Last night I learnt that Ángel Cortés has just passed away. He was 58 years old, and one of the pioneers of Internet in Spain.

We first met in the early 90s, years before Internet access became popular or even easily available in Spain. At the time he was running NeXuS MSX BBS from his home, the only BBS in the country dedicated to MSX computers. I used to dial into his BBS from my MSX2 computer using a 300 bps modem. With his help I later started my own BBS and FidoNet node (LuzNET 2 BBS, 2:343/163).

During the late 90s we worked together at Intercom, back then one of Spain’s biggest Internet service providers. There he started Noticias Intercom, which later became noticias.com. It was one of the biggest news site in Spanish. He also started noticies.com, one of the first news sites in Catalan.

In 2002 he left Grupo Intercom. He asked me for help to start his own news portal: NoticiasDot. We actually ran the whole thing from a server in my Tokyo apartment for about two years, until we moved everything to a hosting company. I was helping him with all the technical stuff until around 2008.

In short, he’s the person who introduced me to computer networks and communications. If I hadn’t met him I probably wouldn’t be where I am today.

Thanks for everything, Angel.

I just got this very official-looking mail in my main address:

It reads like this:

Dear javi@lavandeira.net, (19 – September – 2014)

This message is to therefore warn you that your iCloud and Apple Account (javi@lavandeira.net) has been temporarily locked until we can validate your Apple Account details. This protective measure to secure your iCloud Account from unapproved usage. We apologise for any inconvenience you’ve been caused.

You will be unable to use iTunes or iCloud sync/backup or the iTunes/App Store & App Store until you verify your Apple Account ownership, we urge you to finish verification as soon as you can. Failure to validate your details within a 48 hours can cause termination of your Apple/iCloud ID to safeguard our system.

How to verify my Apple ID and restore access?
Just proceed to the link underneath to prove ownership of your Apple ID. Log-in in using your Appe/iCloud ID and password, then read the instructions.

> Certify My Apple Account

While using Apple devices and services, you’ll still sign in with your main email address as your Apple ID.

If you have questions and need help, visit the Apple Account Care site.

Thanks again,
Apple Account Maintenance Team

Case Support ID: #Y10FHK10419-EU10

It sounds very scary and serious. Should I click the link and log in with my Apple ID and password?

No.

This is just another phishing attempt. You are likely to receive a similar email. Do not, under any circumstances, click on the link and enter your details. I repeat: it’s just another phishing attempt.

Looking a bit closer we can see that the message’s reply-to header points to an address in the ioscareteam.co.uk domain. This domain doesn’t belong to Apple:

The link in the body of the message also points to the same domain. Just place the mouse pointer over the link (without clicking) and wait a couple seconds:

They ask for your ‘Appe’ ID :-D

Clicking the link would take you to a very convincing fake Apple site that copies Apple’s real site. Looks like they even copied the country/language selection code.

However, this fake site will send your login details to the idiots who are trying to scam you:

Summary: if you get an email like the one I got, ignore it.

A few days ago I noticed that I was receiving weird HTTP requests on my frontend web server. The requests were addressed to a domain that doesn’t exists in any of my servers, so initially I thought it was some kind of attack. Out of curiosity I decided to investigate a bit, and it turned out to be something way more interesting.

The requests looked like this:

61.125.xxx.xxx - - [05/May/2013:00:33:38 +0900] "POST http://autoipset.com/ddns/UpdateHost.php HTTP/1.0" 200 3 "-" "-"
61.125.xxx.xxx - - [05/May/2013:00:43:38 +0900] "POST http://autoipset.com/ddns/UpdateHost.php HTTP/1.0" 200 3 "-" "-"
122.19.xxx.xxx - - [05/May/2013:00:45:46 +0900] "POST http://autoipset.com/ddns/RegisterHost.php HTTP/1.0" 200 3 "-" "-"
180.31.xxx.xxx - - [05/May/2013:00:47:53 +0900] "POST http://autoipset.com/ddns/RegisterHost.php HTTP/1.0" 200 3 "-" "-"
114.166.xxx.xxx - - [05/May/2013:00:54:57 +0900] "POST http://autoipset.com/ddns/UpdateHost.php HTTP/1.0" 200 3 "-" "-"
61.125.xxx.xxx - - [05/May/2013:02:03:48 +0900] "POST http://autoipset.com/ddns/UpdateHost.php HTTP/1.0" 200 3 "-" "-"
180.31.xxx.xxx - - [05/May/2013:02:13:05 +0900] "POST http://autoipset.com/ddns/UpdateHost.php HTTP/1.0" 200 3 "-" "-"

(These logs show an HTTP status code of 200 instead of 404 because this is after changing some things on my server. Keep reading for details.)

