According to McAfee’s study, searching for “Cameron Diaz” puts you at a 10 percent risk of landing on a site strewn with malware. Some of the worst searches include those for screen savers and other, ahem, downloads involving the actress’s name.
Diaz isn’t alone in the danger zone. Start the drumroll; here’s the full list of McAfee’s top 10 most dangerous celebs for 2010:
Googling “Julia Roberts and downloads” gives you a 20 percent chance of contracting something nasty, McAfee says.
1. Cameron Diaz
But you already knew that.
More of McAfee’s Dangerous Celebrities
Some other interesting notes from McAfee’s most dangerous celebs study:
• Tiger Woods came in at number 33 on the list of risk. Malware aside, of course, seeking him out may lead to other negative consequences.
• High-profile politicians ranked fairly low on this year’s list. President Barack Obama came in at number 49, while Sarah Palin was number 50.
• Miley Cyrus may be getting more risqué with her wardrobe, but according to McAfee, her online threat level is dropping. Cyrus was number 7 last year; this year, she fell all the way to number 44.
A disguised button causes unsuspecting poll-takers to share unwittingly — including their money.
Ian Paul
Wednesday, August 18, 2010 05:57 AM PDT
Security firm Sophos recently discovered a new clickjacking scam on Facebook that spreads via the social network’s “share” feature and could be costing you $5 a week. The new malware is similar to a so-called “likejacking” worm discovered last May. But instead of exploiting Facebook’s “Like” button, the new scam uses the “Share” feature that posts content to your profile wall where your friends are encouraged to click on it.
This is the second Facebook scam reported on by Sophos in recent days. On Monday, the security firm alerted Facebook users to an enticing scam that allowed you to add a “Dislike” button to your profile.
Here’s how the “Share” button scam works:
The Sharejack
You see a link to a Facebook page for “10 Funny T-Shirt Fails” or something similar. Once you arrive on the page, a message tells you that you have to go through Facebook’s new three-step human verification process in order to see the content.
On the second step, you are asked to click the “Next” button, and that’s where th
Source: Sophos
e scam really begins, according to Sophos. That’s because the “Next” button doesn’t actually have any functionality and is just a dummy. But hidden underneath the “Next” button is a functional “Share” button. So while it looks like you are just clicking on “Next” to get to the final step, what you are actually doing is posting that page to your profile wall using the Share function. (Click on the image for a large view of the screen.)
Sophos notes that browsers running No Script are alerted to the hidden “Share” button. No Script is a Firefox add-on that prevents a Website’s Java, JavaScript, and Flash functions from executing without your permission.
But the scam doesn’t end there. The whole point is to get you to the third step where you fill out a revenue-generating survey for the scammers. The surveys ask you to provide your personal information to enter a contest to win money, a computer, or other prize. The survey Sophos examined asks for your cell phone number among other things. But down in the survey’s fine print it says providing your information will end up tacking an extra $5 per week onto your cell phone bill for a service called “The Awesome Test.”
Protecting Yourself
Facebook responded fairly quickly to Sophos’ report and removed all the fan pages involved in the “sharejack.” Nevertheless, if you think you might have fallen prey to the scam you should check to make sure any links associated with the phony pages have been removed from your profile wall. If they haven’t, hover your mouse over the link and then click the “Remove” button in the upper right corner of the wall post.
If you went so far as to fill out the survey, then you should contact your carrier immediately to see if you have any excess charges on your cell phone bill.
For more information on how to avoid these scams in the future, check out Jared Newman’s post on some common ways to spot Facebook scams. PC World’s article on super safe Web browsing also has some great information on how to protect yourself online.
Computerworld - Microsoft on Tuesday warned customers that a record number of just-patched bugs will probably be exploited in the next 30 days.
Of the 35 vulnerabilities that Microsoft has patched this month, it assigned 32 an exploitability rating, a score that quantifies the company’s take on whether reliable attack code will appear. Of the 32 bugs, a record 18 were pegged with a rating of “1,” which in Microsoft’s methodology means it anticipates reliable exploit code in the coming month.
