iTechBookPages

A Mobile Money Loop Hole Unlikely but Possible

2016-01-14T07:02:00.002-08:00

Introduction

Happy new year and welcome back to iTechBookPages brand new post. And what a way to start my blogging this year, we be tackling an issue which has been baffling me for a while and now I have decided to share it. Its about mobile money industry which as you are aware is catching up with every Kenyan's daily life.

Here in Kenya currently we have Safaricom MPESA product as the main player in the Kenyan industry, which i too appreciate its convenience in my day to day operations, be it paying bills, sending money and all possible options which were not there before. There is a lot to thank for the realization of the mobile money but as well there are loop holes which can lead to Telemarketing fraud. I will address possible Telemarketing fraud in this post which i have not yet heard a case about but i think it can be exploited and wreak havoc to unsuspecting mobile money consumers.

How it can happen

In as much as we register our SIM (Subscriber identification module) cards, a protection layer needs to be added in this process to avoid users being exposed to fraudsters. The registration process only requires one to have an original of thier National Identification Card now think of when you lose your National ID and simply replace the ID thanks to our faster process now here in Kenya, there are two possibilities which can happen to your lost Identification Card:-

The Identification card is lost for good and never lands into a fraudster.
The Identification card by chance falls in the hands of a fraudster.

Of the two options, option 1 is safe but option 2 is damn likely to cause you financial harm, considering your mobile money loan applications rely on sole Sim card registration with a valid National Identification Card. I remember after graduating from High School I used my uncle's National Identification Card to register my Sim card, this is how simple it can be for a stranger to buy a new Sim card and register it without any worry provided they have an original Identification card, because in case of any confirmations by the mobile money agent one can claim its their relative's and in this case most of the time very few mobile money agents conducts the process of National ID confirmation.

After acquiring your SIM registration now you are free to consume mobile money services, the likes of Borrowing Loans, Transfer money, Pay bills et cetera.

Possible Telemarketing fraud Loop Hole

In the case now a fraudster has acquired SIM registration with your lost National Identification Card, (s)he is fully qualified to enjoy the mobile money services. The major loop hole i have come to discover here in Kenya is the Loans Service whereby one can borrow money so easily by simply having a registered SIM card, that's all. Therefore in this scenario picture all the possibilities a fraudster has for any lost National ID card by unsuspecting consumers in their hands. Mmmmhhhh! i can only imagine.

This is just a wake up call to our Mobile money operators and CCK to take action and add a better layer of consumer protection on top of National Identification Card.

Recommendation

Limit Sim card registration to one per a National Identification Card.
Come up with a validation formula for users who need more than one sim registration to an already registered National Identification Card.

REMOVE PROTECTION FROM FREE JOOMLA TEMPLATE AND HIDDEN LINKS

2013-01-15T00:57:00.004-08:00

Hi..how are you doing, am back after small and worth sharing discovery on how to remove protection and hidden links from (Magma) the free joomla template and i thought a good idea i share with you -:).

I was just experimenting with Joomla 3.0 and needed to install a template and see how it works out..

I was using the Magma templates so if using different template you can try this and see if this is of any help to you.

The most obvious hidden link is in the footer section of the template at the copyright part...its protected because after editing it the site won't display at all.

How to remove it:
Open function.php script inside ../templates/magma folder and remove the eval() function like this:
Locate this part and comment it out:
/*
eval(str_rot13('shapgvba purpx_sbbgre(){$y=\'Ubfgtngbe pbhcbaf\';$s=qveanzr(__SVYR__).\'/vaqrk.cuc\';$sq=sbcra($s,\'e\');$p=sernq($sq,svyrfvmr($s));spybfr($sq);vs(fgecbf($p, $y)==0){rpub \'Nhgube yvax zhfg erznva vagnpg.\';qvr;}}purpx_sbbgre();'));function artxReplaceButtons($content){$re = artxReplaceButtonsRegex();

*/
that's all you can now edit the link located at the copyright...-:D

Next after hosting the (magma templated) site only the home page will display the rest won't... you get an error like..parse error unexpected.....line 1 of default.php.After looking at it i didn't seem to notice any error...( ^^) _U~~　( ^^) _旦~~ after that i improvised a way out as below...maybe it helps as it did work for me...
There a lot of hidden links involved as well...i guessed...am not sure but this solved the problem in my case.

