What’s happening with Facebook? Has it’s servers bent their hands because of the weekend traffic? Or are they on their knees and pleading users to logoff for some time. Well, seeing this phenomenon after so many months. So, wanted to share it with my readers. Here is an image of it.

Click for Bigger Picture

What do you think? Which Facebook data center might have gone down the drain for the past minutes?

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India(TRAI) has recently asked all the mobile operators in India not to reject the request of a subscriber who wishes to use Mobile Number Portability(MNP). This directive has a past in which TRAI had already asked mobile operators not to obstruct the MNP procedure because of minor clauses like, a balance of fifty paise and not intimating current address and several others.

TRAI has strictly asked mobile Operators to contact the government officials in the next 48 hours and provide a compliance report that they will not come across any subscriber who has applied for an MNP. The new directive has been issued by TRAI because it had come to know from several individuals who have applied for MNP that their mobile operators were sending cancellation requests through SMS, voice calls and written form.

Read: TRAI guidelines to Telecom Operators over MNP

And also, the so called mobile operators were trying to woo the subscriber by offering the subscriber incentives and goodies. This is against the rules and regulation TRAI had formulated as part of MNP guidelines.

These kind of tactics are applied by mobile operators mostly over post-paid customers as their Average Revenue Per User(ARPU) is way higher than a pre-paid customer.

This step taken up by TRAI is extremely appreciated by subscribers who are troubled because of an operator’s connectivity problems.

What is your opinion on operators wooing subscribers and trying to retain them even when the operators are not able to provide the services? What should the next steps of a subscriber be when he is being troubled by the operators for applying MNP?

As we had previously stated in the earlier post here, compared two cheapest tablets here, and even directed to pre-order Aakash tablet, named as UbiSlate 7, we also told that it will not tick until and unless government takes genuine interest in the plan. Now, those words have come true. The first version of Aakash flopped like a brick in water and has forced the government to re-think the model and features and make their plans work. But, with the poorest of performance from a tablet, there was no way Aakash would have survived the downfall which was inevitable.

Datawind(company which developed Aakash) specification for the Aakash tablet was ridden with so many flaws. But, with government’s decision of sticking to the ‘cheapest’ tablet mantra, and selling at $35 per tablet, Datawind had had to chop off several other interesting and innovative technologies from appearing on Aakash. Now, that proved to be the sole reason why the tablet became a dud.

The next version of Aakash, called as Aakash 2 will have a few better specs. This is as per the tender listed by the government asking the companies to apply for developing, not a $35 version, but a $50 version. This new tablet will have a capacitative touch screen unlike the first version of Aakash tablet.

I hope the next version will have a little much speedier processor of at least 700MHz and Android 2.3.4 for much better battery optimization and display capabilities.

What’s your take on this Aakash tablet fiasco? Do you think Indian government will have a face again by re-inventing the wheel? Is the tax payer’s money being well spent with these tech gadgets?

On a daily basis I at least shootout 2-5 emails on business and as well as personal purposes. At times, the count may go up or down and fluctuates solely based on the needs. I usually respond on a random basis and not right when I receive the mail. I take some time to assess the situation(for any requirement), ponder on the needs(if I get the mail from co-workers) and associations linked with the situation. I respond immediately stating that I would need some time to assess the wants and needs and intimate the sender that he can get a reply very soon, in a few hours or the next day. And many a times I send the mail the nights, just like now.

Most of the times I expect a reply early in the morning or at least after a few hours, but when I don’t get a reply or call, I get in touch with the person I have sent mail to and ask him whether he/she had gotten the reply from me or not. Then they realize that my mail is pushed down to the page because of the mails that arrived after I have sent them the reply, previous night. Then, I wish we had a tool to schedule emails right away so that it will be sent at the time I mentioned. Glad that someone heard my cries and I got a pretty good and nifty tool.

Enter RightInBox – The Perfect Email Scheduler and a Management Solution to solve your on-the-dot email sending problems.

The interface of RightInBox is so neat and clean that you can not recognize it as an add-on or a browser extension. It integrates into Firefox very well, and gets displayed in Gmail when you click ‘Compose’. You get a new ‘Send Later’ button right next to the usual ‘Send Now’ button, which is hard to miss.

If you check the image above, you can see that you can not miss the button placed newly into the set of horizontal default buttons of Gmail. When you click on the ‘Send Later’ button, you get several options to choose from such as, the time after which you want the mail to be sent and also at a specific time on a specific day.

Isn’t that simple and intuitive? I believe that every one will have that kind of situation where in you want to send a mail to the person who logs in right at 10:00 AM in his office in some other country. So, just set a time and date, they get the mail right when they log-in.