Microsoft also assigned nine of Tuesday’s 14 security updates the same “1″ exploitability rating.
Engineers with the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) published a table Tuesday that spelled out their take on exploit likelihood. According to the MSRC, exploit code for five of the eight security updates labeled “critical” and four of the six pegged as “important” will probably pop up in the next 30 days.
Microsoft also expects that exploit proof-of-concept code — demonstration exploits that often need work before they’re reliable enough to use in the wild — will be released for the remaining pair of important updates.
According to Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, August’s exploitability index count is a record, beating June 2010′s 17 vulnerabilities with an index rating of “1.”
Storms’ data showed that February and March 2010 each boasted 12 bugs with an exploitability index of “1,” while June 2009 featured 14.
Security researchers yesterday essentially agreed with Microsoft that the month ahead could be rocky for users who are slow to apply patches. Most contacted by Computerworld believe exploits will quickly appear for several of the vulnerabilities patched Tuesday, including a pair of media-related bugs, several in Office 2007, six in Internet Explorer, and another pair in Silverlight, Microsoft’s answer to Adobe’s Flash.
A bug in Windows Movie Maker, software that shipped with Windows XP and Vista — but was dumped from Window 7 — will also probably be exploited soon, Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys, said yesterday.
Microsoft rated all those vulnerabilities with a “1″ on the exploitability index.
“It’s likely that many of these vulnerabilities will be weaponzied in a framework such as Metasploit,” said Josh Abraham, a security researcher with Rapid7, the company that also manages the open-source Metasploit hacking toolkit. Metasploit often publishes the first public exploits of Microsoft vulnerabilities.
But people shouldn’t panic, Abraham added. “The down-side for attackers is that most of these vulnerabilities require user-interaction,” he said in an e-mail today.
Patching before exploits go wild is crucial, however. Users are on a clock that starting ticking Tuesday, said Jason Miller, data and security team manager for patch-management vendor Shavlik Technologies.
“And you don’t want to lose this race,” Miller said.
The support site of leading Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo has been compromised by unknown attackers who injected a rogue IFrame into the pages over the weekend. Security researchers warn that unwary visitors looking for drivers are exposed to several exploits that install the Bredolab trojan onto their computers.
According to a report from Vietnamese antivirus vendor Bkis, the pages have been infected since at least Sunday afternoon. However, some users have been reporting getting antivirus warnings when visiting Lenovo’s download website since Saturday.
The IFrame points to an exploit kit hosted on a domain called volgo-marun.cn. After performing several checks to determine what vulnerable software they had installed on their computer, the visitors were served with exploits tareting older versions of Internet Explorer, Adobe Reader or Adobe Flash player.
“These exploit codes attempt to load file hxxp://volgo-marun.cn/pek/exe.exe which is a virus, onto victim’s computer. The virus is a new variant of Bredolab Botnet […]. After being loaded onto the computers, the virus copies itself as %Programs%\Startup\monskc32.exe and receives commands from C&C server with domain sicha-linna8.com,” Le Minh Hung, senior security researcher at Bkis, writes.
At the moment, the malicious executable is detected by only ten of the 41 antivirus products listed on VirusTotal. The entire download.lenovo.com subdomain has been blacklisted by Google’s Safe Browsing service. This means that Firefox or Chrome users should see malware warnings when opening resources hosted on it.
“Of the 46 pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 39 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent. The last time Google visited this site was on 2010-06-20, and the last time suspicious content was found on this site was on 2010-06-20. Malicious software includes 1 trojan(s). Malicious software is hosted on 1 domain(s), including volgo-marun.cn/,” a detailed explanation of the Google warnings reads.
Even though the malicious .cn domain appears to be dead at the moment, it could return back online at any time. Therefore, users are advised to stay clear of the Lenovo support website for a couple of days, until the manufacturer has a chance to clean it up and plug the hole that allowed the compromise in the first place.
The popularity of the Internet continues to grow, especially throughout the holiday time. Therefore, it is possible to be connected to the Internet not only in hotels, but also in campsites, shopping malls or in parks. Free Internet connection has become a common part of our everyday life.
