Web Builders International

UPDATE: SCAM CONFIRMED!!!

THIS COMPANY STEALS MONEY FROM OTHER BANKS THEN TRANSFERS THE MONEY INTO IT'S "EMPLOYEES" ACCOUNTS AND HAS THEM WIRE IT ON TO OTHER PEOPLE!

DO NOT GET INVOLVED IN THIS COMPANY.

The entire website webbuildersintl.com has been copied and archived if anyone is interested in a copy.

As of July 13th 2011 a bank in Massachusetts has started contacting banks nation wide about unauthorized transactions being made. So far one attorney has stated that in most cases the unknowing employees can not be held legally responsible for the wire transfers some of them had made. Worse case scenario is some one may end up having to pay back the money.

Again webbuildersintl.com is a SCAM!!!!!

The following post contains information gathered from the Internet and is not intended as a factual representation for all people involved.

Web Builders International has been popping up all over message boards and scam sites with people asking "Is this a legit job offer?". The answer is still not clear as no one has stepped forward in saying they have been paid, or even work for the company.

What is Web Builders International?

According to their website http://www.webbuildersintl.com this company deal primarily with web site development and SEO (Search Engine Optimization), as well as flash, java, etc. According to whois information their website was created July of 2011. This is roughly around the time people started asking about the legality of the business.

Where are they located?

This is hard to tell, they list their address as 859 Hollywood Way, Suite 459, Burbank, CA 91505. However checking out google street view it is hard to believe this address even exists. In fact after making a phone call to one of the businesses located at the same address we where told no business by that name existed and there are no suites at 859 Hollywood way. Going back to whois information the server that hosts their websites seams to be located in the Netherlands (Another red flag in many cases).

What type of job are they offering?

The job itself seams to be the same by everyone's account. You work from home using your computer to contact clients. You are assigned specific clients that only deal with you and no one else that works for web builders. A few people who had stated they had begun working for Web Builders that the job consisted mostly of sitting in front of their computers waiting for something to pop up. One person stated they had received a new job for the day, however at the same time two others had received the exact same job. So it begs to question if these jobs are in fact real, or as one put it a "test" to see how efficiently you can work.

The job also requires you to open a new, separate checking account. This account can not be tied to any other account and Web Builders INTL states this account is for transferring funds to and from clients. This is also where they deposit your pay (on average this has been about $2,850 per month however no one has been paid as of the writing of this article)

Red flags and other non-standard concerns.

Most times when we hear about a work at home opportunity it is something that you have to pay into, such as selling candles, cosmetics, or opening some type of web store through another company. Web Builders however does not ask you for a single penny, instead you fill out a W-4 as you would for any employer along with answering, filling out, and faxing in the standard employment papers. This all sounds great, but some "employees" reported sitting for nearly a week before receiving any work. (Remember they pay you a base payment of $2,850 no matter what according to their paperwork) All the work seams to be the exact same throughout all the employees (Unless we have only heard from those who by some miracle are all working on the same project together) which makes us wonder about what is really going on.

One person said they watched their checking account which required $100 to open to make sure the money they used to open it stayed put, and it did. In fact within a week over $4,000 dollars was deposited into the account in which afterwards the "employee" was asked to wire transfer it to another party. We have not heard as of yet if the amounts of money transferred into these employees accounts is the same amount, if it is then we can assume that either something fishy is going on, or perhaps this is the flat rate fee for a certain service. Either way it seams a bit strange that the employee would need to setup an account instead of the business itself.

On one website where several people where talking about the legitimacy of Web Builders we where shocked to find out that several of the people using the site where fired, one of which who had been fired the exact day he or she was to be paid. No warning, no request to have the posts removed, just fired, sacked, canned, let go!!

The trail is cold and bare.

Everyone who has looked into Web Builders International has found next to nothing on them.

Archive.org has no record of them (especially since the site is less then 6 months old.) But their website says they have been in business since 2006. Google search only pulls up other concerned individuals questioning scam or no scam (Web builders own site barely pulls up on a google search) Even though the company boasts web development and search engine optimization their site has an incredibly low ranking. Their website itself is also broken (One broken link on the main page going to web development) you can't tell me a company that specializes in building web sites does not know how to use a link checker?

