It isn’t even online yet, and already the predators are circling.

As all Harry Porter fans out there will know, Pottermore the website set up by JK Rowling to sell the ebook version of the whole Hogwarts epic is shortly going to become active, and promises to be a wonderful place for you all to meet, discuss and read all manner of stuff about all your favourite Hogwarts personalities, and as I discussed in an earlier post on this topic, they have gone to extra-ordinary lengths to try and make the site a safe and friendly place for kids to wander around in.

But…. 

However, in an attempt to generate even more interest in their site, Pottermore have made it possible for a limited number of people to register on the site before it is actually opened, and this is proving to be a dangerous mistake.

As soon as something like this site with the sort of following it is bound to generate offers any sort of special deal for people (at no cost), then the scam artists arrive in their hordes to make money out of this offering, and that has happened here – in spades!

There are no end of people now offering – for money – to sell you their early registration membership on eBay and similar places, almost all of these are scams of one sort or another. Read full story »

JK Rowling’s soon to start website, (www.pottermore.com) is currently running a sort of competition to allow the happy winners early access to the website.

This action, which is only running for another few days, is a sort of treasure hunt, in which using your knowledge of the Harry Potter books, you have to find The Magic Quill, and having found it, answer a question or two and then you will be able to register yourself at once as an early user of the website.

This is restricted to one person a day as far as I can see, and actually doesn’t give any real advantages except early registration on the site, which will be open for all in a couple of months anyhow, but it is a bit of fun.

Child safety high on the agenda: Read full story »

Its a jungle out there folks!

In a post on daemonsbooks.com, the author warns us about a new danger out there.  As you know, it is very easy to embed hyperlinks into ebooks, which is a rather useful possibility for readers of ebooks on devices that connect to the internet with a built in web browser, such as the Kindle, the Nook and several other models of ereader, but this also enables those canny folk, the internet crooks to embed links that pretend to be to something relevant to the subject of the ebook, but are in fact links to websites which may well contain all manner of nasty things, including small programs (invisible apps to use the current terminology) that can cause all manner of problems for us.

This problem is to be found among the self-published ebooks in Amazon’s Kindle ebook store, in which there are literally thousands of  ebooks available to us, none of which have been checked for this sort of danger by Amazon.

He quotes the following example of how it works:

Read full story »

An interesting article on the similarities of DRM and Airport Security:

In a recent post on his blog (the_average_joe/), Joe Wikert wrote an heartfelt article on the similarities between the hopeless DRM systems that publishers place on their ebooks in an attempt to stop people copying them and distributing them and the equally hopeless and inefficient “security” that all air travellers now have to endure at airports around the world.

As both an ereader owner, who in spite of being pretty well experienced in the ways of ebooks, often finds himself wasting hours trying to get some damn DRM protected ebook onto my ereader and even worse, a frequent user of airports, and who like all travelers has come to hate the irrational and grumpy business of getting past those mini-Hitlers who man these dreadful check points.    Seems  to me that if one looks at the cost in both time and money, the disruption and other aspects of airport security, then one can say that the terrorists have won that particular battle, without lifting a finger or taking any risks to themselves.

Anyhow, before I start to foam at the mouth about these two issues, here is what Joe Wikert had to say….   Enjoy it.

By Joe Wikert

While flying home from Bologna for our TOC event I couldn’t help but think about some of the similarities between digital rights management (DRM) and airport security.  Here are a few common points that come to mind:

False sense of security — Seriously, does anyone today still believe any DRM system is hackerproof?  Heck, even books that have never been legally distributed in any e-format are out there as illegal downloads.  Just Bing the phrase “harry potter ebook downloads” and you’ll see what I mean.  Scanners are everywhere, so if physical books can be illegally shared what makes you think a DRM’d title will never appear in the wild?  On the airline side, I feel like we’re always focusing on the last attack (e.g., underwear bomber, shoe bomber, etc.) and not focusing instead on what the next idiot will try.

