Geez Louise… Yesterday, a client relayed a report that his website had suspicious activity and was tagged as being a phish suspect by MSIE7. Some reports I receive are usually fish tales in themselves, but this client’s a straight shooter and probably angry that his site was tagged. So lest I anger him further by brushing it off, I checked it out.

Since I’m a Firefox junkie, I opened my dusty copy of MSIE7 and turned on the phishing filter.   Sure enough, when I went to the reported page, I was pinged with the suspicious phishing website warning.

Being Murphy’s Law, it was the revenue generating page of the whole site. Now, I’m a little panicky, ‘cuz the client’s probably calling his lawyer. So after nosing around a bit, I click on the link “Report whether or not this is a phishing website.” This leads to a submission form enabling cub reporters to say “Yes - indeed this is a phishing website. Set Homeland Security to Yellow.”; or for the vanquished tagee to whimper “I’m sorry Officer, was I speeding?”.

Instead of telling them how I really felt, I copped a plea and gave Microsoft Phish Central the what for’s, maybe’s and why’s. Not ever thinking I’d hear from them again, I set about finding out why that one page would be tagged. I found clues, but no real answers. Miraculously, I heard back from the collective and they’ve added the page to the “I’m OK-You’re OK” list.

But back to Geez Louise…not only was that a bunch of non-billable scurrying around, but I felt like the poor dude who gets secreted away in “Rendition”. Not torture in the congressional sense, but that page has been up and running for quite awhile. How many people visited the site, popped the phishing filter, and scurried away, never to be heard from (or transacted with) again? Thanks, Big Brother.

I’ve been raving wildly to clients about GoDaddy for years. Primarily because of their low-cost domains versus 35 bucks at Network Solutions and a myriad of other crazy pricing structures from domain resellers.

GoDaddy silenced one part of my cheering section last week by exposing (and implementing) a little-known policy that everyone quickly checks off in the mundane “I agree to the terms of this agreement”. As part of the agreement, any domain disputes sent to GoDaddy are automatically investigated and the INVESTIGATED party is charged for the investigation.

One of my domains was anonymously submitted, and I was investigated, and I was billed for the costs. I complained, but it fell on deaf ears because… I was negligent. On that particular domain, I was trying to keep my phone number private. Turns out the only way to keep some semblance of privacy on your domains is to purchase extra privacy from a proxy.

Now don’t accuse me of being a dummy; I’m just frugal. I ‘ve purchased the proxy before and thought it was a waste of money. This time around, I simply entered in the good old 555-XXXX telephone number used in TV and movies. Since being charged for the “investigation” and threatened with loss of the domain, I’ve updated the number to my real, call me at all hours of the night with ridiculous crap, phone number.

Shame on me for not forking over more cash for the options.

A tip of my (not ten-gallon) hat to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

I renewed my driver’s license online today and I figure they saved me at least an hour of driving time, an hour or so of standing in line aggravation, and a gallon or so of gas.

Thanks to DPS!

Miles and Miles of Texas