In other words, several machines from a bunch of different dynamic IP addresses were sending data via HTTP POST to a couple of PHP scripts (/ddns/UpdateHost.php and /ddns/RegisterHost.php) in the autoipset.com domain.

What puzzled me is that autoipset.com is not, and has never been, hosted in any of my servers.

Keep reading to see the rest of the story…

Remember this post from a few days ago? I got very upset because Facebook keeps messing with its users’ personal information. In this case, they replaced everybody’s email address with a @facebook.com address. That was too much for me and I decided to leave, after removing my personal information from there.

I must admit defeat. I’m sad to say this, but Facebook wins.

My intention was to go through my friends’ profiles, write down the contact information and other data I wanted to keep (mostly birthdays), and then leave.

However, I found that I couldn’t get any contact information for most of my friends, because almost nobody has changed back to their real email address. Nice lock-in there, Facebook.

Also, during these days I’ve kept receiving friend requests from people I know in real life, messages from my family (even though I told them to email me instead), event invitations, etc. I admit it: it’s difficult to leave Facebook. So that’s it, I admit that I suck

As a damage control measure, I’m removing as much personal information from there as I can, but I’ll stay.

Do you want our own, personalized email address? You’re going to need two things:

Once you have these then you can proceed to create your own email address (or addresses).

See after the break for all the details.

I just realized now that ag0ny.com, the domain name that I had been using for over 12 years, has been stolen. It’s pointing to a site in Russia and is hosting what appears to be a web aggregator.

I’m not really going to pursue this because the domain was worthless. I just had an email address there that I barely used. I kept it because from time to time some old friend or another sent me an email there. Plus, another person had an @ag0ny.com address on my server (JPGrobler: if you read this, now you know why your email address isn’t working anymore, I’m sorry).

So remember, if you want to contact me via email, my current email address is javi@lavandeira.net, not the old ag0ny@ag0ny.com.

ag0ny.com at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, just for nostalgia.

Sorry, Facebook. This time you’ve crossed the line.

I read just a few moments ago in Slashdot that Facebook has replaced its users’ default email address with a facebook.com email address. I wasn’t very happy at all with Facebook before, and this, if true, would be the last straw, so I had to go and confirm it.

And yes, it is true. My profile now shows a @facebook.com email address (that I’ve never used and don’t intend to) instead of my real email address.

This is already too much. I’ve already deleted all my photo albums from my Facebook account, and over the next few days I’ll complete the process of removing as much content as possible and disabling the account. I have to write down the email address of people I want to keep in touch with, untag myself from my friends’ photos, and post a notice in my profile saying that I’m not there anymore.

I will still log in to Facebook during the next few days in order to remove all content from there, but from now on, if you want to get in touch with me, feel free to send me an email directly to my real email address: javi@lavandeira.net

As of today, this server (the one hosting this website you’re reading now) is now part of the NTP Pool Project. NTP is the Network Time Protocol. Your computer uses it to retrieve time information from time servers automatically adjust the time in its internal clock.

I was surprised there were so few NTP servers in the Japanese pool. Apparently there are only 21 active machines (counting mine).

You can see the server stats here.

Imagine that you’re a professional photographer: you earn money by taking photos and licensing them to customers who want to use them. One day while browsing the web you find a web site using one of your commercial photos illegally. You wonder how many people are doing the same, so you run an online search and find out that there are many, many web sites using your photo illegally.

You want these people to stop using your work. You could try and contact each of the web site owners, but you know that it’s going to be pointless because most don’t have contact information, or the contact person doesn’t have access to the web code, or they will just ignore you. You decide to send DMCA takedown notices to the companies hosting each of these web sites, so they will get in touch with their customers and ask them to remove your photo from their web sites.

As a result of the DMCA takedown requests, many of the web sites remove your photo, others offer to license it, as they should have done from the beginning. It seems to be going well.

Until a crazy psychotic person enters the scene.

Welcome to my nice, cozy, little space on the web. As you can see, I’ve just launched this new site and there’s almost no content, apart from a couple of photo galleries.

This is not going to be a blog. There won’t be many posts because I don’t think I’m the kind of person who likes telling to the world what I’m doing every day, what the places I’m visiting, or what things I see on my way to work every morning. I have other priorities. However, I do have opinions on several subjects (mostly modern-day politics, computer-related laws, and corporate/government corrupt behavior). From time to time I will feel the need to write something about these, and I will. Expect to see also some technical content every now and then.