All information from wireless networks is transferred through free space; if the user doesn’t use sufficient protection, it is easy for hackers to tap into such information. Hackers are even able to create a special network, looking like a legitimate WiFi access point. As soon as the user logs into such a network, the hacker captures his/her login data and can easily steal their private data such as bank details, credit card numbers, social network passwords etc.
Security experts from the TrustPort company warn against the use of public WiFi networks, but if it is necessary to use WiFi from time to time, they strongly recommend to observe the following rules:
• Use an updated version of security software, which stops malicious codes at all entry points of the computer, and detects and destroys viruses in e-mails or on websites. Thanks to the combination of two top scanning engines, TrustPort PC Security provides one of the highest virus detection rates in the world, and it also detects unknown viruses on the basis of their structure and behaviour.
• Protect your personal data using backup and encryption. You can use, for example, the Archive Encryption module, implemented in TrustPort PC Security.
• Use a personal firewall which allows Internet communication but at the same time doesn´t allow intruders to access your computer. The personal firewall will offer you one-time or permanent permission or blocking of any new unknown connection.
• Check the name of the public network. There can be both legitimate and scam WiFi networks in your list of accessible networks. In some cases an illegal wireless network can have an even better signal. Always make sure that you are connecting to the right network. If you have any doubts whatsoever, check the legitimacy of the connection with a member of staff at the access point where you want to connect (café staff, hotel reception, etc.)
• In public networks, it is better to avoid access to websites where you must enter your sensitive data such as access to your internet banking or e-shopping with your credit card.
The Internet just got more dangerous, in terms of malware, if this study is correct. Researchers have discovered a method of bypassing security software, one that they said tested successfully against all 34 of the products tested.
matousec.comsaid the exploit is usable even if the account does not possess administrative privileges. Among the big names vulnerable according to the report are Symantec (Norton), McAfee, Kaspersky, NOD32, and ZoneAlarm.
All that’s required, the researchers said, is for the security software use System Service Descriptor Table (SSDT) hooks to modify parts of the OS kernel. The researchers have named the exploit KHOBE.
If a product uses SSDT hooks or other kind of kernel mode hooks on similar level to implement security features it is vulnerable. In other words, 100 % of the tested products were found vulnerable. The only reason there are not more products in the following table is our time limitation. Otherwise, the list would be endless.
Not good. Those who might notice that Microsoft’s free Security Essentials software is not listed as vulnerable shouldn’t take heart, based on the above paragraph. The full list of tested products is below. It should be noted, however, that the researchers said the attack code itself has to be running on the system in order to perform the actual attack.
Additionally, the study was done using Windows XP Service Pack 3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on 32-bit hardware. Researches believe that the vulnerability also exists in Windows 7, and that 64-bit systems will be vulnerable as well.
3D EQSecure Professional Edition 4.2
avast! Internet Security 5.0.462
AVG Internet Security 9.0.791
Avira Premium Security Suite 10.0.0.536
BitDefender Total Security 2010 13.0.20.347
Blink Professional 4.6.1
CA Internet Security Suite Plus 2010 6.0.0.272
Comodo Internet Security Free 4.0.138377.779
DefenseWall Personal Firewall 3.00
Dr.Web Security Space Pro 6.0.0.03100
ESET Smart Security 4.2.35.3
F-Secure Internet Security 2010 10.00 build 246
G DATA TotalCare 2010
Kaspersky Internet Security 2010 9.0.0.736
KingSoft Personal Firewall 9 Plus 2009.05.07.70
Malware Defender 2.6.0
McAfee Total Protection 2010 10.0.580
Norman Security Suite PRO 8.0
Norton Internet Security 2010 17.5.0.127
Online Armor Premium 4.0.0.35
Online Solutions Security Suite 1.5.14905.0
Outpost Security Suite Pro 6.7.3.3063.452.0726
Outpost Security Suite Pro 7.0.3330.505.1221 BETA VERSION
Panda Internet Security 2010 15.01.00
PC Tools Firewall Plus 6.0.0.88
PrivateFirewall 7.0.20.37
Security Shield 2010 13.0.16.313
Sophos Endpoint Security and Control 9.0.5
ThreatFire 4.7.0.17
Trend Micro Internet Security Pro 2010 17.50.1647.0000
Another mobile-phone manufacturer has fallen victim to an increasingly common attack in which phones’ memory cards are infected with malware during the manufacturing process and then shipped out to customers. The latest victim is Samsung, which has acknowledged that the microSD cards in a batch of its S8500 Wave mobile phones sold in Germany were infected with an autorun Trojan.
