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Philmore still down, no end in site

vvHi all,

I want to take this opportunity to give a brief update while I’m on location about Philmore Productions.

We’ve gotten confirmed reports of Philmore Productions billing customers for service which has not been up since July 4, 2019.

The activation date was supposed to be July 15th, but that has since been come and gone. aWe believe Philmore Productions is looking for a cheap server, as several days ago, athey reported they were ordering a new server for the voice mail system. On top of that, net by phone had its own issues of hard drive problems and computer trouble.

Net by Phone seems to be up for now, but the voice mail system haws no end in site. Long time customers are finally seeing what Philmore is all about, and is demanding cancellation or money back which was promised.

Now iuts time for everyone to speak up. Speak up loud and clear. Now is the time to show Philmore what issues are not impressing you. I don’t understand why there is a delay in the server ordering, it should be straight forward, unless Philmore doesn’t have the money to buy the server but yet they say it is being ordered.

We’ll provide updates when we can. This is beyond repair now, I think this is killing the company.

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A blind man couldn’t order pizza from Domino’s. The company wants the Supreme Court to say websites don’t have to be accessible

The Gentleman in this article II grew up with. I’d love to get updates on this, because there are a lot of websites that are not accessible where we could buy things if needed. I’m hoping to hear more, and I hope to see the gentleman in question again to see how this turns out or articles come across my desk about it.

Domino’s has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case, where it could prove to be a landmark battle over the rights of disabled people on the internet.

Source: A blind man couldn’t order pizza from Domino’s. The company wants the Supreme Court to say websites don’t have to be accessible

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Bullet Proof Hosting, how bad can it get?

Hello all,

In the recent article department, Krebs on Security has penned an article talking about one of the bigger bullet proof hosters. The article here is entitled Meet the World’s Biggest ‘Bulletproof’ Hoster and I found it quite interesting that these services are still around.

All web hosters whether we resell from a provider like I do, or you provide services to the public where you do the selling, we have to adhere to very high standards. We can’t host illegal, questionable, adult content, and other rules are in place so the services are legal. The bullet proof hosters tend to ignore complaints, and just take money. We’ve talked about several of these types of hosters, one that come to mind right now was the one in Colorado that got taken down. I don’t remember who it was off hand, but this doesn’t surprise me, especially because bullet proof hosters could have resellers under them that resell services to others.

This particular article has a video. The article also profiles someone who is named Alexander, or YALISHANDA. Feel free to catch the video, and also feel free to read the article and leave your thoughts.

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Yet another ransomware case: are they doing the best job?

In a prior article, I mentioned a ransomware case, and similar tendencies to the article I’m linking to here, and the prior article. I’m talking about QuickBooks Cloud Hosting Firm iNSYNQ Hit in Ransomware Attack in this article. I think they’re doing the best they can, and in some instances, staying tight lipped.

Unlike a company who is suffering serious computer trouble, I was speaking with someone in regards too this article, and they mentioned that it was better to be tight lipped about Ransomware because its different, and they did say they’re restoring from backup. I could understand why they said tight lipped is better. I would continue to provide updates, however, I.E. we’re continuing to restore from backups, the status is … and what the status is.

We’ve recently published an article on Philmore Productions, who hardly provides updates now, and really hasn’t provided many updates, but this article shows that in some cases, saying nothing is better, but I think thta you should be as honest with your customer base and potential customers as possible.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Philmore: … Is Anyone Home?

According to this July 20th 9 am CT update I have a question to ask. Is Philmore home? Alive? Pulsing?

History can be found by reading Philmore: Is It Down for Good? Other articles include Philmore Productions not honoring cancellations? What the hell? and Is Philmore up yet? This all paints a story which seems to be getting worse by the day. It was also reported that the voice mail may have been up if not briefly.

Is this company still breathing, now that we are finding out that its flagship product Net by Phone is now down? Philmore Productions indicates that it went down on July 20th because of a hard drive failure. They claim that it started some time ago, but yet, part of why I think Philmore is dead is because the signs of the drive was going as they claim it was acting strangely. Thats usually the first sign of trouble. Philmore Productions has never run maintenance tools on the drives to determine if there is something going on. We always try to tell people that if there is something wrong, to seak help, if they aren’t knowledgable. There is nothing wrong with not being knowledgable, even I don’t know it all.

