Some Background

According to articles, Google Street View vehicle and team has been collecting from unprotected data accidently. Its main aim was to collect Wi-Fi SSID’s and MAC addresses to enhance location based services like Google Maps and Google Buzz. But some how due to wrong programming it has collected data from unprotected/secured Wi-Fi devices. That means they have partially collected whatever sites you have surfed. Interesting and scary eh!

Securing your Wi-Fi

When your computer connects to the wireless device, it sends data through and from the device. If this transfer is not encrypted or password protected, hackers can easily intercept your data packets. Another reason to password protect is stop wardriving. Which is protecting random strangers from connecting to your internet. They could use your internet to cause havoc online like hacking and site vandalism or for some other malicious purposes.

Encrypting these data transfers makes it difficult for the hackers to gather your data unless powerful computers are used.

Types of Security

The are a few encryption technologies, mainly WEP, WPA and WPA2. Recently, WEP has been defeated in like two minutes and security experts do not recommend this anymore. Next best is WPA and WPA2.

In some cases WPA2 will not work as the laptops or portable devices might not support that encryption. In my case, I am using WPA as the WPA2 is not supported in 2 of my family members laptop.

How to?

There is a very high chance that when you purchase your wifi router it will not be preconfigured with any security. Using it right away is stupid and you should avoid it. Get it configured first before getting any wireless devices connected.

Below example shows me using the 2wire 2701 wifi router issues by my ISP Singtel. Though I hate this router I have to use this to make my IP phone and VOIP TV work. It does not work on any other routers. Sucks I know!

Login to your routers configuration page. You should be able to get the correct address from the manual/guide. First of all change the login password from the default to something else.

This is the main configuration page I see. You should see something similar. In your browser key in 192.168.1.254.

Click on Home Network followed by Wireless Settings. You will see these options. Your LinkSys and Dlink routers should have something similar too.

Network name:  This could be your name or some weirdname to your liking.

SSID Broadcast: Enable it if you want everyone to see it. Might be easy when your friends or relatives dropby to use. As an additional security you can disable it. But when you connect from a laptop you will need to manually key in SSID which can be cumbersome.

Enable Wireless Security. Obviously you have to this to secure the network. In my case I selected WPA-PSK and chose a 10 digit password.

MAC Filtering: Every network device has a hardware number tagged to it by the manufacturer. You can this filtering to allow access only to your own computers while it blocks any others from connecting. I find it troublesome and have not enabled it.

Conclusion

The above is just to show you how to quickly protect your wireless network. Each one of you should get it done now, if you don’t have security in place. THIS IS IMPORTANT. It is like leaving your front door unlocked and allowing thieves to steal stuff!

If you dont know how. Call your techie friend or family member to help you out..

I did a check and found the update to be about 437MB. A combo update, that is since version 10.6.0 is about 700+ MB.

Anyways other blogs have extensively covered the update and the improvements the security update has brought about and here are the links:

CNET

Macworld

If you are using the charger alone there is no problem problem. Only when you install the software. In Windows the trojan opens a backdoor allowing remote access to your computer.

Energizer has taken the charger and software off sale and has made an announcement here.

If you have installed the software here is how to remove and complete eliminate the vulnarability:

First, uninstall the software. This will remove the Windows registry value that executes the Trojan when starting Windows. Restart your computer, then go to the System32 directory in Windows and delete the file "arucer.dll," which is the backdoor component itself. For good measure, you can use a firewall to block access to 7777/tcp, but Energizer doesn’t list this step as necessary – from PC World

Read more about it at PC World.

There is Internet Explorer 7 & 8 available now and you ought upgrade to it. Better yet I would suggest Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari or Opera browsers.

I understand that some companies or enterprises are still using IE6. The IT department most likely feels that it works with most application that they have spent money on and instead of spending money to tweak their application, they leave as it is running on IE6. This is real bad idea. Why dont you do yourself a favor and everyone else at the same time and write to the IT Admin that IE6 needs to die. Update the in-house apps and get rid of lots of head ache.

Here is a proof that people are still using IE6. Of the lot of visitors using IE, about 20% are still using IE 6.This data is extracted from Google Analytics that I use to track visitors to my blog.
I feel like including a script which pops to IE6 users to upgrade their browsers. Should I?

