bruceb news

One of the pieces of legislation being reviewed to deal with terrorism would permit Internet surveillance without a court order. The scope of that surveillance was debated at a Congressional committee meeting on Tuesday. The bill’s advocates argue that prosecutors should be able to intercept e-mail headers (TO: and FROM:), since it’s analogous to what they can discover about incoming and outgoing phone calls. But they’re also requesting the right to intercept the addresses of all web sites visited, without a court order. And that’s a wildly different thing, eh? Wired Magazine quotes Senators Hatch and Schumer as saying that “Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy in the identities of their e-mail correspondents, or the addresses of Web pages they visit.” Boy, that sounds flatly wrong to me. […] continued

There’s at least one nasty new worm attacking Windows 2000 Servers today, and as near as I can tell it’s causing problems all over the Internet. Details are hazy, but apparently the worm travels as an e-mail virus that is not covered by current antivirus definitions. Some of my clients have DSL lines that are down, at least one has a dialup account that’s gone dead, and browsing seems to be slow all over. Here’s one of the early articles about what’s going on. Be particularly cautious about opening your e-mail today!

The World Trade Center disaster has already generated a tremendous amount of e-mail spam and chain letters. As this article points out, you can count on a lot of hoaxes to be disseminated by e-mail in the next few weeks. Exercise a high degree of caution before you forward an e-mail message to your favorite fifty friends. Be suspicious. People are not grateful to receive messages filled with misinformation, no matter how well-intentioned you are. And an unsolicited message asking for money is very likely to be fraudulent. Be generous, get involved, help your neighbors and our country – but watch your e-mail! […] continued

Internet security is the buzzword of the moment. There’s a lot of paranoia about privacy these days. Some of it is justified.

For what it’s worth, I tend to think that cookies do not currently deserve much paranoia. There are hypothetical ways in which information from cookies could be used in insidious ways by advertisers, but I’m not aware of anything like that happening in the real world – at least not yet.

Cookies are little files left on your computer while you visit various web sites. When Amazon greets you by name and remembers your shopping cart, that’s the result of reading a cookie on your computer. […] continued

When you’re downloading software, watch for an innocuous item named ‘Gator” that will appear checkmarked in the list of items to download. It’s an evil piece of software that monitors your surfing and pops advertisements in your face that it believes are related to the site you’re visiting. It’s not polite about it – advertisements can appear any time you’re online. Naturally it has some features intended to make it palatable – it assists you in filling out online forms and includes an electronic wallet to assist you in filling out credit card information online. Heck, maybe some people would think that’s worth enduring more online ads. […] continued

The SIRCAM virus may have come your way – I got several copies in my mailbox. The usual precautions apply – don’t open file attachments to e-mail, keep your antivirus software up to date. And if you’re running Microsoft Office 2000, visit the Office Update site and install Service Pack 1 or 2 plus the Outlook E-Mail Security Update.

Meanwhile, the news is full of Code Red, the worm that’s going to disrupt the entire Internet tomorrow. (Well, maybe. Do you suppose the reports of the apocalypse are just the teensiest bit overstated?) It’s an issue for network administrators, not for most users. […] continued

There’s another virus travelling around quickly this morning. It’s similar to the Anna Kournikova “Love Bug” virus – annoying but it doesn’t damage your computer. The “Homepage” virus will arrive in a message from someone you know, with the subject line “Homepage.” The attachment is a .vbs visual basic script that opens a porno web site on your computer and sends the message on to everyone in your Outlook address book. Don’t open file attachments, eh? Here’s an article with more information. I’ve become a big fan of the Outlook e-mail security update, which blocks certain kinds of attachments – especially .EXE and .VBS attachments. […] continued

Microsoft is hustling to revise its privacy policy for Passport and Hotmail, after a torrent of criticism from privacy advocates. (See my item on March 30.) Microsoft says it’s a terrible misunderstanding, just some old legalese that they forgot to update. Here’s an article about the gosh darned oversight.

Microsoft has new initiatives on the way that are meant to move programs and data online, relieving companies and users from some of the burden of maintaining it all. Confidentiality will be the key issue that will persuade or dissuade people from trusting the services.

Many of the new .NET services are built on the Passport system created by Microsoft. Passport is an integral part of Hotmail and MSN Messenger. The Register is the first to notice that the current Passport Terms of Service give Microsoft and its business partners the right to own every bit of information that goes through the Passport system. […] continued

Another Symantec bulletin uses plain English to describe how hackers look for a computer to attack over the Internet, what might make you a target, and steps you can take to protect yourself. This is also highly recommended reading.