A co-worker and friend of mine were talking the other day about the growth of the internet. He has not been a long time fan of the internet. When I first went to work there in 2005 he let me know that he had no interest in owning a computer. He used the internet for getting the current weather forecasts in the morning for the weather segment of his radio shows. He also used it a little for e-mail, but that was about it. A couple years later I was trying to convince him he should get a computer for his home. Once again he told me he had zero interest in owning a computer. Last year he finally got a computer for his home, which he has at his desk in the living room. While I was at his house we were watching something, and we had a question about something we were watching. We were wondering when a movie came out or something like that and he jumped on IMDB and we had the answer.
This got us talking about how remarkable it was that in this day and age we could find the answer to any question, no mater how obscure it was, almost instantly. When I reminded him how he told me a few years earlier, he had zero interest in computers or the internet, he couldn’t believe he even said that.
He was asking me some questions about the internet because he knew I had been on it for a long time. I got on the internet for the first time back in 1993 or 1994. I told him how I remembered seeing a statistic back then that there were 5 million e-mail addresses and about a year or so later that had jumped 30 million. At the time I was blown away by this statistic.
When I got my first computer I was 13 and in 8th grade. It was a used Apple ][+. I loved it and spent many hours everyday after school and in the evening exploring what I could do with it. None of my friends shared my interest or enthusiasm for computers. About a year or so later I got a 300 baud modem and entered the world of BBS’s and spent even more hours staring at my Amdek Color-1 monitor, which by the way still works and is in front of me now hooked up to a wifi security camera. And I still could never get my friends interested in computers. Of course that has all changed and I am now talking to most of them daily on Facebook. But I digress.
Back to my story. My friend, Bob, asked me how many people were on the internet now or how many people had internet access. To which I had to answer I had no idea. There was no way I could estimate or even guess at this point. Tonight I came across a site which has some pretty good statistics about this. So if you are also curious about this you can go to Internet World Stats and get a pretty good overview of it. And one other site I find interesting is the real time statistics at Akamai
Monthly Archives: April 2010
Internet World Usage Statistics
Fake Apple Store Order E-mail
Time to add another fake e-mail to the long list of social engineering e-mail scams. This one looks like this.
Subject 4912-3337 Apple AppStore Confirmation
Sender Apple Up-To-Date Add contactApple Store
Call 1-800-MY-APPLE#4368-66525
Order DetailsYou can also contact Apple Store Customer Service or visit online for more information.
Visit the Apple Online Store to purchase Apple hardware, software, and third-party accessories.
Copyright 2010 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.
This one wants you to click on the order details link, which I have removed, but if you look at the “Order Details” link more closely, you will see that it doesn’t go to the apple store but links to some place called goofbomb. I don’t feel like testing out my anti-virus or risk getting a 0-day virus or some malware, let’s just assume it’s a bad place. So keep your eyes out for this and other e-mails that claim you have purchased something, or missed a delivery, and gives you a link to your “order” or has an attachment for you to open. Quite a few of these going around these days.
Surf Safe
Slacking a bit
The traffic I was getting last year was 1000-2000 visits a day. This had me pretty excited and I was trying to make sure I added new content at least a couple times a week. Then about a month or so ago, my traffic really dropped off, at some point it was down to 200-300 visits a day. This killed my enthusiasm and as you can see, I haven’t posted much. I know I should probably post more if I want more traffic.
Well I just looked at my page stats and I see I’m getting close to the 1000 again. So when I get home tonight I’m going to post at least one new article. It’s one I have been saving or I should say it’s an answer to a previous problem I had been working on and talked about here. The search results redirection malware that I was trying to remove. I found something that got rid of it! Anyways, I don’t want to say too much right now or else I won’t have anything to write about now will I.
Sorry for slacking off. Two years or so ago I wasn’t even getting 100 page views a day, much less 100 visitors. When my traffic started climbing every month by like 50%, I guess I got spoiled. And when it peaked in December, I should have been ready for the decline. It was just nice to know that people were actually reading what I put on here. And now that I see that’s happening again, I’ll get back to work. Thanks for stopping by 
-Chris / PC CyberTek
