Preventing SPAM: Stopping email harvesting with norbt
Posted on July 2010
There are multiple ways for the spammers to collect your email address. One of them is by simply browsing web pages with a crawler (spambot) harvesting email addresses. If your email is public on the web, you are exposed.
With norbt you can prevent the harvesting of your e-mail by not exposing your email address directly.
How: Create a norbt containing your email address or contact details and publish the link to your norbt instead of your email address.
With this solution the spambots don’t have direct access to your email. The only way to get your email is to follow the link and answer the question which the crawler does not know how to answer.
The answer may be trivial, like “What’s my name?” or “What’s my website name?” to stop robots. Or something more complicated to limit access to a smaller group of people, like “What’s my pet’s name?” or “What’s my Nickname?”
As a plus you will get information regarding who has accessed the link and who has answered the question (seen your email). You can find more info on tracking your norbt visits.
Example: In norbt.com we have a link to our contact data instead of our email: contact us (https://norbt.com/TWPM5F).
You may also be interested in: email signatures with norbt
Encrypted files in your norbt
Posted on June 2010
More than just text
The users have spoken!!! Now in norbt.com you can add files inside your norbt’s encrypted content. The files that you add to your norbt are encrypted and decrypted in the browser same as the text.
How to add files
To add a file you just use the add file section under your norbt’s text in the creation page. You will be prompted to select the file to add. The file will be added to your locked data section. The file has not been sent to the server yet, it has just been transfered from your computer to the browser. When you press send both the text and file will be encrypted together using your answer and that encrypted data is sent to our servers.
How files are viewed
When a user gives the correct answer for a norbt, the encrypted data for that norbt is downloaded from our server. If the norbt has files associated with it, the encrypted data includes those files encrypted inside. Once the user has the encrypted data for your norbt, she decrypts the data on her browser. If the data contains files, those will be shon as part of the data displayed. If the files are images, the image and a link to download the file will be displayed. If the files are not images just the download link will be displayed.
You can view the example above at https://norbt.com/NORBT
Subscriptions
As we explained in some other articles, recently norbt.com has adopted a fremium policy to try and cover the cost of running the service.
By default the maximun size for your norbt is small. It’s about 32KB, the size of a small picture (may be 200×200 pixels) or a long text file. For those users who would like to include larger text or image files, this functionality is available in all of the subscription packages. The lowest subscription includes 400K per norbt for 1.5$/month. Log in to see the subscription options.
Enjoy the new functionality and keep those comments coming!
Your own custom ID
Posted on June 2010
What’s a custom ID
A custom ID is an ID chosen by the user at the creation of the norbt. This id will be part of the URL to access that norbt.
Example: http://norbt.com/MY_OWN_ID.
Custom IDs are useful because they are easy to remember and may have meaning for you and those accessing your norbt.
How to create a norbt with a custom ID
You will need to have or create an account (username/password) and subscribe to gain access to the custom ID function.
When you create a norbt, you can select to use a custom ID. Norbt.com will let you know how many custom IDs you have left to use.
Examples:
Signature email with custom ID
We wrote a couple of articles on the advantages of using norbt in your email signature. If your email signature has your name, it will be easier to remember and access. For example John Smith could use https://norbt.com/JOHN_SMITH. You could even use it in your business card.
Directions to your home or office
Use an easy to remember ID for the directions to your home or office. https://norbt.com/JOHN_HOME
In general you can use custom IDs any time that you want an easy to remember and easy to communicate URL.
Disclaimer, not a free feature
Recently norbt.com has adopted a fremium policy to try and cover the cost of running the service. With these new subscription packages, we hope to be able to give something back to the open source community without which this service would not exist.
This feature is only available to subscribers. Currently the minimum subscription that allows you to use this feature costs a whopping 1.5$/month! Come join our community and help make norbt.com a better service. Thanks for your ongoing support!
Do you have any other examples of where a norbt.com custom ID might be useful? Leave us a comment to let us know!
Limit views on your norbt
Posted on June 2010
Until recently you had little control on how many people accessed and viewed the content of your norbt. Based on user feedback, we have added functionality to let users know how many times their norbt had been viewed and who by. But we didn’t stop there! We also added functionality which allows users to limit the number of times that a specific norbt can be viewed.
