked is by setting up an electronic tripwire which alerts you if an unwanted intruder breaks into your account.

1. For our example we will use OneStat. You must first sign up (you can leave a fake name and URL but must provide an email address).
2. You will receive a welcome email from OneStat, with a link to download an attachment. The attachment will contain your account number, write this number down and delete the attachment; you wouldn’t want a hacker to find this information!
3. Change the name of a text document to something that will attract an email hacker such as ‘password list’ or ‘account number and pin’. Also change the file format from a text to a website page, for example ‘account number and pin.htm’
4. Then attach this dummy file to an email and send it to the account you want to monitor. Make sure the email subject title also lures in the snooper (List of Passwords, Bank Details etc)
5. Now the trap is set, if someone opens the email and the attachment, OneStat will record a hit. If you log into your account everyday you will be quickly notified if anyone has been snooping around.

The OneStat account page then gives you details on each “visitor” including the date and time they accessed the web document and more importantly their location and IP address!

Although this may not stop your email being hacked, it’s a good way to monitor your account. If your email does get hacked then you should quickly change your password to something stronger.

Also if you see the hacker’s location and you only know one or two people in that area, then it can narrow down your list of possible suspects.

With most of the population owning a cell phone, the numbers of text messages flying around the airwaves has drastically increased over the last 5 years. And with spammers try to expand their audience, text messages have become fertile territory for malicious spam adverts.

Estimates vary greatly regarding the exact percentage of spam text’s out there, however Clouldmark - a San Francisco company that makes anti-spam software for carriers – claim that the problem is on the increase with numbers expected to quadruple by the end of the year.

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Stumble Upon is a collaborative web search tool that utilizes a growing Stumble Upon community to help you cut down on Googling and get better directed to what you are looking for.

Developed by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance, and Eric Boyd,“StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, we deliver high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences.”

This web search tool comes in the form of a browser add-on which can be found for Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.

Click Here To Download StumbleUpon

How StumbleUpon Works

StumbleUpon finds a new site every time you click the ‘stumble!’ button; once you find a page that you like, you can rate the page by giving it a ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down.’

The pages which StumbleUpon send your way are based on your ratings of previous pages, as well as ratings from your friends and other users with similar interests. In this way, websites with great content get recommend for the next user by real people – not heartless machines.

The StumbleUpon community is extremely large and continuing to grow. In July 2006 StumbleUpon had around 1 million users and as of December 2007, the community had grown to over 4 million. The rising number of the stumble upon community was something that eBay noticed back in May 07 when they acquired StumbleUpon for a whopping $75,000,000 (75 million) USD.

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I am sure everyone has heard about it, but what exactly does it meant to have your identity stolen and how much of a threat is it actually.

What is Identity Theft

Identity theft is a catch-all term for crimes involving illegal usage of another individual’s identity. The most common form of identity theft is credit card fraud. While the term is relatively new, the practice of stealing money or getting other benefits by pretending to be a different person is thousands of years old.

According to the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center, identity theft is sub-divided into four categories:

* Financial Identity Theft (using another’s identity to obtain goods and services)
* Criminal Identity Theft (posing as another when apprehended for a crime)
* Identity Cloning (using another’s information to assume his or her identity in daily life)
* Business/Commercial Identity Theft (using another’s business name to obtain credit)

Identity theft may be used to facilitate crimes including illegal immigration, terrorism and espionage. Identity theft may also be a means of blackmail. There are also cases of identity cloning to attack payment systems, including medical insurance.

How Much of a Threat is Identity Theft to Me?

Surveys in the USA from 2003 to 2006 showed a decrease in the total number of victims but an increase in the total value of identity fraud to US$56.6 billion in 2006. The average fraud per person rose from $5,249 in 2003 to $6,383 in 2006.

Defense Link Article About Military Member Identity Theft Battle

The 2003 survey from the Identity Theft Resource Center found that :

* Only 15% of victims find out about the theft through proactive action taken by a business
* The average time spent by victims resolving the problem is about 40 hours
* 73% of respondents indicated the crime involved the thief acquiring a credit card
* The emotional impact is similar to that of victims of violent crimes

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Google is a name synonymous with bettering someone else’s idea. But we should certainly not be the ones complaining, as they steam roll the competition they continue provide us with more user-friendly and lets not forget ‘free’ services and applications.

