Any computer wizz's here?

[willedoo]

I've started getting emails from eBay notifying me of a login with a new device. They may be spam or could be genuine. The security message is that if it's me, there's nothing to worry about. It's the same type of security message I get from another auction site, but this is the first time I've had it from eBay. I have a dynamic IP which changes every time I log onto the net, but I'd say this is to do with cookies as I blitz them daily.

 

Just curious if anyone else has had eBay doing this.

[octave]

I get that quite often from eBay and other places.  I think it is just a security thing.   I have even received (cant remember  where it came from) a list of recent logins by device and location. 

[onetrack]

Yes, I get the "login with a new device" notification from both eBay and Google when I pull out the laptop, after I haven't used it for a while.

Then I smashed the screen on my Samsung Galaxy Note 4, so while I waited for a new LCD screen to arrive, I switched my SIM card to my old standby Samsung S4 phone.

Wow, that sure made them start asking questions! Just shows how much they track us constantly.

 

Edited January 29, 2021 by onetrack

[willedoo]

My device hasn't changed; same old laptop. The only recent change was going on the NBN. My new plan has a dynamic IP same as the old ADSL plan, so I don't think it would be anything to do with fresh IP's. I'm thinking that cookies are the only way eBay knows what device you log in with and I rarely keep them longer than 24 hours. I regularly use a couple of cleaners otherwise the Windows system gets constipated and gets unacceptably slow and these are set to wipe cookies, temp files, memory dumps etc..

[willedoo]

I've noticed that websites are increasingly using the .webp format for images. I'm assuming it's because of their small size which would have the benefit of quicker page loading and less bandwidth used. I don't like them much as I hoover up a lot of net photos and most .webp images display as very dark in MS image viewer.

 

If I want to keep them, I usually use Paint and 'save as' a .jpg or .bmp. As an example of size, a .webp photo of 35KB is 62KB saved as a .jpg and 900KB as a .bmp. I find most of them are so small that the .bmp format conversion is the only one that will give a reasonable resolution in the picture viewer. But I guess for a website developer/owner, the .webp format is the way to go if you don't need high detail photos.

[spacesailor]

What about " TIFF "  SEEMS a good image saver. With no loss.

spacesailor

[willedoo]

1 hour ago, spacesailor said:

What about " TIFF "  SEEMS a good image saver. With no loss.

spacesailor

I just converted the file mentioned above (35KB) to a .tiff and the size increased to 340KB. Resolution is not quite as good as the larger bitmap but still fairly good.

[willedoo]

When you use an image editor to save in a higher quality file format, I don't know what it actually does to the image. The online AI upscaling sites clone adjacent pixels and multiply them I think.

[red750]

A number of images I have saved lately have had the extension .jfif, which is not recognised by my photo editor nor by these forums. Here is a link to a video showing you how to convert the image to .jpeg.

 

How to convert .jfif to .jpeg 

[old man emu]

How do you convert *.piffl to something useable?

[red750]

If you right-click on an image and select "Save image as..", sometimes it saves as a HTML file.

If you use Windows 10, display the image, click on Snipping Tool, and save the image as .jpeg so yu can edit or upload it.

[Marty_d]

On 29/01/2021 at 9:16 PM, willedoo said:

I've started getting emails from eBay notifying me of a login with a new device. They may be spam or could be genuine. The security message is that if it's me, there's nothing to worry about. It's the same type of security message I get from another auction site, but this is the first time I've had it from eBay. I have a dynamic IP which changes every time I log onto the net, but I'd say this is to do with cookies as I blitz them daily.

 

Just curious if anyone else has had eBay doing this.

I had a call on the landline this afternoon.  Woman's voice with no discernable accent said "This is Ebay.  Your account has been charged $299..."

Didn't hear any more because I hung up on them.  Obvious scam.

[spacesailor]

I,m getting mobile ( cel ) call asking me ifthey can access my account for $ 695 by  Amozen for purchase of a Applephone.

Is this a scam from the fone guys, or a scam to my bank! .

spacesailor

[old man emu]

Any unsolicited call asking for payment is a scam. I doubt if any company nowadays starts correspondence with you first. You have to contact them. That means that you control the requests for information or money.

[red750]

My wife received one of those today, and it's not the first time. Today's was from 0498 260 210. It is a well-known scam. We have started a spreadsheet to record these call details so we can advise Scamwatch. 

[onetrack]

I'm staggered at the regular amount of huge losses by people who hand over large sums of money for a major purchase via an email request - only to find scammers have intercepted the businesses emails, and advised the buyer the bank account number has changed - whereby the buyer still does no basic checks and is scammed completely.

