Category: Life

With all the recent hoopla about security issues going around, I thought I’d share some tips on how to keep your computer safe. I assume that you already know not to open attachments from strangers, and that you should always have a firewall and anti-virus program installed. This entry goes into a little bit more depth than that.

The router. Having a router is a first line of defense. Do not ever connect your computer directly to the modem. Due to how routers work, outsiders are unable to have direct access to your computer – unless you initiate the connection with them first, or modify the settings in your router to allow them to have access. An unpatched Windows XP machine that’s connected to the modem directly will be compromised in minutes.

The Internet browser. Aside from trying to get you by sending you virus-laden emails, the big way that the bad guys will try to get at you is through your web surfing. There’s two facets to this. Some bad guys will try to infect your computer outright, and turn it into a spam-machine. However, the more recent trend is to compromise your online identity: load custom code that gets your computer to spam Facebook or Twitter, without your computer itself being infected. This works by turning your web browser against you, and its much easier to pull off – all you have to do is surf to a website.

Older web browsers have no defense against this type of attack and will fall right for it. So if you’re one of the millions that still use the ancient Internet Explorer 6, switch. Newer browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome check what websites are getting your traffic, and look at the behaviour of the websites you’re on, and will try to warn you if it detects anything suspicious.

At the present time, Google Chrome is my browser of choice. I especially like that it patches itself regularly to defend against the latest attacks aimed at the browser itself. Firefox auto-updates as well, but usually you have to press a few buttons and it’s an invasive process. Chrome does it in the background and doesn’t require any user intervention.

Block ads. Even if you surf sites that are well-known and considered safe, the bad guys can still get some of their code to be loaded by your web browser. Third-party ads are one such approach. The ad company might be legit, but they might sell some advertising space to company B, who divides it up and sells it off to company C, D, and E. Company E might actually be a front for a cyber criminal. He loads in custom code, which then gets displayed on the legitimate site you surf. You and thousands of others get compromised.

Modern browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have plug-ins you can download to block ads. I very much recommend that you make use of these.

USB Sticks. If someone else passes me a USB stick, I never run anything that’s on it without first scanning its contents with an anti-virus. If you have Windows XP, disable AutoRun, otherwise, the contents could be made to run automatically as soon as the device is inserted into your computer – and inject a virus along with it.

I remember that there was this kid whose computer I cleaned from malware. He put a USB stick that he had used during the infection back in, and his computer got infected all over again.

Beware of PDFs. Alright, so you already know to not open executable files (.exe and .scr) when you check your emails from anyone, including your family. You have to be careful with PDFs as well. Adobe Acrobat is a pretty popular target for bad guys. If you must open the files, then I use something like the Google PDF Viewer, which takes out the offending code.

Update: Check the comments section for some great tips from Sakuramboo!

I met Paul when I was working selling boat tickets years ago. He was given a hard time by other staffers, so I immediately liked him. He was an oddball, and I thought that was cool. I became his friend.

However, our friendship was plagued with frustrations. We’d plan to go out for a beer, and he wouldn’t show up. I would call up his house; his parents would tell me he had forgotten that he was working at McDonald’s. When Paul would eventually meet me, he would invent tales of what happened. His maternal grandmother died more than once. He would lie to me time after time – only to be caught in it. On the times he would show up, he was always 15-30 minutes late. Always.

Sometimes during our outings would claim to go to the bathroom – only to disappear for half an hour. He would never apologize or say anything about it. He always wanted me to spend 1.5 hours busing to his home or a pub minutes from his house, rather than meeting half-way somewhere. This despite the fact that he had access to a car, while I did not. By car, the trek was only 15-20 minutes.

By the end, I just didn’t have it in me to continue the friendship. So I stopped answering his calls. And that’s when it started. At first, he would call me from his home. Almost every day. Realizing that I was screening his calls, he would call me from the McDonald’s he works at. He’s 25 now, has a double degree, but lives with his parents and works at McDonald’s.

So I get it – he’s got other issues. But nonetheless, I had had enough. Suddenly, the calls stopped. But at the same time, I started getting calls from an unknown number. The person would stay on the line, usually for 8-10 seconds and then hang up. I got especially pissed off when the person called at 3AM. I always suspected it was Paul, but I couldn’t confirm it. He never spoke a word.

Finally today, I was looking through my phone records with WIND Mobile. They had switched their billing from showing the Caller ID, which was being shown as “Unknown”, to the ANI, the Caller ID-like service telephone companies use for billing purposes. Unlike Caller ID, ANI cannot be blocked. So I finally got to see who was calling me all these times.

It was Paul. He was blocking outbound Caller ID all this time, probably by pressing *67 before making the calls to me. The display on my phone didn’t show the number for him, but my billing record does.

For your pleasure, here’s the logs from the last month. Keep in mind, this has been going on for months. I called WIND Mobile, but they said the only thing I could do was to change my number. I’ll have to call Paul, and tell him to stop. If that fails, I’ll have to switch numbers.

The Phone Calls from Paul:

Call log updated on September 14th.

Alright, so a number of years ago, I caught the book-reading bug. Turned off by all the literature we were forced to digest in high school, I had got sick of books and had stopped reading altogether. Then I go the bug, and started reading once more.

Things changed in the last few years. Work started to mentally drain me. I would come home, and the last thing I wanted to do was to think. I just wanted to relax to some mind-numbing activity, such as reading sites like Reddit or playing video games.

I never stopped buying books, mind you, I just stopped reading them. So I would keep visit Chapters and purchase titles that interested me. Most recently, this included a splurge on math books where I bought a book on irrational numbers, another on prime numbers, and a tome on the history of algebra.

Finally, a few days ago, I caught the book-reading bug once more. I’ve been reading two books. One is a collection of real-life short stories by super-cool-lesbian-Yukoner Ivan Coyote called The Slow Fix. The other is a book on Africa that I picked up at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. I figured if the museum carried it, that it was likely the least likely title to depict things inaccurately.

*Hugs Books*

Ontario has a population of 13 million people. Yet our provincial government is 200 billion dollars in debt. The federal government’s debt, by comparison, is 540 billion dollars for the whole of the nation.

That means that every Ontarian carries $18,000 of provincial debt, plus $15,000 of federal debt. The total gets real close to the annual salary of an Ontarian. It wasn’t always this bad. From 1997-2008 the federal government managed to reduce the national debt by $100 billion dollars, before spending its way out of the recession in 2009.

Can we do a repeat? Can we find a way to reduce debt while maintaining social programs, not shedding responsibilities to lower levels of government and making it their problem, and not breaking the banks of the average Canadian? It seems that the Ontario government is trying to make headway, but the results of their actions remains to be seen. As for our federal government, they insist on raising spending while maintaining tax levels.

Nevertheless, I feel like this debt isn’t talked about enough. It’s a lot of money, and it’s a load shared by all Ontarians.

Update: As it has been noted in the comments, I should credit my significant other for bringing this news piece to my attention. +1 Credit to BF!