Treats everyone like a criminal — It’s hard not feeling like a convict when you’re going through airport security or coming back through immigration/customs.  The assumption is you’re guilty till proven innocent by way of xray machines, full-body scans and patdowns.  On the book side, the fact that I can’t treat my ebook purchase like I can my print book ones (e.g., can’t be resold or lent to a friend indefinitely) makes me feel like the retailer and publisher simply don’t trust me.

Read full story »

Beware of this new scam email:

There is a scam email going the rounds just now, which purports to be a confirmation of “your order” for a BeBook, and includes a link to enable you to print out your invoice and pay it.

My daughter in law received this one yesterday, and I am placing it here in the hope that it will warn you guys to delete it as soon as it appears in your in box.

Obviously it has nothing to do with BeBook  and will either do something nasty to your computer should you click on the link they helpfully place in the email to download the invoice, or simply give you an invoice in the hope that you will pay it.

In either event you will not be happy.

It might be a good idea for you to pass this warning on to  people you know, since an amazing number of people seem to fall for this sort of trick.

So here it is, in all its glory:

I have disabled the links, and have not checked them to see what they lead to.

Subject: Message from mybebook.com: Thank You For Your Order ! Check The Email And Download Your Bill

Thank You For Your Order N#:NMR45480SD5497

You have Make an Order in Our Website in  03 novembre 2010 .

Click Here To Download The Bill

BEBOOK 2010

Nasty:

Whilst I get a daily dose of about 100 – 200 spams here on the blog, I don’t really worry too much about them,as they are all concerned to get me to visit some website or other, but this type is concerned to either steal money,or to infect my computer… and that goes too far for me!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Share with us:

If you get this one or something similar involving one or other ereader, do let us know, so we can warn others and thus reduce a bit the “profits” that the criminals who send out this sort of thing stand to make.

Bloggers suffer from Spam……. in Spades!!!!!

We all suffer from spam to a greater or lesser degree, but if one happens to have a blog, it becomes ludicrous.   Since I started this blog about January of this year (2010) I have received about 21000 spams. Truly, I have the figures here……..

In the beginning it was only the occasional one or two, but as my blog became better known, and climbed the Google ranks, the number of spams increased in parallel with this and has now reached the point of anything up to a couple of hundred a day.  I suppose in a sort of a way, I should be happy about this, as it confirms to me that my blog is becoming successful…….

Luckily, Word Press, the platform I use for my blog, has an extremely efficient anti spam filter, and catches most of them before they make it to me as comments to be moderated, but even so, each day I receive about 10 or so as comments that slip through the anti spam filter, and need to be moderated (which is why I moderate all comments to the posts on this blog).

Many variants:

They come in a wide variety of types as you know;  most of them are simply pointless lists of websites – mostly Russian Porn ones – huge lists, as many as 150 different porn site links… extraordinary.   Others consist of nothing more than a name, very odd that is – oh, and of course, a link to some website or other.

Lately I have been deluged with spams trying to get me – and you – to visit sites that are selling Nintendo game devices.

Obviously I delete all of them at once, a daily chore under the heading of maintenance.

However, quite often I almost give in and let them through, as the great majority are spams telling me how wonderful my blog is, and how useful and interesting they have found whichever post they are sent to as comments, and in moments of wishing more people would write and praise my work – we all enjoy that after all, I hate deleting these ones.

Here are a couple of examples of this sort of spam to give you an idea:

Properly accomplished This was a superb piece of writing. Do go on as you are. I shall be eagerly waiting.

Greetings, this is a genuinely absorbing web blog and I have cherished studying many of the content and posts containedon the web site, keep up the outstanding work and desire to read a good deal more stimulating articles in the future.

See what I mean?   It hurts to reject such praise.

Another type of spam that has recently started popping into my Comments To Be Moderated box are rather wonderfully surrealistic ones for Cialis, a version of Viagra.  These seem to be created either by a descendant of James Joyce or some other stream of consciousness writer, but more likely by a computer simply stringing random words together, but it results in completely amazing texts – I love getting and reading these ones.   Here is a typical example of one such:

Read full story »