5 posts tagged “security”
I have wanted a MacBook since they were released. It seems that all the “cool” people in the blogging universe use Macs and I am still plodding along with a Dell Latitude D600. I would love an Intel Macbook but at 700.00GBP I just can’t afford one!
I found myself on eBay.co.uk looking at the Apple laptops that are available. There are a few nice looking machines on there but I don’t want a macbook pro, I want a Macbook. As soon as I searched for “MacBook” and selected that I was searching for laptops I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. 99 percent of the auctions for a Macbook appear to be either fraudulent as in the seller has 0 history, registered today, or it is just plain fraud. I even came across one that was for the seller “to get a free Macbook with your reference” Check it out here, if you don’t know what the hell I am talking about.
If this kind of auction is allowed on eBay.co.uk I will apologise, but I find it highly contrary to the purpose of eBay and I am sure that other honest members would be highly offended as well.
Everyone says not to buy computers on eBay. I did buy this Dell on eBay and I was lucky. It arrived totally as described and so far has been a brilliant system. After seeing the MacBooks on eBay were mostly not real or quite obviously trying to rip you off I decided to report the auctions I suspected.
I clicked the “report this item” link at the bottom of the eBay page and was greeted with another page that had me select why I was reporting it. I selected that I thought the item was fraudulent and then clicked next. It then gave me a page to read about fraud. It did not say “We will look into this immediately, thanks for being a great eBay consumer” Nothing like that. They make it so difficult to report the item as fraud that I decided to give up and just write this instead.
I am a fairly avid user of eBay but what I have seen tonight has really disturbed me and unless eBay steps up their security, and watches these quite obviously “fraud susceptible” items more and more people are going to be ripped off while conducting business on eBay than are being already and this situation is only going to get worse.
For the moment, for your saftey: DO NOT BUY or BID for a Macbook on eBay unless there are contact details for the seller and they have a good feedback rating of 15+ or more. Make sure they have no negative feedback and if they do that it is obvious why. These are good rules to live by when purchasing on eBay anyway, but with this discovery, I would consider this a YOU STAND TO LOOSE YOUR MONEY situation.
There is a brilliant TV programme has been airing two weeks in a row here in England on Sunday and Monday nights. It is called Trial and Retribution and this week’s installment involved a murderer using the internet, specifically chat rooms to contact his victims. His victims were young, school girls using the internet service. He would identify himself as a young man, display an image and entice the girls to meet him, when they met, he would kill them.
I have known about internet crime for years and used chat rooms on and off for about 9 years. I have never been very comfortable in chat rooms as I am aware of how easily one can be tricked. Recently while looking for like minded people on MySpace to talk to, I have found myself in a MySpace chat room on more than one occasion. Watching this programme made me think long and hard about my experience in the chat rooms on MySpace and how it would be so easy, especially as a younger person to be tricked in such a virtual venue. I decided I would do a little investigating of my own to see what happened in these chat rooms if I stuck around and read what users were discussing.
I started my investigation by going back to the chat rooms on MySpace into the film-makers, screenwriters and actors section. I knew of an existing problem that infects the entire MySpace chat arena. No one talks about the subject that the room is set up for. Conversations in the film making section ranged from idle conversation to discussions about hobbies, and most frighteningly and frequently about various sexual positions, sexually oriented questions and preludes to cyber sex. I was concerned to see that members of the chat room profiles said their ages were from 13 to 35 and everything in between. There seems to be a rather large dosage of 14, 15 and 16 year old girls.
MySpace needs to own the problem of the chat rooms. They are not being used for the purpose for which they are setup. The chats have no named moderator and from the profanity used in the chats, no moderator took control or asked anyone to mind their language. This means that anyone, no matter their age could access MySpace, create a profile and log in to one of these chat sessions where they are exposed to the afore mentioned conversation and worse. The worse part includes offers from people like “Any girls want to chat” and when they answer they go to private IM so that what is said is not in the view of the room.
During my investigation I participated in a chat with another user of MySpace, a female 18 year old. She was talking to a male 17 year old and when he left she remarked to me that “ohh..he had a nice stomach” she was referring to the image in his profile which depicted a male’s mid section, muscular and attractive. I asked her a simple question “How do you know it was his stomach?” To this question she replied, “Good Question.” She didn’t really know, and at the time it did not appear that she had in any stretch of the imagination think he might not be who he claimed to be.
The problem is clear. The Internet is the Wild West and a perfect hunting ground for internet predators. Parents can only protect their children so far as they can access the internet just about anywhere. One of the methods used to catch the bad guy in the drama this evening was a police officer posing as a 16 year old girl in the chat room. The environment of the chat was identical to this MySpace situation down the subject of the room. I think this would be a good precaution to employ on a continuous basis, have a constant police presence in the chat rooms some labeled and some under cover.
The only way for problems like this to stop is to place limits on MySpace users dependant on their age. This will of course be a sloppy fix because anyone can lie and say they are 16 or 18 when they are 14. It is as simple as changing the year of their birth and kids are smart enough to do this. It is the responsibility of Myspace to deal with this problem and to see to it that safety protocols are in place to protect the young and naïve. Doing nothing is not an option.
I had the pleasure of speaking with a member of the support team at Control Scan today after I had no luck contacting a company that displays the Control Scan badges on their website. In their own words ControlScan:
Provides third party verification and services to identify, measure and prioritize security, privacy, quality, accessibility and compliance risks that exist on corporate web properties.