Are we still breathing over there in Chicago? The weather had a hand in motion, but its always the company that has to make sure things are operating the best it can. There was recently an article published, not totally related, about a company who is recovering from ransomware. In this case, being tight lipped is not a bad thing, but backups in both Philmore and the company in question is key. We know that Philmore has little to no backups. We know that in the article I speak of, the company in question is recovering from the ransomware by restoring from those backups. While I’ll talk about that article more in a different post, I’m emphasizing that each situation is different, and updating your customer base in any situation is the key to each situation that comes up.

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Is Philmore up yet?

Philmore is either going to be up, or is going to be down. Today is the day that Philmore promised his customers that it would be up. Are you interested in the latest update?

Go and download this 1mb file which talks about how i’m correct.

The company claims that they were not prepared for this. Some of this is common sense.

• Did Philmore Productions back up? Probably not since he’s trying to restore from corrupted data.
• Why did it take a month to come out and tell his customers about the fact that he couldn’t recover their data after the power outage?
• The system was up, probably slower than normal because it couldn’t access the data customers had for years.

There’s probably more, but the problem we have is that I still think its too late. One customer on a line indicated to me they’re calling Philmore Productions to cancel all boxes. When I last wrote about cancelling, Philmore Productions would not take cancellations until the 10th which was the day I published that article. Philmore Productions did not have a data recovery program available to him which should’ve been run the first day after his systems came back up.

This is the same company that decided to have a running live system while data recovery was in process, and the promise it would be done in days.

School doesn’t teach these things, common sense does. I would have:

• had my software backed up somewhere
• customer data backed up somewhere
• never taken down sensitive data while traveling, saving the message until I could take it down safely
• made sure if I had trouble, be prepared to tell my customers about the issue and what I was going to do with it and
• be transparent on everything to do with the business and its operations which include good or bad.

I’m sure that now is the time to say something. Now is the time to show this company about how serious this mistake has cost him.

Have you read Philmore Productions not honoring cancellations? What the hell? yet? There is more live coverage around the phone lines if you know where to look.

This includes:

• Gordon Radio: 832-999-8255
• Philmore Productions customer service update: 773-572-3000
• Unsensored partylines customer service line: 773-572-6200

Make your voices heard. It may be till August before the system sees the day of light. This can’t be good.

Thanks for reading!

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Stop punishing developers who are trying to make their games accessible

hI just read this applevis post Stop punishing developers who are trying to make their games accessible and it has an accompanying blog post or two. I read the first one, and it is sad that we have to see this. I didn’t read the comments all the way through, nor have I played crafting kingdoms, but it looks like this company is trying. We need to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially since its a small company. Lets give them the praise they deserve.

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What I’ve been reading of late

Hello folks, here is some of what I’ve been reading. Maybe you’ll find it of value.

• FEC approves anti-spearphishing service for campaigns at low cost Cyberscoop
• Congressional pressure builds for White House to share classified cyber authorizations cyberscoop
• July’s Patch Tuesday Fixes Critical Flaws in Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer, Including 2 Exploited Vulnerabilities Trend Micro
• Who’s Behind the GandCrab Ransomware? krebs on security
• Patch Tuesday Lowdown, July 2019 Edition
• Where Will Ransomware Go In The Second Half Of 2019? Trend Micro

This is only some of what I’ve been reading. There’s plenty more, so why not check out my twitter to see if anything fancies you? You can follow me, and get some interesting news. I try not to put my own thoughts in to things, however, I try to put out things people might be interested in.

You also might want to comment here for in audio for a future podcast. Transfer files through wetransfer and send it to my email address for the blog. Let me know what you think.

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Philmore Productions not honoring cancellations? What the hell?

Hello folks,

It has come to my attention that Philmore Productions is not honoring cancellation requests by customers. Within the last 24 hours of this posts timestamp, 773-572-3000, has a message about the catostrophic downtime and estimated restoral of July 15th.

After this announcement, he gives his office number (312) 396-4160 for questions and concerns.

