8 Ways to Sunday

The ongoing news of a massive North American pet food recall has panicked many dog and cat owners, but the news may have just gotten worse. Del Monte Foods recently added some of their pet food products to the recall list. In response to an e-mail query from The Huffington Post’s David Goldstein, a Del Monte representative confirmed that the melamine-contaminated wheat gluten to blame for the reported pet deaths is “food grade.” That means manufacturers are allowed to use it in human food products. (more…)

These men will not be visiting your house.

An e-mailed phishing scam that appeared in late December takes an extreme new approach to defrauding its recipients. Pay up, threatens the message, or you’ll be killed.

The “hitman spam” is part of a highly targeted con directed mainly at well-paid professionals in the United States — doctors and lawyers, for example.* It seems sure to gain traction and spread to other markets, however, so stay on your toes. Do not respond in any way to this message, as the threats are utterly baseless. The goal is for you to fork over bank account information, allowing the scammers to clean you out.

SophosLabs — a virus, spyware, and spam analysis company — was the first to report on the hitman phishers. Graham Cluley, a Sophos consultant, says the message is “surely one of the sickest phishes yet seen.” The online edition of The Times of London has more, including news about the scam’s impact so far.

Personally, I think the emergence of such extreme phishing tactics is a good sign; it shows that the criminals are getting desperate. As the general population becomes increasingly savvy about the dangers of phishing, the old methods aren’t working anymore. We’re winning, and the only way to keep winning is to continue deleting their messages without response. Keep up the good work, folks.

(Props: Windows X’s Shrine)

I’ve been preparing to upgrade WordPress — the software that powers this blog — by upgrading all the WP plugins that I have installed. Somewhere along the way, the form that allows people to subscribe and unsubscribe to e-mail notifications of new posts stopped working.

I’ve taken the form down until I can fix whatever has gone wrong. If you have an urgent need to change your e-mail subscription status for this blog, you can send me a request using the contact form and I’ll make it happen.

Sick of the useless gibberish you get from Babelfish and Google Translator? I’ve found an online translation tool that (usually) manages to actually make sense: Im Translator. Compare the translations of this Spanish-language Wikipedia article to see the difference:

• Google translation
• Babelfish translation
• Im Translator translation

The United States’ telephone excise tax was established in 1898 as a luxury tax to help fund the Spanish–American War. It’s been a very long time since we were fighting with Spain or phone service was a luxury item, and the IRS has finally caught up with the present.

The phone tax is being abolished in the new year, and American tax payers are eligible for a refund of their last three years of tax payments. If you’ve used traditional, cellular, or VOIP phone service in the last three years, you’ve got some money coming to you from Uncle Sam.

Here’s the catch: you only have one chance to claim this refund, by filing some special information with your 2006 tax return. Phone tax payments are rolled into your phone bill — much like how sales tax is paid at the same time you buy a candy bar or bag of grapes — so you’ll need copies of your last three years of phone bills to get the best refund. If you don’t have or can’t get those records, then you’ll have to make do with the IRS’s standard refund based on your number of exemptions.

The IRS has a FAQ on its website that gives basic instructions on how to claim your refund. More specific guides are also available for businesses and individuals.

(Props: Dallas Morning News)