Phishing attack

No! the title is not misspelled and I am definitely not talking about fishing.

Was going through my Gmail spam folder when I found this.

Amazon Inc. Security Center"
date Jun 18, 2007 8:35 PM
subject Dear Amazon Inc. Member ,
Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information. Learn more

Dear Amazon® member,

We are contacting you to inform you that our Account Review Team identified some unusual activity in your account. In accordance with Amazon's User Agreement and to ensure that your account has not been compromised, access to your account was limited. Your account access will remain limited until this issue has been resolved. To secure your account and quickly restore full access, we may require some additional information from you for the following reason: We have been notified that a card associated with your account has been reported as lost or stolen, or that there were additional problems with your card.
This process is mandatory, and if not completed within the nearest time your account or credit card may be subject for temporary suspension.
To securely confirm your Amazon information please click on the link bellow:

http://nghonaim.saudi.net.sa/Amazon/www.amazon.com/

We encourage you to log in and perform the steps necessary to restore your account access as soon as possible. Allowing your account access to remain limited for an extended period of time may result in further limitations on the use of your account and possible account closure.

For more information about how to protect your account please visit Amazon Security Center. We apologize for any incovenience this may cause, and we apriciate your assistance in helping us to maintain the integrity of the entire Amazon system.

Thank you for using Amazon!
The Amazon Team

Privacy Notice © 1995-2007, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

Out of curiosity, I clicked on the url even though I knew it was fake. Another warning are the 3 spelling errors in the e-mail. Can you locate them? Special mention on my blog if you do.

Firefox also gave me a "Suspected Web Forgery" warning. Here's a snapshot of the site. Looks exactly like the real site.

Don't be fooled.

Related links:
- Phishing on Wikipedia
- Anti-Phishing Working Group

Tags: fraud phishing security

Help with B2B marketing

If you are a business owner I am sure that you are interested in generating more sales. An area of concern relates to converting interest into sales.

Came across the "Ways to Boost Direct Marketing Results" on 'The Lead Dogs' site. They say:

1. Have an offer
2. Use telemarketing before the promotion
3. Use telemarketing after the promotion
4. Give a unique URL
5. Personalize all aspects of your direct marketing campaign

The Lead Dogs is a lead development company that works with business-to-business marketers and help aggressively find and pursue business leads. Established in 1994, they actively help companies to generate, manage, nurture and close the loop on sales leads using Business to Business Telemarketing and other tools.

You can download case studies about how they helped their clients to generated real results, from their website.

BTW, I really found their story of how they came up with their company name, hilarious.

Always your mum's baby

Found another relatively new blog with a lot of interesting posts. "Call Me When You Get There" was started in March this year by Jackie.

One of the posts that made me think is
Bittersweet. She relates her feelings as her son grows up.

I feel awkward when my mum treats me like a kid sometimes, especially when other people are around. However as a father myself now, I realise that in our eyes, our kids will always be the baby that you held in your arms.

Ikea in Coventry

As a long time fan of Ikea, I was really excited when I heard that they were going to open a store here in Coventry. This store on Queen Victoria Road, is the first one to be built in a City centre shopping area. Work started on the site on 15 May last year and is scheduled to open later this year.

The building will be seven storeys high, three of which will be for parking and another three for stores (with a store space of 24,000 square meters).

Ikea's decision to open a store is a boon for Coventry which has seen an exodus of businesses and public services leaving the city in the past few years. The new store is expected to create around 1000 new jobs here.

Right now, they already have a small store open at 2 Croft Road, CV1 3AZ.

Would definitely love to work with them. Since they are recruiting, I thought it would be a good idea to send in an application too. Unfortunately, have been rejected twice.

Guess I will have to send in an application again.

Fruits of my labour

These strawberries are the first fruits from my garden.

Of course, there will be people who feel that gardening is all a waste of time and some people might argue that you can get a big pack of big juicy strawberries for only a pound in the local grocer.

However, the feeling that you get when you sink your teeth in something that you grew yourself - is Priceless.

Related link: Strawberry on Wikipedia

Our house smells like a cafe

I mean that in a nice way.

A few days back, my wife's friend Roby gave her a present - a coffee making set along with some coffee. So now, no more Nescafe from now on. In fact, no more instant coffee of any kind.

As my wife says, "this is real coffee". It was really interesting to watch her make the coffee - the Italian way. I say real, because the Italians invented expresso.

Where previously, we just had to add coffee power to hot water and add milk and sugar, now it is an elaborate ritual of packing the coffee power in, adding the water and then heating it up in that espresso machine.

The boiling water is pushed up through finely ground coffee by pressure, thus extracting its full flavour. She then creates some frothy milk in what else, the Frother.

The frothy milk is first poured into the cup followed by the concentrated coffee.

There you have it - delicious espresso cappuccino.

Of course, we are amateurs. I know some coffee fanatics even buy a thermometer and grind their own beans. We are not there as yet.

Tags: coffee espresso

Why do you buy designer sunglasses

My friend Nick collects sunglasses. He has so many that they fill up two drawers, arranged neatly in rows. These are not just any sunglass but designer brands. We once watched the first Matrix movie together and liked what he saw. So off we went to grab a wrap around Ray-Ban like the one that Neo wore in the movie. I was laughing at him but I too had a similar experience when I first watched Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise as an ace pilot. Went and bought myself a replica aviator. I thought I looked cool.

And you thought that sunglasses were merely to protect your eyes from the harmful UV rays. Was wondering whether movies and celebs influence our decision to buy sunglasses?

Just sometime back, I was at this optical shop and these two girls were excited about one particular sunglass. It looked like something from the 60s - big with white rims and I thought it was really ugly. Could help but over hear the girls. They were going, "it just looks like Paris Hilton's" or something like that. I guess big glasses with white rims are back in fashion. I can see a lot of people wearing them.

Whatever your reason, if you are looking for latest designer sunglasses, check out the 2007-08 Designer Sunglasses Collections at Optics Place. The website carrries the most affordable prices on a range of designer brands including Gucci, Prada, Versace, RayBan and much more. You don't have to go to different stores to compare and find the sunglass of your liking.

Besides sunglasses, the site also has a good selection of eyeglass frames, contact lenses, safety glasses and accessories. As someone who wear glasses, I was more interested in the information on eye health and the vision correction options. I found a lot of them to be very useful.