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A while back I shared a tip with you regarding a simple way to block access to
AIM chatrooms using the PICS filters already bundled with MSIE. Many readers wrote
back to thank me for that tip and I'm glad to have been of service. One reader
wrote to ask if I had ever found a similar technique for restricting access to
MSN Messenger chatrooms as well. Not having been a MSN user I honestly couldn't
offer any good advice. What I did reply with was that I would investigate and
reveal my findings here. Today I make good on that promise.
MSN Messenger is basically an AIM rip-off. Some things are rearranged to look
different but otherwise it's very much the same. MSN chatrooms also work exactly
the same way as AIM chatrooms. They're both accessed by URLs with elements common
to all of them. It's these common elements that we prohibit which in turn prohibits
entry into these Messenger style chatrooms.
Click Start / Settings / Control Panel.
Double click Internet Options.
Click the Contents tab.
Enable Content Advisor.
After choosing your password and Content Advisor is enabled, click the Settings
button.
Reenter your password and click OK.
Internet Explorer comes with the RSACi PICS Internet filtering standard preinstalled.
You can add others but for our purpose now we'll just use this one. With Content
Advisor enabled, the only sites allowed will be those that fall under the rating
levels you set here, assuming pages you view are rated. If you don't want to affect
your general browsing, slide these 4 bars all the way to the right. Otherwise,
set the viewing levels you desire.
Now click the Approved Sites tab. Here you can enter sites to always
allow or always block. These take precedence over the ratings set earlier. To
block access to MSN public chat rooms, copy this text into the Allow this Web
site field: chat.msn.com. (FYI: Yahoo! Messenger should also
be similar but I haven't found the correct url to block yet. If anyone knows please
tell me so I may share it with the others.)
Now click the Never button. This url is now added to the list that
will always be blocked. Children can still IM each other through MSN and they
can even invite friends into private chat rooms where only they interact. No public
chat at all.
Now click the General tab. Here's where we can have a little fun,
especially if SurfSafely.com
is your web directory of choice. If you uncheck the box next to Users can
see sites that have no rating, users will not be able to view unrated
sites unless you have added then to the approved list on the previous tab. For
users of SurfSafely.com, this is no problem because all sites in the directory
must be rated! If you don't want to be limited to our directory, then you
browse the web at large where only about 0.1% are labeled. In this case, check
the box so unrated sites can be viewed.
Finish by clicking OK, then OK again to accept Content
Advisor settings. Your kids still get to IM their other friends. Just no public
chat.
Back to top.
Ebay fraud alert
update.
Apparently the EBAY fraud alert I issued the other day is nothing new. It's actually
been around for about a year now. Some of my readers wrote with links to previous
articles on the topic which I will share with you below. However, others like
myself had never seen it before. The reason I had never seen it before is because
scams of this nature "stick out like a sore thumb" when reviewing email
with my favorite spam buster, MailWasher.
I was deleting and bouncing them all before ever downloading them from the email
server because they were all just so obvious. Then it occurred to me "What
if my readers don't find it as obvious as I do?" So, I decided to take a
look. What I saw of this one astounded me!
There are some basic rules of online behavior than common sense dictate. One of
them is never send sensitive personal information via email, not even to parties
you may know or already do business with unless you know how to send it securely
using products such as PGP to encrypt it in transit. But this ebay scam was different.
Instead of asking for information via email, they provided a link to a web page
that looked almost EXACTLY like it was hosted by ebay. The operative word here
is 'almost.' But it was good enough that even I almost fell for it.
I do trade on ebay and I do have an account with them. The email stated ebay needed
to "verify" my account information with them. The page on which the
information was to be submitted looked surprisingly authentic. Here were the danger
signals that tipped me off to the scam.
All the same, the page was so authentic
looking, I am certain many did fall for it and reveal sensitive private information
to an unknown entity who likely sold it to the highest bidder and vanished. Unless
calling their banks and credit card companies to cancel and change accounts, anyone
falling for this type of scam places themselves in serious financial jeopardy.
Anyone with possession of the information revealed can then charge those cards
to the max and the drain banks accounts.
It happens. Please don't let it happen to you.
Here are the links I promised you. Thanks to James Shaw of OurLittle.net
for these.
http://www.auctionbytes.com/pages/abn/y02/m02/i12/s01
http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/incidents/2002-12/0050.html
Back to top.
Be informed,
Be involved,
Be well.
Sincerely,
Mark Brasche
Founder and CEO,
SurfSafely.com
Come visit our growing family of web sites and services
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http://surfsafety.com/ Our online safety community site
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