Bill Mullins' Weblog – Tech Thoughts

Tech Thoughts Daily Net News – April 26, 2011

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Who’s Screwing You Over on Privacy Issues? Pretty Much Everybody – Dropbox- flamed this week for revealing that it will hand over your stored files to the feds if requested – is not alone in its willingness to throw users’ privacy under the proverbial bus. Nor is Apple, under the gun today after a revelation by O’Reilly Radar that 3G iPads and iPhones keep track of users’ locations in unencrypted files.

New Stars Malware Said to Target Iran – The Iranian government says it is being targeted by a new piece of malware aimed at its federal computers. The disclosure comes a few months after the country’s nuclear facility was hit by the Stuxnet worm, kicking off a frenzy of cyberwar hysteria and speculation.

Firefox 4 Tops 100M Downloads, Fails to Move Share – In the month since Firefox 4’s launch, the browser has racked up 100 million downloads, Mozilla said last weekend. But statistics from one Web analytics company showed that Firefox 4’s introduction has done nothing to boost Mozilla’s overall share of the browser market.

Editing PDFs in Linux made possible with PDF Studio – Looking for a good PDF Editor for the Linux operating system? Jack Wallen has finally come across a tool that just might fit the bill. Read on and see what Jack thinks of PDF Editor.

Sony’s Silence on Cause of PSN Outage is Troubling – Sony’s silence on the PSN outage creates a news vacuum leaving many to assume a worst case scenario. Should PSN users be worried about more than just getting back to gaming?

Wardriving gang targeting small firms – A group of individuals who are believed to have been engaged in wardriving around Seattle and stealing personal and financial information from networks belonging to small area businesses during the last five years, are currently being investigated by the local police.

Compliance violations via email increase – In a study of how professionals use, and companies manage, email – particularly the handling of private and confidential information – VaporStream found that employees remain a major source of risk to employers and themselves.

Five tips for diagnosing memory problems – Memory problems can be tricky to troubleshoot. But working your way through these diagnostic steps can help you zero in on the cause.

Company News:

Google insists it will remain open source player – Google insists that Android will remain an open source platform and takes great exception to reports to the contrary.

Entrust expands authentication platform – Entrust is extending their Non-Federal Identity SSP service to include Personal Identity Verification-Interoperable (PIV-I) compliance for state governments, the private sector and entities that wish to securely communicate and interoperate with the U.S. federal government.

Google Crushes, Shreds Old Hard Drives to Prevent Data Leakage – A new look into Google’s data centers shows extensive security measures and the destruction of old hard drives to prevent leakage of customer data.

Off Topic (Sort of):

How to get people to use strong passwords – Can passwords be both secure and easy to use? Some think “no”, but if you stop there, you simply aren’t thinking enough.

Really? House Democrat Warns of Sex Predators Using iPhone Tracking – If you’ve been following PCMag’s coverage of the iPhone tracking controversy, you’d know by now that it would be extremely difficult for a stalker to find you with the phone’s location- tracking features. Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass), however, clearly isn’t paying that close attention.

Phishing attacks: Training tips to keep users vigilant – Organizations that take IT security very seriously still become victims to phishing attacks. How can we guard against social engineering? Here are a few tips from security experts.

I’m a Mac, You’re Sarah Palin – Mac users are more politically liberal, more urban, younger and more educated than their PC-using counterparts, according to a new survey by affinity aggregator Hunch.

Today’s Quote:

Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.”

–    W. C. Fields

Today’s Free Downloads:

Hamster Free Zip Archiver – If you’re not satisfied with the basic Zip archiving built into Windows, you’ll want to give Hamster Free Zip Archiver a try. It offers far more capabilities than what you get with Windows, and unlike many other similar pieces of archiving software, does it for free.

7-Zip (64-bit version) – You can compress and decompress .zip format archive files using Windows’ own built-in capabilities, but that’s limited. Or you can use a commercial program like WinZip that’s packed with all sorts of goodies, but you have to pay for it. Or you can use 7-Zip, which gives you a couple of the most important features for free. It’s available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

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