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  • Is grenadine.co legit?

    From Gary McGath@21:1/5 to All on Sat May 27 06:59:28 2023
    I got an email allegedly from Pemmi-Con, where I've asked to be a
    program participant, inviting me to fill out a form. Some things about
    it make me suspicious, though, and I'd like to find out whether it's a legitimate site.

    The "From" address is no-reply@grenadine.co . Grenadine.co is registered
    in Colombia, as the domain name indicates. A whois check tells me the registrant's name and address are "redacted for privacy." Web searches
    on "what is grenadine.co" and "is grenadine.co legitimate" tell me a lot
    about drinks but not much about the domain.

    The default behavior by most people is to open any link and download any
    app they're asked to. This is a big part of why data breaches are
    routine. I need more reassurance before giving this site any information.

    --
    Gary McGath http://www.mcgath.com

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  • From Andy Leighton@21:1/5 to Gary McGath on Sat May 27 15:08:21 2023
    On Sat, 27 May 2023 06:59:28 -0400, Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:
    I got an email allegedly from Pemmi-Con, where I've asked to be a
    program participant, inviting me to fill out a form. Some things about
    it make me suspicious, though, and I'd like to find out whether it's a legitimate site.

    The "From" address is no-reply@grenadine.co . Grenadine.co is registered
    in Colombia, as the domain name indicates. A whois check tells me the registrant's name and address are "redacted for privacy." Web searches
    on "what is grenadine.co" and "is grenadine.co legitimate" tell me a lot about drinks but not much about the domain.

    The default behavior by most people is to open any link and download any
    app they're asked to. This is a big part of why data breaches are
    routine. I need more reassurance before giving this site any information.

    Grenadine is used by a number of cons for their online programme (not
    least a few Worldcons - I think it started with Renovation in 2011 and
    then turned into a commercial product). Not sure why they have a .co
    URL but it is valid. Quite a number of companies are using .co addresses
    (good business for Colombia I guess) for some reason.

    Grenadine is a Canadian company based in Montreal.

    --
    Andy Leighton => andyl@azaal.plus.com
    "We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!"
    - Douglas Adams

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  • From Keith F. Lynch@21:1/5 to Gary McGath on Sat May 27 16:36:32 2023
    Gary McGath <garym@mcgath.com> wrote:
    The "From" address is no-reply@grenadine.co . Grenadine.co is
    registered in Colombia, as the domain name indicates. A whois
    check tells me the registrant's name and address are "redacted
    for privacy." Web searches on "what is grenadine.co" and "is
    grenadine.co legitimate" tell me a lot about drinks but not much
    about the domain.

    Like Andy, I've seen other cons use it.

    Lots of third-world countries have sold the rights to use their
    country code to businesses elsewhere in the world, confusingly enough.
    And not just on the Internet. Lots of ships that have never sailed
    anywhere near Central America fly the Panamanian flag.

    I'm not thrilled by all the fannish outsourcing. What next, hire a
    company to organize and run the con itself, rather than relying on
    voluneers? I've heard claims that a number of cons, including the
    latest two Worldcons, used MailChimp to send mass emails to all their
    members. I wouldn't know, even though I was a member of both cons,
    as I of course have long since had MailChimp blocked as a spam site.
    Even if I didn't, if I start to read an email and the first thing
    I see is an impenetrable mess of angle brackets, ampersands, and
    JavaScript code, I don't waste my time trying to make sense of it.

    The default behavior by most people is to open any link and download
    any app they're asked to . This is a big part of why data breaches
    are routine.

    ObSF: I recently read a trilogy by Adrian Tchaikovsky (who, despite
    his name, is British, not Russian): _Children of Time_, _Children of
    Ruin_, and _Children of Memory_. (And I'm currently re-reading the
    last one, in reaction to its twist ending.) The back story of the
    trilogy is that there was a terrible war on Earth, as a part of which
    a doomsday computer virus was broadcast into space, which caused
    all computers to unrecoverably crash, killing everyone in the space
    colonies in our solar system, and almost everyone in the handful of interstellar terraforming expeditions.

    My first thought was that no sane designer would set up computers to automatically run whatever crap is sent to them. My second thought
    was that present-day computer designers aren't sane.

