Brought to you each week by the PC Gurus, a loose collection of volunteers from around the Kentuckiana region.
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The WHAS Crusade for Children provides year round support for needy children throughout the Kentuckiana region. Visit http://www.whascrusade.org to make donations online.
3-31-05
Last week’s topic of identity theft generated a lot of comments and further suggestions for personal identity security. As a follow up, we’ll add to last week’s tips with more and feature a message from one of our readers who’s actually lived through this nightmare and lived to tell about it.
In this day of dumpster divers digging for personal information a small home shredder is an absolute must. Straight cut shredders are very inexpensive, some for $30 or less, and allow a modicum of safety but if you shred just a few documents a week the strips are fairly easy to reassemble.
A cross cut shredder is a better choice and a heavy duty one, while quite a bit more expensive, will shred not only paper but things like credit cards and CDs. These can usually be had for less than $200 and are very safe if you tend to back up financial data to CD and/or receive a lot of “pre-approved” credit card offers.
This is important for your personal information but come June 1st it’s the law for employee data. If you dispose of any records pertaining to employees as innocuous as a nanny or handyman you are required to make sure the data is non-recoverable.
Another way to protect yourself is to pay attention to how you give data out. Never give credit card or other personal information to anyone who calls or emails you. Since you didn’t initiate the contact you have no way to verify that the other party is actually who they say they are.
As an example, let’s say you booked a hotel stay with Holiday Inn in St. Louis for the Final Four this weekend. You mention this at work within earshot of a dozen people and one of them decides to see if they can get your credit card info.
After work you receive a call that goes something like: “Hi, this is Missy from Holiday Inn. I’m calling about your reservations for this weekend. The credit card number you supplied was denied, can we confirm the number or get another card?” It sounds legit but Missy is actually Diane the temporary employee and all she wants is a way to buy some stuff on your dime.
As far as email, we’ve talked about phishing before so you should know that reputable financial institutions NEVER email you asking for verification of anything. Unfortunately there are exploits out there that could allow someone to hijack a link from a website you type in yourself where such data would be expected. For that you can use a free toolbar I mentioned as a download tip a few weeks ago, the Netcraft Toolbar.
Available from http://toolbar.netcraft.com/, this handy little gadget shows the country and host name for any website you visit in real time, as well as a ton of other tidbits.
Now, if you think this sort of thing can’t happen to you, reader Elaine begs to differ, and she gives her own indirect tip through her own experience:
“I was robbed Dec 11, 2004 while shopping. A guy bumped into me said don't move I have lost my contact and can't see without it and would you please help me look on the floor...I had my hand on my shopping cart with my purse in the child seat and buckled in. While I was helping him look on the floor, (maybe 2 minutes or less) mind you with my hand still on the bas-kart someone opened my purse got my billfold on one side and my checkbook on the other. They got around $6000.00 from me (Thank goodness the bank took care of it). The police said without a doubt it was a ring, as it was happening all over Louisville, but it wasn't a priority and there was nothing they could do about it. (Although they had pictures from several stores of them going thru the line) The 26 checks were all cashed all over Louisville and Indiana and most of them without any ID at all on them. Most of them were over $200.00, of which I would probably have to give a pint of blood to cash one that big. So thank-you for helping, maybe people will be aware of what is happening.”
Thanks for sharing Elaine. Hopefully your story will be a help to others.
The modern world is a dangerous place folks, both on- and off-line. Be mindful of that…
Kevin Mefford, Editor
The teen who
created a variant of the Blaster worm won't have to pay
Microsoft half a
million dollars after all---he'll get to work it off
instead:
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,120242,00.asp
The
Supreme Court began hearing arguments in the MGM vs. Grokster case
on
Tuesday. You may not download music from the Web but this case is
still
going to have an impact on your life:
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1499297/20050330/index.jhtml?headlines=true
A
built-in dock for your iPod that fits on top of a computer---a new
Mac?
No; it's an HP:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5647614.html
We
here at the PC Gurus have always been picky about anti-virus
software, and
here's an example of why--- Symantec has reported
glitches in its antivirus
software that could allow hackers to launch
denial-of-service attacks on
computers running the applications:
http://news.com.com/Symantec+details+flaws+in+its+antivirus+software/2100-1002_3-5646871.html
Copy
us on the good stuff ;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.opaquelucidity.com
For those of you with Gmail accounts you’ll love this little tool. It’s the free Gmail Notifier from http://toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/.
Currently in beta, this utility sits in your System Tray and makes you aware of new messages in your Gmail inbox, including such information as the subject, sender and a snippet of the message itself. Be sure to read the system requirements before downloading!
Cindy Guenther is our resident pet expert and AOL tech. She also answers a mean Star Trek trivia question ;)
From http://www.thepcgurus.com/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1#cindy:
“When Cindy isn't playing with the dogs or working with the kids, she hosting one of several a chat rooms on AOL and is the team's resident AOL Guru. If she doesn’t know the answer, she can find it or locate someone who knows the answer. Cindy has been volunteering on AOL for 4 years.
Cindy is also a professional groomer and a vet assistant at Barbour Lane Animal Hospital. She is also a 4-H leader for the Oldham County 4-H dog club, Leaders Of The Pack, and is the President of the Oldham County 4-H Counsel. She is also on the state 4-H Dog committee and helps with the State Fair Dog Show each year.”
Q: I have Spybot, Ad-aware, Norton's,
Windows XP firewall and pop-up
blocker as my computer defense team.
However, the "moving flash ads"
on sites such as my Fox News are annoying to
the point of making it
difficult to even read articles. Is there any way to
stop these ads? I
may not be using the correct terminology but hope you get
my drift.
A: I have been using Avant Browser for a
couple of months now, and one of
its features is the ability to disable flash
animations. (Found under
the Options pull-down menu). You can find
Avant at
http://www.avantbrowser.com/.
There you'll find more information
about the browser, what is included, and
download links.
-Robert Kendall Heite
LCpl, United States Marine
Corps
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