Day: December 21, 2007

Online video helps troubled borrowers spot fraud

Fraudsters are targeting troubled borrowers facing foreclosure in a scheme that could leave homeowners with even more debt than they otherwise would face, a new online video warns. In the video that dramatizes a common case of fraud, a homeowner receives an unsolicited offer to help settle mortgage debt but ends up homeless and with battered credit. Under a common scheme, a con artist will seek out a public notice of foreclosure and approaches the potential victim with documents and the promise of sorting out the debt. “You sign, thinking you are saving your home but you

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The next generation of security threats

REDMOND, Wash.–Microsoft security engineer Robert Hensing had a question for the hundreds of his company’s developers seated before him: can a person’s PC become infected with a rootkit simply by opening a PowerPoint file? In the packed conference center, a smattering of developers raise their hands. Nearby, in an adjacent room, where hackers invited to speak at Microsoft’s Blue Hat conference watch the presentations on TV, an entire table of hands go up. “That’s one thing I want you to take away from this,” Hensing tells the Microsoft developers. “Applications are dangerous.” “We’re attacking today’s problems. We

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USDA Proposing Change to Horse Slaughter Transport Regulations

by: Erin Ryder, TheHorse.com News Editor The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is considering a change to its regulations concerning the humane transport of horses being shipped to slaughter. Current special regulations pertaining to slaughter-bound horses only apply to horses being shipped directly to processing facilities. If the horses will be stopping at a sale, assembly point, or feedlot en route to the facility, the regulations do not apply. This means that haulers are legally allowed to use double-decker trailers, as long as the animals are not going directly to a slaughter facility. The proposed

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Preventing Dog Food Holiday Disasters

When dog owner George Kingsley of Brooklyn, N.Y., took his five-year-old pug Sophie to a friend’s holiday party last December, he was looking forward to the punch. What he didn’t expect was that Sophie would enjoy it as much as he did. “People were eating while standing, so they were holding their plates and forks, and resting their plastic cups full of vodka and cranberry punch on the floor. There was music playing, so no one heard Sophie darting around the room lapping up their drinks. I’m not sure how much she’d had by the time I

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AQH Rewarded for Wrangler NFR Performances

America’s Horse, December 20, 2007 – The dust has settled at Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center from the 49th Wrangler National Finals Rodeo, and the fans’ votes are counted for the Fort Dodge Champion American Quarter Horses of the WNFR. American Quarter Horses carry the hopes and dreams of Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association cowboys and cowgirls in the rodeo arena, and American Quarter Horse Association’s Corporate Partner Fort Dodge rewarded the owners and riders of American Quarter Horses at this year’s WNFR with a unique, fan-voted contest. The program recognizes American Quarter Horses and the competitors

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Phishers are using shorter URLs for malicious sites in a bid to lend an air of legitimacy to threatening links.

Internet Security Services, IBM’s online-security division, claims to have noticed a significant drop in the number of characters used by fraudsters in their phishing URLs. A post on ISS’s Frequency X blog stated that “analysts have been observing host names within fraudulent phishing URLs consistently arrive with lengths of between 30 and 37 characters”; observers “have noted a significant change” as phishing host names have shrunk down to an average of only 17 characters in recent weeks. For more info click here

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