Simply delete the Article folder located in ../templates/magma/html/com_content

And thats all feel free to comment your contribution is most welcome.
.....φ(・∀・＊)

HOW TO CUSTOMIZE BEEZ 2 TEMPLATE FOR JOOMLA! 2.5

2012-09-21T02:43:00.000-07:00

HOW TO CUSTOMIZE BEEZ 2 TEMPLATE FOR JOOMLA! 2.5

Some times you my need to customize the default templates inorder to use them in a unique way and
some of these customization are tricky especially messing with the underlying code...
Fast forward ama disscuss two partial but major customization of the beez 2 template specifically in Joomla! 2.5.

The two customs ama discuss are the fontsize changer on top of template and then the space which remains at top of the template after removing the font size changer.

Removing the fontsize changer on top of the template

Find and delete or comment this code in beez2/template/index.php:

AND ALSO:

2. To remove the space left after removing the fontsize changer

Go to personal.css and change the code as follows:

Code before changes

#header ul
{
display:block;
margin:0px 0px 1px 0px;
text-align:right;
list-style-type:none;
padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;
position:absolute;
top:5px;
right:0px;
}

Code after changes

#header ul
{
display:block;
margin:0px 0px 1px 0px;
text-align:right;
list-style-type:none;
padding:10px 0px 10px 0px;
position:absolute;
top:0px;
right:0px;
}

In the same personal.css file find and edit the code below:

Code before edit

#all #header
{padding-top:8em;
}

Code after editing (The ems will vary depending on if you have a Top Menu or not):

Suitable for those with Top Menu in their site if you don't have Top Menu increase the 3ems value to 4 or 5 etc.

#all #header
{padding-top:3em;
}

That is all for now!

Are IEBC web servers overstretched by online applications of voter registration clerks?

2012-07-25T16:18:00.001-07:00

Are IEBC web servers overstretched by online applications of voter registration clerks?

With the recent advertisement of 2900 vacancies in biometrics voter registration clerks by IEBC in the local dailies, candidates are required to fill an online application form that easy! But to me it had been a nightmare trying to access their website (www.iebc.or.ke), not even applying.

The above is the message that welcomed me on typing the IEBC website URL in my browser, since last Sunday, until late Monday at around 9pm in the evening when I managed to access, and may be that was the trick, problem solved! Yes! But may be for then, since it didn’t hold at all, on Tuesday I tried to prove this to my disappointment, this time around I tried until late in the midnight all in vain, this no doubt a true sign of the IEBC web servers amiss.

This is the sample of biometrics voter registration clerks online application form

So let me discuss some probable justification to this IEBC website behavior:-

Heavy Website

This is as a result of poor page, links, JavaScript or image CSS format optimization, use of components in a website that are poorly optimized or existence of unused components in your website among other elements. This can lead to slow loading of a website or not at all especially with a slow Internet connection.

For example an image of 1028 x 628 and 1MB being used as a thumbnail as it is in a website or poor html - not in accordance with w3.org, used for pages or poor headers for links, all this is culminates to poor optimization and will lead to slow loading of the website. The solution to this by validating each element to achieve maximum optimization

So if IEBC problem is due to heaviness - one will need a fast Internet connection I thought to myself - this prompted me to try and access the mobile version of the website - images and that much formatting removed. There are various free mobilizing tools online to do this - Google mobilize, mowser and/or opera mini on pc - in my case I preferred mowser because of its cute formatting feature - but it did work a clear indicator that it wasn’t my slow internet connection maybe the server side.
?

A screenshot of the mowser test

Server Limitations

The web server in which a website is hosted needs enough bandwidth which can handle all requests without depletion of services and this comes at a cost of course but it is worth getting professional advise for the best option independent of cost but website requirements before hosting your website.

Using www.ismyblogwoking.com to get some quick statistics of IEBC website and this were the results:?

From the screenshot above IEBC web server was really suffering.

Routing Malfunction

A slow response from a website or web server indicates data packet loss. The larger the number or percentage of packets that are lost during a transmission, the slower the response is from the server that you are accessing. Troubleshoot or fix for this problem is very simple:

1. Establish the Actual Route Using Tracert – native Microsoft Windows command

The first thing in determining data packet loss is documenting the actual route being taken- which routers are currently responsible for the data packet transmission- execution of this command returns a list of the routers and their locations that are used for the data packet transmission. Simply execute this command using any Windows computer system from your location and affix the web server IP address as the parameter - E.g.

