Photo by Mzelle Biscotte

It all started with an notification on top of my Gmail account, asking me to reconfirm my secondary email account, which is my Yahoo Mail. The notification reminds me of the news of a Twitter employee got his Gmail account hacked:

About a month ago, a hacker was able to access a Twitter employee's personal email account, according to a blog post by Twitter cofounder Biz Stone. Once there, the hacker struck the mother lode: access to the employee's Google Apps account, which contained Docs, Calendars and other Google Apps that Twitter uses for sharing notes, spreadsheets, ideas, financial details and so on.

If you didn't follow the story, the hack happened through Gmail's password recovery procedure, which sends password recovery information to the user's secondary email, which is an expired hotmail account:

At Hotmail, Hacker Croll again attempted the password recovery procedure - making an educated guess of what the username would be based on what he already knew. This is the point where the chain of trust broke down, as the attacker discovered that the account specified as a secondary for Gmail, and hosted at Hotmail was no longer active. This is due to a policy at Hotmail where old and dormant accounts are removed and recycled. He registered the account, re-requested the password recovery feature at Gmail and within a few moments had access to the personal Gmail account of a Twitter employee. The first domino had fallen.

In fact, not only Gmail, but all email services has similar recovery process. Most of the time, things like this has to be learned the hard way. All free email accounts expire if you don't log in after some time, approximately 3 months.

Let me continue with my story. So, I believe Google gave that notification to all users to make sure everyone had a valid secondary email account (after somebody got attacked, of course). I thought it might be a good idea to check my Yahoo Mail to see if the account is expired or not.

When I logged on to Yahoo Mail, Yahoo said they found some suspicious activities with my account and forces me to change my password! I changed it.

Then I was brought to my inbox, I was greeted by the name "Heather", and my profile picture shows a girl, a hot babe! All my information in profile was changed!

The first question was how does this "girl" broke into my Yahoo? Why she did not change the password? Does she have any bigger motive after hijacking my Yahoo Mail?

Immediately, I changed the secondary email of my Gmail. Suddenly, I felt the internet is so insecure. Anything could happen overnight.

My advice (conclusion) to everyone:

• Probably backup is good. Lifehacker has got a good guide on Gmail backup.
• Strong password is important. Alphanumeric + symbols. Best password is a combination of easy to remember, hard to guess. Using first characters of words in a sentence to create a password seems to be a good way.
• Avoid using same password across different websites!

Can you afford to lose your main email account? How do you prevent that from happening?

When they don't do that they ask you to log in again and again. The "remember me" check box never work properly.

You might say that you can easily find cheaper price elsewhere. And yes, I found it at Yahoo, but what happens after that? Yahoo increased the price without informing me!

However, with all the good stuffs, I don't really happy with them recently. I find that GoDaddy.com main page is taking a very long time to load. Maybe their business is so good that it slow downs the main website. For whatever reason, if they want to be in this hosting and domain business, they should always keep their main page shows up quickly to get the confidence of their users.

Is everyone in other parts of the world facing the same problem? Or is it only Malaysian facing the problem?

I think I shall switch soon, if the problem persists. I really can't afford to spend so much time to renew a domain name.

During the process, I learned that Yahoo! Small Business support is simply stupid, or they are just machines that only know how copy and paste information from their help pages.

I have done all the steps required and the status at GoDaddy was to wait for final confirmation from Yahoo, so that it can be transferred. Here are our email conversation, if you are interested:

--

I'm planning to transfer my domain (<a domain name>) at Yahoo to
Godaddy. I followed exactly the instruction at http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/domains/authcode/authcode-04.html

In the last step, it mentioned that "Once your transfer is complete,
we'll send you an email confirming the transfer". However, I'm not
receiving any email after so many days.

--

Hello Englee,

Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Small Business Support.

As per your Whois information, the admin email id used is:
engleeteh@gmail.com .You must receive any communication from go Daddy in
this email id.

http://whois.domaintools.com/<a domain name>

If you wish to change this email id then, if you are planning to update
your domain name's contact information can only be done through your
domain name registrar.

If you registered your domain name using Yahoo! Domains, the personal
information you provided in your order was used to register your domain
name. As required by ICANN, the Internet governance organization, this
information is publicly available via Whois database interfaces.

You can edit the Whois contact information associated with your domain
name by accessing your Domain Control Panel and clicking the
"Registration Information" link.

1. Log into your Yahoo! Domains account with your Yahoo! ID and password
by clicking on the "Sign In" link at the top of the page:

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/domains/

2. Click the "My Services" tab, then click on the Domain Control Panel
for the account you wish to edit.

3. Click the "View/Edit Your Domain Registration" link.

4. Click the "Edit button". Edit the fields for Domain Registrant and
Administrative Contact as necessary.

5. Click "Update".

Changes to your WHOIS record may take up to 24 hours to take effect.

Please note: If you registered your domain name through Yahoo! Domains
before January 22, 2001, your domain name registrar is Network
Solutions. You can update your contact information by going to the
Network Solutions web site.

Please do not hesitate to reply if you need further assistance.

--

Hi,

My question has nothing to do with admin email. I have access to that
admin email account and I have followed the instructions and completed
the transfer request. In the last part of the transfer, is the final
confirmation from your side.

I have waited for days but I haven't receive any confirmation of
transfer from Yahoo!.

Please let me know what else I can do.