According to the BBB search on Philmore Productions, the company has an A. Recently, the company was called in regards to cancelling services. Its been reported that Philmore Productions said that customer service is closed, and cancellations will not be honored until the 10th of July. This is a responsible customer who wishes to cancel and has a right to cancel as they are not happy with the level of service Philmore is providing. We all know that in coverage here on the blog, that Philmore is not covering themselves very well through this difficult time. I understand it isn’t easy, but they’ve done it all wrong. The link to the BBB provides a complaint form that you may access to file a complaint against the company if you wish to do so. Telling customers that you’re closed, yet you provide your office number, seems wrong to me. If you didn’t want to have people calling, don’t give your number out! Philmore does not like dealing with customers live. His behavior towards customers have been good at times, but at times also bad. The security of the company is laxidasical at best.

Its time for you to show Philmore Productions who is boss here. Demand money back, or you’ll go and file a complaint with the BBB through the link to the search above. Its time the mistreatment of ligitament customers comes to an end.

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blindvms e1 out

Hi all.
Go here
blindvms first ep
Yeah, its out, bad sound and all.
I am still getting used to the setup but at least I made a start.
For those on nvda list I am going to start putting out things in reguards to part of this.
For those waiting, remember that www.groups.io/g/blindvms is the group to go to.
You can comment here and I’ll get them.
You can comment on the blindvms blog and I’ll get them to.
You can leave a voice message on the blindvms anchor page and I will listen, maybe include it, and you can eamil me and I will get it.
Finally if you happen to listen to this from new zealand and want to chat or australia maybe, email me and I will give you a number but understand my offline phone and mobile is the only way to keep my online and offline world apart, and I generally want a bit of peace when I log off, I get far to many scams as it is.
Also it appears a fellow podcaster is interested to know what I am doing and how I am doing it, weather that could mean someone to share remains to be seen.
Never the less, know this jared that if you think you want to contribute to this or un it along side the current tech cast there is always a spot, after all you let me admin this site with you so its only fair you share in any expantion.

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Philmore: Is It Down for Good?

Ever since the technology archives became the technology podcast, Philmore Productions has been talked about for good and for bad. I believe it has been more bad than good. The most recent: Philmore Productions blocking whole area codes which was minor compared to others. Philmore Productions continues to trash its customers writeen in November 2018 was a prediction post, in no way was it written to trash the company.

The time has now come to really put Philmore to bed. I am thinking that the time has come to say good-bye. Philmore Productions programs reasonably, the system has always worked, but now, after some recent events, its time to say goodbye to ignorance.

First, lets start at the beginning. Around the end of May, 2019: Philmore Productions suffered an outage due to a storm that blew through the Chicago area. After determining that it was a circuit breaker that caused the outage, Philmore was braught up. Currently to this day, Net By Phone is still up and operating under its capacity.

After some time passed, Philmore Productions determined that a hard drive failed. That is not the worse thing that can happen, you buy a new drive, and rebuild from the data you had in backups. The good news is that he had an array, so the data was not completely lost. This took several weeks to diagnose. The system could be used with newer material, but older material had issues. Once this was determined, a new drive and restoral of data took place. This is now mid June, when this process took place.

Lets fast forward now to July 4th weekend. At the time of writing, and until we find out otherwise, Philmore is down. It has been down since the 4th, and this could be the end. Philmore Productions told its customer base that the system would be down briefly for maintenance. After several hours, people were wondering what was happening.

According to some reports, the system is either down to restore data, or worse, it was supposed to be back up at a certain date (jul 6th 2019) and its not. The recent report is an upgrade gone wrong.

If there is something I’ve learned through the years of covering breaches, we need to backup all of our stuff, which would include software, correct? Philmore is telling some that there was a software update which pretty much crashed his software. This could be the end.

The constant lies, the potential breaches, the non-communication with customers or potential customers, the loss of potential data you had, the apologies, the inability to put hard limits when you say 3,000 messages, the unlimited factor, the yelling at customers (including me when testing the uploader tool) really adds up. I’m very fair here, I even posted Philmore Productions releases upload tool for the voice mail system a 2014 article when I was still there. If you say I’m not fair, here is the Philmore Productions search I did on the blog. Phil, its time for you to start understanding how your stuff works, and it may be too late. Your biggest customer is still there, and for that, I’m surprised.

I think this biggest disaster is the end. There is no line of communication with the company, because the company does not give any live customer service. They will call from any number they want, but yet, they hate when people call any number they have. I’m using “they” loosely, as Philmore doesn’t want people to know its a one man shop, not an organization of a few employees.

