Do you know what TTFN means?

It's "ta ta for now". I knew that, but there are tons I don't know. I was googling for one, and found this page. It's kind of interesting.

The national center for missing and exploited children has a dictionary of kids phrases , or chat abbreviations up on the web.

http://www.missingkids.com/adcouncil/pdf/lingo/onlinelingo.pdf

Perry

What is Phishing?

Phishing is when a criminal sends an email that they forge to look like a trusted company like your bank. They make up some story and ask you to clink a link that looks a place you trust, but goes to them instead. If you log in with your username and password, you've given them keys to your kingdom.

Here's an example from SANS

Dear email account owner,

This message is from somewhere email administration center to all email account owners. We are currently upgrading the email securities of our database and email account center. We are also conducting a routine check by deleting all unused accounts to create more space for new accounts. To prevent your email account from being closed, you will have to update it below by providing us with the below mentioned so that we can ascertain that your account is prensently in use.

CONFIRM YOUR EMAIL IDENTITY BELOW

Email Username:....................
Email Password:....................
Date of Birth:.....................
Country or Territory:.............

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

Regards,
Admin Team

Thank you for using somewhere email account

If you ever get an email like this, just ignore it, or call your financial institution directly, using the number on your regular card or bill NEVER THE PHONE NUMBER IN THE EMAIL!

(This goes for phone calls and texts too!)

Perry

Edit: Carbonite Is a cool backup solution

Edit (1/31/09): I wrote the following without thinking about the dates. Apparently most of this happened in 2006, and some of the older review posts in question were recently deleted.

Carbonite is a needed service, they're a local company (Boston) and they have significant infrastructure so they're more likely to stay around in this screwed up economy, so I'm pulling for them.

I don't understand David Pogue reporting this like it's news, and I'm left figuring out whether I want to try the service myself - the backups I want to do are my photos that are probably 80 GB and completely disorganized - maybe they're the perfect solution.


People think they need a good system for backing up their computers. That's not exactly right - they need a system for restoring their computer in case there's a problem.

Online systems seem perfect, pay a little money, load a client, and your computer is backed up into the cloud. When there's a problem, simply get a new drive, hit "restore" and wait a little while.

Well, Carbonite seemed like the perfect solution, it's not expensive, it has some well known personalities that are fans it's got good reviews, etc.

Unfortunately it's not so simple, while it seems to back up pretty well, restore, not so much. Then when you need customer service, not so much either.

And then it turns out, there's widespread review-padding from employees. Yuck.

Oh well, I guess I need to look at another option.

Mac users have time machine - maybe PC people will get something similar someday, and we don't have to go buy a Drobo( the coolest drive out there ), but it still needs swell software.

Perry

Nasty New Worm for the New Year

There's a nasty new worm out there named W32.Downadup.B (symantec link here) that spreads in a large number of ways. The Symantec link describes it in detail, and has a great list of recommendations at the end of the posting.

Best ones are:
1. Don't open attachments unless you know what they are, who sent them and why!
2. Keep your anti-virus up to date ( and if you don't have one - get one- I'll help!)
3. Make sure your firewall is working

Have a great new year!
Perry

The Boston Globe did what?!

The Boston Globe, or someone who said they were from the Globe, called us on the telephone a couple of days ago with a weird story that our credit card for delivery had expired, and asked for a new credit card number and expiration date.

Well, the Boston Globe isn't exactly a paragon of identity protection so Sue naturally thought it was a scam. After all, in this day and age, who would call their customers asking for credit card numbers?

Well, we got a letter in the mail today - and guess what? It was the Globe, and our credit card really had expired. Haha - I wonder how hard it is for them to update their customers' credit card numbers now?

Should I sign my Credit Cards?

I'm pretty sure the answer is "Yes", although there's certainly an urban legend around that to protect your identity you should put something like "See Photo ID" on the backs of them.

I recently received an email that said it was from a lawyer and had interesting advice regarding identity theft that included this trick.

It seems like pretty good advice, and I have tried it in the past. Trust me - don't experiment with this when you travel. The merchants hate it and I think the credit card companies do too. I think it's something legal.

I found Scambusters with this Google search: "PHOTO ID REQUIRED on credit card"

They say this specifically:
http://www.scambusters.org/Scambusters80.html

And they address a letter like it here:
http://www.scambusters.org/creditcardfraudprevention.html

They're right about hotel keys, which isn't in letter; however.

I did some more searching, and found this, too - a link from the Missouri attorney general's site

http://ago.mo.gov/ConsumerCorner/blog/10398/Should_I_sign_the_back_of_my_credit_card/

http://www.mytruston.com/blog/tips/sign_the_back_of_credit_cards_or_not.html

Truston is identity protection company, but they do link to the real visa rules, but does agree with what I found. Rules are 1 and 2.5 MB pdf files, I don't think I'll read them right now. :-)

Perry

Don't Download Free Antivirus!

Well, maybe you can use AVG , but DON'T download any other free antivirus products - they ARE viruses!

There's one particularly nasty one called "Antivir 2009" that's driving sysadmins crazy everywhere.

There's another called "Winiguard.com" ( note the extra "i") , and possibly a program called "Macguard" that's also suspect.

If you want free antivirus, I think the best is to download Norton or McAfee from your internet service provider ( I'm pretty sure Comcast and Verizon have it ) or AVG

Please contact me direct if you have any questions.

Perry