aggressive bankers

[typist]

Suddenly, out of nowhere I get a phone call from a really aggressive guy, claiming to represent some bank doing business as "Dortia" (anonymized)

I own quite a few personal name domains (ie somename.cctld). One of them is something like dorita.es (anonymized - pm me if you're curious).

All the top search results for my domain name (without the extension) on Google refer to women bearing the same first name, and there's more than a few of them.

Naively, I had listed my cell phone in the whois info.

Now this guy starts off, using rude language, accusing me of spreading spyware and a lot of ugly things. The content in question is provided by a well known parking company.

I asked him to calm down and assured him that I'd like to work with him to understand what happened here, and that I absolutely disapprove of spyware.

For a while, I continued to listen to his allegations - a somewhat abstruse mix of man-in-the-middle attacks, malicious code, spyware and phishing - and then asked him to give me his email address.

I double checked with the parking provider; of course there is no spyware (the casale media code tracks visitors, but unless as a visitor you've really got something to hide, visitor tracking is not very malicious).

In my subsequent email to him, I patiently explained that there is absolutely no spyware associated with my domains, and that I'm not involved in any phishing activities.

I tried to understand why he jumped to these conclusion. Apparently it was only the perceived similarity of the domains which triggered his aggressive behaviour. This is the second time this happens to me: Bankers really seem to be paranoid these days. What scares me though, is that the people who are dealing with this, at least the two I spoke to,
have absolutely no clue of what they are talking about in terms of IT security. Maybe there's an opportunity for a security consulting business here?

Anyway, now I've wasted almost half an afternoon on this. I'll definitely never list my cell phone in a whois listing again.

....and an afterthought: I'll definitely change my username. "Typist" might be better. Just to avoid any misunderstandings. All my mispleddings are intentional copyright traps...

[denny007]

Casale media is the worst spyware on the net.
Google for
casale media spyware
casale media removal

[typist]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I thought it was simply a tracking cookie.

Not what I would define as spyware. Though I understand some people might find this creepy due to the mere reach of Casale Media: according to wikipedia "As of May 2006, they claim to serve ads to 170 million unique users worldwide.

As measured by comScore Media Metrix (May/06), the Casale Media network reaches over 102 million unique online Americans (60% of the U.S. digital audience)."

Opens up a whole new world for a tracking cookie, doesn't it.

I wasn't aware of the massive opposition towards casale media. I'll read some of this tomorrow and consider if I should disable the casale popunders. Popunder RPM has been merely 2.40 this month anyway, and I only get 1 popunder out of every 10 pageviews.