Dear Vodafone customer: Congratulations. You are one of 100 users we have selected......

A couple of times recently an unusual page has popped up in my browser (using Microsoft Edge) with the following message.

Dear Vodafone customer:

Congratulations. You are one of 100 users we have selected as a part of our reward program. You can win the Samsung S10, iPhone XS or iPad Pro.

I thought it was interesting because I do use Vodafone.

Of course this is a scam. You should ignore these.

The fact that I am a Vodafone user is easy to determine via my IP address.

The first time I got one I didn't quite see where it came from. The second time I clicked on the back button which took me back to the Oxford Dictionary's site www.lexico.com. I've used this site many, many times, so there's nothing suspect about the site. The problem is the site uses Google's AdSense advertising and I'd be fairly sure a malicious ad has crept through. The means potentially any site that uses advertising (and that's probably hundreds of millions) could be carrying nasties.

If something pops up unexpectedly when using your browser don't trust it. Close the tab and move on.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

IP address 207.241.232.233 scanning website.

I noticed the IP address 207.241.232.233 was scanning my site and generating a considerable number of hits. I decided to check if I could out out more about who was behind the IP address.

It turns out this robot was the scanner for the Internet Archive. Over the years I found the Internet Archive to be quite useful, in particular the waybackmachine. Whilst the hits I saw were links to external sites and fairly pointless, I'm happy to accept the hits as I'm sure the Internet Archive helps many, many people.

Kelvin Eldridge

South Australia speed camera locations and red light camera locations now live.

Some time ago I developed an interest in red light cameras and speed cameras. This started because the yellow light timing was set incorrectly on a number of red light speed cameras around Melbourne. I took a video of the timing when it was wrong and the timing after the lights were fixed. These videos are available on my YouTube channel.

One thing led to another and I combined code from a site I'd developed, with red light speed camera location and fine information and www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au was born. The site has been running for a number of years and I'm pleased when I see people using the site to help them understand their fine with a range of information including satellite view, street view and often a dashcam video.

I'd recently extended the site to cover New South Wales and now I've extended the site to cover South Australia and Adelaide. For the South Australia red light locations and speed camera locations I still need to collate the number and value of fines, but I felt even without this information, the location information can be very useful and thus the South Australian section of www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au/sa/ is now live.

I hope others find this information useful.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.SpeedCameraLocations.com.au/sa/

IP address 136.243.212.93 scanning website.

I noticed in my logs today a lot of activity from the IP address 136.243.212.93. A check of the internet just gave me reports of spam but I couldn't help feel I should dig a little deeper.

First I checked the IP address 136.243.212.93. This IP address is based in Germany.

Next I checked my website logs to find the User Agent String. A bot scanner will let you know more about itself by providing information in the User Agent String. The User Agent String is also used in browser software to let a site know the browser the person is using. If the User Agent String is faked or disguised it may or may not be malicious. A reason you may disguise the user agent string is if you write a bot to collect information but the site only allows browsers. For example you may wish to automate a process that accesses web pages but the site stops you unless you provide a browser User Agent String. Depending on your point of view you're still doing something the site doesn't want you to do so it could be considered inappropriate.

In this case my logs for the IP address showed the following User Agent String.

serpstatbot/1.0 (advanced backlink tracking bot; curl/7.58.0; http://serpstatbot.com/; abuse@serpstatbot.com)

Whilst I may not be entirely pleased my site's being scanned, at least this bot lets me know everything I need to know, including where I can find out more information about the bot and it's purpose.

At this point I can make a decision as to do nothing, block the bot using an entry in the robots.txt file, or block the IP address. In this case I decided that I could reduce unproductive traffic by blocking the IP address. I could have just as easily done nothing and let the bot scan my site/s. A considerable percentage of web traffic really is just automated bots and this is just another one.

It should also be kept in mind that companies often use scanners to get their information into site logs. Then when people check out where the traffic is coming from they've advertised their company to another person as relatively low cost. The one's I'm concerned about are the IP addresses that if you want to directly end up being malicious and could damage your computer. It's a good idea not to visit unknown IP addresses without using a tool to check the address out first.

Kelvin Eldridge
IT support.
www.OnlineConnections.com.au

Scam calls from 0268540287, 0268504751, 0263140111, 0264130111, 0264133171, 0262836675, 0267660319

A contact has received six calls today from the following numbers.

0268540287, 0268504751, 0263140111, 0264130111, 0264133171, 0262836675, 0267660319
02 6854 0287, 02 6850 4751, 02 6314 0111, 02 6413 0111, 02 6413 3171, 02 6283 6675, 02 6766 0319

Most of the calls were hang ups. The latest one provided the information needed.

The telephone call using a recording stated the IP address was being used and most likely the person had been hacked. They haven't, it's just a scam.

The call goes on to say press 1 for technical support. Not pressing anything means nothing else happens and the caller hangs up.

Unfortunately these calls are annoying but since they appear to come from different numbers there's nothing that can be done to block a call.

There's a couple of things I suggest people can do to limit the annoyance of such calls.

1. Set up your phone so that all your contacts cause the phone to ring with one tone, and those that you don't know to ring with another tone. That way you instantly know legitimate calls from people you know, and can ignore the calls from people you don't know.

2. You can send all message from people you don't know to voice mail using the Hiya app.

3. You can use Hiya (which is built into Samsung S8 and above) but this phone already has the Hiya app and the calls aren't being marked as bad. It's pretty hard to mark phone numbers as bad if different numbers are used for every call. Keep in mind phone numbers can be faked so the number displayed is not likely to be the actual number.

