Category Archives: Computer Security

Since Diallo Mamadou Oury is so insistent on sharing my personal information, here’s some of his

I have no idea why Diallo Mamadou Oury, who lives in Dakar, Senegal, insists on using my email address to sign up for services and web sites all over the Internet (previous postings). But since he apparently feels entitled to share my personal information without my consent, I have no compunctions about sharing his. Here’s… Read More »

Mamadou Diallo still, inexplicably, using my email address all over the internet

For some inexplicable reason, some guy who identifies himself as Mamadou Diallo, a.k.a. Bouba Diallo, has been creating accounts all over the internet using my email address for over two years now. I’ve written about this several times before. It’s still going on… I just got email indicating that he created a Yahoo! account (“m.diallo76”)… Read More »

Amend the ECPA to protect email privacy!

The privacy of our email is protected by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed in 1986, which requires law-enforcement officials to obtain a warrant to intercept and read private email. However, the law has a critical flaw: it does not require a warrant for emails “left on servers” for more than 180 days. This made… Read More »

Have you enabled do-not-track?

For a while now, the web browser vendors and major purveyors of targeted internet advertising have been working on a proposal for allowing users to prevent web sites from tracking their online activity and using it to “customize their web browsing experience,” a.k.a., displaying targeted advertisements which are, theoretically, tailored to the person viewing them.… Read More »

Craigslist email-reply scam and what Craigslist could do to fix it

UPDATE [2013-02-13]: According to this article on Craigslist, as of February 10, 2013, they have implemented and are testing the idea I described below for fixing the problem described in this posting. I recently placed a for-sale ad on Craigslist. I anonymized my email address in the ad, which means that the published email address… Read More »