In this post we’ll explain how you can control access to your norbt by limiting the number of times that norbt.com will serve your norbt’s encrypted content before the content is blocked to new views.
In our previous post we explained how you can track visits on your norbts . It may be useful to read it to understand better how blocking works.
Why would I block norbts?
There are multiple reason why you may want to block a norbt but some examples that come to mind are the following:
One to one private email
You want to send an email that should only be read once by the final recipient. By setting the number of visits to 1 you are telling norbt.com that the encrypted data should only be served once. Only the first person that access your norbt and answers it correctly gets access to the norbt’s encrypted content.
Challenge with a reward for the first X people to view
If you are doing a challenge where you give a reward to the first X people who answer your question correctly, you could control that by limiting the number of views of the encrypted content to X.
My own private norbts
If you have private norbts with information that only you want to access, you can block them when you are not using them to stop people from trying to guess your answer.
Outdated norbts
If you have norbts that you are not using right now, but may use in the future, you may choose to block it now and un-block it in the future when you need it. If you delete a norbt you will be losing the ID associated to it, so you may consider blocking it instead to keep the ID.
How to block your norbts
To limit the number of times your norbt can be opened you have to go to the edit/manage page for your norbt. To do that click on the manage norbt in your norbt’s view page. You must be logged in as the owner of the norbt to view the manage button.
Once you are on the manage page for your norbt, select the view control tab. There you have two options: block the norbt right now using the checkbox or select the number of times that your norbt can be opened before it blocks.
If you select to enter a number in max. views. The norbt encrypted content will not be served by the server once the max views number has been exceed. If the norbt in question has already been served that number of times or more, it will be blocked automatically – the result will be the same as if you had chosen to mark block access.
Note that when you limit the number of times that encrypted content will be served, your requests as a owner of the norbt do not count towards blocking.
Find your blocked norbts
Finding out which of norbt’s are blocked is easy. In your norbt’s page, those norbts which are blocked appear with red stripes on top of their id.
You can click on any id to go it’s specific view page, and from there to the id management page and change the view control fields if you want to un-block it.
How your blocked norbts are seen
When a norbt is blocked the norbt’s visitor gets a message (see the image below). The user sees the title and the question of your norbt. The user doesn’t get the option to answer the question and view the content.
Some security details
The block feature is controlled by our server, even if you bypass the ui (user interface) and send the right answer to get the encrypted content, our servers will check if the norbt is blocked and if you are the owner of the norbt to know if it should serve the norbt’s encrypted content.
For more details about security see our security page.
We hope you find this functionality useful. We’ll keep on working to improve your experience at norbt.com. Thanks for your support.
Tracking your norbt’s visits
Posted on May 2010
Have you ever wondered how many times your norbts are viewed? Norbt.com has created a quick and easy way to give you this information in two simple steps.
To track your norbt’s visits, just sign in with your user. Once signed in, you will see a list of all your norbts. This list has a counter on the right side of the screen to let you easily see how many times each norbt has been viewed (it will show up like the “45 views” image to the right of this text). It also lets you know how many times you, the owner, has viewed the item versus someone else.
For more details on a specific norbt you can click directly to your norbt’s view page. At the bottom of this page you will see a list with the details of when and who did what with your norbt. Only the owner of the norbt can see these details. For an example of how this looks see below:
On your norbt’s view page, you can see when a user requested your norbt (view question) and when she/he provided the right answer and opened your norbt (view data).
One user to rule them all (your norbts)
Posted on May 2010
A new functionality has been implemented in norbt that allows you to create a user.
Once you have a user, you can Sign in and manage all your norbts.
This is usefull for multiple reasons:
- you control all your created norbt under a single user.
- your username (which you choose) is easy to remember (not like your norbts id)
- you can view all your norbts in on place (your user page)
- you have only on password (your user’s password) to manage all your norbt. You do not need extra passwords for each new norbt
- New norbt creation is faster and easier signed in as your user. When creating a new norbt, you don’t need to answer a captcha and you have 4 fields less to fill up
You can easily add norbts that have already been created by you to your user bu signing in, going to the norbt you want to manage, clicking on the manage your norbt, and selecting the “own this” tab.
In group secret sharing in Twitter and Facebook
Posted on December 2009
We have added links/buttons for sharing your norbt in Twitter or Facebook.
