Annoying "Card Member Services" call from 407-476-5700
My wife has been getting annoying "Card Member Services" calls on
almost a daily basis. Today I hit *69 to get the number from which
the call was being placed. The number was 407-476-5700. I hit 1 on
the phone's keypad to speak with someone who claimed, when I asked him
what company he worked for that he worked for the dubiously named "Card
Member Services" company. I informed him that I was on the government
Do Not Call list and that he
shouldn't be calling. He hung up and I reported the calling number at the
National Do Not Call Registry
website, since our home phone number has been on that list for years.
I also called the calling number where one of the options was to enter
my phone number after the beep to have the company take our number off
their list. There was no beep, but I entered the number anyway.
I found many others reporting such calls from 407-476-5700 over the last few months at
800notes Directory of Unknown Callers 407-476-5700. I found postings there from others on the government "Do Not Call" list and postings from people stating that requesting the company remove their number didn't put an end to such calls.
[/phone]
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Bad Route to Host
After switching from a wireless connection to a wired connection on a MacBook
Pro laptop running Mac OS X 10.6.8, I was no
longer able to access a website I needed to access to establish a
VPN connection to a remote
network.I had a VPN connection established before switching from the
wireless to the wired network. When I plugged the network cable into
the laptop for a wired connection I also changed the network settings
under
System Preferences on the system by selecting "Turn
AirPort Off" to ensure the wireless connection would not be
used. Afterwards, when I tried pinging the destination system using the
wired connection, I saw the following:
$ ping vpn.example.com
PING vpn.example.com (10.0.56.76): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: Network is down
ping: sendto: Network is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
ping: sendto: Network is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1
ping: sendto: Network is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 2
ping: sendto: Network is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 3
cping: sendto: Network is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 4
ping: sendto: Network is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 5
ping: sendto: Network is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 6
cping: sendto: Network is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 7
ping: sendto: Network is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 8
ping: sendto: Network is down
Request timeout for icmp_seq 9
^C
--- vpn.example.com ping statistics ---
11 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss
To determine why I was getting the "Network is down" message, I checked
the route for the IP address associated with the destination system.
$ route get 10.0.56.76
route to: vpn.example.com
destination: vpn.example.com
gateway: 192.168.1.1
interface: en1
flags: <UP,GATEWAY,HOST,DONE,STATIC>
recvpipe sendpipe ssthresh rtt,msec rttvar hopcount mtu expire
0 0 3411 67 67 0 1500 0I noticed the gateway, i.e., router address, was pointing to the wireless
router's IP address, 192.168.1.1, rather than the IP address for router for
the wired connection, 192.168.0.1. But when I checked the default route,
I saw it was correct.
$ route get default
route to: default
destination: default
mask: default
gateway: 192.168.0.1
interface: en0
flags: <UP,GATEWAY,DONE,STATIC,PRCLONING>
recvpipe sendpipe ssthresh rtt,msec rttvar hopcount mtu expire
0 0 0 0 0 0 1500 0I flushed the routing table. Note: you must put the sudo
command before the route flush command, if you are not logged
in as root, but the account you are using is allowed to administer the
computer, and then supply your password in order to execute the
route flush command as you must be root to alter the
routing table.
$ route flush
route: must be root to alter routing table
$ sudo route flush
default 192.168.2.1 done
route: write to routing socket: No such process
got only -1 for rlen
After then disconnecting the network cable from the laptop and then
reconnecting it, I then saw the correct route for the webserver through the
wired router, which had IP address 192.168.0.1, and was able to ping it.
$ route get 10.0.56.76
route to: vpn.example.com
destination: default
mask: default
gateway: 192.168.0.1
interface: en0
flags: <UP,GATEWAY,DONE,STATIC,PRCLONING>
recvpipe sendpipe ssthresh rtt,msec rttvar hopcount mtu expire
0 0 0 0 0 0 1500 0
$ ping 10.0.56.76
PING 10.0.56.76 (10.0.56.76): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.56.76: icmp_seq=0 ttl=57 time=19.955 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.56.76: icmp_seq=1 ttl=57 time=21.017 ms
^C
--- 10.0.56.76 ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 19.955/20.486/21.017/0.531 msI was then also able to access the website using Safari.
I had not been able to do so when I previously had tried just disconnecting
and reconnecting the network cable without flushing the routing table.
[/os/os-x]
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Passwords Plus CS Registry Entries
I set up a new system for someone who had been using the
Dataviz
Passwords Plus
program to manage passwords. She had been using the 1.006 version of the
software on the prior system. I installed the latest version which was
Passwords Plus CS version 2.001. The software is free for Windows systems,
but the cost is $9.99 USD for the version that runs on iPhones. Passwords
can be synchronnized between Microsoft Windows PCs and iPhones using the
new version. I had to make a few changes to the Windows registry in order
for the program on the new system to access shared password database
files on another system.
[
More Info ]
[/os/windows/software/security/password/PasswordsPlusCS]
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