Triona's Tech Tips

I’m glad to report that Dell has rebranded the “Della” web site, less than two weeks after igniting an online furor among women in technology fields. Now called “Lifestyles,” the most offensive wording has been removed so women are no longer encouraged to purchase Dell to check their recipes and keep up with the latest fashion news.

Kudos to Dell for listening to the complaints, but fie on them for coming up with the idea in the first place. If the intent was to cater to the non-technical market, they blew it by assuming that all women are non-technical people and all non-technical people are women. Dell would do better by designing an ad campaign for non-technical people regardless of gender. Or… how about an ad campaign encouraging young women to pursue careers in technology? That would be a vast improvement over suggesting that the color of a woman’s laptop has to match her outfit. Personally, I’m more interested in how many gigahertz the computer has and whether or not it will suit my customer’s needs.

Hewlett-Packard has issued a recall for some 70,000 HP and Compaq notebook computer batteries due to risk of fire. You can read the CPSC recall information here. The batteries were sold both in computers and separately between August 2007 and March 2008. Affected models include the following:

Consumers may contact HP here regarding replacement batteries.

Computer security specialists, myself included, recommend that you avoid clicking on bad web links. But how can you tell a bad link from a good one? Even if you’re going after legitimate software it may be difficult to tell the difference. To demonstrate, I’ve pulled screenshots from the downloads for two of my most-recommended security tools, the free AVG anti-virus program and the free Spybot anti-spyware program.

The first hurdle comes when you search for these products. As you can see from this screenshot of a search for Spybot, it’s hard to tell which link to click.

The key is to look for the words “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads”. These are links, often phony, which come up when certain keywords are typed. There are plenty of bad or questionable links associated with the keyword “Spybot.” This is the same vicious technique hackers use to get you to click on bad links when you’re searching for hot topics like “swine flu” or “virus removal.” It’s black-hat search optimization, and the big search engines like Google and Yahoo aren’t going to protect you. They don’t care if the keywords link to malicious sites as long as they’re getting paid for the ads.

Let’s assume you’ve navigated yourself to the correct page to download Spybot. Even here, there’s a catch. Most software is downloaded from aggregate “mirror” sites, in this case CNet. These sites have keyword-based advertisements too, not all of them good. In this screenshot I’ve highlighted the ads in red, the correct Spybot download links in green. It’s like an obstacle course!

The AVG examples demonstrate the same thing. Assuming you’ve gotten yourself to the correct download page, you’ve got more bad links to avoid. Sometimes the positioning is such that the bad link looks like the good one. In this case, the words in blue, “Ad Feedback,” show you which parts of the page are ads. If you mentally divide the page up into regions you can see where the ads are versus where the content is.

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How much money is actually made from computer crime? Do companies lose money fighting against it? I’ve gathered some numbers to illustrate the burgeoning black market of cybercrime.

According to a recent report from security firm Finjan, fake antivirus software can bring in an average of $10,800 a day in profits. At $50 per user that’s a lot of people being scammed, not to mention left vulnerable to viruses. Respondents to the Computer Security Institute’s 2008 security assessment report that the removal of zombie or “bot” computers from their networks cost an average of $345,600 last year. The Business Software Alliance reports that piracy cost the software industry $50 billion in 2008.

Researchers investigating the Storm worm found that spam remains highly profitable. Storm advertises, among other things, pharmaceuticals, netting a potential $7,000 to $9,500 during the height of its spam campaign. This extrapolates to $3.5 million a year in revenue, with 3,500 to 8,500 newly infected computers every day.

Don’t be part of these statistics. Keep your protections up to date, and subscribe to Tech Tips for the latest computer news.

Join me this Sunday, May 17th, 2009 at 10:15am for Web 2.0 For Job Transitioning, a special seminar sponsored by the Career Renewal Ministry program in Deerfield, Illinois.

Career Renewal [is] a support ministry for those seeking employment. Career Renewal is co-sponsored by Holy Cross Catholic Church and St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, both of Deerfield, Illinois. We assist individuals who have become unemployed or are re-entering the job market as well as those seeking employment for the first time. Assistance is provided without regard to gender, race, creed, or national origin and is in no way restricted to members of sponsoring parishes.