When you create a norbt, if you specify an e-mail address, you’ll receive a message with some extra instructions and links to directly share your norbt on twitter and facebook:
Once, a norbt is already created, you can still post your norbt via the management tools:
Finally, facebook and twitter may request your consent to complete sharing your norbt.
You may want to play a game with your friends to see if they know the answer to your question. You may want to organize a party for those who know the name of your dog. Or you just want to tell something to a subgroup of your followers (you are filtering that something to an in group with your question/answer)…
Start sharing norbts on Twitter or Facebook now, create a new norbt.
Better email signature with norbt, an example
Posted on October 2009
Creating safer, simpler and more secure email signatures is a breeze.
The following example demonstrates how norbt gave back control of his email signatures to John Smith.
Let’s see what John Smith did
Here is his original email signature:
--
John Smith
email: jsmith57@fakeemail.com
cell: 444-444-444
tel: 555-444-444
fax: 333-444-444
twitter : jsmith57
skype : jsmith57
blog: http://fakeblog.jsmith.com
facebook: http://www.facebook.com/jsmith57
linkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/jsmith57
Address:
872 Fake Street
Fake Town, FS 12345
His old email signature had a few problems:
- It’s too long. It distracted people away from the content of his email.
- He has no control over who receives his personal information.
- He has no means to update his signature after sending an email
To solve his problem he creates a norbt for his personal email signature. This is a norbt that only friends and family will be able to access. To limit access only to this audience he creates a question that only this close group of people would know. John’s norbt question for his personal contact details is “What are the names of my children? Format : daugther name (space) son name.” answer: “Julia Zack”
His new norbt email signature is:
- -
John Smith
Contact info: https://norbt.com/7VMTPR
Click on the link after contact info. You will see just how easy it is to protect your details while still giving access to those who need the data.
Since John has created his norbt a couple people have asked him to remind them the name of his kids. John thinks twice about these requests since these folks can’t be too good of a friend if they don’t know how many kids he has!
Several people have commented on the fact that his emails don’t use 10 sheets of paper when they print them out.
He has been congratulated by somebody in the IT department for the nettiquete of his email signature.
In the weeks following the creation of his norbt, John changed a couple of contact details. Since he changed the data in his norbt, his data is up-to-date in all of his emails, even those that he sent before he changed his details.
Another thing that amazes him is that he is not receiving as much spam as he did in his email accounts, he wonders if making his contact data only accessible to humans (via a norbt email signature) has anything to do with it.
Using norbt for email signature improved John Smith’s life, it may improve yours as well.
If you need help creating a norbt email signature, check out our howto post.
How to: norbt email signature
Posted on October 2009
step by step
- Go to norbt.com and click create a norbt.
- Think up a title – this should be something descriptive like – John Smith Business Contact Details. This goes in the title box.
- Think up a question. This is the way that you protect your data and only give people in the know access to your deets. If this question protects your professional data then maybe you want a question that is easy to figure out like “What is my company name?”. If this question is protecting your personal details then perhaps you want something a little more complex and tricky like “What is my cat’s name?” This question goes in the question box.
- Carefully type the answer to your question. This is the exact text (with spaces, punctuation etc.) that your audience will have to type to ensure that they are able to reach your hidden text. If your question is “What is my company name?” then your answer might be Acme Corporation. The answer isn’t case sensitive (“Acme” is equivalent to “acme”).
- In the locked text box you are going to put the text or information that you want to protect. If you are protecting your professional details you might put the following in the locked text box:
- Business phone
- Business mobile
- Business fax
- web page
- mailing address
- anything else
- Think of a password that you will remember. You will need the password to manage your norbt that you just created. Did your work phone change? This is the way that you can edit your professional details without having to change the link that you put in your email signature.
- Once you have created your norbt, copy the link that appears in the pop-up box which will be something like this https://norbt.com/MLZLTZ and put it in your email signature.
example:
--
John Smith
Contact info: https://norbt.com/MLZLTZ
Notes:
You can click on the link in the previous example to view John Smith’s norbt
Benefits
- Email signature security. Confound the web crawlers. Your norbt is encrypted and only accessible to those that provide the right answer.
- Email signature simplicity. Short signatures are a thing of beauty (nettiquet).
- Email signature continuity. You control the data in your norbt. Your details are always up-to-date.