Flashes of Panic

I know this is getting to be a broken record for me, but I really am professionally paranoid (and for good reason.) Anyway, you don’t want to hear me in “I told you so” mode.

There’s an article in Wired News today about “browser hijackers:” bits of spyware/malware which embed nasty stuff on your computer. And by “nasty” I mean, “felony conviction.” I couldn’t read the whole article, it just infuriated me so much.

Better news: via Adot’s, news of a browser plug-in (for Firefox and IE) called Spoof Stick which essentially shows you where you really are on the web. So if you’re about to be hooked by a phishing spoof, you look at Spoof Stick and see, “Hey! I’m not on Downtown Bank’s site! This is beyondthelaw.com!” It seems a bit like the angle-of-attack and tilt gauges in my cousin’s old Tercel, which he referred to as the “oh $#!+ meter”—do you really need a special dial to tell you you’re going uphill? You’d think not. But you’d also think a closed door would be enough to keep people out of a car without the need to lock it.

A friend quoted an email newsletter from Peter Coffee:

I spent almost an hour on the phone one morning last week de-Sassering my mother’s almost-new laptop via a coast-to-coast long-distance call. Call it a tipping point: After that incident, I’ve finally decided to start treating the cup of computing security as much more than half empty, rather than treating security threats as trace contaminants in an otherwise benign environment.

He’s just getting to that point?

The good news: there’s a new system for the Boss, still in its box in my office. Yes, it’s still Windows, but I sold him on replacing IE with Mozilla as his primary browser. And (since I need to remind myself that some things still just work) Raven has been up 237 days without a blink. When it hits 366, I’m making cupcakes. Sometimes the stuff that’s broken occupies all my attention, and the simple things which just work are forgotten.

Now playing: Stop Whispering from Pablo Honey by Radiohead opinion: 3 (of 5)