Notes From The Tech Man

SOPA and PIPA are bad

December 28th, 2011

The Internet in the United States is under a threat of assault, the likes of which I’ve never seen. Two bills going through Congress right now, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act), will likely cause secure breakage to the technical underpinnings of the Internet.

The idea behind these bills is to go after copyright violators. However, the methods allowed are extremely aggressive. Can you imagine a single image uploaded to Facebook which turns out to be owned by someone else being the catalyst which makes it impossible to go to Facebook unless you know its IP address? These bills don’t take sites of the net so much as they break your ability to look up the underlying address of the site.

A thorough treatise is posted here at the Stanford Law Review. There are many other sites which go into detail on SOPA such as this one by Adam Savage of Mythbusters and this one over at Lifehacker (which includes a nice video describing the problem).

There has also been some collateral damage in this war. GoDaddy, for instance, had initially shown support for SOPA. As a result, a boycott was called unless they inform Congress that they don’t support the bills at all.

It also appears that SOPA will break the forming DNSSEC (a secure form of DNS, the “phone book” of the Internet) specification.

All in all, this must stop. Letters and calls to Senators and Congresspeople are a good idea at this point.

Posted in Internet, Networking, Security | No Comments »

Google is using your wireless router

November 20th, 2011

I’ve known about Google’s (and other companies’) use of the SSID and location of my wireless router for some time. My phone, for instance, uses this information to approximate my location. Other phones do this as well. In fact, before GPS became common in smart phones, it was the only way to determine where you were for location-based services (such as finding a local restaurant).

Google does offer a way for you to opt out of this, but as this article points out, that’s not necessarily the right way to go about things. For instance, not everyone knows how to make the changes in the router to accommodate Google’s opt-out method. What if, like myself, you have a long-running network and don’t wish to change everything (not only do you have to change the settings on the router, but you now have to tell all your equipment the new setting)? Another thing suggested in the article is how accommodating Google won’t help you if another company decides to offer a similar service and doesn’t honor the same opt-out method as Google (or any opt-out method at all).

In my opinion, I have bigger things on my mind than people using my wireless network for location-based services. I understand that by broadcasting my SSID, it is visible from the outside. Half of the problem of using wireless networks for location determination is that people have a tendency to move and this will disrupt that kind of service. I even have a mobile hotspot that I use. I can just imagine how that can disrupt things.

Posted in Internet, Networking | No Comments »

Be wary of sharing your passwords

November 12th, 2011

I’ve spoken in the past about how you should be using different and complex passwords. Today, I was reading a post from Leo Notenboom which hit home on the subject of sharing your passwords.

Now, in the course of my fixing a client’s computer, I may ask for a password. In 99% of the cases, the client just gives it to me and I proceed. I consider it a great honor that I’m entrusted with this information. For my part, I rarely keep a record of the passwords used which requires that I ask again when doing service at a later time. I know not to breech this trust as that would negatively impact the reputation I’ve grown. Besides, it’s just wrong. I’m also not offended if the client wishes to input the password instead of giving it to me.

You should really consider who has access to your passwords. I’ve encountered simple issues like spouses who know each others passwords on to more risky situations like kids knowing parents’ or employees knowing bosses’. The worst case, of course, is just having your password written down in full view of anyone who may pass by.

To summarize, in addition to maintaining separate and complex passwords for different sites (as well as computer and program logons), you need to take care who else has access to these passwords.

Posted in Security | No Comments »

Another place where backup is important

August 7th, 2011

There’s been a great amount of impetus toward putting our computer lives in “the cloud.” While it has many advantages (such as being able to access our stuff from anywhere on any device), what happens if your access to the cloud is interrupted or, worse, completely erased?

One person found this out as reported here. He had an image on his Google account of questionable legality. He was notified his entire account had been disabled due to the nature of this image. No one asked for an explanation. There was no one to call. He had a great deal of information, bookmarks, saved articles, etc. tied to this account and it was completely obliterated.

While he was able to recover his account (and remove the image which caused the problem), he has since learned to not rely on one cloud service for everything.

What can you do? I would keep a local copy of everything. I learned this myself the hard way when my blog was hacked. Every time I update the WordPress installation, I also download the entirety of the site so I can maintain a local copy in the event another such hacking occurs. You can also use multiple services to keep copies of bookmarks and the like. Even with Facebook, you have the option to download everything you’ve ever posted.

As long as you have more than one copy, regardless of how you do it, you have a backup. If you have only one copy, it’s at risk of being erased due to accident, failure, or a malicious act.

Getting worried about your own data? I have a special where I set up a backup and follow it up later to make sure it’s working. You can order it here: http://www.fixescomputers.com/backupspecial.html (offer good for local clients).

Posted in Backup, Internet | No Comments »

Outlook Express’s 2GB problem

July 11th, 2011

I had a visit with a client today who used Outlook Express and it wouldn’t gather her e-mail. She knew it was there as she could go to the mail service’s web site and see it. She just preferred Outlook Express. I can’t say I blame her as I normally recommend using a program on your computer to read your e-mail (and there are certainly worse programs out there than Outlook Express).

The error which was given was “unknown” with a code of 0x800c0133. Not very informative (like most error codes). After a quick search, I discovered the problem could be caused by a corrupt mailbox file. I went to the location of the data files in an attempt to follow a method of repair I saw online when I discovered the true problem: The “In Box” data file was just under 2GB in size. Knowing Microsoft would have never imagined Outlook Express using a file so large, it’s probably hard-coded to choke when it finds one.

My options were simple. I could delete the data file or figure out a way to shrink it. The compress function in Outlook Express didn’t work. I couldn’t even view the In Box from within Outlook Express. In my case, my client wasn’t concerned about the past e-mails so deletion wasn’t a big deal. However, this won’t work for everyone and I began my search for a free utility to perform the job. Unfortunately, I didn’t find one.

There is a great site out there for anyone who uses or maintains Outlook Express: oehelp.com. From there you can grab utilities to help out with several problems however the ones which could be used to extract important e-mails weren’t free. In the past, I’ve used insideoe.com for assistance. It has a great deal of help, tips, and advice. However, both sites haven’t been updated in a great while. This doesn’t surprise me much as Microsoft basically abandoned support of Outlook Express when Windows Vista was introduced (let’s not forget Windows Mail which came with Vista which was basically replaced with Windows Live Mail a short time later). I imagine all support (whether from Microsoft or someone else) eventually going away with time as Outlook Express has been well and thoroughly replaced.

Now, if you’re looking to move away from what Microsoft offers, I strongly recommend Mozilla Thunderbird. I’ve been using it myself on my PC for quite some time. It’s a very capable e-mail program with many options out of the box and huge quantity of free add-ons. It might seem a little quirky to some, but I’ve found it to be significantly better then the Microsoft offerings (I even game Windows Live Mail a chance for nearly a year before giving up on it).