If I was in need of this service I can assure you the first place I would go to is ControlScan. Their outstanding level of customer service even to someone calling who is not looking to become a customer is fantastic for a dot com company. There is no doubt in my mind why they hold business accounts with such large companies as quotes on their website.
I contacted ControlScan after having no luck contacting a company with whom I have recently done business. The company is part of the Yahoo Stores and is called DieCastBlast. Through a relative in Nevada I bought a gift from them for my father’s Christmas present a beautiful Aston Martin DBS, the one from the latest James Bond film.
It was never shipped but according to UPS who had shipping information for the item, it was billed to them on the 12th of December. After countless attempts at getting in contact with DieCastBlast by phone and email we resorted to contacting ControlScan, as they had badges that claimed DieCastBlast had passed their requirements.
Because of the special circumstances of this situation the representative at ControlScan was extremely helpful in getting me the contact phone number for the human behind the scenes at DieCastBlast. Once my Uncle and I had obtained the phone number we called them and were given a series of excuses that ultimately added up to the item not being dispatched and claims that we had been informed of this already and a credit had been issued back to the credit card that purchased the model car.
Without the help of ControlScan, we would be no closer to getting this problem dealt with, we would not have been able to reach a voice at DieCastBlast as all previous voice mails had gone unanswered and emails not returned. I have given ControlScan a complete account of this event and their representative promised that the information would be kept on their permanent file.
I still don’t have the Aston Martin DBS is 1/18 scale for my Dad to open on Christmas Day. That’s the only thing left to get this Christmas!
I am no saint. As many of the online community have done, I have used software of various types that have been cracked or less than legal, and I have downloaded music. Just about a year ago, I stopped doing anything remotely illegal online with new regard for the law. I am an advocate of fair use, which means if I buy music on my desktop’s iTunes, I want to be able to use that music on every music player I own, forever. I am extremely vocal about DRM forcing us into a “one use per download” methodology.
Windows Vista like Windows XP, ME, 98 and even 95 will have a product key that you have to use to install the OS. The difference between the product key in Vista and the one in earlier OS’s like Windows 98 is Vista’s will actually do more than allow you to install the OS. Vista’s product key will regulate the amount that you are able to use the operating system, decide whether or not you are eligible for updates and will help Windows Genuine Advantage decide where it is going to stop you from using your computer sometime two months down the road.
As I have been advocating fair use I can not very well turn around and recommend that you pirate an OS, especially one that is not even public yet. Someone has come up with a registry hack that will allow you to do just that. This new hack will allow you to hack into Vista and use the product key you got with your Beta version of Vista and apply it to the RTM version.
My first reaction to this is. Why? Why should any of these software companies listen to us when we ask for looser restraints on music and software so that we are able to use it for our own purposes more easily? How can we expect them to be compliant when we are talking about cracking the OS that they have been taking so much time to release? I am not a Microsoft apologist, I am not apologizing that they have been wasting our time for months while they “work further” on Vista but I can say that Microsoft are people and they will respond as people.
At this juncture you might be wondering how I think Microsoft might “take this out on us” and I would point you to the upcoming Zune. Zune has reduced functionality, it won’t be able to play music that you have bought on the iTunes music store, if you share music you can only keep it for three days, there are countless reasons Zune is counter play to fair use advocates. Microsoft might very well decide that
“If they are going to screw with the OS…we’re going to tighten the DRM on Zune to prevent anyone from using anything but Microsoft licensed music….”
Don’t get the wrong idea, this is speculation of Microsoft’s “feelings” if Vista is pummeled by the same hackers who go after everything else they should be paying for.
If you want to use Vista, you should buy it, legitimately.
The amount of non-secure wireless home networks is astounding. It seems that most people just plug the router in, make sure they have “the internet” and just think that is all you have to do. It seems that Wireless Security which helps prevent bandwidth theft and data vandalism is last on the consumer’s mind when they install a home network.
This is a serious problem as most laptops, PDAs, even some mobile phones have built in 802.11x technology which of course is WiFi. If you are running an unencrypted wireless network then you are vulnerable to attack from any number of devices that could gain access to your network.
In my experience, when you buy a wireless network router, security is not enabled by default or even hinted by the software or accompanying documentation that it should be. As recently as the other day when I have spoke to Netgear Technical Help they advised me to disable Wireless security to speed up my connection! When I have had my laptop in London and browsed for Wireless networks available there are more on the list than can be displayed in one page, there is actually a scroll bar! I found that over HALF of them were unsecured!
I spoke to a Silicon Valley Technology Consultant about this issue and received the following quote:
“As a consultant I see unsecured home networks everywhere. Manufacturers of home networks should help customers set up a secure network from the onset…”
If that is not enough, I did a little research and spoke to a few more people and learned that because of the lack of security on a network they work near on a regular basis, their laptop jumps straight onto the other network with no warning. This has become irritating. The user went as far as to change the SSID on the unsecured wireless router to “IHAVEBEENHACKED” this in my opinion is a great change from the default “NetGear.”
Another Tech Expert I spoke to told me “this state of affairs is akin to driving down the internet super highway with no seatbelt”
If you are not sure if your wireless network is secure or not you should make it a priority. Look at the documentation that came with your router, or Google it. If all else fails get in touch with your Router manufactures technical support and ask them. Modern routers are capable of two kinds of encryption, WEP and WPA. By many studies WPA is stronger security but not all WiFi receiving cards support it.
Prevent yourself from bandwidth theft and data vandalism. Check your wireless security before it is too late!
