How Mozilla Foundation's Tabbed Browsing is Helping Scammers in Africa

I personally think the Mozilla firefox browser is helping scammers spam more easily by opening many tabs. and I would like to know what webmasters think about this.

I wrote a whole article on this link about this idea, you might love to read it then post your comments below here so the world can see that the Firefox browser and the tabing system it introduced is helping spam mails in Africa.

One of the worst things about tabbed browsing is the ability to open many sites ( in tabs ) at the same time while navigating them easily without switching the windows.

The Mozilla Firefox browser has strongly pushed tabed browsing due to the ease of use it brings to web surfing. I personally see how it helps me read soo many blog articles or tutorials in the same browser. But the worst part of it all is how this our African Scammers use it to open many "classified ads " sites to post same spam on all sites. You need to see how they post about 200 spams in an hour, just with the help of tab browsing. What will happen if they put in 6 hours ? If my maths is right, one person will post 1200 items in 6 hours. Usually they have internet at home, just imagine the spam they can be posting, and still captcha cant do anything.

See how Firefox from the Mozilla foundation is helping them spam classified ads sites.

No wonder www.kerawa.com was already complaining about spam.

I went to a cyber cafe here in Buea( Cameroon ) the other day, and I saw a young boy of about 18 years working with the Mozilla firefox browser on a pentium III windows xp system with about 128 mb ram and he had opened about 50 tabs on the same Window. Beside him I found guys complaining about the internet connection being too slow [ what could be the cause of the slow lines ? ].

Actually with so many tabs open, and about five such young guys in that cyber, then no body will be able to use the internet anymore, just because five computers are already consuming the bandwidth required by 50 computers. What will the others use now to read their yahoo mail [ ofcourse 50% browsing in Africa is yahoo mail and 40% is manual spamming ].

I personally think if Mozilla foundation can put a customisation module on Firefox where a cyber cafe admin can set the number of tabs to open per window, then this issue will reduce the number of spams per day from scammers in Africa. And I think it will help to ensure the proper netiquette to be practised in African cyber cafes.

This will prevent scammers to open many tabs and copy paste ads into many classified sites. Remember even Captcha cant stop manual posting, so we have to do something about this multi tab browsing abuse.

To conclude I strongly blame the scammers for using Firefox to send their spams faster, I love tab browsing, but I want the world to see how Africans are using it for the bad side. And about Mozilla Foundation: they are not actually the ones promoting it, but people always devise bad things out of good ones.

http://mambenanje..com/2008/06/mozilla-foundation-is-helping-scammers.html

ok tunde,
look at it this way, since Americans have the best airways, Africa should just use theirs and not start. Maybe its not the best example, since there are soo many sattelites out there in space, why should Glo host their own sattelite instead of renting space on another one.
Its all about business, we can setup a social media solution thats good for the africans, and has somethign that facebook, myspace and hi5 dont have because those guys are not in Africa. The can never feel what we feel, they will never solve our problems.
Well a social network for fun ( facebook, myspace) is not the way to go for Africans, we dont have money to spend on fun we need to make money.
Can Facebook help an African make money ?
so if someone builds a social network that helps africans make money, is it not worth a taste of it
I bet you if the right social network rises for africa by africans Tunde I will see you on it

I am an activist when it comes to web 2.0 and I personally think Africans too can own web 2.0 ventures but there are some issues that will not let our ventures grow. I wrote a whole blog post about this, follow the link below

http://mambenanje..com/2008/05/why-social-networks-media-sites-cannot.html

you can read all that and reply on this topic if you think you have other reasons why web 2.0 is not working yet in Africa.

great Challenge I put forth is: Can your web 2.0 solution convert non Internet users to become internet users here in Africa ??

ok lets talk about making people visit your site.
These are some of the things that will make people come to your site everyday:
- Daily service : Do they need something from your site everyday, I personally dont visit nairaland everyday but I visit www.google.com/analytics everyday ( I guess webmasters know why )
- Innovations: if your site keeps getting some innovations, it will cause news and bloggers around will write about you and people will turn to visit your site. Facebook launched the platform and after that new applications have been coming up which make bloggers, journalists write more about facebook and hence giving their site more attention
- updates: if your site gives users some updates by email or phone or TV or , then the users will keep coming to your site.

I have plans to setup a big web 3.0 platform for Africans just like www.twine.com but its still a plan, and it might happen only if I we get some Venture Capital with my partner.

hey basking
I already replied in the post you started or just follow this link to it

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-137381.0.html#msg2303671

and from there you will get what I feel about the idea you put forth

I personally think Adsense is not working for Africans no matter what you earn its still not good enough compared to what is happening in the US.
I wrote an entry in my blog you might want to read http://mambenanje..com/2008/05/google-adsense-is-not-working-in-africa.html

@basking4me
why are u spamming the whole place with this single post, you already created a topic for it, then why spam it all around, I guess the moderator needs to delete some of this stuffs.
I am begining to wonder if you realy have time to even build the social network you are talking about, if you can spend your time pasting spam around the place

Well I am also getting this feeling, but there are soo many issues why a social network cannot get to millions in Nigeria and Africa as a whole.

