Thursday, November 27, 2014

Spam and Scams

Every day one hears of people having their computers or their phone hacked and money disappearing mysteriously.

Many people pay money for third party security for their computers and phones; but they neglect basic security themselves. They are running another operating system that is by default lying on its back waiting to be defiled, but it's OK because Symantec or somebody else is looking after them.

They are also quite happy to use those computers to do their banking and shopping; in fact to run their lives for them with all their utilities bills etc., getting them a discount for doing things online. The killer is that they are hooked in to social media 24/7 and when an email/message comes from their bank/service provider with a clickable link they are likely to just click and follow, they even have these banks/service providers as friends in Facebook or Twitter.

I do not  use online banking and do not fill in direct debit forms online either, because I think that the internet is fun and stupidly insecure, I am sceptical about any email/message from people that I don't know personally, and I know that Facebook/Twitter is as secure as a colander; they are not your friends, they view you as a data source and a revenue stream that they derive their incomes from.

My computers all run Linux because I feel that anything that is Open Source by default has huge numbers of people looking at the underlying code to make sure there are no serious security holes. I tend not to click on any link that comes in an email/message because that way madness lies.

Toodle ooh  for now, I'm off to make my foil helmet to save me from all those alphabet soup people that are supposed to be guaranteeing our safety!