Which tools do you use to schedule your emails? Are you using any email marketing solutions which serve this purpose? Mention your views in comments.

Some related posts:

1. 1000s of Gmail and Yahoo accounts for sale.

2. Undo the mail sent through Gmail

Phishing is the most common way to impersonate someone authentic and scam people. There are tons of mail fraud complaints resting in the cyber crime police stations in India. While most of the emails originating as scams end up in the Trash of an email account, some emails pass through the filters and end up in Inbox. Here is where people open the mail and with a little hurry, do not check the point of origin of the mail and whether the sender is authentic or not.

Recently I read about a mail from Paypall. No, I have not mistakenly put a second ‘l’ at the end of Paypall. That’s where the mail originated from. They identified themselves as PayPal and sent the mail to a friend of mine, using his Full Name. That’s a surprising factor, because most of the scam e-mail is sent by creating random email addresses. And if someone opens that email and clicks any link or image in it, then the sender gets a confirmation that an email account with the random name exists.

In addition to the online credit card fraud, these kind of e-mails ask you to login using the link provided in the mail. When an unsuspecting user clicks the link, he will be directed to a website which looks exactly the same as the authentic website. The unsuspecting user tries to login using his authentic user name or account number and password. This will get stored in the scammer’s database and he will use the credentials to abuse the account of the innocent user.

Like wise, these scam e-mails are also sent under the disguise of PayPal, an authentic money transfer portal whose reputation precedes it. This email I read said that my friend’s account is going to be closed as they suspected a fraudulent task and the next action that any user should do is, use the link provided in the email and login to their PayPal accounts. If this process goes through, then the username and password will be stored in the scammers’ database and he may use it for any kind of fraudulent act.

Below is the mail verbatim:

Subject line: Notification of Limited Account Access RXI-6166
Body: Hello <<Full Name Here>>,
As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in the PayPal system. We recently contacted you after noticing an issue on your account.

We requested information from you for the following reason:
A recent review of your account determined that we require some additional information from you in order to provide you with secure service.
Case ID Number: PP-648-716-821

This is a second reminder to log in to PayPal as soon as possible. Once you log in, you will be provided with steps to restore your account access.

Be sure to log in securely by using the following link:
Click here to login and restore your account access

Once you log in, you will be provided with steps to restore your account access. We appreciate your understanding as we work to ensure account safety.

In accordance with PayPal’s User Agreement, your account access will remain limited until the issue has been resolved. Unfortunately, if access to your account remains limited for an extended period of time, it may result in further limitations or eventual account closure. We encourage you to log in to your PayPal account as soon as possible to help avoid this.

To review your account and some or all of the information that PayPal used to make its decision to limit your account access, please visit the Resolution Center. If, after reviewing your account information, you seek further clarification regarding your account access, please contact PayPal by visiting the Help Center and clicking “Contact Us”.

We thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Please understand that this is a security measure intended to help protect you and your account. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Thanks,
PayPal Account Review Department

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you
will not receive a response. For assistance, log in to your PayPal account
and click the Help link in the top right corner of any PayPal page.
—————————————————————-
Copyright © 1999-2011 PayPal. All rights reserved.
PayPal Email ID PP-648-716-821

That’s the mail my friend received. Users have to be extremely careful when they receive these kind of emails. There are several steps that can be taken to prevent these kind of phishing identity theft situations.

1. Always check the sender’s email address for these kind of emails.
2. If the mail says that it’s from PayPal or ICICI Bank or any kind of authentic banks, then the sender’s mail will have to surely end with ‘@paypal.com’ or ‘@icici.com’ or any other company name. If it’s not ending like that, then it’s definitely a scam e-mail
3. If the sender’s email address looks authentic, check the contents of the email. Scam e-mails usually have grammatical and spelling errors which are very much obvious to regular English readers and speakers.
4. If you can’t recognize that it’s a scam, then do not use the links provided in the emails. They lead to the scammer’s website. So, if you receive an email stating that it’s from PayPal, read it first. Then, open another browser window or a new tab and login directly(I do this) by typing www.paypal.com or any other website name.

These are sure fire ways to save yourself from phishing. If you, by any chance become a victim of PayPal phishing, then immediately contact your bank whose credit card is attached to your PayPal account and inform them about the situation and block the card from further use.

Next step would be to report the phishing email to PayPal by copying and pasting the email in their Support page. This will let them ensure that money ‘can’ be reinstated into your account and inform their customers about the phishing email.

Even if you do not fall for the lame trick, inform the PayPal team about the email so that they can take the necessary next steps.

BTW, when I tried, Paypall.com led me to ApnaPaisa after hopping on several IP addresses.

Did you ever fall for the phishing trick? did you face any problems because of these phishing emails? Do share in the comments section.