Feb 15
Ben KingBusiness, Internet, Life Other
The MS abuse team basically fobbed me off to the live team, and i quote:
‘I am really sorry sir for the trouble this incident has caused you. However, recovering of hacked accounts is best handled by our Windows Live ID Technical Support as we only support abuse issues on this area. Please understand that I really want to help you address this concern but this issue is beyond our boundaries.’
I have given the live support team 24 hours and still no response.
GRRR!
Update (21/07/2008)
After recieving many posts and emails with people asking and pleading with me to help them get their hotmail back I have prepared a handy document that tells you everything you need to know. I am making a small charge for this of $10, you can buy it here.
Feb 14
Ben KingBusiness, Internet, Life Other
So on my mission to get my hotmail/msn account back, after my password was stolen, i thought Microsoft live were being very efficient and I got the email asking me to validate who I was, name, address, account details…
Check out the response… (and who the hell is Jessica?!).
–
Hi Jessica, Thank you for contacting Windows Live Messenger Abuse Support. My name is Maynard and I’d be most glad to assist you with your concern.We appreciate you providing the answers to the questions sent by Joff in order to prove your ownership of the account king@hotmail.co.uk. However, recovering of hacked accounts is best handled by our Windows Live ID Technical Supprot as we only support abuse issues on this area.
Please contact Windows Live ID Technical Support through http://support.live.com/eform.aspx?productKey=wlid&page=wlsuppor t_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts and include your answers to the questions sent by Joff. If you need further assistance, you may contact us at http://support.live.com/eform.aspx?productKey=wlmessengerabuse&page=wlsupport_home_options_form_byemail&ct=eformts. Thank you for contacting Windows Live Messenger Abuse Support. Have a great day. Sincerely, Maynard Windows Live Messenger Abuse Support
Update (21/07/2008)
After recieving many posts and emails with people asking and pleading with me to help them get their hotmail back I have prepared a handy document that tells you everything you need to know. I am making a small charge for this of $10, you can buy it here.
Feb 12
Ben KingBusiness, Internet Interweb, Life, Systems, Web/Tech
I just found this on the web, someone with the same challenge:
http://www.itoctopus.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=27
I am just beyond part 1 of the problem, fingers crossed for a response from MS with a reset password email for me.
In the meantime my hacker continues to cause trouble!
Update (21/07/2008)
After recieving many posts and emails with people asking and pleading with me to help them get their hotmail back I have prepared a handy document that tells you everything you need to know. I am making a small charge for this of $10, you can buy it here.
Feb 12
Ben KingBusiness, Internet, Life Interweb, Life, Systems
I am distraught, I am the victim of hacker!
My hotmail/msn messenger login has been stolen, I have for some years now had the hotmail address - king@hotmail.co.uk, which i won in a eBay charity auction (for NSPCC).
The address regularly attracts attention of hackers, I get frequent emails in my Hotmail ‘Reset your windows live password now’, not to mention at 10 people a day randomly adding me either to see who has the address or by mistake!
So how did they do it? Being in our business all our workstations are locked down, firewalled, security patched, anti-virussed, anti-spywared up to the hind teeth, so a workstation compromise seems unlikely.
The perpetrator (by all accounts a 19yr old Egyptian male), who has been boasting to my contacts about how ‘he works for msn, and has hacked my account’, by all accounts achieved this by the most artistic form of hacking ‘social engineering’.
‘Social engineering’, basically means he has convinced someone at MS Live to reset my account password, thus gaining him access to my account. He has then gone on to change the other pieces of information (secret phrase, alternate email address), thus stopping me resetting it back.
So I am in the annoying stage at the moment where someone else is logged onto my messenger, and I can’t do anything about it until MS sort it out. BOO!
Update (21/07/2008)
After recieving many posts and emails with people asking and pleading with me to help them get their hotmail back I have prepared a handy document that tells you everything you need to know. I am making a small charge for this of $10, you can buy it here.
