What is UNICODE?
Everything you see on your computer is represented by 0's and 1's. Characters are also encoded in the form of 0's and 1's. In this method each character is represented by a number. A common method of encoding is called ASCII (American Standard for Information Interchange). In this method each character is represented by 8 bits. Therefore 256 different characters can be represented using this method. But 256 characters is not enough to mention all characters in all languages. Here comes UNICODE, in which each character is represented by 16 bits. Therefore in this method of encoding, 65536 characters can be represented.For more information about UNICODE and its applictions visit Unicode.org
Whats interesting?
Unicode is capable of representing many languages, including those written from left to right and those written from right to left. There are special characters in UNICODE to achieve the RTL. One such character is the Mirroring character. The property of mirroring character is that it makes Left to Right Text, Right to Left just by pasting the character, all text after it becomes RTL. So it can be used on sites which use UNICODE character encoding format (like orkut). The property of the mirroring character is that it reverses whatever you paste after it. So "[mirror char]hello, how are you?" becomes "?ouy era woh ,olleh". Mirror character has nothing to display, so you cant see a mirror character. One thing to note that is the mirroring character is not rendered on all browsers. It is supported on Firefox, Opera, IE7 (partially). If anyone has any info about other browsers please leave a comment.
What can it be used for?
http://www.mysite.com/fol/file.html?site/moc.elgoog.www://ptth
Suppose you paste a link like this and if someone clicks he/she goes to mysite.com instead of google.com. This could be used on sites like orkut.com which doesn't allow you to hide the url of the link you are giving.So it could be potentially used for phishing !Inorder to protect yourself from such methods always look at the url beofre you give away senstitive information about yourself.Other potential uses are left for you to explore. If you find anything interesting please let me know..
Guess you can take care of it from here on ...
Thats all folks.
Caution!
This trick can potentially be used for phishing! So please always look at the Address Bar for the URL of the page and verify it is the right site you want to visit! Please warn everyone you know about this risk.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Protect yourselves from phishing
Phishing? Haven't heard that...
Phishing is very similar to fishing. In fishing, we put a bait and wait for the fish to catch it. In Phishing, a fraudsters acting as a genuine bank employee or web admin, sents you an email (the bait) asking for confidential and personal data, that could potentially harm you (Its not nice to see your savings balance to drop to ZERO, right?)Fraudsters are getting smarter and equipping with techniques that almost fool you. So now its our turn to get smart and fight back.
Common methods of phishing
Most phishing scams start from fake e-mails that arise from compromised mail servers across the world, or from zombie computers called botnets. Phishing mails will be asking for confidential data like PIN numbers, Bank account id and passwords, or anything personal. There would be some links in the mail that redirects to some compromised server, which would be very similar to the legitimate site.Another common scam is someone asking for your bank account details to help them transfer money, and you will get a fair share of it.Or you have won a big sum of money in some lottery in some unknown place, and you have to provide the bank account details to get the money.
If you fall for these scams, most probably you will loose everything you have.
How to get smart?
Phishing is mostly successful because of ignorance from the part of customers and the thought of making easy money. So its time to get smart!
Phishing mails
+ are mass mailed, So...
+ It would not contain your name
+ It would not contain any personal info about you that was provided to the legitimate organization.
+ It would not have a valid source. If your email client can display advanced headers, please go through the headers if you suspect of a phishing scam.
+ It may contain grammatical as well as spelling mistakes.
Now even if it contains your name and free from mistakes still you cannot rule out the phishing scenario.
Take a part of the phishing message and do a Web search on it using popular search engines like google, yahoo. From the search results you can identify wether it is scam or original. In most cases, no banks will never ask you to enter your PIN or similar sensitive data through mails. You can also mail the legitimate organization for a confirmation on the email.
Spread the word
Please spread the info to help protect yourselves and those near and dear from this peril !Any more info to share? Leave a comment...
Phishing is very similar to fishing. In fishing, we put a bait and wait for the fish to catch it. In Phishing, a fraudsters acting as a genuine bank employee or web admin, sents you an email (the bait) asking for confidential and personal data, that could potentially harm you (Its not nice to see your savings balance to drop to ZERO, right?)Fraudsters are getting smarter and equipping with techniques that almost fool you. So now its our turn to get smart and fight back.
Common methods of phishing
Most phishing scams start from fake e-mails that arise from compromised mail servers across the world, or from zombie computers called botnets. Phishing mails will be asking for confidential data like PIN numbers, Bank account id and passwords, or anything personal. There would be some links in the mail that redirects to some compromised server, which would be very similar to the legitimate site.Another common scam is someone asking for your bank account details to help them transfer money, and you will get a fair share of it.Or you have won a big sum of money in some lottery in some unknown place, and you have to provide the bank account details to get the money.
If you fall for these scams, most probably you will loose everything you have.
How to get smart?
Phishing is mostly successful because of ignorance from the part of customers and the thought of making easy money. So its time to get smart!
Phishing mails
+ are mass mailed, So...
+ It would not contain your name
+ It would not contain any personal info about you that was provided to the legitimate organization.
+ It would not have a valid source. If your email client can display advanced headers, please go through the headers if you suspect of a phishing scam.
+ It may contain grammatical as well as spelling mistakes.
Now even if it contains your name and free from mistakes still you cannot rule out the phishing scenario.
Take a part of the phishing message and do a Web search on it using popular search engines like google, yahoo. From the search results you can identify wether it is scam or original. In most cases, no banks will never ask you to enter your PIN or similar sensitive data through mails. You can also mail the legitimate organization for a confirmation on the email.
Spread the word
Please spread the info to help protect yourselves and those near and dear from this peril !Any more info to share? Leave a comment...
Thursday, February 28, 2008
A Small Introduction to the World of Gadgets and Gizmos
As many of the people knows, A gadget is a device or an appliance that has a useful specific practical purpose and function but is often thought of as a novelty. Gadgets are invariably considered to be more unusually or cleverly designed than normal technology at the time of their invention. Gadgets are sometimes also referred to as gizmos.A gadget may vary depending on its usage, there are Programmable Gadget, Mechanical Gadget, Application Gadgets and so on . The picure on the Top Right is a typical example of Modern craft of excemplary innovation. Phone which has a 5 Mega Pix Camera and works as an extraordinary entertainment portal .
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