Sounds Like Weird
Computerworld has a rather excellent guide on Doxxing Defense, aka removing your personal info from data brokers.
Today, I got one of the classic spammy kinds of comments with English words that don’t make sense when strung together.
I am this is on the list of a great deal important information in my situation.
One of these days, I’m going to get one with the words in the sentence alphabetized, and it’ll make me laugh.
However, what was different about this one is that it didn’t link to a spam domain.
Instead, it linked to a forum profile at an educational site (major university in this case), and that forum happened to show a user’s URL to everyone. The linked site was a spam site. The educational forum allows registration from anyone. (For obvious reasons, I’m not listing the link.)
So, just be aware when you get a comment on your blog, even if the linked site appears to be legitimate, it may be just spam-by-proxy.
So, discovering that I had no JDBC driver for Oracle, I go to Oracle’s site to obtain one.
Naturally, I had to assert that I comply with the following:
I am not a citizen, national or resident of, and am not under the control of, the government of: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Syria, nor any other country to which the United States has prohibited export.
I will not download or otherwise export or re-export the Programs, directly or indirectly, to the above mentioned countries nor to citizens, nationals or residents of those countries.
I am not listed on the United States Department of Treasury lists of Specially Designated Nationals, Specially Designated Terrorists, and Specially Designated Narcotic Traffickers, nor am I listed on the United States Department of Commerce Table of Denial Orders.
I will not download or otherwise export or re-export the Programs, directly or indirectly, to persons on the above mentioned lists.
I will not use the Programs for, and will not allow the Programs to be used for, any purposes prohibited by United States law, including, without limitation, for the development, design, manufacture or production of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons of mass destruction.
OK, so if I were part of the Iraq reconstruction process, I couldn’t use the JDBC driver there? Hrm.
Irony value: as if having posted about this weren’t enough, what I didn’t say in the original post was that I was working as a Network Geography Analyst for Quova at the time. My job was to determine where in the world IP addresses mapped to, including, understandably: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Syria.
In 2006 and 2007, I consulted for PGP Inc, ensuring that their beta PGP encryption software met the same export standards as those listed above.
It all comes full circle, doesn’t it?