Pastebin.com snippets, updated apps, and more

It's been a busy week with usability improvements, bug fixes and and experimental new feature.

Let's start with the new stuff. ShadowTrackr scans for your keywords in datadumps. Up until now you had to click the link on your timeline to find out the context in which your keyword was mentioned. Only after clicking you could see the full orginal post on the datadump website. Since keyword monitoring is quite popular, this results in a lot of clicking.

To improve this, Shadowtrackr now saves a snippet that includes some lines before and after the keyword as the context. You can see this context on your timeline by clicking on the details link in the right bottom of the post. This might save you some clicks. It also provides you some idea of what the data was like if the original data has been deleted.

There is a new version of the iOS app. An iPad user rightly complained that he had to run it in tiny iPhone mode, and that the links in the menu where so densely packed to it was hard to tap the right one. Both issues are now fixed.

Android users where bothered by an unexpected refresh on the timeline and a not properly functioning back button (the one on the hardware itself). Both these are fixed in the newest version.

There are quite a few other improvements and even some additions that are too small to mention here. I hope these improve the usability as intended. If not and something bothers you, please let me know!

DUHL ip addresses and false positives

In the last few weeks, multiple ip addresses of multiple users have ended up on the SORBS DUHL list. ShadowTrackr picked up on this and dutifully gave a blacklist warning. Now if the ip address is running a mailserver, a proper warning is in place. Unfortunately, in other cases this can be a false alert.

DUHL is short for Dynamic User/Host List. It contains ip addresses that are flagged by ISPs as residential or small business internet lines. These lines are used to browse the internet and should not have any servers running. Considering the SORBS blacklist is mainly used by mailservers looking to filter out SPAM, a DUHL list is quite useful. A mailserver on a home internet line that is sending email likely means the thing is hacked and sending SPAM.

The problem comes when you have your home or branch office internet lines in ShadowTrackr. This is a perfectly good idea since you'll be warned when you have security trouble. We encourage it. But your ISP might have flagged this as a DUHL connection and ShadowTrackr will alert on it. There was even a case where the ISP repurposed the ip range from Dynamic use to a server park and forgot to update the DUHL flag at SORBS. Again, this resulted in a false positive.

In order to prevent these false alerts, ShadowTrackr now uses only the relevant SORBS sublists instead of the main blacklist. The main blacklist included DUHL listings and this way we can avoid the false positives. We shouldn't be scaring you with false positives that can be avoided. Good riddance to this one :-)

You can find more information on the SORBS lists here

ShadowTrackr Android app available in Google Play Store

It's been on the planning for a while and now it is finally released: the ShadowTrackr Android app. It has the same functionality as the iOS app and the webversion of ShadowTrackr. There is still a way to go to improve the mobile user experience, but all the important functionality is there. The most handy thing of course are push notifications for your security problems.

It's a version 1.0, it's Android, and it's developed and tested on a Samsung device. The diversity in the Android world is huge and I expect there to be bugs on non-Samsung devices that don't show up on the test device. Please do not hesitate to submit your bugs and feedback. And while you're at it, send in any bugs or complaints you have on ShadowTrackr. For a developer nothing beats feedback from real users. Not everything might be solved straight away, but everything will end up on the list. The more users ask for something, the higher up on the list the item goes.