The malware loaded on the microSD cards in the S8500 Wave handsets is an autoRun virus that executes automatically if the card is inserted into a PC that has the autoRun feature enabled, according to an analysis by Michael Oryl of MobileBurn.com, who received one of the infected handsets.
It appears that Samsung has accidentally allowed a malware program called slmvsrv.exe onto the 1GB microSD memory card that is shipping with the new bada-powered Samsung S8500 Wave smartphone. This Windows-based application, known as Win32/Heur, appears with an Autorun.inf file in the root of the memory card and will install itself when it is inserted into any Windows PC that has the autorun feature enabled.
Oryl notified Samsung of the infection, and the company responded that only the first production run of S8500 Waves shipped to Germany was infected with the malware. However, the company didn’t specify exactly how many handsets that initial production run included.
Malware targeted at specific smartphone platforms is still a relatively rare phenomenon, but attacks such as those against the HTC and Samsung handsets, in which the malware is pre-loaded on memory cards, are increasingly common. There have been other incidents in which other pieces of malware have been found pre-loaded on USB memory sticks, digital photo frames and other devices not typically thought of as targets for attackers.
For attackers, these types of attack vectors can be an efficient way of getting malware on a large number of devices with a minimum effort. Security experts say these attacks often are executed by attackers paying an employee working in the factory that manufacturers the device or memory card, who installs the malware on the devices during the production process. It’s a pay once, infect many business model.
Please note: the views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of Bay Geeks, the owners or our technicians/staff. We thought this article may be of value to anyone reading our blog and may be good for conversation! Please enjoy.
Ban Facebook!
Facebook privacy policies keep going down the drain. That’s enough reason for many to abandon it. Here you will find nine more:
After some reflection, I’ve decided to delete my account on Facebook. I’d like to encourage you to do the same. This is part altruism and part selfish. The altruism part is that I think Facebook, as a company, is unethical. The selfish part is that I’d like my own social network to migrate away from Facebook so that I’m not missing anything. In any event, here’s my “Top Ten” reasons for why you should join me and many others and delete your account.
Let’s start with the basics. Facebook’s Terms Of Service state that not only do they own your data (section 2.1), but if you don’t keep it up to date and accurate (section 4.6), they can terminate your account (section 14). You could argue that the terms are just protecting Facebook’s interests, and are not in practice enforced, but in the context of their other activities, this defense is pretty weak. As you’ll see, there’s no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. Essentially, they see their customers as unpaid employees for crowd-sourcing ad-targeting data.
9. Facebook’s CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior
From the very beginning of Facebook’s existence,there are questions about Zuckerberg’s ethics. According to BusinessInsider.com, he used Facebook user data to guess email passwords and read personal email in order to discredit his rivals. These allegations, albeit unproven and somewhat dated, nonetheless raise troubling questions about the ethics of the CEO of the world’s largest social network. They’re particularly compelling given that Facebook chose to fork over $65M to settle a related lawsuit alleging that Zuckerberg had actually stolen the idea for Facebook.
8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy
Founder and CEO of Facebook,in defense of Facebook’s privacy changeslast January: “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.” More recently, in introducing the Open Graph API: “… the default is now social.” Essentially, this means Facebook not only wants to know everything about you, and own that data, but to make it available to everybody. Which would not, by itself, necessarily be unethical, except that …
7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch
At the same time that they’re telling developershow to access your datawith new APIs, they are relatively quiet aboutexplaining the implicationsof that to members. What this amounts to is a bait-and-switch. Facebook gets you to share information that you might not otherwise share, and then they make it publicly available. Since they are in the business of monetizing information about you for advertising purposes, this amounts to tricking their users into giving advertisers information about themselves. This is why Facebook is so much worse than Twitter in this regard: Twitter has made only the simplest (and thus, more credible) privacy claims and their customers know up front that all their tweets are public. It’s also why the FTC is getting involved, and people are suing them (and winning).