Another strange finding was this article on a E-zine site. The site itself looking like it was thrown up over night. Yellowpage look ups, show nothing for the company which after 5 years of business you would think by now should have a phone listing of some sort. The numbers listed on the site:

Phone: (818) 748-8380

Fax: (818) 671-5715

Seam to be mobile numbers or disposable numbers. Calling the main phone number will get you a woman named "Emily" with a foreign accent.

Conclusion:

This website / business confirmed SCAM July 14th 2011 at roughly 3pm CST.

Winterm Hacking update

It has been a long time since I posted any new information on my winterm hacking progress. Well it has finally been picked back up and the results are excellent. I'll go through the process and hurdles I faced so hopefully other can benefit from my experience.

Since the Athena TK3350 I have only had 128mb of ram it was almost impossible to boot from a usb cd/dvd drive. So the first hurdle was how to get a new 4gb compact flash card loaded with an uncompressed OS. When you boot from a cd/dvd/usb flash drive, most times (Especially with linux live images) there is a compressed file system. In my case I was using SliTaz linux which is a 30mb distro with a graphic desktop and a web browser. When trying to boot directly from cd/dvd or usb I would recieve errors about running out of swap space.

To get past these first hurdles the solution was simple. Use a more modern system with beefier resources to create the uncompressed cf image. So I booted the SliTaz cd then plugged in my compact flash card to a usb adapter. Once the desktop was loaded all I needed to do was start the slitaz installer which was under the main program menu >> Slitax installer.

I then had to tell the installer to show all drives then I picked my usb drive from the drop down menu. After a few seconds I had an uncompressed copy of slitaz on the new 4gb cf drive.

!First Boot!

The first boot had some major issues, first errors about unable to find sda1 (problem from the installer not offering options to change boot device name) and some DMA errors.

Fixing the sda1 issue.

This was pretty easy and straight forward. Plug the cf back into the usb adapter and open /boot/grub/menu.1st and change sda1 to hda1

!Second Boot!

The second boot was a bit more exciting new messages where popping up, but I still got several errors that prevented the desktop from loading. The error that caught my eye first was all the DMA errors. After reading through some forums I found that I could go two different routes. 1. Re-compile the kernel with the appropriate DMA options, not an option for me. 2. use boot parameters to change DMA settings. This was the only option for me since I did not want to waste a ton of time on this project. Since many thin clients use a cf to ide adapter they do not use an 80pin connector like most new hard drives. So the system could not boot using DMA options of modern systems. So after more searching I found this tid bit to disable DMA (Or at least downgrade it)

My menu.1st now looks like this.

title SliTaz GNU/Linux (cooking) (Kernel vmlinuz-2.6.30.6-slitaz)

root (hd0,0)

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.30.6-slitaz root=/dev/hda1 ide-core.nodma=0.0 ide-core.nodma-0.1 vga=normal

Notice the ide-core.nodma=0.0 ide-core.nodma=0.1 This is the key to getting many linux ditros to boot from compact flash cards.

!Final Boot!

At last with all the little items fixed the system was off to a real boot. SliTaz booted and I was able to answer questions about how I wanted the system setup. Since everything is uncompressed these settings where saved and each boot afterwards will take off without a hitch.

What now?

Now that I have a running system its time to put it to use. Keeping in mind the limited resources this system would be good for several projects.

1. Internet radio station. This system could sustain a few connections from listeners before it became over loaded.

2. Network attached storage. Originally i wanted to install freenas but its minimal requirements are a little over what this system has (533mhzcpu 128mb ram) however a stipped down linux os (text mode only) with samba running would provide a general storage server.

3. tiny web server. plenty of space to host a web site, but it would only be able to handle a small amount of traffic at a time.

4. Kid computer. Since resources are low this would make a decent first time computer for a child. Its limited space would mean less chance of junk being downloaded and running linux means no viruses or malware.

5. LTSP, this system can function very well as a thin client for linux terminal service project. connected to a decent server this device would be capable of performing most tasks of modern computer systems.

So there you have it the general steps needed to turn trash into something usable. I plan on running the shoutcast radio server on this machine in the near future. So stay tuned for the audio / video amazement jeitv will bring. (Or not!)

Things I want to do this winter....or probably won't.

Hack Lab.

It seams not a single person I talk to knows what a hack lab is, or why anyone would want to have one. Many see it as a way of teaching people how to break the law, or spread information that should not be shared.

