I had an old computer that I wanted to donate to charity, but you hear so much these days about people being able to recover sensitive data even after it’s been erased.
So my old laptop just sat in the corner collecting dust even though I’m pretty sure there is someone who can put it to good use.
Recently I found Darik’s Boot and Nuke which is a free utility which will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect. I went to Sourceforge, downloaded it and tried it out. None of the data recovery programs that I have found anything at all to recover so I believe it works very well.
When I use other peoples computers what I usually see is how much crap is running in them. Programs that are not ever used or even known about are running and using up resources for nothing.
I use Windows and here are some of the things that I do.
They work for me, but that’s no guarantee they will work for you.
I like Firefox for web browsing and Thunderbird for e-mail. I recommend them both.
Have anti virus, a firewall and spyware removal. There are good free ones like avast, Spybot-S&D and zone alarm
I occasionally check the start/all programs/startup folder. These are the programs that start everytime Windows starts. I have nothing in there. Probably the only things that I would consider allowing there would be a firewall or anti-virus program, but mine don’t need to be there. I don’t believe that anything else actually needs to start until YOU start it.
This folder just has shortcuts, if you delete what’s in there it doesn’t affect the program except to not start it up automatically.
Open the control panel and look at add/remove programs and see just what is installed. If I know a program that is installed that I don’t use anymore I will uninstall it. This is especially true if I still have the program and could install it again if necessary. If I didn’t know what it was or what it was doing I would find out.
Using e-mail to communicate with long distance customers can be a challenge to say the least. I wrote a small article on the subject. The trick is to convey your message as well as to understand what your customer is trying to get across without clues from body language or voice inflections. I found it’s always best to assume that you need to spell out in great detail what you want to say or ask.
There are many other issues to using e-mail to communicate with friends or customers. Etiquette, security, and just plain effectiveness can be very tricky topics. Here’s a post by itsecurity.com called “Hacking Email: 99 tips to make you more secure and productive” it covers many of these issues.
I still get an occasional e-mail from well meaning friends that tell me that the newest virus is on the loose. It is undetectable, not repairable, and if I open a certain attachment a hammer will pop out of my screen and smash my hard drive to bits.
Unfortunately it’s just not that simple anymore. While it’s still not a good idea to open an attachment that you don’t know or has a possible executable file in it, many attacks target your machine from a web page or don’t have to be opened at all.
Your best bets are still, keeping all of your software especially your virus protection up-to-date, scan regularly for spyware, don’t open any attachments except the ones that you are expecting form a trusted source.
Real virus warnings are rarely sent by e-mail, not unless you request it and don’t say things like “it will erase everything on your computer.” They usually look more like this…
What looks to be a good story about the “No Fly List” will appear on 60 Minutes tomorrow night. I believe that this kind of thing doesn’t work to prevent terrorism and never will.
“The most feared words in the English language ‘I am from the government and I am here to help’.” - Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Here’s a preview of the story.
On this day to remember this countrys loss on September 11th I read this essay by Bruce Schneier about how to prevent future terrorist acts.
He reminds us that “Our best defense is intelligence and investigation. Rather than spending money on airline security, or sports stadium security.”
We should not be wasting our resources on highly visible displays of pretend security just to get people (re)elected.
Here’s a great article by my favorite security guru Bruce Schneier on Wired news about why the terrorists are winning the “War on Terror” and how to fight it better by fighting terror with antiterror.
It all is common sense, which unfortunately is not very common any more.
“The only thing we have to fear is Fear itself.”
FDR
I have always advised my clients using dynamic pages to use mod rewrites to make their pages more search engine friendly. It is almost always advised for pages with more than two parameters.
Here’s a new article on Threadwatch about “One Of The Best SEO Tools [mod rewrite] Now The Biggest Security Risk.” If this is true it could be a huge risk.
The Apache Foundation released versions to fix the exploit within mod_rewrite.
Upgrade your servers and urge your providers to do so asap.
Wired News has an article on new powerful infrared cameras to read license plates.
You knew it had to happen sooner or later. First the police in several cities started using these devices, some of which can read sixty license plates per second, for finding stolen cars and make windfall profits from ticket scofflaws.
You have to know it’s only a matter of (probably short) time before all of the companies that are already collecting too much information onyou pick up on this and have these readers installed everywhere and link them to their already massive databases of what used to be your personal information.
I really hate to see this happen, but I guess there’s no stopping it now and there’s no end in sight. Can’t we get any good privacy laws?
With all of the news lately of the government (and others) spying on everyone it looks like the people are fighting back. I’m not sure if this is a good thing or not, but you had to know it would come to this.
Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. Tor also provides a platform on which software developers can build new applications with built-in anonymity, safety, and privacy features.
Tor aims to defend against traffic analysis, a form of network surveillance that threatens personal anonymity and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships, and state security. Communications are bounced around a distributed network of servers called onion routers, protecting you from websites that build profiles of your interests, local eavesdroppers that read your data or learn what sites you visit, and even the onion routers themselves.