The main thing is if anyone else gets a call from one of the numbers we've already received calls from, they'll know the calls are most likely scam calls.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support

ING - Looks like you're using an unsupported browser.

A person recently contacted me about the message they'd received when using ING's online service. They'd called ING support and were reportedly told they probably needed a new computer.

The real problem is without any warning ING has stopped supporting Internet Explorer. To suggest a new computer is required is very poor advice and quite concerning that any such advice would be given. This sets up the user for potentially being sold a computer when no computer is required. ING should take better care of their customers than to offer such advice.

First ING could have issued a warning to all users using an older browser, that they would stop supporting the browser, rather than just presenting the user with an unexpected message. Second the ING support person is probably under pressure to maintain their support quota so may not be able to provide the level of support the user requires.

Most like the user has been using a shortcut to ING for some years. The person is using Windows 10 and could easily use one of the alternate browsers. However there's always the risk they'll use the shortcut which uses Internet Explorer. That shortcut needs to be removed. The default browser setting in Windows 10 also needs to be checked that it is an acceptable browser. Any shortcuts or bookmarks the person uses need to be set up for use a more modern browser.

No new computer is required.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.

Phone charging slow? Mobile phone charging slow and how to make charging quicker.

We found charging an old Samsung S5 much slower than you'd expect. When I investigated the result was what I expected, but there were also some very unexpected results.

The first issue is the Samsung S5 was using an old mobile charger from an older mobile phone. Testing the charger showed it only charged at 0.53A, the reason the mobile phone was charging slowly. Plug a micro USB cable into another USB charger and the mobile charged significantly faster.

As this point I decided to check out a range of cables, chargers and powerbanks. This is where some of the results I obtained weren't quite what I'd expected. For example I have a nice thick micro USB cable and use it as my go to cable for charging. This cable did not provide the best result. Surprisingly, but when you think about it, not quite so surprising, the cable that delivered the highest amperage was a short cable provided with a powerbank.

To perform the tests I used the following USB charge tester. I have to say at around $5 on eBay it is a great way to check your cables and adaptors to find which cables and adaptors give you your best charging times.

In these tests I had four cables.
1. Short cable 25cm, which came with an Aldi powerbank.
2. Medium thinner cable 60cm.
3. Medium thin cable 65cm (W)
4. Long thicker cable 1m. My go to cable.

For charging I used the following four devices
1. An Aldi travel powerboard with 4 USB ports.
2. A Huawei power adaptor rated at 5V, 1A
3. A 10,000mAh powerbank purchased from Aldi. Cocoon. Two USB ports rated at 5V, 2A.
4. A 10,000mAh powerbank purchased from Miniso. Two USB ports rated at 5V, 2A

I used my Samsung S7 mobile phone as the device being tested. The mobile phone was less than half charged. Keep in mind a mobile that is near fully charged won't consume as much power at it reduces the charging rate as it nears being fully charged. Being half charged or less meant I should see the maximum amount of power being used.

Result of testing

Aldi Travel Powerboard
Cable 25cm - 1.69A
Cable 60cm - 0.63A (slightly thinner feeling cable)
Cable 65cm - 0.82A
Cable 1m - 1.21A

Huawei Adaptor
Cable 25cm -  0.92A
Cable 60cm - 0.63A
Cable 65cm - 0.72A
Cable 1m - 0.91A

Aldi Cocoon Powerbank
Cable 25cm - Port 1: 1.21A, Port 2: 1.60A
Cable 60cm - Port 1: 0.53A, Port 2: 0.63A
Cable 65cm - Port 1: 0.63A, Port 2: 0.72A
Cable 1m - Port 1: 0.24A, Port 2: 0.43A

Miniso Powerbank
Cable 25cm - Port 1: 1.70A, Port 2: 1.70A
Cable 60cm - Port 1: 0.73A, Port 2: 0.72A
Cable 65cm - Port 1: 0.92A, Port 2: 0.92A
Cable 1m - Port 1: 1.40A, Port 2: 1.40A

Conclusion

The main finding from these test is, to get the highest amperage and thus the shortest charging time, using the short cable with either the Miniso Powerbank or the Aldi travel powerboard, produced the best result.

Whilst the thicker 1m cable, which is my usual go to cable, often produced the second best result, however if combined with the Aldi Cocoon Powerbank, this would produce the worst result.

The amperage ranged from 0.24A on port 1 on the Aldi Cocoon Powerbank using the thick 1m cable to 1.70A on port 1 or port 2 on the Miniso Powerbank using the short 25cm cable.

In general using the shortest cable is best, but if you do use a longer cable a thicker cable is best. But if using a powerbank, the thicker longer cable doesn't guarantee a good result, as in this case it was the worst result with one of the powerbanks. There's really no way to know without some form of testing how the powerbanks will perform.

Overall, short of using the testing device I used above, using a short cable with a higher output rated amperage should produce the quickest charging times.

For those wondering why the length of cable matters, this is because voltage drops over the length of wire and drops with the square of the current. Increase the length of the cable and the voltage will drop. Increase the current being used to charge and the voltage will drop by the square of the current. The reason the old charger wasn't a problem with the old phone, is the old phone didn't need much current to charge. The Samsung S5 required more current so the charger no longer performed as desired. Hence the need for a charger that supplied more current, but couple the higher current with a shorter cable to give the best charging performance.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
IT support.