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Anyone Else Wonder This?

I'm curious if anyone else has considered this.

Why was Hilary Clinton in the situation room during an active operation?

Is she not the Secretary of State? Our number one person in charge of diplomacy? Should she have been in the room?

My Mother

A picture of my mother. I didn't have a picture until last year. The last time I laid eyes on her was the summer between kindergarten and first grade. She passed in 2010.

I encourage any and all to take advantage of knowing your mother, father, siblings, anyone; not just on a special day, but everyday.

It was just a matter of time: Now CA Offers New Law

Now California is getting into the act.

 

Proposed new laws that feed off the fears of the population and not the actual problem.

 

This article appeard on The Mac Observer via my Google News Feed (read here).

 

The tools to safeguard what sites you visit are already in your browsers, regardless of which type you are running.

 

I find it fascinating that the federal and state governments think that by passing a law problems individuals are experencing will magically go away.

 

First, consider a conversation you might have with a co-worker or even a stranger at the local pub during happy hour. What can that person lean about you?

• Your name?
• If you are married?
• What you do for a living?

If individuals were to apply the same concept when they are online our lawmakers could focus on more important things.

Some tracking of what you do online is good. For example if you are into doing geneology work the fact that the websites you use can work with you to provide better information is a good thing. If your intrest is collecting coins or stamps or salt-n-pepper shakers and the 'internet' knows this as you  poke around you will actually get more out of your daily surfing.

It is the malware that traps your passwords and other key strokes you might be making (like your checking account or credit card number) that we need to be vigilant about.

The law that my native state of California and the proposed federal law I wrote about yesterday do nothing to address the real problem.

My advise to you is NEVER give out information that you would not in a normal conversation with a person at church, the pub or in the bleachers at a ball game.

Keep your anti-virus software up-to-date to protect against those little snippets of programming people try to put onto your computer (malware).

Don't be afraid to tell the internet you are looking for that 1963 Franklin Half Dollar in Proof condition to complete your 20th centry type set (for you coin collectors out there).

And remember - if I'm in New York (which I am) and California passes a law that says I can't put a cookie on your computer from a site hosted in (for example) Texas... what is the California Attorney General going to do? Ask me to please check into Folsom Prison?

Don't waste taxpayer's dollars creating new laws and then additional monies trying to enforce them. Focus on the real problems like benefits for vetrans and incentives that create jobs.

 

Shortcut - Lock your computer

Lock Your Computer

Passwords... Good Advice and Bad

CNN... a recognized authority because of the name, interviewed a guy named Graham Cluely, Senior Technology Consultant at the software security company, Sophos. (article here)

This is the first time I've been exposed to the company "Sophos". That really isn't the point herearticleartical had a good piece of advise - how to create passwords. Take a phrase like "I Like Coffee On Sunday Mornings" and make that into a password like ILcoffeeOnSunday. Easy to remember and long enough to satisfy most password rules.

The point I take exception to was the portion that advised everyone to use a "Sophos" service that retains and maintains your passwords.

Don't do that....

Just this week we have yet another Sony hack... but two of those kinds of services were hacked and everyone who used them now has to change all their passwords.... banking, facebook, email... OMG.

DON'T use these services.

Love that the articel had good password creation advice, kind of upset that the just of it was a push to use a service to record your passwords. It's better to put them on a post-it-note on your monitor rather than put it in a place hackers are trying to get it on a daily basis.

Your Security While Online - Think About It

Computer World reported yesterday (May 6, 2011) that Senator John Rockefeller (D-WV) is going to introduce an online do-not-track bill.

The Senator was quoted in the article, "Consumers have the right to know when and how their personal and sensitive information is being used online..."

I take exception to that statement by the Senator, especially when it comes to 'personal and sensitive'.

First, the obvious. Personal information is Sensitive information. Putting those two words into the same sentence only serves to play on people's fears.

Second, people need to understand there are three levels of personal information. I break them down as such:

First level - what a person could learn about you sitting next to you in a bar, coffee shop or the break room at work. They could learn your first name, what town you live in, maybe your phone number. An easy way to look at this first level is whatever they can find out about you by looking your name up in the telephone book.

Second level - what your friends know about you. Your friends and family know your spouse’s name, the names of your children, birthdays, stuff like that. Your friends would also know if you served in the military where you went to college and where you work.

The last level is the level that can cause the most heartache in your life.

Third level - this is stuff only you and your spouse know. Account numbers, social security numbers, health information things like that.

Senator Rockefeller's Do-Not-Track Online Act only serves to play off the fears of the public.

Frankly I don't care who tracks what I do on the Internet, but then I have nothing to hide. I don't care if they know I searched Google for a product or service and then show me a little ad for that exact thing a few days later on ABC news website. Better than seeing an ad for something I'm not interested in, like a little blue pill or something.

Consider the three levels of information above. Think about what it is you give-up while you are online.

I'm not fully convinced that we need yet another law that will only serve to confuse people even more.