Why must it die?

I am not a coder but I am a blogger. Getting this site to work with IE 6 is like a nightmare. I did not bother to get my designer to get it working with IE 6. Yes, my blog looks bad on IE 6.

I do understand how much coders have to go through just to get the page to look right.

PNG Transparency – It simply doesnt work. Transparent portion of a png image file look gray. Making the site messed and super ugly. View my site in IE 6. It looks horrible

Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) – CSS is heavily used in most sites and blogs nowadays. This is what makes site look and feel right. IE6 does not support the latest incarnation of the CSS so much so that coders have to struggle to tweak and get it working.

Crashing – Over the internet you can find sites providing codes that could crash IE 6. Yes crash it. What more can I say about security.

Security – Its not safe anymore. It is full of holes. Trust me.
Heard of the recent issue where by Google was attacked by Chinese hackers. One of the main culprit was a component of IE6. Read further.

More and more companies are doing away with support for IE6. Facebook has a message to IE6 users. Digg.com and many other sites are doing the same. Now Google will be pulling the support for IE6. Their online apps like the Google Apps will not be supporting IE6 any longer. Which means if you use IE6 and access their Apps, many features would simply stop working or cause errors.

Read further: 
http://davidwalsh.name/6-reasons-why-ie6-must-die
http://mashable.com/2009/07/16/ie6-must-die/

Could you do us all a favour and pass the message to let IE6 die? Simple just provide whoever still uses IE 6 the link to upgrade to Internet Explorer 8 or any of the browsers mentioned.

Basically it is an entire Security Suite – Anti-Virus and Anti-malware.

I am wondering if it will do its job comparable to other Security vendors like Symantec and McAfee. Will it put them out of business? Definitely a NO.

Windows Update is known for causing problem by forcing you to install the Windows Genuine Advantage(WGA). WGA has caused issues to people that it blocks genuine users from receiving security updates if WGA fails.

Secunia Online Software Inspector

You can still keep your Windows OS security patch updated by using an alternative called the Secunia Online Software Inspector(OSI).

Here are the features from their site:

• Detects insecure versions of common/popular programs installed on your PC
• Verifies that all Microsoft patches are applied
• Assists you in updating, patching, and protecting your PC
• Activates additional security features in Sun Java
• Runs through your browser. No installation or download is required

Here is a trick to reduce spam if you are using Gmail.

Lets say your email address is minime@gmail.com. You are interested in signing up to newsletter say gardening. You can register as minime+gardening@gmail.com. The newsletter will still be received at minime@gmail.com.

I use this method in combination with filters to maintain my emails. If I find I am receiving spam through this email address, I just dump them by filtering it to the trash bin.

My suggestion is to use “Ultimate Boot CD for Windows“. There is some leg work to be done before burning a bootable CD and is clearly stated in the site. A very clear instruction is given too.

Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. While the most widely recognized form of spam is e-mail spam, the term is applied to similar abuses in other media: instant messaging spam, Usenet newsgroup spam, Web search engine spam, spam in blogs, wiki spam, online classified ads spam, mobile phone messaging spam, Internet forum spam, junk fax transmissions, social networking spam, and file sharing network spam..

Wikipedia

Ever since email has been around there have been spam (atleast as far as I know). It has grown out of proportion to the level that most of your emails are actually spam rather than genuine emails.

I have been affected by spam so much so that I had to give up two email addresses so far. It was a pain to sift through the junk for genuine email from friends or families. I opted to delete them and created a new email from gmail and mass email my family members and friends.

Free Email Services

Free email services like Google, Yahoo and hotmail has improved their anti-spam services and in most cases work pretty well. But some Spam will still slip through. These anti-spam methods are highly automated and In order to strike a balance between accidently blocking genuine emails verses spam emails, ISP need to make some compromises. Spam email will eventually get through looking genuine.

Manage Spam

I recommend having at least two email addresses. Registering for an email address from free providers is as easy as ABC. No wonder hackers and spammers register them easily!

1. Give out one email address out to close friends and family members. Do not reveal this to anyone else    and definitely do not put it online where the spam bots can easy seek out and get your email address.