C:\>tracert xx.xxx.xxx.xx, where “xx.xxx.xxx.xx” is the IP address of your web server

Screenshot of an example of a sample output using tracert

From the screenshot above we can see the IP address of each router that takes a part in the data packet transmission.

2. Use Windows Ping command

The second step is to use the Windows Ping command to isolate any routers that may be responsible for packet loss. Packet loss is intermittent in nature. Randomly some data packets are successfully transmitted while others are not. We can use the ping command to send a group of test packets and measure the percentage of successful transmissions. The larger the number of test packets being transmitted, the greater the probability that there is packet loss during your test. It also follows that the larger the packet size transmitted, the greater the probability that there is packet loss. The ping command is executed in the following manner:

C:\>ping –n 20 -1 500 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

The above command basically means send 20 data packets, each 500 bytes in size to the IP address of “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx”. In most cases, a byte size of 500 being transmitted 20 times to a given router is significant enough to discover data packet transmission problems - packet loss- if any.

Screenshot of an example of a sample output using ping

Note: The results of your ping tests could be time dependent based on the rate of other traffic passing through these public routers.

Abuse from bots or automated programs

This is a very likely with IEBC website specifically in the application form being used for Biometrics voter registration, I have filled this application form and to my surprise no recapture challenge-that distorted text or images one has to type in a box - for preventing computer programs from applying which may spam the system up and even cause lack of service.

Above is a sample of a recapture challenge

Computer Mouse Problem Solved

2012-07-08T05:09:00.002-07:00

Some times back I was unable to use my laptop mouse for a period of not more than six months and after soughting various sources I finally found a solution (I used solution number 4 as listed below).These are some of solutions to mouse or trackball poblems I propose:

Install Axiotron-done by vendor who sold you you latop-they just put insulation to the motherboard.
Undervolt your machine-using a cookbook ($10-cost) to run at lower voltages/higher processing speeds than the default.
Restart pen driver using Activity minitor.
Disable pointing devices in your BIOS(Click F2 on boot)Ref:sumsung np-x1

Solution number 4 solved my mouse/trackball problem for my sumsung np-x1 model laptop so I hope this would of some help to someone else who might be having related problem. Please let others know if this works by commenting after trying them out.

Income Boost: Earn Money Online

2012-05-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

Internet for money

There are so many theories about ways of making money online,some are intimidating though. With the Internet growing by day, it means that more and more ways will be born, so in short the various ways you hear or read about today, tomorrow they will be gone others will just evolve.Some ways will be all time, those are ones am going to discuss with you today so relax, take your position, load some music on the background and follow through.

There are many websites one can earn online by use of ones skills,ability and/or affiliate progam, allow me to recommend a website out of experience-here we go: Freelancer.com an online outsourcing website with millions of active freelancers - one can use his skills either as an individual or hired by an employer to work in his group and lastly the affiliate program - its worth trying out.
I will be posting more soon on Internet and money so stay tuned......Right?

Enhancing WinXP boot up process

2011-07-15T05:14:00.000-07:00

Still running on XP OS on your machine?

Many are times we have had our windows XP desktop or laptop machines taking too long to start up (boot), so i came up with the following steps on how to go by making your windows XP machine boot fast.

Follow the following steps:

1. Open notepad.exe(from start menu select "Run" then type in "notepad"), type "del c:\windows\prefetch\ntosboot-*.* /q" (without the quotes) and save as "ntosboot.bat" in c:\
2. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "gpedit.msc".
3. Double click "Windows Settings" under "Computer Configuration" and double click again on "Shutdown" in the right window.
4. In the new window, click "add", "Browse", locate your "ntosboot.bat" file & click "Open".
5. Click "OK", "Apply" & "OK" once again to exit.
6. From the Start menu, select "Run..." & type "devmgmt.msc".
7. Double click on "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
8. Right click on "Primary IDE Channel" and select "Properties".
9. Select the "Advanced Settings" tab then on the device or 1 that doesn't have 'device type' greyed out select 'none' instead of 'autodetect' & click "OK".
10. Right click on "Secondary IDE channel", select "Properties" and repeat step 9.
11. Reboot your computer.

I hope this helps.... END.