However this is not the case for me. Its more of a way for me to learn from others and help others learn from me. Over the years I have kept up with a lot of stuff I never get to use, and a hack lab is the easiest and safest way to put those skills to practice.

What is a hack lab realy?

A hack lab is a small (or large) dedicated network complete with servers, switches, and whatever networking equipment you want to play with. Hack labs are usually not connected to the Internet to keep activity from leaking into the public networks.

A hack lab is setup like a game, one hack lab may focus on web application security where players are responsible for finding holes and security problems. Another hack lab may require files to be found and passwords cracked.

As text to many this may sound dull and boring, but a hack labs main purpose is to educate those playing. Each person thinks differently and may take alternate routes to the same goal. A hack lab may show that using a tool like wireshark is much faster then using tcpdump. Or that john the ripper is quicker at cracking zip files then a proprietary application.

What would my hack lab be like?

I have always had a fascination with wireless security and how people take most security as a hassle instead of a way to protect their files. So my hack lab would focus on these areas. An access point would be setup using a basic "WEP" based protection and possibly a MAC address filtering list. Players would then be tasked with gaining access to the wireless access point using several methods and collecting information. After accessing the wireless network they would need to keep other players at bay while not alerting the owner of the wireless network. So switching mac list, or encryption to WPA/WPA2 would not be an option.

Once into the network they would then have to gain access to a file server containing a protected data file. This file would be protected using methods that even hospitals have been known to use.

It sounds like a quick lab, but in reality it could take several hours if not an entire day to complete. Once finished players would be asked to explain how they obtained access to each section of the network and propose solutions to keep attackers out. As an extended game the newly secured network could then be attacked. However, the use of wpa/wpa2 would greatly increase the amount of time it would take to gain access to just the wireless section of the network.

This lab is just a basic example, there are even hack labs online you can play, or download and play. Most of them focus on security since thats the biggest problem facing any computer user, and of course its the funnest.

Online radio/web show.

When I was living in Quincy I had a small web show, it wasn't much but it was fun when I could do it. Many years ago I had a very small radio show online. I have always liked interacting with people and making things that entertain even if its just a hand full. And with the updates to some of the software I have been using, a live show would be pretty fun. I may eventually try to do another show, but it will require a lot of planning and content provided by listeners/viewers. Perhaps I'll start over the winter if i'm not swamped by work.

Lastly I'd like to get my business back up and running. After two weeks of being open we started to get a steady stream of customers, but scheduling problems and the city wanting another $100/$200 for a permit or re-zoning killed us quick. But we plan to move to a new location. Once done pricing will be cut way below local competition and we hope to build our business back up and beyond.

A town choking itself to extinction

Small towns are often seen as tourist attractions, tid-bits of the past mixed with modern day stores. However, what happens when a town refuses to change, refuses to better itself or build on its existing assets?

Over the past 30 years the town I live in has went from a decent bustling small city to an almost dead ghost town. If it wasn't for Wal-Mart I think this town would be almost completely empty. The mall (if you can call it that) has more junk in it then merchandise, main street has very little to stop and even consider looking at, and the people running the city seam to be living in another world. A few months back I spoke to a man who said Keokuk was fine, and that people needed to stop whining about how the economy has made things worse. His solution to the lack of jobs and stores was to shop elsewhere and work elsewhere while at the same time living here. To me this just seams like a moot point. How can a city thrive if everyone has houses here but does all their living in surrounding areas.

Travel 50 miles in any direction and you'll see towns that are doing much better. Why? Because the majority of people have the same idea as the man I talked to. While Ft. Madison, Burlington, and Quincy grow, Keokuk falls deeper and deeper into becoming a ghost town.

Recently the city chamber put out a survey to find out what Keokuk residents feel about how the city has been doing so far. I can only imagine what the final results from these surveys will be. Lets take a look at some of the points Keokuk simply refuses or is unable to take care of.

1. Shopping is limited to a very few places. These places are mostly large chain stores that put very little to no money back into the community. The jobs they generate are minimum wage jobs that have been filled by a large number of elderly who can no longer live on their retirement pensions.

