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Be aware of the poisoned email!
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 I get a ton of emails everyday and that's no surprise. I get emails from you, the near 1200 home clients that I support, the businesses that I support; and more mail from all the vendors from whom I buy equipment and services for you guys. Lately though, I've been getting emails from clients that they did not send and that contain a web site link that's actually nothing less than a virus. Click on the link and your computer is infected. Once you do, your email password might be added to those already stolen.
If your email address has been compromised and your password is known, heed the advice I send back to those who've sent me such an email:
- Notify everybody in your address book not to open any questionable emails from you.
- Change your email password and secret question immediately!
- If you're an "on-line" email user, that is you pick up your email using a browser, on the web, then these people have had access to all your "old emails" and you need to examine them as well to see than no vendor account numbers are present. If they are, notify the vendor immediately of the circumstances and change your passwords with those vendors as well.
- If at all possible Download and save off-line all vendor emails with any kind of account information. Then delete it from your on-line email account.
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| The Real Deal |
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- Thinking about a new TV? If you're out for a new set and you're trying to figure out what size you should get for that room Try this link.
- Air fare deals! Forget Priceline, forget Orbitz and even Kyack. These guys are the real deal and they aggregate all the others for you at one website here.
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- And if you're over 60 (like me) don't buy without checking for a senior deal! Download this PDF containing a partial of "over 60" deals and here's the link. Of course always ask if the vendor provides a senior discount.
- Do you travel overseas and need to call back home? Or are you renting a home for a week without local internet coverage? Rent a mini hotspot for about $15 a day, No Contract! You can connect your computer(s) and smart phones to the internet and via Skype or Google voice talk to anybody anywhere for little or no money. This, compared to charges for overseas phone or texting service is a huge bargain. Here's the link.
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- Criminals have gotten pretty good at making fake Web sites, like your bank! Flagfox for Firefox determines the Web server's physical location and pastes the corresponding country's flag at the end of the address bar.
- Only 30% of the companies doing business on the net actually report breaches to their customer base. Try this link to see if one of the companies you do business with have had their data stolen.
- Malware comes to the MAC! The MACDefender Trojan works by tricking users into installing a fake AntiVirus program, which then behaves like any other fake AV, finding fake viruses and popping up Porn Sites on the infected MACs. (Ha!) BTW, the software does, as does it's PC act alike, ask for a credit card to have you "buy" the full featured version. Adding insult to injury, MACDefender installs itself without needing an administrator password, something unheard of on a MAC.
- Kapersky Security Lab announced that a bit of malware "TDSS" has conscripted more than 4.5 million (yes that's million) computers into a network to be used by cybercriminals to install adware and send spam. Kapersky infers that this "botnet" (robot network) is practically indestructible because unlike most networks of this type there is no central command computer directing their actions.
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And it's not only you. The Defense Department suffered one of its worst digital attacks in history in March, when a foreign intelligence service hacked into the computer system of a corporate contractor and obtained 24,000 Pentagon Sensitive Military Files during a single intrusion!
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- Cybercrime Fact: US companies will spend $130 Billion this year, 3 times what they paid in 2006 to defend themselves. How you might ask? Well, the average cost of a lost or stolen laptop to business? $25,454. This represents the laptop, legal expense, missing data and intellectual property as well as lost productivity.
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Fastest computer? China's Tianhe-1A speed 2.5 Petaflops or 2.5 quadrillion operations per second. But wait, there's hope on the horizon, IBM is about to release a machine capable of 20 Petaflops, 8 times as fast. A flop BTW is an acronym for one "floating point operation".
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