|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
|
Wi-Fi hotspots have become ubiquitous at cafes, airports, restaurants, and other public location. In fact, more and more cities are creating hotspots that blanket entire metropolitan areas.
But every time you connect at a hotspot, you're asking for trouble. hotspots are open networks that don't use encryption, which invites hacking and snooping. In addition, when you're on a hotspot you're connected to the same network as your fellow hotspot users, they can potentially weasel their way onto your PC and inflict damage.
But don't let that deter you from connecting. There's plenty you can do to keep yourself safe at hotspots. Just follow these ten tips….
| | |
|
Last November, Ryan, a high-school sophomore, figured out a way to outsmart the Web filters on a school PC in order to visit the off-limits MySpace.com while doing "homework" in the computer lab.
A teacher eventually spotted the social network on the screen in front of "Ryan," a fictitious name for a real student attending school in Phoenix, Ore., a small town with a population of about 5,000. The teacher flagged the activity for the school's technology expert, who then followed Ryan's tracks online through the school network.
Ryan had apparently set up a so-called Web proxy from his home computer so that when he was at school, he could direct requests for banned sites like MySpace through a Web address at home, thereby tricking the school's filter. (Web, or CGI, proxies can be Web sites or applications that allow users to access other sites through them.)
The media frenzy around MySpace.com has struck a nerve with parents fretting about what their kids are doing online.
Now the social networking site, along with other Net companies and child advocate groups, is trying to calm those parents about what their kids are doing online and what tools they have to deal with it.
The use of new technology such as text messaging in order to bully children is increasing, researchers have said. A survey over four years of more than 11,000 children found nearly 15% had received nasty or aggressive messages. And researchers from York have seen a steady increase in children suffering from this form of "cyber-bullying", a Cardiff conference will hear on Friday. Girls were more likely than boys to report being bullied by e-mail and SMS, the survey reported.
| | |
|
Surfing MySpace.com helps cops crack the case.As far as Jennifer Joffe was concerned, the party started the night of Feb. 23, when she let four friends raid the liquor cabinet of her mother's Boulder, Colo., mansion—and it ended when she stumbled up to bed.
How to Form a MySpace Watch
As parents grow concerned over what sorts of people their children meet in online like MySpace, some are looking for ways to police online social networks for known sex offenders. Most states, with the exceptions of Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, DC, post sex offender registries online. Concerned parents can become a MySpace member and search for other members who match names listed in the registries. Such services as myspaceWatch.com can help parents monitor their child's MySpace activity for as little as $6 a month, while other sites list profiles of known criminals who use social networking sites and blogs. The article provides links to help parents start their online surveillance.
Claire Miller, a 44-year- old publishing executive in New York, recently stripped her nameplate from the tenant directory at the entrance to her apartment building in the Kips Bay neighborhood, where she has lived for more than 11 years. She also asked the landlord to disconnect the buzzer and is in the process of changing her phone number. These are drastic measures for an otherwise outgoing person.
It took 10 minutes in a retail parking lot for Cory Michal to get someone's name and credit card number. The technical operations manager for Appleton-based Exceed Security Systems LLC merely used $300 worth of common technology to casually intercept a person's vital financial information as it was transmitted between a retailer and a credit card company.
Flash drives, iPods, camera phones -- you know what your employees carry in. But do you know what they carry out? Proliferating flash drives and other personal memory devices are causing corporate IT managers to rethink data security policies and enforcement. But the balance between corporate security and user convenience has never been more difficult to achieve, because ubiquitous thumb-size drives can hold gigabytes of corporate information.
Security threats are everywhere – spyware and adware installed inadvertently over the internet, viruses transmitted through email, keyloggers penetrating your firewall, malicious code broadcast over peer-to-peer networks.
| | |
|
Kiss goodbye to Word, Excel and PowerPoint files Antivirus firms are warning of a destructive Windows worm that will begin wiping files on infected PCs this Friday. 'Nyxem.e' has been spreading via infected emails and network shares.
On the third of each month the worm will activate 30 minutes after the computer is booted up and overwrite all files with the extensions DOC, XLS, MDB, MDE, PPT, PPS, ZIP, RAR, PDF, PSD and DMP. Corrupted files contain the text 'DATA Error [47 0F 94 93 F4 F5]'.
If you have computer files you'd rather not lose, now is a good time to make sure your anti-virus software is up to date. A worm set to activate Friday will corrupt documents using the most common file types, including ".doc," ".pdf," and ".zip." Hundreds of thousands of machines are believed to be infected, mostly in India, Peru, Turkey and Italy, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for Finnish security company F-Secure Corp.
Pest highlights need for consistency in identifying viruses. The Blackmal e-mail worm, which is programmed to delete certain files on infected machines this Friday, should pose little threat to organizations that have implemented basic security best practices, according to analysts.
| | |
|