Customers, its enough. Show Philmore Productions that you mean business. Be truthful and tell the public what is up with your system including the web site and services. Do not tell a potential returning customer one thing, and another person working at a different company another. How are we going to believe anything you say or do now? Its been over a month now, and the system isn’t operating and you still have no web site. Time to tell him who is boss around here.

Other systems have had their issues, and they have been able to notify their base.

Thanks for reading, and make it a great day!

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You’re going to pay more for .org and .info domains following ICANN’s lifting of price caps

Hello folks,

While this is older news, and I think I found something of interest, this article entitled You’re going to pay more for .org and .info domains following ICANN’s lifting of price caps really hit home. I remember leaving comments saying that there are people who can’t afford it if prices are too high, and I’m one of them. I run menvi.org which is a non-profit. I get re-embersed, but if it goes up, it might become a problem. I’m not sure if it will, but thats why I’m saying might. Only time will tell.

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Tech podcast 318

Welcome to the tech podcast, this is show 318. I’ll be in the process of reloacting, so this may be the last podcast until the relocation is complete. I’m hopeful that the relocating process will go well, and I’ll be available through contact methods mentioned throughout the program should you have questions and concerns.

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We talk about URL shorteners. Cutt.us and similar services can be a target of spam. This service, along with a couple of others, allow the visitor to report suspicious links. These services allow the shortening of long URL links to shorten one for sharing. Reporting suspicious URL’s may be a start, but I’m going to try and get recaptcha on one of my biggest sites to see if it can curve this problem.

In segment 2, we finish the talking of shorteners by talking briefly about another service similar to the one I link above, and then we demonstrate braille 2000’s grade relaxer. This particular part of the application was already working, but some accessibility fixes were made, and with the beta, I present to you how the relaxer can be used in a classroom setting.

We take a song break. In the last segment, we had relaxed Gokul Salvadi to demo how this is done. I thought the music would be perfect to play one track, and you can leave your thoughts.

Finally, Equifax and Myspace are back in the news. When Myspace Was King, Employees Abused a Tool Called ‘Overlord’ to Spy on Users from blog The Technology blog and podcast | <a href=”Former Equifax exec sentenced to 4 months in prison for insider trading related to data breach

Our contact information is at the end of the program. I’m hoping that the relocating process goes well for me, and if something big comes out, I’ll do my best to get it out quickly. If not, then I’ll be back once I’m settled in. Thanks for listening, and thanks for your continued support.

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Attunity Data Leak Exposes Sensitive Files at Ford, TD Bank

Well, this can’t be good. Its not as bad as others, and luckily a researcher found this and notified the company, but this is what we want. We want researchers to find he data and disclose it to everyone involved instead of hackers making off with it.

Three unsecured Amazon S3 storage buckets compromised more than 1TB of data belonging to Attunity and its high-profile clients.

Source: Attunity Data Leak Exposes Sensitive Files at Ford, TD Bank

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When Myspace Was King, Employees Abused a Tool Called ‘Overlord’ to Spy on Users

Several employees were caught abusing the tool, which let them read users’ messages and passwords.

Source: When Myspace Was King, Employees Abused a Tool Called ‘Overlord’ to Spy on Users

So this is myspace news, but it trickles to every social media platform today no matter what the tool is to help with law enforcement stuff. This can’t be good, now can it?

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Former Equifax exec sentenced to 4 months in prison for insider trading related to data breach

Source: Former Equifax exec sentenced to 4 months in prison for insider trading related to data breach

More equifax news, it doesn’t seem to be getting any better, does it? This just shows that crime does not pay, and there are penalties. I’m happy to see that something is finally being done to show that this can’t go on anymore.

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Do Data Breach Victims Have Standing to Sue?

This is quite interesting. Found this on twitter, and thought the blog would love to see this too. Sounds like there is a split on whether we can sue, but frankly, the companies who have our info should be part of the solution by protecting it the best they can. This includes patching if necessary if the perp gets in via a hole in software installed.

Data breach victims are at risk of identity theft, but the courts are split on whether they have standing to sue the companies that failed to protect their data.

Source: Do Data Breach Victims Have Standing to Sue?

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