- How many Nigerians or Africans have access to internet at home ( luxury ),?
- How cheap is it to go to the cyber everyday just to have fun on a soo called social network where your not going to make any thing out of it ?
- Are the Nigerian Ventures (web 2.0 sites ) having the right networks ( business , marketing, HR, IT ) to handle such growths to millions of users, and do they have the "big problem" Venture Capital ?

If you are in Silicon Valley and you have a crazy idea like twitter.com, it can explode within two years but if you are in West Africa, who is ready to invest into a "war torn zone" ( as they address us ), thinking that when a war breaks all their servers will be turned to dust ??
But I think if you offer nigerians or Africans a place to meet people to better their lives( jobs, marriage, career networking ) just like what we are working on with www.webyfolio.com ( still a work in progress ) they will come there and also tell their friends, and with time you might get the VCs coming or you might get the traffic to make some money out of.
But remember, online ventures need patience, Facebook started in 2003 and it became big in 2007, Google started in 1999 and it became big in 2003, Myspace (2003 - 2006 ). Blogger started in 1999 and Google bought them in 2005, don't expect to start today and in a year you get 20 million users, but you should expect a Geometric Progression kind of thing.
like Facebook was with 15 million users in 2007 and it converted that figure to 70million users in 2008. but it took them 2003 - 2007 to get 15 million users.
I think I have exhausted all the reasons why web ventures don't grow that big in our continent.

I wonder if many guys take the internet itself like a social network ( faceboob, myspace, hi5, linkedin ). What these websites offer is what the internet also offers but it just needs some components to crown it up to become one. And I guess thats what Google is trying to do with "Friends Connect" and Facebook and Myspace too are trying to expand in the direction too.
But I think in the nearest future things like myblogLog(www.mybloglog.com) and blogcatalog ( www.blogcatalog.com) are trying to make some social networking out of the internet. I have a nice write up about it here http://mambenanje..com/2008/05/internet-is-one-big-social-network-web.html

I would like to know what African webmasters think about this rapid changes in the online ecosystem.

@tundewoods
thats what I am begining to understand, but I personally think for a venture whose audience is based in the USA or Europe Google adsense can help make something out of your traffic ( if you have good traffic though ).
Thanks for you observation too

@naijacampu
Yeah I am a Cameroonian and I am English Speaking. Actually Cameroon is a bilingual country and I happen to be from the English Zone of Cameroon.
I did all my studies in English, though I use french to play with friends and communicate most of the time.
Hope you understand why I can express myself in English now.
As for your comments about my blog, thanks alot and I am happy the "google adsense is not work in Africa post affects you too "

hey men where did you find him ?
care to share ??

@webguru
thanks for you nice write up and I bet you it will surely help me and the other thousands of African web business men reading.

I must say I am very happy with all the replies, yet I am not happy that guys in USA with same traffic like guys in Africa will make more money.
its not fair

@ mambenanje

Man,sorry to say this but no hard feelings,i think you are begining to step on toes with this your rather lousy post. So what if my2cents started a few threads regarding wacky news,If you looked studied the threads carefully and notice that they made sense and most times where technology related.

Using the word the term "Scape Goat" is a slap on our face, And whats up with bring up porn into the issue at hand.

I think you should stop ranting and taking your Un banned liberty too far dude.

@tunde
I personally feel what you feel about my2cents - he is my pal and he has helped me alot on soo many projects out of this board, and all I am just doing is asking the board of nairaland why he was banned if at all he was banned .
Maybe if I get why he was banned I will also avoid getting banned, you diggg ??

As for the porn and scape goat, I was just putting out my doubts and I didnt concretize on anything. so I put it like " well maybe he is a scape goat or some personal feelings ". I guess you could understand the maybe which signifies a condition and it clearly means I dont know and I could be wrong
Thanks for the concern though

I personally think Google adsense was not made for us African Web masters. Because no matter what traffic you have, you will not be able to benefit much from the traffic compared to a web site owner in the US. I talked about it on my blog today and I would like to know what other webmasters think about this
Follow the link below to see what I have to say about that
http://mambenanje..com/2008/05/google-adsense-is-not-working-in-africa.html

I would like webmasters to express their thoughts towards this, because I think its a sensitive issue

i think he was barned, very sure of that! is one person that peeps will miss from this from but i would say when this forum started newly, my2cent was among peeps who make this forum so lifely when it comes to webmasters. don't know if the moderator can see to this and bring him back.

