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Showing posts from July, 2006

Recap PC World's -- 10 Biggest Security Risks

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PC World’s August 2006 issue has a great article on “The 10 Biggest Security Risks You Don’t Know About,” http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,126083,00.asp. This is a comprehensive article that should scare you enough to ensure your PC is up-to-date with fixes and you have all the necessary protections. The article begins with describing zombie PC attacks. These are unknowing PCs taken over and being used for various crimes, including simply logging your keystrokes to learn your usernames and passwords. They offer the usual tips to avoid this threat: avoid unknown sites and email, be suspicious of email attachments, and use any browser except Internet Explorer. The second risk discussed is having your own sensitive, stolen data available for free on the web. This is really a result of the first issue, with the hackers not securing what they have stolen. Why should they? Additional ways to avoid the original problem includes having a personal firewall such as Zone Alarm – a pr

Firefox: Have you switched yet?

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If you have not replaced Internet Explorer (IE) with Firefox , you are really leaving yourself open to security threats plus missing out on an improved browsing experience. In addition to not supporting ActiveX, which will solve most of your security concerns, Firefox offers hundreds of extensions to improve your security and enhance your browsing experience. Take for example the extension, No Script . With No Script, I specify which domains, if any, can run JavaScript the web page I am viewing. In most cases, I always accept the local domain, but no others. For example, if I visit Pogo.com , which has a lot of free games, I allow Pogo to run JavaScript, but I miss all their ads because I do not allow DoubleClick.com and other domains from running JavaScript. Another great extension is SiteAdvisor , which is now owned by McAfee. Site Advisor displays a green, yellow, or red indicator on search results, as well as on the bottom of my browser window to indicate their rating of the site.

Follow-up to IE Causing Problems with Project 2003

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I had posted on June 5th my experience with how Microsoft project 2003 had problems with certain functions due to the security setting in Internet Explorer, My Computer domain begin set to High. On June 14th, Microsoft finally conceded that there is no fix expect to lower the security settings. I can either change the default setting to Medium or Enable five settings, which for all intents and purposes is the same as changing the security to Medium. Here's the response attempting to describe why it's okay that Microsoft has impeded IE into Project: There is a reason we don'’t expose that functionality in IE by default. It used to be there in Windows 2000 Server and Pro, but it serves little purpose, provides no protection against the outside world, and generally only breaks things. Worse, since its set on a per user level, it doesn'’t prevent OTHER users or the system security context from running something '‘bad'’ on the local machine, only the logged in

TWiT Discusses Net Nuetraility

This Week in Tech (TWiT) , hosted by Leo Laporte, had a great discussion on Net Nuetrality during show 60, posted July 2nd. Of particular interest was the playing of part of a speech from Senator Ted Stevens [transcript] [audio] (R - Alaska). According to Mr. Stevens, he wants business to pay data providers a tax based on savings throught the use of the Internet. His example was services such as NetFlix, and that if movies are to be delivered via the Internet instead of mail, that an additional fee should be charged (above the bandwidth fee already being paid to deliver the movie). Here are the comments I posted on the TWiT website: It was great that you gave so much time to Net Neutrality -- you really helped me gain additional clarity on the real issue, and I have been following it for several months now. I beleive the goal of the data providers is to tax content providers , it was never about the home user. The data providers see all the revenue being generated using their pipes,