For more information and directions, please visit the Career Renewal Ministry web site. Hope to see you there!

I’m seeing a rash of seriously infected Windows XP computers. The technical term for these computers would be toasty. Fake antivirus, insidious spyware, you name it, these computers have it, and the vast majority of them are quite well protected from a Windows XP standpoint.

It’s sad to say, but our decisions to upgrade have become less about whether we need it for productivity and more about whether our computers can remain functional against the continual onslaught of cyber-attacks. Remember, Windows XP is 8 years old. These attacks are sneaking through despite our best defenses. Windows Vista is no panacea, but its improvements in security offer better protection.

If your computer doesn’t meet the system recommendations for Vista–the real recs, not Microsoft’s bare-minimum–an upgrade to Vista equals either an upgrade in hardware or possibly a new computer. Bearing in mind that Windows 7 is slated to come out around the 2009 holiday season, this means your Windows XP days are numbered. The good news is that your software should, for the most part, be compatible. The bad news, if you don’t care for the Vista interface, is that you’ll finally have to bite that bullet. If you’re not sure what to do, I’m always happy to evaluate your computers at my next service visit.

If you’re using Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), avoid the latest update, 10.5.7. It’s buggier than a mosquito zapper in August.

Also watch out for malicious PowerPoint presentations on Macs, or on PCs using Microsoft Works. Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday this month released bug fixes for PowerPoint, but only if you use Office for Windows. No indication as to if or when Microsoft might fix the problem for Works for Windows or Microsoft Office for Mac.

I don’t often rant on this blog, but this one’s got me in a lather. Dell has created a new web site especially for women, because we’ve obviously never heard of computers before. “Della,” as it’s called, shows us ladies how we can use color-coordinated computers to check the weather, generate our grocery lists, and stay up on the latest fashion news. This advertising is more 1950s than 21st century.

I have news for you, Dell. I am a woman in technology and have been for twenty years. Not only do I not use my computer to organize my recipes, I actually *gasp* know how to configure thingamajigs like firewalls and servers, and I don’t even have to ask my husband or some other man how to do it. In fact, since I’m a computer consultant… the men ask me!

Advertisements like this perpetuate the stereotype that computers are too hard, too technical, or too masculine for the fairer sex. I am reminded of the Simpsons’ equivalent of Barbie saying “Math is hard!” Women are as capable of working in the technology fields as men. Some say more so, because women tend to have better people skills which equates to better and more compassionate customer service. “Della” is not the example we want for today’s young women considering careers in technology.

I might also note that there are plenty of women in business who make purchasing decisions for their companies. I doubt this will encourage them to buy Dell. As for myself, I can’t say I’ll be recommending Dell computers to my clients anytime soon.

The next session of my Blogs For Business class is Thursday, May 21st, 2009 from 12:00pm-1:00pm at the Fox River Grove (Illinois) Village Hall, 305 Illinois St. The class is sponsored by the Cary Grove Chamber Of Commerce and will include a box lunch.

Would you like to know more about how blogs can help your business succeed? Join me and we’ll learn:

• What are blogs?
• How blogs can benefit your business
• How to market using blogs

For more information and my upcoming computer class schedule, please visit www.guidryconsulting.com/news.

Gmail, Google’s email service, has some vulnerabilities that could allow unauthorized access to your email. To beef up security, make sure you are using a secure HTTPS connection to Gmail by checking your browser’s address bar. The address should begin with “https://” if you are using a secure connection. While HTTPS is not without its own vulnerabilities, it’s better than naked surfing.

You can configure Gmail to always use HTTP by clicking Settings from the main Gmail window. In the General tab under Browser Connection (at the bottom), select “Always use https.”

Other email services like Yahoo and Hotmail don’t allow this option. Your most secure option is to download your email using a program like Mozilla Thunderbird instead of viewing it on the Web. (In my opinion Outlook and Outlook Express won’t do anything to enhance your security because they have their own problems.)