Archive for November, 2006
How safe is your private data?
It’s bad enough that a lot of people are being taken in by phishing scams but even the wary can get ripped off because somebody loses their private data. InformationWeek reports that 49 million US adults have been warned about data breaches in the past three years.
More than one in five adults surveyed said some [...]
About passwords
How do you choose your passwords? Most people use very simple schemes and accordingly leave themselves open to crackers. The security expert Roger Grimes maintains that length is your best protection. To prove his point he has issued a challenge and you can read about it here. According to Grimes:
Even if complexity is required, [...]
A new backup utility
Good backup utilities are always welcome and Microsoft has a new free download that adds a graphical user interface to the existing command-line utility called Robocopy. Robocopy has been around since Windows 2000 but until now has been strictly a command-line tool. Robocopy is primarily for backing up over a network and is more complicated [...]
Trying another theme for the site
I am experimenting with the appearance of the blog again. Any comments are welcome.
Will the Web become intelligent?
We are just beginning to grasp the possibilities of the so-called Web 2.0, where web-based applications and “mashups” may be replacing many functions currently done on the PC. And now comes Web 3.0, where artificial intelligence may turn the Web into something that resembles a human research assistant. Today’s New York Times has a very [...]
Quick and easy way to configure ActiveX settings for IE 7
I previously posted about a Web page I put up giving some recommended changes in the security settings for Internet Explorer 7. I know from my experiences in teaching that many people are daunted by a procedure of that sort. To provide some help for those who find the general approach to be too much [...]
Phishers rake it in
Phishing is no penny-ante scam. It’s big business. An article at InfoWorld gives some numbers:
The average loss per phishing attack was US$1,244 this year, Litan said, up from $256. Gartner estimates that the total financial losses attributable to phishing will total $2.8 billion this year.
And users who are taken in by phishing scams are [...]
Is Vista the last hurrah for the PC?
Microsoft announced today that Vista was being released to manufacturing. Interestingly, amidst the hoopla for Vista are some voices saying that Vista may be the last system of its kind. A writer at TechRepublic even says The home PC will be extinct within 5 years. According to this little article:
Having tried out some of these [...]
Maybe a license should be required to run a PC
As malware exploit after exploit comes along that relies on people to do stupid things, I sometimes think that the whole way that computers operate should be changed. Several months ago Lance Ulanoff wrote an item at PC Magazine called Technology for Idiots. I was reminded of it by the latest worm epidemic mentioned in [...]
Trojans cause big increase in spam
If you think that you are getting more spam lately, it isn’t your imagination. Internet Week reports that two wide-spread Trojans are the cause.
MessageLabs on Friday fingered a pair of Trojans for pushing up spam rates, and said the duo use techniques that make it difficult for anti-virus vendors to keep up.
According to the [...]
For really early shoppers
The Christmas shopping season seems to come earlier every year and it’s already begun, at least at CNET. They have put up their holiday gift guide for gadgets and started the countdown of the number of shopping days left. They say:
Forget the malls and deck the halls with some gadget gifts that will delight everyone [...]