A new Google service, dubbed “Knol,” is set to compete with the Web’s largest data base of reference work, Wikipedia. The firm revealed that the new website project will invite individuals to write “authoritative articles” on their areas of expertise.Google hopes that Knol (the name derived from “knowledge”) articles will cover “all topics, from scientific concepts … to entertainment.”Significantly, the project will see Google help generate new editorial content, a process its executive have previously said it is “philosophically opposed to.”In a Google blog posted last month, Udi Manber, Vice President of Engineering wrote,

“The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors. Books have authors’ names right on the cover, news articles have bylines, scientific articles always have authors — but somehow the web evolved without a strong standard to keep authors names highlighted. We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content”

As on Wikipedia, the content will be free to access. However, one major difference is that Knol’s authors will be able to attach advertising to their work and take a share of revenues.

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Google are always up to something, and we could dedicate a whole blog to them if we simply had the time on our hands! In what seems to be their never ending quest to take over the Information Technology World they have announced yet another FREE application, language translations for the Google Talk chat client.

Using the same technology as, the translation application is delivered as a series of chat bots. These tools can quickly translate a phrase or paragraph for you, and they can also be added to group chats to act as real-time translators.Google lists out about 30 total language bots with which are all logically named according to their translation duty, such as en2ko@bot.talk.google.com, signifying English to Korean translation. English is the dominant language across the translations; however there are some non-English bots available such as fr2de.

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The performance of your WiFi home network is highly dependent on the signal strength of the router or the wireless access point (base station). This signal is greatly affected by distance, obstructions and interference.

There are several ways to boost your range and signal strength. There is a selection of different antenna enhancers available on the consumer market as well as some DIY hacks to create your own expander.

D.I.Y Boosters

You can boost your WiFi signal considerably well using kitchenware or even old cans.

Check out this video on how to create your own wireless enhancer.

You can also use a sheet of manila folder and aluminum foil to create the parabola reflector:

1. Download and Print out a template of a parabola
2. Use it to score an outline onto a manila folder with a pen or pencil
3. Apply glue to the side of the folder that is not scored for the reflector (with the slots)
4. Apply aluminum foil with dull side down onto the glue
5. Don’t apply foil to the support part (with the tabs)
6. Turn the manila folder over and cut out the shiny new parabolic
7. reflector
8. Cut out the reflector part (with the slots) and the support part (with the tabs)
9. Bend the reflector - with the foil in back - and insert the tabs of the support part
10. Apply tape to keep two parts together
11. Poke the antenna through hole (about 1/2 way down pole) and pivot the reflector to point in desired direction

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After a long road and unsuccessful launches we are offering to cut our loses and sell www.1Replica-Watches.com. This website was originally ordered for a British customer who was interested in setting up a shop to sell generic replica watches along with fashionable designer watches online. They were unable to work out their payment structure even though they had a reputable provider. In the end the canceled the project tried to recover by transforming the E-commerce site into a watch blog.

This domain is now available to bid on at EBay. Click Here to Bid on This Domain

The blog was semi-successful in that it was able to increase the Google Page Rank to 2 and pick up higher rankings in the search engines. We are now offering bidding on this domain that includes the website blog as well. It is in the process of being appraised and we will publish this as soon as it becomes available.

Click Here if You would like to bid on the www.1replica-watches.com domain and website with admin CMS section by WordPress 2.3.1 at GoDaddy Domain Auction!

Benefits of This Domain Name:

• SEO Optimized URL with Keywords
• Appears First in Alphabetic Listing Directories
• Google Page Rank 2
• Established in Directories and Search Engines
• Weblog Included; Earn Money By Doing Paid Reviews and Selling Ad Space
• Perfect URL for Sales of Designer Brand Name Watches and Replica Watches
• A .com Domain Suffix

Hackers are getting assistance from a female stripper by the name of Mellisa. She is a digital girl that is helping spammer hack a security measure that has helped slow the spamming community.

To help solve the mystery and security behind Captcha text images, the spammers enlisted the help of Mellisa. By inserting and deciphering the text, users get to see explicit images. Seems like a fair enough trade-off. In the past many viruses have tricked people into opening booby-trapped attachments with the false promise of seeing explicit images, but this was one of the first to actually show people more images if people respond.

This software by Trend Micro and Panda Security that is helping to defeat the anti-spam security check is a Windows game that arrives on machines that are already infected with malicious software. The program comes to life when the Internet Explorer browser is used on infected machines. The Captcha-busting program can run on Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, and Server 2003. You win (getting to see the explicit image) by correctly typing the text shown in an accompanying image. This seems like an easy enough game with great rewards. The creators of the game in turn take the deciphered text that stop spam robots from automatically signing up to create accounts that can be put to illegal use. By getting people to type in the text the spammers can are also able to take over the accounts and use them to send junk mail.

