Posted by admin on Apr 3, 2009 in
Business,
Internet,
Software,
technology Security experts and basically anyone who has ever lost a lot of “stuff” will tell you that backing up your data is not only important it’s absolutely crucial. Yet few people do it and when all is lost computer techs are expected to wave some magic wand and bring it all back from the dead. Often you can actually retrieve data from a disc when you think all is lost but not always. So if you are one of the few people who actually regularly back up their stuff congratulations but are you sure you remembered to back up everything?
Here are some tips that I came across for some things that people take for granted but probably don’t think about when they back up their stuff. Trust me this is something that you probably want to back up as well. One of the big ones is your blog and I have seen this happen. Trust me you don’t want it to happen to you. Imagine hundreds or even thousands of hours lost instantly. That would just be devastating.
One of the things I don’t agree with in the article is #4. I don’t see any need to back up drivers. The drivers you are backing up are probably outdated anyways so there is no need to save these. Unless for some reason you don’t have internet access but in that case you are probably out of luck if a major data loss were to occur. If you use Vista this is completely unnecessary as well. Even Xp for the most part is good about having the drivers already on the disc in case you have to completely reinstall Windows. Regardless if you did have to do a full reinstall there is no way that you could get your PC back to 100% without internet access. Saving drivers would just be saving outdated drivers and to me there is no point in that.
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Tags: security
Posted by admin on Mar 29, 2009 in
Internet,
Software,
technology
A while back I wrote a post trying to warn everyone that Captcha as a security measure has been defeated. This basically means that anyone who has a blog or any site that uses Captcha for security pretty much has no security. Spammers could easily hit your site with whatever they want and that’s not good. Well it’s good for them but bad for us. So I had a feeling people were scrambling to find a new method of security. Then I saw this article here.
This new technology makes it pretty much impossible for a computer to crack so automated processes like this are eliminated but there is a catch. There was another article that I can’t seem to find right now that basically said Indian firms are hiring hundreds of people to physically defeat the Captcha system. That is they hire out humans to go through Captcha systems by hand and then spam away. Apparently its cheap to hire out this labor and then they can spam websites (you can probably figure out which kind) Want more Viagra ads? Well these are the people that do that kind of crap.
Bummer 
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Tags: security
Posted by admin on Feb 12, 2009 in
Internet,
technology
The FAA recently announced that some of their data bases have been breached, hacked, compromised, whatever you want to call it. Let’s just say that security was brushed aside and all the data released to the general public or rather a den of thieves. Oh but don’t worry, they didn’t get into flight control…or did they? (Would they tell us?) Which leads to the next story…
Kaspersky, yes the same Kaspersky as your AV (Antivirus) was also breached. If you have an account with them I would immediately change all your passwords because your password there was exposed to the entire internet and the same den of thieves as the first story. Will they go after little ole you? Maybe. Depends who it is and how easy you are to get access to. By the way this story was particularly scary considering that Kaspersky is a security company!
Kaiser Permanente a large company out of California was also hacked. This affects about 30,000 people or so. You can read that story here.
Anything not hacked?
Probably not. If you have read some of the stuff I have been posting in the past few months you will see a definite pattern; nothing is safe. No one is safe. In fact there isn’t even a danger any more. Every single thing about you was probably hacked and made public knowledge many years ago so there probably is nothing to worry about anymore because there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Your Social Security number is in the hands of many people. I don’t mean to scare you; rather I am trying to inform you. The only thing you can do is regularly change your passwords and closely watch your bank accounts. If you see anything strange report it immediately. This isn’t one of those it could happen to me but probably won’t, this will happen to you in your lifetime. It is a mathematical certainty at the rate at which these hacks have been done and are currently being perpetrated.
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If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
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Tags: news, security
Posted by admin on Jan 31, 2009 in
Google,
Internet,
technology
Google released a warning this morning about websites that are being abused. I don’t think this was necessarily related to the other fiasco this morning where every site was tagged as malicious. But it does seem like a strange coincidence to me. Regardless everyone knows that the internet isn’t necessarily the safest place and the more you put yourself out there, the more you open yourself up for attack. Anyone who owns a website or blog is definitely a prime target. If you think you are safe because you are a small site, think again! The smaller the better because it’s more likely that someone who runs a small site might not even know that an attack is being triggered from their site. There are a variety of ways that they implement these attacks and you should be aware of the potential danger, especially for the safety of your visitors. If this morning’s upset was any indication of the potential damage that can result from your site being labeled as malicious, can you really afford to take any chances? Trust me they are not coming back to your site if they think it’s dangerous.
I highly suggest you read this article by Google on what you can do to protect you and your site.
If you think this can’t happen to your site I know of one agent who is in my city whose site at this very moment is infected with several viruses and for obvious reasons I am not going to link to it. But this is a very real thing and I can’t imagine the impact it would have on your visitors if they thought they could no longer trust your site!
*note* my site is safe and I have extra security in place to ensure that safety.
If you have something to say please leave a comment.
If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email.
Buy or Sell, I’ll Treat You Well!
Tags: security, websites