2. Register another email ID to register for membership sites and newsletters.

Subscribing for memberships and newsletters has a high chance of getting spammed. If the sites you registered are not secured enough you will be spammed. Some site would even sell your email addresses to partners to offer products and so on. It could be just spam to you.

3. Make your email address as unique as possible but do not make them too difficult for others to remember.

Spammers tend to make combinations of common names and numbers and broadcast emails. If they are lucky it will get through to you.

Do you use any other methods of preventing email SPAM?

PRESS RELEASE

Singapore – 27 August 2009 –WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world’s leader in external storage solutions,
today introduced a new version of its popular WD TV media player. The new WD TV Mini Media
Player now enables playback of RealNetworks®, Inc.’s RealVideo™ content and provides a more
affordable way for consumers to play their stored digital content in up to 1080i HD resolution directly
on their HD television.

The WD TV Mini Media Player connects to a user’s TV or home theater and plays digital movies,
music and photos stored on USB drives such as the best-selling WD My Passport™ portable drive. As
with other WD TV models, the WD TV Mini Media Player supports playback of digital media on most
USB mass storage devices such as digital camcorders and digital cameras. The new compact design is
small and portable enough for users to easily take with them when they travel and play their digital
media anywhere on any TV in up to 1080i HD resolution.

According to research firm Parks Associates, the average consumer household currently has
approximately 298 GB of digital media, which will reach approximately 898 GB of digital media by
2012.

These large personal digital libraries are all but trapped on users’ computers. In order to play their
content on their TVs, consumers have struggled with clumsy solutions such as copying onto multiple

CDs and DVDs or connecting their PCs to their TVs via wires or complicated home networking
solutions. The new WD TV Mini Media Player perfectly suits the needs of those with a large media
collection that are looking for an easy and affordable solution to watch their digital media on their
TVs.

“The popularity of the RealVideo format and its compatibility with the WD TV Mini Media Player
makes it an excellent solution for consumers who wish to enjoy their RealVideo content on their TVs,”
said Scott Nelson, director of business development for RealNetworks.

“For those who desire an easy, affordable and portable solution to enjoy their digital media on their
TVs and who have content in RealVideo format, the new WD TV Mini Media Player fits the bill,” said
Craig Davis, Director, Sales & Marketing, Branded Product Group, Western Digital Asia Pacific
Region. “The new WD TV Mini Media Player unlocks the content from their PCs and storage devices
and makes it simple for people to enjoy their media on their home theater systems, without the need to
spend time configuring a complicated device or transcoding files to make them compatible.”

Features of the WD TV Mini Media Player include:

? Play video, music and photos on your TV in up to 1080i HD resolution;
? Supports widest variety of file formats including RealMedia Variable Bitrate (RMVB);
? Rich HD 1080i advanced navigation and user interface;
? DVD-like navigation with chapter support, trick modes and subtitles;
? Expandable:  buy more storage, delete fewer movies;
? Photo slideshow with unique transitions and music on your HD TV;
? Thumbnail support including photo thumbnails and music album art;
? Ability to preview your video during navigation (480 and 720 mode only);
? Video, music and photo auto-play for users digital signage solution;
? Subtitle support including multi-language subtitle support for video playback;
? Picture Transfer Protocol to view or backup content from your digital image device;
? Compatible with USB Camcorders and USB mass storage devices;
? Component and composite video output;
? Digital optical audio output via SPDIF;
? Ultra-compact design making it perfectly portable for travel; and,
? 1-year limited warranty.

Pricing and Availability

The WD TV Mini Media Player is available now at selected retailers and is distributed by
AMC Pacific Pte Ltd in Singapore. The MSRP for the WD TV Mini Media Player is S$129.

About WD

WD, one of the storage industry’s pioneers and long-time leaders, provides products and
services for people and organizations that collect, manage and use digital information. The company
produces reliable, high-performance hard drives that keep users’ data accessible and secure from loss.
WD applies its storage expertise to consumer products for external, portable and shared storage
applications.

WD was founded in 1970. The company’s storage products are marketed to leading systems
manufacturers, selected resellers and retailers under the Western Digital® and WD brand names. Visit
the Investor section of the company’s Web site (www.westerndigital.com) to access a variety of
financial and investor information.