August 30, 2010
WEAK PASSWORDS
Previously:
Passwords: computer login
Passwords: e-mail
Passwords: Google Accounts & Windows Live ID
Passwords: password managers
Passwords: online passwords and LastPass
Let’s go over a few facts of life.
No one is enjoying the need to have a lot of passwords. It’s hard to remember the passwords, of course, but in our complicated world it has become even harder now to understand when passwords are required or what they’re for.
I feel your pain but I can’t change the world. At the moment your passwords are your defense against identity theft, financial loss, […] continued
August 5, 2010
LAW OFFICE CASE MANAGEMENT IN THE CLOUD
Previously:
The Sad State Of Law Office Software
I’m going to work up to specific products, but let’s start with the concept of storing valuable, confidential data in the cloud, on servers run by some big company.
As a lawyer in a small firm, think of the scariest example you can imagine – say, your highly sensitive letter to a client outlining the risks in your litigation strategy, or notes on the phone conversation with a client where she confessed to killing Colonel Mustard in the library with a candlestick. Save the file as a Word document on […] continued
August 3, 2010
CRITICAL WINDOWS UPDATE
Microsoft released a patch yesterday that should be installed promptly on all Windows computers. Most of you will find that it was installed automatically on Monday night. If your computer restarted last night, you’re almost certainly fine – but be alert in case the Windows update icon is trying to get your attention from the lower right corner of your screen! If you want to make sure it was installed, look in the update history on your computer for KB2286198, the reference number for Microsoft’s security bulletin.
The patch fixes a particularly nasty vulnerability, yet another way that […] continued
July 26, 2010
FACEBOOK FRIEND SUGGESTIONS – HOW DOES IT KNOW?
When I joined Facebook, I was asked if Facebook could rummage through my Outlook address book looking for a match with other Facebook users. I politely responded, no, absolutely not, thank you very much, and I thought that was the end of it.
My Facebook page fired up right away, empty except for the suggestions on the side of the page listing Facebook users that I might know. I assumed it would suggest people based on common schools or common employers; since I hadn’t supplied that information to Facebook yet, I didn’t expect to see any familiar names. […] continued
July 1, 2010
GMAIL LICENSE AGREEMENT
Wayne Small, an Australian SBS consultant, took a look at Google’s license agreement recently and wrote up a nice reminder that big companies do not make any pretense of playing nicely with your information.
Google Terms of Service cover all of Google’s services, including Gmail. There are some provisions that shouldn’t be surprising – for example, that Google can turn services off without warning or notice, with no consequences.
You probably already know that Google runs through the text of email messages to decide what advertisements will be presented, but it’s interesting to find out that Google […] continued
June 10, 2010
DROPBOX, ANDROIDS, AND SECURITY
Previously:
Sync Files With Dropbox
Dropbox for iPad, Android
Almost everyone should take a look at Dropbox, the service that syncs folders and files among your computers and mobile devices. If you have more than one computer (home/office/notebook) and you haven’t started using it yet, then go read about it and get started! I’m going to highlight a security issue but that shouldn’t discourage you from using it for all the things it does so well – just keep an eye on all of your tools with security and privacy in mind.
Dropbox has released apps […] continued
May 11, 2010
COPIERS AND SECURITY
As if we don’t have enough potential security risks to worry about! Recently a number of people have pointed out that photocopy machines can have internal hard drives designed to store documents that been copied or scanned. If the machine is replaced, those scans leave the office, usually not encrypted and potentially filled with confidential information.
This is more of an issue at big companies. Small businesses don’t often pay for big built-in hard drives that would store a lot of scanned documents. It’s too easy to hit the “e-mail” button and clog up their Outlook folders instead. […] continued
May 6, 2010
FACEBOOK AND PRIVACY
In the golden glow of hindsight, there was a wonderful time when big companies would do things that were good for their customers because that was likely to be the most profitable choice, and because it was the right thing to do.
Big companies still consider doing good things for their customers – but it’s only one element in their thoughts and can easily be jettisoned if there’s more money to be made from treating customers badly and profiting from the ones who feel locked in or don’t have any reasonable options.
April 27, 2010
REDACTION DANGER
In December the Transportation Security Administration released its airport security screening procedure guidelines with redactions that failed to remove the underlying text. (Boing Boing: “Unfortunately, the security geniuses at the DHS don’t know that drawing black blocks over the words you want to eliminate from your PDF doesn’t actually make the words go away, and can be defeated by nefarious al Qaeda operatives through a complex technique known as ctrl-a/ctrl-c/ctrl-v.”) It has happened over and over in lawsuits and releases by high profile government agencies.
So it’s hardly a surprise to see another story in the news […] continued
April 21, 2010
MCAFEE KILLS WINDOWS XP COMPUTERS
“We’re hearing from all over that a bad McAfee for Windows XP update is causing computers worldwide to shut down. Apparently DAT update 5958 deletes the svchost.exe file, which then triggers a false-positive in McAfee itself and sets off a chain of uncontrolled restarts and loss of networking functionality. Yeah, wild — Twitter is basically going nuts, and McAfee’s support site appears to be down. There are some fixes floating around out there, but it may be too late — the final tally of borked PCs today may reach into the millions. We’ve already heard anecdotally […] continued