    My biggest computer-related fear isn't that AI will take over the
    world. It's that someone will turn one of my computers into a child
    porn web server without my noticing, resulting in my getting a prison
    sentence of life without the possibility of parole. This has already
    happened to hundreds of people. And some who were falsely accused of
    this pled guilty in return for a sentence of only a few years followed
    by life on the sex offender list.
    --
    Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
    Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Joy Beeson@21:1/5 to kfl@KeithLynch.net on Sun May 28 22:45:55 2023
    On Sat, 27 May 2023 16:36:32 -0000 (UTC), "Keith F. Lynch"
    <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:

    My first thought was that no sane designer would set up computers to automatically run whatever crap is sent to them. My second thought
    was that present-day computer designers aren't sane.


    The "I Robot" movie put a massive strain on my W.S.O.D. -- who would
    allow radom changes to his household robots?

    A few days ago I noticed a dialog box on my spouse's computer. It
    said that Windows would install an update at 5:37 unless I clicked
    "Install it now" or "Install it later". "Don't install it" was not
    an option.

    I noticed the box because I wanted to use his computer to enter
    receipts into Quicken. A recent update to Quicken has scrambled all
    our categories. "Groceries" are now a subset of "Dining", "Medical"
    was a sub-category of "Fitness", prescription medications were missing entirely, and there is a new top-level category called "Shopping".

    Shopping? I bought a half-dozen shopping bags at two dollars each
    about thirty years ago, and despite being washed with hot water and
    bleach, they are just now showing signs of wear. Even if I buy more,
    at the much higher prices unwashable bags are going for today, "Misc."
    or "Household" will cover it nicely. What in expletive-deleted am I
    supposed to file under "shopping"?


    --
    Joy Beeson
    joy beeson at centurylink dot net
    http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

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  • From Keith F. Lynch@21:1/5 to Joy Beeson on Mon May 29 03:39:18 2023
    Joy Beeson <jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
    "Keith F. Lynch" <kfl@KeithLynch.net> wrote:
    My first thought was that no sane designer would set up computers
    to automatically run whatever crap is sent to them. My second
    thought was that present-day computer designers aren't sane.

    The "I Robot" movie put a massive strain on my W.S.O.D. -- who would
    allow radom changes to his household robots?

    Presumably the owners aren't given a choice. Indeed, the owners
    aren't really the owners, but are just the possessors. That seems to
    be the sales model for more and more gadgets.

    I wish more people pushed back against that trend. I recently read
    that someone bought an expensive HP printer. When he discovered that
    it would refuse to work unless given unlimited uncontrolled access to
    the Internet, he took it back, got a full refund, and vowed to never
    again buy an HP product. Good for him!

    There is some argument for this for products such as autonomous robots
    and self-driving cars. A programmer or tinkerer who doesn't know what
    he's doing could cause great risk to the general public.

    I have less sympathy for DVD players that won't let me skip copyright
    warnings, disclaimers, previews, and other crap. It's my player and
    my DVDs, so I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with them,
    other than making and selling unauthorized copies.

    A few days ago I noticed a dialog box on my spouse's computer. It
    said that Windows would install an update at 5:37 unless I clicked
    "Install it now" or "Install it later". "Don't install it" was not
    an option.

    I am dismayed by how often my two Ubuntu laptops want to install
    urgent security updates. They're far too large and far too frequent
    for me to make any attempt to try to figure out what they're doing.
    It's like being given a new thousand-page contract of dense legalese
    to sign every week.

    Does anyone know of a more reliable OS? After the 20th time, I have
    very little faith that they finally got it right.

    I'm glad I'm not one of Ubuntu's authors. The first time I was
    responsible for releasing software with a security flaw, I'd be
    extremely embarrassed. The second time I'd decide I was in the
    wrong line of work.

    I noticed the box because I wanted to use his computer to enter
    receipts into Quicken. A recent update to Quicken has scrambled all
    our categories. "Groceries" are now a subset of "Dining", "Medical"
    was a sub-category of "Fitness", prescription medications were
    missing entirely, and there is a new top-level category called
    "Shopping".

    I insist on keeping all my data under my full control, in categories
    and formats of my choosing. And in multiple offsite copies, so no
    possible malware, security flaw, revoked DRM, software update or
    expiration, or EMP blast could erase all copies.
    --
    Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
    Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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