Brought to you each week by the PC Gurus, a loose collection of volunteers from around the Kentuckiana region.
You can interact with the team via chat room or BBS at www.thepcgurus.com. There are usually members present in the chat room after 8:00 PM every evening and you can post computer questions, comments, rants etc. on the bulletin board 24/7.
If you’re new to the Newsletter you can read back issues at Team member JP Durbin’s website at http://www.jpdurbin.net. There are links to all the old 84 Online issues as well as the new GuruNews missives.
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.
5-12-05
I’ve been hammering on identity theft for several weeks and really hoped to move on to other matters this week but some things have come up that need to be passed on.
If you thought the only risk to your private information came from unsecured servers and unshredded credit card mailings think again. What if your favorite computer repair shop copied all your private data to another computer and then used that computer as a FLOOR MODEL?!? Giving any schlep who wandered in complete access to YOUR PERSONAL FILES?!?
Sound ridiculous? It is but it actually happened.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/4460522/detail.html outlines how “Susan” bought a new PC at a Circuit City in Boulder, Colorado and asked that her files be transferred from the old PC to the new one. Rather than slaving the old drive into the new PC and transferring the files directly or just burning the files to a CD (which was part of the actual request), the Circuit City employees copied the files to another PC and THEN burned them to disk. When they were done they just left the files on that PC and it was moved to the display area as a floor model.
Luckily the man who purchased said “floor model” was kind enough to realize something was amiss and contacted her (although he would have to view some of her personal files to get contact information) to make her aware of Circuit City’s transgression.
When she approached Circuit City about the incident she was told it was her fault for having personal files on her computer and for expecting them to protect her privacy. Huh? It’s called a “personal computer” guys, hence the term PC! And the data on a PC is no different, at least in my eyes, than your financial information that you give to your accountant to do your taxes every year. You naturally expect your accountant to protect that information. I fail to see how Circuit City can make such an argument when this goes to court. Oh, I failed to mention that “Susan” has already filed suit and I hope the next time we hear from her she is the CEO of Circuit City.
To protect yourself from this sort of privacy invasion you can first avoid large corporate stores for your PC repairs. Mom and Pop stores often have dedicated test beds or storage servers for this sort of work while big box stores apparently use new PCs for a few weeks and then sell them as floor models.
If you have to ship your PC or laptop off for repair you should back up all of your personal data and then wipe the drive completely. Autoclave from http://www.troyoverton.com/downloads/viewcat.php?cid=6 will make a bootable floppy that will allow you to do a complete wipe of your hard drive that even meets Federal Government standards.
Regardless of where you take the computer for repair or other service you should always ask what the company’s privacy policy is. Make sure that they outline how they do backups and that they mention that all data is held internally and not made available to the public.
Speaking of private information at risk, the ever increasing of Mozilla Firefox users shouldn’t feel quite so comfortable. According to http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5700204.html two extremely critical flaws were discovered last weekend that can expose a user’s personal information to theft as well as rendering the computer vulnerable to hijacking.
The Mozilla Foundation is working on fixes for these flaws, but for now they advise users to disable JavaScript.
Not even Apple is immune to security problems. This month they patched 20 security flaws that includes many of the old standbys like buffer overflows and scripting vulnerabilities. You can get the entire list of updates from http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301528.
I’m going back to DOS…
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Using CT scans
of his mummified body, three teams of scientists have
constructed an image of
what King Tut probably looked like:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,67489,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_7
The
next generation X-Box is set to debut on MTV tonight:
http://www.pro-g.co.uk/news/nid/744/
Is
Google getting into the social networking business? The
company's
recent purchase of Dodgeball indicates that it is:
http://news.com.com/Google+buys+social+networking+service/2100-1038_3-5704496.html?tag=nefd.top
Congress,
apparently believing it can pass enforceable laws in all of
cyberspace, is
having another look at anti-spyware legislation:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/security/0,39020375,39198094,00.htm
Copy
us on the good stuff ;-)
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
www.opaquelucidity.com
I’ve mentioned Karen Kenworthy’s Power Tools many times before and she’s come up with yet another one, this time to run startup items once a day instead of at every boot up or log on.
This is extremely handy if you log in in the morning and want to catch up on the news, check for updates for your spyware and virus scanners and then head off to work. Set up the web pages and update modules you want to access and you get your early AM fix but when you get home and log back into your PC you just head straight out to the Internet.
Grab this free program and lots of other handy utilities at http://www.karenware.com/powertools/powertools.asp.
Q: Am I supposed to have a program called Registry Mechanic on my computer? I have a HP about 2 years old using Windows XP.
A: Registry Mechanic is a utility
application from the folks at www.pctools.com . From reviews I have
read, it is a useful tool for those who are advanced computer
users.
If you don’t fall into that category, it is possible to cause problems on your computer with this tool. Making changes to the registry can damage the operating system (Windows XP).
Art Maley
If you have tech support
questions or ideas and/or submissions for our newsletter please submit them by
visiting www.thepcgurus.com and click
on the “Email the Team” icon.
Copyright 2005, The PC
Gurus. All rights reserved.
Publication, rebroadcast or storage is prohibited without prior consent,
however you may freely forward this publication to friends as long as A) it is
forwarded in its entirety and B) no fee is charged.
Information provided in this
publication is provided "as is" without warranty of any kind, either expressed
or implied. Although the
information provided is known to work on most systems, it may not work on ALL
systems. Make use of any
information supplied at your own risk.
The PC Gurus are a group of
volunteers who provide support for the PC, Mac and Linux users in the
Kentuckiana region.
To unsubscribe from this newsletter send an email to microdome@seidata.com with the words “unsubscribe newsletter” (without the quotes) at the top of the body of the message.