This online anti-spam security measure of using a image of text is known as Captchas or “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”. Typically they feature a disfigured word or one overlaid with static that make it difficult for anyone but a human to decipher.

Since its fist arrival, many spammers and hackers have been vigorously working to defeat the system and regaining acess to net-based resources, such as e-mail accounts or blogging tools, they are designed to protect. Although this game seems like a bunch of fun and gaining popularity, it is likely to increase the annoyance of spam and weaken our hold in the War on Spam.

First we would like to apologize to all of our customers who received our Email newsletter and who were dissatisfied. We received many complaints and questions regarding it - and I was not what it was suppose to be. It was our first attempt at communicated with our customers via Email and we wanted to do it professionally. We searched and we were referred to Jerry Hart - who from his website seemed like he was going to help achieve our goal and more.

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Quickly gaining popularity and taking back the web, Firefox is lighting up the internet with personalize browsing that is safer, faster and more powerful. When Firefox first emerged not many expected much since there were already other browsers, like Netscape, Opera, and Eudora, that had been out for a long time already and were no where near being as popular as Internet Explorer. This has caused Microsoft to start paying attention and listening to the users - but still falling short in keeping users loyal. Microsoft is synonymous with closed-code with only Microsoft add-ons at Microsoft prices.

For those of you who are not familiar with Firefox, prepared to be awaken to the revolution taking place on the web and quickly become converted to a Mozilla Firefox user.

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A gift that at the same time was a curse, the Digg effect took us down back on September 11, 2007 - ironic date I know. However, we did survive and we are in the process of improving the blog and posting articles that were missed during the month of October. Thanks to Girls Of The Israeli Army post done back on August 5, 2007 we got well over 2000 Diggs before our MySQL database could take no more connections.

For those of you who do not know Digg, it is best to just head on over to the community to sign up and start clicking around. Start viewing the Digg review of our page that created a lot of traffic for us and then begin exploring Digg. It is somewhat of an easy concept to grasp but here is what the ol’ mighty internet resource has to say about it:

A community-based popularity website with an emphasis on technology and science articles, recently expanding to a broader range of categories such as politics and entertainment. It combines social bookmarking, blogging, and syndication with a form of non-hierarchical, democratic editorial control

According to Wikipedia. Basically that all means that the readers vote - “Digg” - webpages, blogs, photos etc. that they like. The more Diggs you get the higher your ranking in the community. Voters do not all carry the same vote. People who are reputable and have the most friends get more say and weight. This helps when an average Joe trys to cheat and vote his webpage up.

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Talks of a phone from Google dubbed the Gphone, have recently been causing a stir on the World Wide Web. There are articles mentioning deals between certain high profile companies with expected release dates and even articles from people claiming they have already seen prototypes. Whether or not we can believe everything we read, Google are on the up and up so a move into the wireless industry is not out of character.

There have been a few reports that Google are making a big push in the development of their own handset. High Tech Computers, a Taiwan-based smart phone maker are rumored to be designing the Linux device which is said to incorporate a Texas Instruments edge chipset. There have been a number of specifications listed in these reports and if all of this turns out to be true, Google may revolutionize the way we use our cell phones.

Reports suggest we can expect a handset that provides Wi-Fi, 3-G and GPS capability, a user friendly browser such as Linux or possibly one designed by Google, access to VoIP, Gtalk or even Skype, a 2 Megapixel Camera, Mp3, a predictive Qwerty Keyboard and of course, a large color screen.

The Gphone is apparently scheduled for release early 2008, with T-Mobile and Orange tipped to be providing services it may seem like everything is almost decided. If Google can come up with a handset that can incorporate all these features then they really will have a rival to the Apple iPhone.

The iPhone is a great device and certainly did take mobile technology to the next level; however some felt it did not quite live up to the hype. All this talk of the Gphone is setting the stage for something really spectacular but with no sign of any official concept designs, it is difficult to really predict what is on the companies mind.

Note: All images are Unofficial Concept Sketches; designs are artist impressions of what the Gphone may look like.

The release of Google Docs and Spreadsheets, the highly anticipated free office suite application available through the internet by download, threatens to topple Microsoft’s dominant position as the leader in desktop software offering services delivered over the Web supported by advertising and/or subscriptions. So much so that Microsoft set to the drawing board and immediately began developing a rival project.

Tip: Be sure to check out the link at the end of this article for a link to a listing of various free and open source software programs for download that is having the executives at Microsoft shaking in their boots and thinking about ways to counter this!

The aim is to offer a free version of Microsoft Works which will be pre installed in desktops and will display advertisements stored in cache, the advertisements that help support the application will be refreshed when the computer establishes an internet connection.

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