IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Phishing for Engineers, Don't Get Hooked - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

A colleague telephoned me today with a story of very much worth taking note.

An engineer much like myself had been exploring employment opportunities. In the course of that effort, he was contacted by someone from out of state who told him of an engineering employment opportunity that seemed a perfect match for his personal skill set. The potential employer's name was recited and it was further said that this company did many millions of dollars of business per year and already employed several thousand people.

The caller was very anxious to get things moving and to facilitate that, wanted my colleague's employment info which would include his social security number.

Think about that.

My colleague ended the call on some pretext and then did a Google Maps check of the town where this company was said to be located. There was a Dunkin' Donuts, a CVS, a restaurant here and there and so forth but no such company as had been claimed.

The scam was plain as day a phishing scam.

Consider this as a cautionary tale.

A Three-Way Table Lamp Socket - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

A table lamp in our living room started to flicker the other day. It's bulb was a three-way bulb of 50-100-150 watt rating. On the low switch setting or on the high setting, the light would turn on/off (low) or flicker (high). Clearly the 50 watt filament was randomly turning on and off. That meant something was wrong with the bulb socket so I replaced that socket and then all was well. We had nice and steady light levels again.

A look at the old socket is worth taking a moment though.

The left image is the removed socket while the right image is a close up of the socket's pair of bulb filament contacts. Note that one of the contacts has been ruined.

High contact resistance to the bulb base is my best guess as the cause of this damage. High resistance at the point of contact led to contact heating and to metal destruction.

I have nothing remedial to suggest because of this. I only want to show it here as maybe something useful to remember if you see something similar happen in your own home.

Generator In Basement Equals Stupid - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

Look at this headline:

The URL for this headline and its article is:

https://patch.com/new-york/merrick/s/h7bip/generator-led-to-1-unconscious-4-with-hazardous-levels-of-co?utm_term=article-slot-1&utm_source=newsletter-daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

What astonishes me is the total and utter lack of common sense that drove this homeowner to have a generator situated in his basement. Was somebody not paying attention in Science class?

I remember a lecture in Junior High School about how oxygen bonds to blood cells and how carbon monoxide does the same thing but then doesn't unbond and remains in the bloodstream where it accumulates until the poisoning victim dies.

I don't know how much biochemical detail was left out for the sake of our being delicate youths, but the message of the lecture was driven home with force. This lecture was delivered when I was twelve or thirteen years old, but it never left me.  

As stated in this article, no generator should ever be used indoors. Period!! Case closed.

I wonder where the next nitwit who's going to make this blunder is living. At least, so far.

Safely Deleting Spam from Outlook - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

What follows below may seem insultingly obvious. It is not meant to be. Rather, this essay has come about after my seeing several peers needlessly put themselves at easily avoidable malware risk while deleting spam e-mails while using Outlook. 

We all get 'em, don't we. The message Inbox fills up with scam e-mails, many of them packing malware, just waiting and ready to harm you and you want to get rid of them. To make the point, look at this list:

Are any of these messages legitimate? Maybe, but my gut tells me otherwise. Just for a few examples, I don't have any subscription service with Microsoft, I have never ridden on a Metro-North train, I never sent out any "request for quote", there have been no transactions for $799.99 or $649.99 and so on and so on.

I've heard this kind of stuff is called "click bait". It's supposed to excite or alarm the recipient into impulsively opening the e-mail. If one were to do so, it could lead to dire consequences. When you see stuff like this, do NOT react and do NOT fall prey.

Furthermore, when you delete this stuff, YOU MUST TAKE CARE NOT TO ACCIDENTALLY OPEN ANY OF THESE KINDS OF MESSAGES!!!!! 

The worst thing you can do is place your cursor over any such message and click once to select it for deletion. If you do that, you WILL one day slip up and accidentally double click the mouse and thereby accidentally open the message you want to delete. If this becomes your habit, you WILL one day do a double click in error and don't tell me you'll be careful about it. To err is human, but if you err like this, forget about any divine forgiveness.

A safe way to get rid of any one message is to use the "Up" and "Down" keys to move the darkened display area onto the message you want to erase and then deleting that message by using the "X" function at the top of the screen. You won't accidentally open anything up that way. However, if you have a whole bunch of bad messages like shown above, you have the task of deleting the whole bunch and doing it safely.

One way is to repeatedly tap the "Up" key to move the darkened bar to the top of the group like this:

From here, you can get rid of the messages one by one by repeatedly using the "X" function over and over again until the whole group has been wiped out. There is no danger this way of accidentally opening something. However, if the group is large, repeatedly invoking "X" may get tedious and may take more time than you have the patience to spend.

There is another way which also avoids the danger of an accidental opening.

Use the "Up" key to move the darkness up to the first message as shown above. Then press the "Shift" key, hold it down and start tapping the "Down" key. Each time you tap, the dark area will expand line by line, message by message, like this:

Don't let go of the "Shift" key! Keep tapping the "Down" key and watch the dark area expand further like this:

While still holding down the "Shift" key, keep on tapping the "Down" key until the entire collection of messages is darkened:

Next, let go of the "Shift" key and press the "Delete" key. Here's what will happen:

The entire group of selected messages will get erased at the same time. BUT!!! (There is always a BUT, isn't there.) the messages won't be totally gone. They'll be in the "Deleted Items" folder where they will still be every bit as dangerous as ever so we're not finished yet.

The process in the Deleted Items list is a repeat of what we've already described. First use the "Up" key to move the dark area up to the first message, press and hold down the "Shift" key while you repeatedly tap the "Down" key to expand the dark area to cover the entire collection of messages, let go of the "Shift" key and press the "Delete" key. This is what you will see next:

Click the "Yes" button and you will have safely gotten rid of the bad stuff with no risk of having inadvertently opened something.

Make this process your habit. Do NOT regress. Do NOT relapse. You only have to screw up once to enter into a world of regret.

Anti-COVID Face-Mask Pain - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I made a profoundly important discovery today.

We had a visit from a neighbor and we sat outdoors on lawn chairs at well over six feet of distance and we all wore face masks. After roughly an hour, I started feeling extreme facial pain.

I do not want that to be misunderstood. I am not talking about inconvenience or discomfort. I am talking about genuine facial P-A-I-N and nothing less.

It took me a little while to figure out why.

Since the onset of the pandemic, I have been wearing the kind of face mask shown on the left in the above picture. My mask came from a box of N95 masks that we bought forty years ago, back in 1980, when we were having work done on our house and there was a great deal of dust.

I have worn my antique mask for hours on end with no problem. However, when our guest arrived today, I grabbed the mask shown on the right from a newly purchased package of masks and after a relatively short time, I developed an intolerable facial pain.

My guess is that the new mask forced me into a facial expression under the mask which was not just unaccustomed, but which led to facial muscle stress. The older mask design doesn't seem to do that.

If you or anyone you know refuses to wear a mask, maybe unspoken facial pain is part of the problem.

To anyone whose experience parallels my own, I say try wearing a different style of mask and see if it makes a difference.

You have that civic responsibility.