@uspry1 or moderator
are you trying to say that smartsoft is a liar ?

what is the website all about, and where is the site ?
from those we can help you better on how to make money from it or we can advice you stop working on it

Hey Bossman,
I noticed alot of "wacky news" posts on this forum attributed to him ,
I wonder if that could be the reason for his ban status. Actually I have been seeing fake spam adverts and "wacky news" here on NL that fill up the forums by appearing in soo many different sections of this site and the guys come out free with no ban.
well maybe he is a "scape goat" or maybe some personal feelings
And I also remember seeing alot of porn, I wonder if they realy care about the porn or about wacky news

Well its true he was banned, and its actually funny that they bann someone who did not post porn or bad content (actually I think banning is reducing nairaland's income).
and I know we Africans love abusing power

@last naijacamp
yeah men but I took blogging serious just some days back, after reading on africapath how african entrepreneurs can use blogging to expose themselves.
thanks for the complement about my blog. I hope you like the articles

I just started blogging some days back and I realised how interesting blogging can get whey you are bored of writing codes and html tags
check out my blog here http://mambenanje..com and tell me what you think about the madness found in it.

why bother about creating if from scratch, I prefer you learn how to use simplepie hosted at www.simplepie.org and let the library handle the rest for you

well you can check a solution from this post
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-126853.0.html

@Abidemi_A
I am happy to read your request and I will get to you soon when I catch some time

@cmon
if I get you clearly you want your web application to read a local mysql instance hosted on your clients computer. it means you have to convert your clients computer into a web server.
All you need to do is make your clients computer have a PUBLIC IP ADDRESS, then you can login to the mysql on his computer by using the public IP address as the server host.
from there all what you want is possible, you can host the whole application within the clients computer and it will still serve the world. But one thing is that the clients computer must be on 24/7 which I dont think is possible in Africa
hope it helps

hello Aphoe
its easy, if you are running apache webserver with php then you can easily do it by learning how to use .htaccess files.
these links will help you do that easily

http://www.webmastertips.us/tutorials/mod_rewrite.htm

http://www.skiffie.com/code/php/seo
(my fav)

hey but note that I tried tihs with Xampp server and it failed me but with phpdev it works well locally but on production (live) sites I havent found any problem

@heckler
I am also a ruby guy, but lately I am using php ports of ruby on rails which are much similar but abit more procedural like codeigniter ( www.codeigniter.com).
I must say your opinion about php not being too good is something I have argued with guys here and they don't get it. but you wont blame guys because most of them havent realy delved into OOP with things like realtime exception handling, Threads, Interfaces, and some design paterns like Observer Design pattern which have much use in web systems.
but php is not bad if you want to setup a fast site in the shortest time possible given the fact that its very popular and it has soo many free codes lagging the net.
So any ruby stuffs we can talk about anytime email mambenanje@afrovisiongroup.com
chao

Some days ago I posted this link
http://www.cmswire.com/cms/industry-news/php-vs-java-vs-ruby-000887.php

and I noticed that guys didnt realise that from the link you can't actually be sure of the programming language used to build the site (some nonsense again from me, keep reading).
You might obviously think its php but if you build a site like this one I did

http://www.cameroonfootballers.com/profiles/showPublicProfile/27/alexandre-song-billong

from that link you can't tell if its php or java or C#. I built that site with php and there is no folder on the server root like profiles nor showpublicprofile (but profiles is an object and show public profile is profiles method like profiles->showpublicprofile).
So why do people create such links which have the title of stories in the link.
The answer is because Google will index such sites with a better understanding.
with a link like this

www.your-site.com/article.php?article_id=10&date=10008574

When google gets to that url linking to such a page, it stops indexing because their crawler might enter and endless loop.
so with Apache and .htaccess configurations you can make that link become something like this behind and actually still run on php

www.your-site.com/article.php/10/10008574

this way since the ? (question mark) is not in the url the google crawler will easily crawl and index your site.
so nowadays with[b] Apache Webserver's Mod_rewrite function and .htaccess[/b] you can build a site with java and make it have .php extension.
Next time Afam don't get this link

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/industry-news/php-vs-java-vs-ruby-000887.php

and boldly think its php, because only the site developer can tell you the technology used behind and I can use ruby on rails and my links show .php
hope it helps

@webdezi
if thats what will please you fine, php is not meant for startups.
But as a personal advice from my experience I will wish to inform you that if you plan to make a multinational project that wil have servers in AFrica, Europe and Asia please go with something like java, python, C#(asp.net) because its more robust and if you need about 20 guys working on one section of your website, count php out because its having serious issues when it comes to team work.
Well this is what I am telling guys from my idea as a web developer with two startups to my profile, but you can take it or leave it

well you already have the intranet site running but now its only on one computer,
This is what you have to do next
On the computer running Xamp installation set a static IP address and on every computer in that network if you type that ip address on the browser address bar (IE or FF) you will be able to navigate all the websites hosted in your XAMPP system.
So learn how to assign a static IP address to the Xampp server ( Apache server ) in that network and you xxamp site will be accessed using that IP as domain name and you can use Apache virtual domain creation to map that IP to a normal domain name like myintranet.com or so
good luck

@poster
nice site !! kudos buddy !!