Why You Need a Software Firewall, and Security at Wifi Hotspots
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Geekery
I’m getting tired of answering questions at Yedda or Yahoo!Answers, then seeing my answers scraped and used as content on other people’s blogs. I’m probably going to keep answering the questions, but just answering with a pointer to a post here or at one of my other sites. Ordinarily, I’d put this particular answer over at another site, but I’m rebuilding it right now.
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Tags: eSet, firewall, GoToMyPC, Remote Access, security, VPN, wifi, wireless
TotD: Eating and Drinking
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Thought of the Day
This passage reminded me of Sam:
People ask me: Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don’t you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?
They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft.
The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry.
But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it … and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied … and it is all one.
From The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher
Tags: comort, eating, food, hunger, M.F.K. Fisher, Sam, security
Malware Woes
Posted by Cyn | Filed under Geekery
A few weeks ago, my PC was somehow infected with some nasty thing that tried to turn it in to a spambot via driveby download. I had the current version of Symantec AntiVirus running, set to the absolute highest paranoia levels and updated daily. I also had Spybot Search & Destroy running, again, updated daily and carefully configured. I had both do full system scans every day, as well as keeping them memory-resident at all times.
Neither program ever gave so much as a peep. In fact, when I found the original file that was to blame and checked it manually with Symantec AV, it passed as though it were as innocent as a babe. If I hadn’t had the antivirus software configured to show me an icon in the systray when it was checking outgoing mail, who knows when I would have realized that the system was compromised? As it was, I knew within seconds. (Hey, I notice “outgoing mail” when my email program isn’t even open.) I ended up pulling out the ethernet cable to stop communications ‘til the system was clean.
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Tags: antivirus, antivirus software, ethernet, firewall, free online storage space, internet, LAN, mail server, malware, security, security software, security software research, spambot, Symantec, technical, trojan