When Pete Wardendemonstrated just how this bait-and-switch works(by crawling all the data that Facebook’s privacy settings changes had inadvertently made public) they sued him. Keep in mind, this happened just before they announced the Open Graph API and stated that the “default is now social.” So why sue an independent software developer and fledgling entrepreneur for making data publicly available when you’re actually already planning to do that yourself? Their real agenda is pretty clear: they don’t want their membership to know how much data is really available. It’s one thing to talk to developers about how great all this sharing is going to be; quite another to actually see what that means in the form of files anyone can download and load into MatLab.
5. Even your private data is shared with applications
At this point, all your data isshared with applicationsthat you install. Which means now you’re not only trusting Facebook, but the application developers, too, many of whom are too small to worry much about keeping your data secure. And some of whom might be even more ethically challenged than Facebook. In practice, what this means is that all your data – all of it – must be effectively considered public, unless you simply never use any Facebook applications at all. Coupled with the OpenGraph API, you are no longer trusting Facebook, but the Facebook ecosystem.
4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted
Even if we weren’t talking about ethical issues here, I can’t trust Facebook’s technical competence to make sure my data isn’t hijacked. For example, their recent introduction of their “Like” button makes it rather easy for spammers to gain access to my feed and spam my social network. Or how aboutthis gem for harvesting profile data? These are just the latest of a series of Keystone Kops mistakes, such as accidentally making users’ profiles completely public, or the cross-site scripting hole that took them over two weeks to fix. They either don’t care too much about your privacy or don’t really have very good engineers, or perhaps both.
3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account
It’s one thing to make data public or even mislead users about doing so; but where I really draw the line is that, once you decide you’ve had enough, it’spretty tricky to really delete your account. They make no promises about deleting your data and every application you’ve used may keep it as well. On top of that, account deletion is incredibly (and intentionally) confusing. When you go to your account settings, you’re given an option to deactivate your account, which turns out not to be the same thing as deleting it. Deactivating means you can still be tagged in photos and be spammed by Facebook (you actually have to opt out of getting emails as part of the deactivation, an incredibly easy detail to overlook, since you think you’re deleting your account). Finally, the moment you log back in, you’re back like nothing ever happened! In fact, it’s really not much different from not logging in for awhile. To actually delete your account, you have to find a link buried in the on-line help (by “buried” I mean it takes five clicks to get there). Or you can just click here. Basically, Facebook is trying to trick their users into allowing them to keep their data even after they’ve “deleted” their account.
2. Facebook doesn’t (really) support the Open Web
The so-called Open Graph API is named so as to disguise its fundamentally closed nature. It’s bad enough that the idea here is that we all pitch in and make it easier than ever to help Facebook collect more data about you. It’s bad enough that most consumers will have no idea that this data is basically public. It’s bad enough that they claim to own this data and are aiming to be the one source for accessing it. But then they are disingenuous enough to call it “open,” when, in fact, it is completely proprietary to Facebook. You can’t use this feature unless you’re on Facebook. A truly open implementation would work with whichever social network we prefer, and it would look something like OpenLike. Similarly, they implement just enough of OpenID to claim they support it, while aggressively promoting a proprietary alternative, Facebook Connect.
1. The Facebook application itself sucks
Between the farms and the mafia wars and the “top news” (which always guesses wrong – is that configurable somehow?) and the myriad privacy settings and the annoying ads (with all that data about me, the best they can apparently do is promote dating sites, because, uh, I’m single) and the thousands upon thousands of crappy applications, Facebook is almost completely useless to me at this point. Yes, I could probably customize it better, but the navigation is ridiculous, so I don’t bother. (And, yet, somehow, I can’t even change colors or apply themes or do anything to make my page look personalized.) Let’s not even get into how slowly your feed page loads. Basically, at this point, Facebook is more annoying than anything else.