Oct 10
Ben KingBusiness, Internet bit10, Business
6/10/6 was a momentos day for bit10, we made our first acquisition of another web development company, Networks New Media. Networks have been a long time local competitor of bit10.
The aquisition brings approximately 270 new customers of varying sizes and an estimated half million pounds of additional turnover.
Woohoo!!! <- Happy Ben 
Sep 13
Ben KingInternet, Life, Play Cannonball, Interweb, Life, Web/Tech
For the next few days I am away on the Cannonball 8000, from London to Budapest.
You can see our progress on our Team 30 Cannonball website… http://www.team30.com.
So until I get back I will be blogging there, so pay us a visit and see how we are progressing.
Sep 11
Ben KingBusiness, Internet bit10, Business, Interweb, Web/Tech
Wow who’d have thought that having a great website developed was soo traumatic, especially when you own a company who does web design.
My trauma however is no reflection on the bit10 people doing my project, its more of a reflection on my inability to really know what I want!
We are now on our 3rd major design iteration and probably our 50th minor iteration, and its starting to look fantastic.
The main thing I have learnt from the experience so far is that we employ fantastic designers however they aren’t mindreaders. So unless you are the sort of person who can visualise exactly what you want and convey it in simple terms others can understand (neither of which I can do), then the design process has to be iterative.
Mental note to self ‘sell clients far more design iterations’. :)
Sep 07
Ben KingBusiness, Internet Cannonball, Interweb, Web/Tech
Marketing Week have published my letter to the editor regarding click fraud in response to their piece on the subject last week.
Unfortunately Marketing Week, don’t make content available to non subscribers online, so you will have to do with my copy below, or grab yourself a copy of the 7th September issue!
–
Dear Editor,
The rise in click fraud is a real cause for concern amongst UK businesses, (Search marketing feels pressure of click fraud, Marketing Week, 31 August 2006) and companies now need to reassess their pay-per-click advertising campaigns to make sure that they do not become the latest fraud victims.
Undoubtedly there are some companies that take great pleasure in clicking their competitors’ links when they first set up a Google AdWords campaign but this is not really a serious problem. The fun soon dies off, especially when companies realise that their competitors are probably doing the same to them.
The real threat actually comes from the automated click-fraud bots which are increasingly widespread, and with more and more PCs around the world now ‘owned’, the opportunities to commit click fraud are significant.
Companies need to protect themselves by limiting their daily spend on cost-per-click campaigns and by undertaking regular trend analysis which will quickly reveal if someone is trying to hurt them. Significant traffic from one region or IP range is relatively easy to deal with if the right controls are in place.
Unless companies start to put more rigorous processes in place to help them analyse and understand the clicks they receive, then the click-based advertising business could soon spiral out of control.
Ben King, Director, bit10, Coventry
Sep 01
Ben KingBusiness, Internet Business, Web/Tech
Last week saw bit10s first ever appearance in NMA (New Media Age) , for our work we have done in developing, refining and hosting BMG Musicsearch. You can read the whole article here (if you have an NMA login/password), or our press release here.
Aug 10
Ben KingBusiness, Internet bit10, Business, Interweb, Web/Tech
We are redoing our website, because frankly its a bit rubbish, it consistently fails to convert traffic into leads, and it is a pretty poor reflection of bit10, a classic case of the cobblers shoes.
We know what is wrong with it and we have kicked off a project to get it right.
The great thing is that Ally and I get to be bit10 customers, and we are running the project as if it was a client project and we are going to do it textbook.
Steph is our messenger (project manager to the non informed), Stuart is our technical lead.
The first step, which is to complete high level project requirements is complete, and a budget allocated… you can read it here.
The next step is to kick off the ideas generation and actually decide exactly what we are doing… that happens this afternoon.
So far my experience as a bit10 customer has been a good one, however I am frustrated by the time it takes to ‘do the job properly’ – although I totally appreciate the necessity!
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