Archive for December, 2006
Watch out for New Year’s worm
The bad guys never rest and they are trying to take advantage of the New Year’s holiday. A worm email holiday message with a Trojan is circulating. I’ve received several myself. ZDNet reports:
An e-mail worm disguised as a New Year’s greeting is making the rounds on the Internet.
Worm-laden messages are titled “Happy New Year” [...]
How to keep the Windows XP system clean
I have revised and updated a previous article that I wrote on maintaining Windows. It can be found here. I have also added an article on How to use Disk Cleanup. This utility is one of the system tools that comes with Windows XP.
Before you connect a new computer
If you or someone in your family gets a new computer for Christmas (or any other time), there are some precautions to follow before you hook up to the Internet for the first time. CERT at Carnegie-Mellon outlines a procedure to follow to make sure that you are protected when you connect.
Suggestions for last-minute software gifts
Do you still need to get a holiday gift for someone? Here are several software suggestions that don’t even require you to go out and buy them. They can be downloaded and tried out before purchase. Gift-wrapping may be tricky but they are programs that I use all the time and provide very useful services [...]
Selected Links
Ewing SeniorNet
Tips from the ElderGeek
Langa blog
Tech Support Alert
Neat Net Tricks Newsletter (subscription required)
Dave’s Computer Tps
Windows Insight
Holiday hiatus
Because of travel and the holiday season, I will be posting only sporadically until after the new year begins.
Happy holidays!
Mouse rage syndrome
The Internet is responsible for a lot of things. That apparently includes its own medical problems. We’ve probably all heard of the cases of people who become so addicted to the Internet that it interferes with their life and health. You may remember the South Korean who died after playing Internet games for 50 hours [...]
The computing year in review
It’s that time of year when all sorts of articles appear with reviews of the events of the year. Go to this link for PC Magazine’s look back at computer happenings in 2006. The article says:
We rate the best and worst of the year in technology, from ultra-cool PCs, phones, and cameras to a company [...]
Extortion on the Internet
A growing type of Internet crime is a form of extortion where you have to ransom your data. Crooks either erase data on your computer and demand payment to restore it or encrypt the data and ask money for the key to unencrypt it. Information Week reports a Hotmail incident:
Some Hotmail accounts have been compromised, [...]
If money is no object
I like USB flash drives and own several. I’ve posted about their uses a number of times but a $5000 version has got to be a good thing taken too far. Anyway, if you have more money than you can count, here’s something for your Christmas stocking. There’s a 64 GB flash drive being offered [...]
New part-time jobs for students- Internet crime
Many college students want part-time jobs to earn some extra money and one of the latest possibilties seems to be cybercrime. In fact they can even get training to make a career of it. ZDNet reports:
Organized gangs have adopted “KGB-style” tactics to hire high-flying computer students to commit Internet crime, a report said on Friday. [...]