Facebook is clearly determined to add every feature of every competing social network in an attempt to take over the Web (this is a never-ending quest that goes back to AOL and those damn CDs that were practically falling out of the sky). While Twitter isn’t the most usable thing in the world, at least they’ve tried to stay focused and aren’t trying to be everything to everyone.
I often hear people talking about Facebook as though they were some sort of monopoly or public trust. Well, they aren’t. They owe us nothing. They can do whatever they want, within the bounds of the laws. (And keep in mind, even those criteria are pretty murky when it comes to social networking.) But that doesn’t mean we have to actually put up with them. Furthermore, their long-term success is by no means guaranteed – have we all forgotten MySpace? Oh, right, we have. Regardless of the hype, the fact remains that Sergei Brin or Bill Gates or Warren Buffett could personally acquire a majority stake in Facebook without even straining their bank account. And Facebook’s revenue remains more or less a rounding error for more established tech companies.
While social networking is a fun new application category enjoying remarkable growth, Facebook isn’t the only game in town. I don’t like their application nor how they do business and so I’ve made my choice to use other providers. And so can you.
Dan Yoder is a serial entrepreneur and the VP of Engineering at Border Stylo, a Hollywood-based social media startup. He can be reached on Twitter as @dyoder.
Disclosure by Dan Yoder: I’m the VP of Engineering for a Hollywood-based social media startup, BorderStylo. The opinions expressed here are purely my own and are not in any way endorsed by my employer. While I do not see our applications as directly competitive to Facebook, nor have I presented them as such, it would be disingenuous not to mention this.
Have you ever tried to recover from your backup to ensure it all works as planned?
We all know how important our data is. 60% of businesses who lose their data are out of business within six months.
We have several recommendations we’ve advised over the years depending on your needs. It’s always best to consult an expert and we’re always happy to help!
Some of the main backup solutions available are external hard drives, online backup solutions, burning dvd’s/cd’s, saving the data to thumb drives or emailing specific files to ourselves… the list goes on and on.
While the external hard drives are good to use for many reasons, I’ve been finding that there are more problems with them as opposed to the other solutions available. Among the issues I’ve seen, at the top of my list would be inadequate ventilation/cooling mechanisms. Most users I’ve seen leave their external device plugged in and running 24/7. Some folks who have automated their backups have the hard drives constantly spinning. This tends to overheat the drives causing premature failure.
Another problem with external hard drives is the false sense of security users feel. I couldn’t begin to count how many clients have stopped saving data to their “C” drive in favor of their external hard drive. The external hard drive is really not any different than the hard drive in their computer! It’s just as likely to fail if not more likely to fail due to the restrictive ventilation and constant spinning of the disks.
My take on it is this: External drives are great to use, just don’t leave them running 24/7 without having your data stored in at least two other locations. Remember, if you don’t have your data in 3 locations… you don’t have it! They won’t do much to protect against fire, flood, theft etc…
What I’ve been advising lately has been using an external hard drive system that would more accurately be called a network attached storage (NAS) device. Inside these devices are multiple hard drives. Let’s call it two for now to keep it simple. What we’ll do is configure the NAS device to act in what’s called a Raid 1 (mirroring) array. Basically, even though the NAS has two hard drives inside… it only looks like one to your computer. When you save your data to the drive, it actually writes the same data to both hard drives creating a mirror of your data.
Now if we keep saving our data to our “C” drive and then synchronize our user directory to a location on the NAS device, we’ll have the data in a total of 3 locations for what I would consider optimal redundancy.
The nice thing is that these NAS devices are getting more and more affordable every day. I just picked one up for under $400! I know that’s expensive and there are other solutions. This just happens to be what I’m using and it’s also one of my favorite configurations personally.
