January 18th, 2012 by Paul
Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act will break the internet and allow censorship. Watch the video.
Take action now via EFF or Fight for the Future.
Look up your Congressman and give them a call or drop them a line.
Learn all about Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP Act from Wikipedia or check out the infograph posted by Fight for the Future.
Here are a list of Senators supporting and opposing SOPA http://projects.propublica.org/sopa/. I am happy to report that Maria Cantwell (WA) is opposed to SOPA.
Companies against SOPA – for the complete list go to SopaStrike.com
Finally, here is a short word from The Oatmeal
November 17th, 2011 by Paul
I needed to update Adobe Flash on my computer. I fire up my browser and type in the search bar “adobe flash”. The search engines are usually faster at finding the product’s download page as compared to looking for it on the companies website.
It wasn’t the search results but the ads that caught my eye. When I searched on Bing I was shown 8 ads. Five of them went to a website offering a download for Adobe Flash but none of them were owned by Adobe. From what I can tell these websites are not malicious, instead they are attempting to drive traffic to their ad covered pages. It is also my understanding that Bing scans these sites to help prevent malicious content from being delivered to your PC.
Google was different. It alternated between zero and one ad. The ad they did show was owned by Adobe and for CS5.5. Just a few weeks ago I did see other ads being served up by Google when searching for “adobe flash”. I am uncertain as to why they are no longer being displayed.
So be careful when searching on the internet. Check the web address before you click. Only download programs from the companies website or a trusted source. If you want to update a program but aren’t sure where to get it from, phone a friend or call your local computer specialist.
January 14th, 2011 by Paul
I recently made a purchase from Circuit City, it was for under $100 dollars. And I saw this message at the “Thank You for your purchase” screen.
Circuit City wants the last 4 digits of my SSN
I can’t imagine why but for some reason Circuit City wants to know the last 4 digits of my SSN. They claim its to identify me and expedite my order. I guess my Name, Mailing Address, Billing Address, Phone Number, Email Address and Credit Card number isn’t enough to identify me. There is no chance in hell I would give Circuit City or any other business (except a financial institution) my social security number.
You should always question when a company wants to know any personal information about you. Don’t just hand it over. Just think of the security questions you get asked when calling your bank or credit card company. Whats your birthday? Mothers maiden name? Name of your first pet? Last 4 digits of your social? Some of this information can be found in public record and the rest right from Facebook. Well almost, hopefully your social security number is listed on Facebook.
All I am saying is be careful who you give your information too and what information you give them. Keep a list of places that have your information and what information they might have. This way you will know what was leaked when the company reports that it “lost” a laptop with your information on it.
December 20th, 2010 by admin
I received a phone call the other day from a friend, now referred to as John He said he kept getting a popup on his screen saying that he was infected with a virus and for the low price of $79.99 this program would remove it. John then started to tell me about this email he received, from someone he knew and he was expecting this person to send him a file. I saw this email, and it looked something like this:
From: luigi
To: john
Subject: i think you will like this
Body:
http://Url.to.surprise.exe
There are a couple things wrong with this picture,
1. The subject is non-descript.
2. The body contained only a link (url) in this case to the virus
If you receive an email like this, I would not click on the link. Even if it is suppose to be a hilarious video of some kid getting attacked by the family cat.
And what happened to him after he downloaded and ran the file sure was a surprise to him. John had 2 anti-virus programs on his computer. Microsoft Security Essentials which we will call MSE for short and Malwarebytes Free Version. MSE did not prevent the installation of this program, however it did find the trojan that Suprise.exe tried to install. Malwarebytes did successfully find and remove the program.
Be very careful with what links you click on. If you think it might be a virus reply to the email and ask your friend if they had intended to send you that email. Its better to be sure then have to worry if your data is safe. John was lucky that he had someone he could call and that the virus didn’t delete any of his data.
References:
Microsoft Security Essentials -http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/
Malwarebytes – http://www.malwarebytes.org/
