Is this meme real or is it a hoax? We want to be good people and help others. And we would like to think that wealthy people and huge companies want to pass along some goodies. Unfortunately, there are people and groups that will take advantage of your good nature or your trusting tendencies. There are also people who […]
Hoax List – 5 Things That Will Never Happen
Are You Safe Using Snapchat?
The process of writing this article was much more educational than I anticipated. I started out to write about a breach of Snapchat usernames and phone numbers, so I could warn readers about using this service. Then I found out about the photo leaks—and more. I also found a significant amount of naiveté demonstrated by some of the bloggers who […]
Limit Your Exposure
Unless you always save to your external drive or your mapped drive on your home server, you might consider disconnecting when not in use. The encrypting malware is getting really sophisticated and extends its reach to your mapped drives. That means if your offsite online backup solution operates as a mapped drive, your safety net could become no more useful […]
You Can Survive Most Crypto Attacks–For Now
Rule Number One: Don’t get infected. But if you do, follow Rule Number Two: Clean it off your system immediately. If you read my post on CryptoLocker, you’re aware that it’s not always just that easy. Without a good backup you run the risk of losing everything, and even with a good backup, you’re in for a lot of work. […]
Sometimes It’s the Little Things
…or, in this case, the Itty Bitty. I get my news and information from a wide variety of sources: websites, newsletters, YouTube channels, and podcasts, primarily. Today’s media content lends itself well to consumer contribution, and that increases the value of each medium as well as each producer. I currently follow 17 podcasts, and the only reason I can do […]
…and from the “whatever happened to” department…
Just about a year ago, the Infotech security space was all ablaze with noise about this thing called “BadBIOS.” This was a scary bug, for several reasons. First, it was new, which meant that before the security researchers could come up with the cure for it, it could do a lot of damage; but that’s not unique. Second, it had […]
Do You Use Free Programs and Services?
There have been several incidents in recent memory in which a service provider has stopped providing a free service or stopped providing service altogether. Most recently, the developers of TrueCrypt, a disk encryption product, announced that they were stopping all development and support of their product. They went so far as to alert users that the product should not be […]
When is a Cell Phone More than a Cell Phone?
answer: ALWAYS. It is a rare circumstance when our United States Supreme Court agrees so completely as they did in the case of Riley v. California: all nine of the Justices agreed that law enforcement officers DO need a search warrant to examine the contents of your cell phone. This question is no longer about seeing who called and whom […]
What is Do Not Track; Why it Matters
The internet is a cool place, is it not? We now have access to information on a scale not dreamed of by our parents; our grandparents didn’t even know a lot of this information even existed. You can find countless places to pursue any of your interests. Some of the material is provided by subscription, and it’s up to you, […]
How to Turn Off Facebook’s Annoying Video AutoPlay
You can only truly turn off this “feature” in the desktop/laptop version; on the Mobile app for iPhone, the best you can hope for is to force it to only work when your phone is connected to wi–fi. update: ios 7.1 includes the ability to turn OFF video autoplay: go to Settings>Facebook>Settings>Video; set Auto-play to OFF, or to Wi-Fi only. Here’s the way it […]