--

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Yahoo! Small Business Support.
I have read your email and understand your concern.
To initiate the transfer process please provide the authorization code
to your new register.
To retrieve authorization code:
------------------------------

1. Log in to Yahoo! Small Business account with Yahoo! ID and password
at:

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/services/

2. Click on the Domain Control Panel for the account you wish to edit.

3. Click the "View Your Authorization Code" button to get your
authorization code.

Please retrieve the authorization code for all your domains.
Once you have retrieved your authorization you will have to cancel your
plan with Yahoo!.
Please note that if you decide to cancel your service:

* The service is non-refundable.
* All Files & Emails will be deleted from the Yahoo! network.

To cancel your Yahoo! Web Hosting account:-
1. Log into your account with your Yahoo! ID and Password at:

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/

2. Click the button "Small Business", next to "Manage your services", at
the top of the page.
3. Click the link "Cancel Plan" next to the plan you want to cancel.
4. Follow the onscreen instructions to complete the process.

When the cancellation is complete you will receive a cancellation
complete message.
After you have cancelled the plan please reply to this email with a
request to release the domain from the Yahoo! reseller list. After we
receive your request we will release the domain to our registrar
Melbourne IT.
Once the domains are released from the Yahoo! Reseller list your
transfer of the domains to Godaddy can be completed. Please provide the
authorization codes of the domains to Godaddy.

Please do not hesitate to reply if you need further assistance.

--

What do you think about their support?

Until yesterday, I received a similar email again, titled "Past-Due Payment Reminder", and the amount was 34.95. I thought it must be in Malaysian Ringgit, however it is still expensive it is showing in Malaysia Ringgit.

So, I think I should find out what actually happened. I found out that Yahoo! has announced that they had increased the price of a domain to USD34.95. Wow... Should I say I'm lucky because I have replaced my credit card? I would have been charged without any notice from them. I didn't receive any email from them telling me the new rates!

Is this a trap? Actually, I bought this domain few years ago from Yahoo! because they were selling a domain for only USD2.99.

Now, I believe the domain should be expired but the website seems to be still running. The email I received was actually came on the day the domain expired.

So, I try to transfer the domain to GoDaddy. GoDaddy seems to be making so much business from Yahoo's new domain price. They even wrote a PDF guide to help you transfer domain from Yahoo.

I'm still not sure whether it would work, since the domain is expired. Nonetheless, I have done everything stated in the guide. The final stage would be to wait for Yahoo registrar to approve the transfer.

Wish me luck!

(Anyhow, the domain does not have anything running, so I think if I were to choose between paying USD34.95 or lose it, I would prefer to lose it!)

Update: Transfer successful!

Its understood that Maxis will offer the iPhone 3G in Malaysia at a competitive price below RM1,000.

It's a nice offer, since I have been using Maxis for years. Changing the plan will get me the new Apple iPhone 3G. However, The Edge Daily got a different response from Maxis:

When asked by The Edge Financial Daily in April if the telco planned to bring the iPhone here, Maxis chief executive officer Sandip Das had said Maxis had no plan at that time to bring in the phone as Apple had not decided on its Asian distribution policy.

Anyhow, Bernice certainly has a good point saying that it's not a good idea to get first generation products from Apple, especially the company is new in mobile phone business. On top of that, 3G services are still very expensive in Malaysia.

But, it is really very tempting. I'm not sure I could wait any longer once it reaches Malaysia.

Keep your friends up to date on what you are doing with Twitter, the micro-blogging site, now on your mobile! Normal data rates apply.

http://m.twitter.com/

The message certainly looks like it really came from twitter.

I have been using twitter for a while, still trying on it. I find that the service is not reliable enough, sometimes slow, sometimes down.

Are they spamming text messages to all mobile numbers in the world? I don't receive much sms like this from US. Is everybody receiving it?

If any of you are using twitter, please let me know.

I remember when some of my friends started a Malaysian map service. They sent me an notification, asking me to join. However, after a few months, when I tried to look at the service, the domain name is no longer available. At this point, you really don't know what actually happened to the service and how they are going to use your information.

Just imagine, one day when you open your Gmail account, the website is missing. The service is gone, just like that. Your emails are gone, just like that.

Recently, I received more than one notifications from Ringo, a friend-networking website last time (I don't know when it switched to be a photo and video sharing site), which I suppose to be taken down due to the rise of MySpace or probably Facebook. Or for its new business, Flickr or Youtube. Or probably it's taken down simply because it is not 2.0 enough.

Anyway, it's certainly a good thing to do, to inform your users that you will stop your service and more importantly, ask your users to backup whatever information they have with you. What Ringo did was good, they provide alternative way to get their pictures and videos, which is allowing their users to get their data through CD.

If you have an account there, download your data before June 30!

Apple named just Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong & Macau, India and the Philippines as Asian markets earmarked for the new device this year. China, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Taiwan were among notable omissions from the list although the likes of Equatorial Guinea, Nicaragua and Botswana made the cut!

Not much choice left for us. We can only get illegal hacked version from other countries. Not to mentioned about the 3G version, even the older version is not here yet!

How legal or illegal is it, to own a hacked version from Singapore?

Now, the new iPhone 3G will be out on July 11, with HALF THE PRICE. It costs only USD199 for the 8GB version and USD299 for 16GB version. I wonder how much it would cost to get one now. Hopefully Apple will bring it to Malaysia soon.

The best part of the iPhone 3G is of course the 3G functionality, and it comes with GPS as well. It could replace my Dopod D810 any time!

Note: I hope to upload some pictures but I'm not able to upload any using the WordPress' flash image uploader when I'm in the office, although it works fine from home. Probably it doesn't work well through a lousy proxy server.