Month: October 2009

Short answer: when you buy a Lenovo machine.

The editor of Consumerworld.org and Mouseprint.org, Edgar Dworsky, has found that some computer makers are charging “shipping, handling, and fulfillment fees” after Microsoft promised customers free upgrades to Win7 when they purchase PCs with Vista installed.

Microsoft began the Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program in June and said those who purchase a machine between June 26, 2009 and Jan. 1, 2010, will get the upgrade free.

Some manufacturers are giving the new OS free to some customers and charging others varying amounts from $11.60 to $17, Dworsky said.

See Computerworld story here for a list of who charges what.

Tom Kelchner

For those who spend a lot of time behind Google, there are some new features to play with improve your efficiency at work.

After a search results are presented, the “show options” control displays more ways to narrow your search by types of info (videos, blogs, etc.), time (past 24 hours) and whether you already visited the page.

The “Timeline” shows a graph of the periods in history mentioned in the results.

And the “wonder wheel” presents you with related searches.

See story: Google offers search refinements

Tom Kelchner

This month is the Department of Homeland Security’s sixth annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month and the theme is “Our Shared Responsibility.”

The point of the “theme” is “to reinforce the message that all computer users, not just industry and government, have a responsibility to practice good ‘cyber hygiene’ and to protect themselves and their families at home, at work and at school.”

The DHS page is full of really good basic computer security information and suggestions.

If you’re reading this, you are surely aware of at least one anti-virus company (Sunbelt) and the need for anti-malware protection. That’s a really big part of “our shared responsibility.” If you know somebody who is new to the Internet, you might pass along the link to the DHS Cyber Security Month page and tell them it’s a great place to start learning about protecting themselves. (Link here.)

Tom Kelchner

I check my mail cubbie today (something I actually rarely do anymore, what with all these internets having killed the postal service), and find a simple letter.

Inside is a folded napkin and a hotel room key.

The napkin has a note that says, in what appears to be female writing:

Let’s meet…

www.accepttheinvitation.com/alexeckelberry

So I’m thinking of all the times a beautiful woman has sent me a hotel room key with a note on a (perfumed) napkin.

Never.

I go to the site, and there’s a door, which I have to open.

And then I’m in some kind of restaurant.

You choose your dinner, and after a while, you see this:

Well, I suppose the whole thing is a bit creepy, especially when out of the blue, I get a follow-up email from some dude.

Creepy? Good marketing?

I suppose a bit of both.

Alex Eckelberry

One spammer, having a conversation with himself on my blog — as two different identities.

Alex Eckelberry

Jon Oberheide, a security researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Michigan, has gone public with an application (exploit?) to disable the censorship capabilities of Green Dam Youth Escort. It’s called Dam Burst.

According to the Oberheide web site, Dam Burst (v 1.2, tested on Green Dam 3.17), doesn’t need administrative privileges to disable Green Dam censoring functions.

His site notes a security benefit: “As a pleasant side effect, disabling the Green Dam components within a running process actually increases the security of the end host as the vulnerable code paths within the Green Dam software are no longer exploitable by an attacker.”

Sunbelt Software considers Green Dam to be spyware and our official description is:

Green Dam is system monitoring and content filtering software that blocks disapproved content on the local PC as well as incoming and outgoing network traffic.

About two weeks ago, schools in China were removing the Internet monitoring software because it was interfering with educational software. (Sunbelt Blog entry here.)

In mid August, Chinese Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Li Yizhong, reversed the requirement that all computers were required to have it, but Green Dam was to be installed just on school computers and those in public places. (Sunbelt Blog entry here.)

If you’d like to read the whole crazy story, search for “green dam” in the search box on the bottom of the right column on the Sunbelt Blog page.

Green Dam has been SUCH a fun disaster to write about.

Tom Kelchner

A university study has found that two out of three Americans do not care for online tracking by advertisers. And, once they find out how the marketing folks track them on the Internet, even more object.

The study, believed to be the first conducted by someone outside the advertising industry, was carried out by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California, Berkeley. They hired a survey company who contacted 1,000 adults who use the Internet and interviewed them for 20 minutes each.

According to the study, 66 percent of those interviewed said they did not like tailored advertising. When they told that web sites might track their behavior, another 7 percent said they did not like it. And, when asked about being tracked by other web sites, an additional 18 percent objected.

Ninety two percent of those surveyed said they would support a law that required Web sites and advertising organizations to delete information about them on request.

Marketing trade groups, who point out that advertising pays for a lot of Web content, are working on a set of practices, like notification that site visitors are being tracked, in order to avoid government regulation of their practices. Meanwhile, there have been indications that Congress and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission might be about to step in to protect consumer on line-privacy.

See story here: “Two-thirds of Americans object to online tracking”

Thanks Alex.

Tom Kelchner