When it comes to online backup solutions you need to assess your comfort level with storing your data somewhere in the world. Do you trust strangers with your data? The way I see it, I’m okay with that as long as I can create my own encryption key. Preferably, I’d like to be able to select my preferred encryption algorithm, bit rate and my own key. If I can select my own encryption key, the odds are no one will be interested in taking the time to crack my encryption key. Granted, that advice would not hold true for data that is sensitive or confidential… but in most cases the data should be relatively safe. At least you’ll be protected from a local fire,
flood, lightning strike, wind damage etc… but not from theft.
The primary down side to online backup solutions (aside from not having physical control over the storage medium) would be the limitation of our bandwidth/throughput. How much data are we storing? How long will it take to download that data? If there’s a lot of data it could take a whole day or longer to download all of the data. How soon does your business need to be back up and running? Are you going to be comfortable with waiting for the data to be downloaded? Will your data be intact or would there be a corruption somewhere some how of some mission critical data? What if the data is corrupted when downloading? What if you’re almost done with your 8th hour of downloading and all of a sudden the power goes out, your computer reboots after an update was applied which was running in the back ground? Just hope you have access to the internet when you need to get your data!
When was the last time you tried to back up your data to a cd? Any idea how many cd’s it would take? Probably too many! So let’s talk about DVD’s… one dvd can take a tremendous amount of time to make especially if there are lots of smaller files. I guess if you can get away with only making one or two dvd’s… it might not be so bad, but it will certainly be time consuming. Then what about scratching the disks? What about fire, flood, theft etc… you’re pretty much out of luck. Plus, coming from someone who’s burned tons of data to dvd’s… there is generally a ton of unused space on the dvd’s… which for those who enjoy being frugal like me… that
may just bother us!
Thumb/flash drives are neat and useful, but unfortunately they are often carried around in a front trouser pocket (like mine is now!) where they are highly susceptible to electro-static fields which can corrupt the data. Plus, if you’re using a cheap thumb drive, then I’ve observed poor data fidelity… in other words, the data I saved to the drive didn’t work after a day or two! Not a very good storage system. Granted, some devices are better than others and some provide better protection, higher fidelity… but I wouldn’t rely on the unpredictable nature of a thumb/flash drive for my businesses mission critical data. Much less my personal data!
Emailing specific files to say a Gmail account is yet another option… Good luck with that on a large scale! You may consider looking into Gspace (a firefox plugin) which converts your Gmail account into an off-site storage or online storage solution.
One of my new favorite backup solutions for my personal pictures that I’ve found is Google’s Picasa. They’ll give you a gig or two for free, but 20 gigs for $5 a year really caught my attention. Like most people, I have tons of pictures that I do not want to lose. Not only do I keep them on my NAS, but I also keep them out in ‘the cloud’ on Google’s Picasa. I can quickly share them and more, but for the sake of this article, it works as a great easy to use picture backup system.
Either way you decide, please do find a system and stick with it! If you’re interested in learning more about how we’d automate your backups and customize a solution based on your budget and/or needs, please give us a call at 727-579-GEEK (4335) and we’ll be happy to help! Thanks for reading!
The University of Princeton has released a report saying that the Apple iPad has DHCP problems.
In short, when the device first gets an IP address from the DHCP server, it uses that IP address for however long the IP lease was for. When the lease expires, the iPad needs to get a new IP address from the DHCP server. However, instead of getting a new IP address once the lease has expired, the iPad allows the lease to expire but continues to use the old IP address without asking for a new one.
The issue arises when the DHCP server assigns that supposedly expired IP address to a new device resulting in IP conflicts. This causes interference with other devices on the network and because of this, universities like the University of Princeton have banned many iPads from their network.
Other universities such as the George Washington University in Washington D.C have experienced problems with the iPad. However, it isnt related to the DHCP issue:
“Our current authentication system isn’t supported by the iPhone or the iPad,” said Guy Jones, Chief Technology Officer for GWU.
Lastly, the country of Israel has banned the iPad completely – even from tourists. If they find yours, they’ll confiscate it and charge you a storage fee. The reason why it was banned is because the American FCC allows Wi-Fi broadcasting at higher levels than what are standard in Europe and Israel.
“If you operate equipment in a frequency band which is different from the others that operate on that frequency band, then there will be interference,” said Nati Schubert, a senior deputy director for the Communications.