 

It has happened in W.A. with scammers acquiring houses, and purchase monies for houses. The Govt was forced to tighten up the real estate and settlement agent industries to try and remove loopholes that allowed this to happen. Everyone is now advised to call and confirm the email from the agency, before any money is transferred.

 

This woman lost her money that she thought she was handing over for a new Tesla. Doesn't help much when all the Tesla dealing is done online.

 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-15/tesla-invoice-scam-costs-two-australians-electric-car-deposit/13226126

 

Edited April 15, 2021 by onetrack

[willedoo]

Have just been reading that the U.K.'s National Cyber Security Centre is recommending using three random words for passwords.

 

https://www.neowin.net/news/the-uk-government-wants-you-to-use-passwords-made-of-three-random-words/

 

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2021/08/three-word-password-method-recommended-password-safety/

 

I remember a few years ago using a crack programme to check my passwords. My computer administrator pw was 12 letters long, all lower case and not representing any words. The master administrator pw in safe mode was 13 of the same all lower case, but different letters than the first pw. From memory it took three minutes to crack both. Even though they had a lot of letters, they were weak passwords.

 

It was easy to check. Just boot into settings, change boot priority to CD, insert the crack CD, reboot and let the crack programme run automatically and it would pick up every password on the computer.

[red750]

Modern laptops don't have CD/DVD players. Mine doesn't anyway.

[Jerry_Atrick]

The chances of someone booting into your computer to run a brute force password crack are minimal; however, they are very likely to get into your home network and run on all devices.. However, if you are concerned about booting a crack CD, then almost all BIOS' allow BIOS boot and settings passwords to be set..

 

Most brute force password attacks rely on dictionary words, names, and dates, with the common special character replacements (e.g. @ = a, ! or 1 for i, etc). Therefore, their algorithms will be confused if you place more than one decent sized word into the mix - after a while they will give up and then try a combination cracking algorithm,the time of which to take increases exponentially by the number of letters.

 

Unf, many sites put limits on the size of passwords, still. In a database, the use of an encrypted text field (usually up to 4mb in length) is easy enough to store in the DB (well, it is usually stored on disk outside the DB, but in a specific location). But for some reason, even today, new sites impose maximum lengths. Whenever the site allows me, I use the words of the first line of a song my kids used to sing when young-ans. It is really easy to type, is about 150 characters, and very difficult to crack, even without the use of special letters.

[Jerry_Atrick]

4 minutes ago, red750 said:

Modern laptops don't have CD/DVD players. Mine doesn't anyway.

That is true - my desktop doesn't either... However, most BIOS will allow boot form a USB drive - so the crack CD image can boot off that.

[onetrack]

I use long Latin genus names for passwords, with sections of phone numbers added to strengthen the password. Can't recall any cracking of my passwords yet - but I have had a couple of credit cards compromised because I carried out a transaction with an overseas business online - and they had their computer hacked, and my CC information was stolen, because they had stored it on their system.

 

Most computer hacking comes via emails, and as a result I use Mailwasher, and I can examine every incoming email for scammers and phishing and viruses. Mailwasher allows me to examine the email contents, the header information, the email routing (a dead giveaway, generally), and any type of attachments - all without downloading the email.

 

Then, when I've ID'ed the email as being from a scumbag, I blacklist him and his location, and bounce the email back to him, making it appear my email address is invalid.

I've used Mailwasher for about 15 or 16 years and never had a single problem with emails or phishing or viruses in that time.

[red750]

I use things like a deceased relatives name and birthday eg HannahEliza1503 or part of my wife's maiden name and our wedding day, eg. Wils24071973 (examples only, not actual). All sites have said they pass the security test.

[red750]

As is obvious from my avatar, my user name is my car rego number. You could also use the number, plus your mothers initials, as a password, particularly in Victoria, with recent regos in the format 9AA.9AA. So if your mother's name was Mary Ann Smith, your password could be 2HQ4ekMAS which gives you more than 8 characters, upper and lower case letters, and numerals, and because it is meaningful to you, is easy to remember.

[spacesailor]

if your that good, just swap the keyboard layout to a different language. type in your password then put the American keyboard back.

Not many hackers would get that, the password is Double Dutch !. LoL

spacesailor

 

[willedoo]

3 hours ago, spacesailor said:

if your that good, just swap the keyboard layout to a different language. type in your password then put the American keyboard back.

Not many hackers would get that, the password is Double Dutch !. LoL

spacesailor

 

spacey, I'm assuming by different language, you mean a language with a non Roman script like Greek, Russian, Chinese etc..