2. Teen / kid related activity is almost zero. Several arcades have opened and shortly after closed due to vandalism, bullies, or lack of funds. Skate N Challenge had great ideas but closed due to too many bullies and not enough people spending money. Who wants to let their kids hang out somewhere they'll be ostracized and possibly harmed. K-town underground is rumored to have closed because of child pornography taking place by the owners. Even if not true, the place was a dump. A dark room in a basement with over priced junk food and no real activities to do. All attempts at getting a skate part put in have ended with each one being closed from complaints of more vandalism and bullying.

3. Many locally owned stores along main closed shortly after Wal-Mart opening, however the large chain store remains while dozens of local business still remain empty. More the likely several of the workers of those local stores had to go work for Wal-Mart just to keep making a living.

4. Keokuk has started (for what seams like the dozenth time in 10 years) a "Buy Local" campaign to urge people to buy from local business. The only problem with that is there is nothing of use you can buy from local businesses. Need diapers? Chain stores. Need parts for your vehicle? Chain stores are your choice. Need Medication? Chain stores. Groceries can be purchased from local farmers market, but for everything aside from the basic vegetables and eggs your once again looking at taking a trip to a chain store.

5. Keokuk offers almost zero help for small businesses to start. Quincy has the Business and Technology center to allow new business to grow at a lower cost. If you located a block and a half off main or less you will also need to get a permit or have almost every aspect of your new business ok'd by the "Main street group".

These are just a few of the problems others and myself have seen around the area but little has been done in decades to fix these problems. This doesn't include streets, schools closing, and a rise in drug problems.

Keokuk could really benefit from looking at surrounding areas for ideas. Just because a building is old does not make it "History". We seen exactly what happens when a "Historic" building is let sit with the "Green Tambourine". Now they want to make the underground tunnels that many of the city citizens knew existed, into a tourist attraction. This was brought up years ago before and the city responded with the high costs and insurance liability problems. So these problems have subsided now? I think not. The city will waste tons of money on cleanup only to close the tunnels off from the public leaving a big lot with nothing but a hole in it. It won't be long before many other parts of Main street follow and with each one a new empty lot will emerge. More then likely staying empty for years.

Surrounding areas would have knocked down these troublesome building and put effort forth to fill them with new buildings and new business. Even offering rental space at a lower cost for the first 3-5 years would probably get more businesses to open. $600-$1200 is the average cost of an average location on main. Add in the fact that Keokuk has very little money being spent already and your looking at another business waiting to close from lack of money coming in.

Eventually Keokuk will get the hint that his is small town USA, not a big city. The people here worked hard for years in factories and now all they have to look towards for employment is a greeter or cashier.

Many may be thinking "If you don't like it move"! Well I'm excepting offers for jobs paying 45k or more per year and I'll be happy to oblige. Till then i'm in the same boat as the rest, not enough money to stay and not enough money to leave.

My early years.

Computers have come a long way since I first began using them. In fact my first computer was an Tandy Color II. It had a green screen, and programs had to be saved to cassette tapes. The program cartridges where about an inch thick and literally had to be slammed into the slot in order to work. Needless to say this was not the computer that started my love of technology. In fact my mother used it more then I did.

The first computer that got me really going on was a gateway solo 2100 laptop. 233mhz cpu, with 32mb of ram and a 2gb hard drive. I wasn't going to be taking over the world with this system, but I did come up with some pretty interesting projects using it. My first ever true "hack" or "project" was a floppy disk that bypassed the windows 95/98 login screen and took you right to the desktop. This was done by loading system files from the floppy but using config files on the systems hard drive. It was popular on IRC for about a week before completely abandoned due to simply being able to press cancel at the login screen.

My second project was a bit more complex and useful. A bash script that allowed anyone to view ifilms.com paid videos for free. At that time ifilms was one of the webs first video sites. This project was put on antionline.com but lost after I stopped updating my free website.

As years passed I came up with other little projects, none of them really worth keeping around for to long. It wasn't till I started work at a small ISP (Interlink L.C.) that I started trying to come up with new projects. Most of them consisted of scripts to automate tasks, such as parsing log files and hunting down user activity. Once wifi became popular I created a few scripts to quickly change hardware MAC addresses for gaining access to wireless towers without having to have an actual account on them. Although working for the company I already had free access. But these where proof of concepts, which got me fired for being a security threat then shortly after re-hired once one of the managers was let go.

A few years back I created a script for Yahoo Live! which allowed people to view any live cam without having to be in the same chat room with the user. This was mostly created as a way for users to view more then the 4-5 cams they could by default. Sadly once it was finished the site closed down due to the economy.

Now days I spend my time piddling around with php, mysql, and different tools for sniffing and manipulating network traffic. Although I have not created anything of interest in a long time. The old days still ring in my head just waiting for an opportunity to once again create something neat. Perhaps the new business will push me in a direction to create such a tool. Who knows.

It seams the days of tinkering are almost gone though. Sneaking through alleys listening to phone conversations, or using my old palm pilot to telnet into systems from unsuspecting phone lines are but a funny memory. But as technology grows and more people embrace it, I feel more fun is yet to be had and more projects yet to be created.

Only time can tell. Who knows maybe my children will pickup where I leave off.

Can open source replace your office servers?

When http://www.networxpc.com decided to startup the first thing we talked about was providing small businesses with open source alternatives. What we found was surprising and a bit annoying at the same time.

Not only did we easily find alternatives for almost every single Microsoft based server in the small business sector, but we also found alternatives that worked better with more features.

Here is a small run down of what can be fairly easily replaced with open source software. And yes Networx pc supports them all.

• Microsoft exchange (Alternative offers a great web interface, desktop app, or even use Outlook)
• File server (No surprise since Linux and open source have been doing this since day 1)
• Active Directory with or without roaming profiles (This was a big surprise for me, people spend thousands on MS based AD servers, and a similar alternative is available for free)
• Backup server (No matter if its a single file or an entire drive the Open Source community has this one under wraps with very easy and stable setup)
• Groupware (Sharing information is big in most businesses. weather its calendars, notes, files, or documents. We found several alternatives that leave customers asking "Why did I spend so much on our solution?")

A big reason many of these "Alternatives" are not used is because most IT based businesses can't see any way to make money on them. However, if you look outside the mid west you will find dozens possibly hundreds of businesses making very good money from supporting open source. The money doesn't come from selling some junk software that needs constant hand holding. Instead it comes from offering support and configuration of the system and selling of hardware the system will run on.

Not only does this make customers happy, but the business providing the support has far less out of pocket expense getting a customer setup then a similar business using proprietary software. The servers themselves are also more cost effective due to no longer needed constant updating and rebooting, or an anti-virus solution to protect the server from rouge malware.

With all of this said let me assure you that open source may not be the right solution for every situation. Some businesses rely very heavy on Microsoft or system specific software and possibly hardware. With time these businesses may get an alternative that suits them. But for now its best to take great care and do plenty of research before implementing any open source system.

We see great potential for what we offer, and we hope our customers will to.

Jeff L. Richtman

V.P. Networx PC LLC

Visit our site

Island Paradise Fishing Helper.

Its a nice day outside and you want to go out and do something, but your Island Paradise game needs tending. What do you do?

Let it fish for you. In a span of about 10 hours of no interaction our little app was able to catch around 700-800 coins worth of fish and junk (Wood, Cans, boots etc) All by fishing for you.

How it works:

The script sits watching your island for several images. First the whirl pool, this is where fishing begins. Once the script find a whirl pool it move the mouse over to click on it. This throws down the net. It then automatically click the Save button for you. The script also click the "Skip" button on most boxes that pop-up. So no interruptions caused by wanting you to play other games, or notify your friends of you catch.

Once time has expired and a fish pops up. The script will move the mouse over to click on the new fish. All without you doing anything.

Bugs:

Its not perfect just yet. With glitches in the game and problems with facebook the script can move your island over to one side of the other, making it only possible to catch fish in one area.

Anything under the save button such as land, grass or even your avatar will make the save feature no longer work. Since it is looking for an exact pixel match in the image.

Other windows that may pop up such as Windows updates, or third party software can also cause problems as the script continues to run no matter what is on the screen.

Conclusion:

Its for these reasons why we are not actually releasing the little program for download. We don't want people complaining about damage done to their data. There is little worse then a rouge mouse clicking on random things.

If you would like to try it out however, please contact either myself or kat. If you don't know how please email webmaster at jeicrash dot net and I'll send you a copy.

You will need Autohotkey in order for the script to work, I will not be giving out compiled exe's of this script.