Computer Support Blog

There have been reports in recent days that the National Security Agency is collecting data from multiple Internet communication giants in a broad surveillance measure where the government collects e-mails, social media data, and other communications.  The report has stemmed from a leak of an NSA employee’s internal presentation on the surveillance program, which the NSA named PRISM.  The leaked slides claim that the NSA was receiving data from the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple, Paltalk and others.  These companies have all publicly claimed that they the NSA does not have direct access to their servers.  They also claim only to provide customer data if presented with a court order.  However, if reports about the surveillance program are true, all of these companies would be legally required to deny knowledge of PRISM, as it is a classified program.  Read more »

Phishing attacks have become an increasing problem as of late both for everyday computer users and even major publications.  In the last month, there have been widespread phishing attacks aimed at both Apple and Twitter accounts.  These attacks come in the form of e-mails or web pages that seem as if they were from a service the recipient uses.  These e-mails trick recipients into giving over information, which then lets the cybercriminals access their accounts.

The phishing attacks aimed at Apple users mimicked an account verification page from Apple and prompted users to give their e-mail, credit card information, and account password.  This particular attack compromised over one hundred websites, which displayed the page that tricked Apple users into handing over their information.  Without proper Internet security service or software, it would be difficult to detect the attack for most people.  The intent of such attacks is to gain access to people’s Apple accounts.  Criminals will then sell the information or use it to compromise the accounts themselves. Read more »

The notion that each person wears many different masks in the course of their lifetime and in different groups, is a very old idea.  How you interact with other people and what you choose to show one group of person in your life changes based on very old social mandates and ideas.  With the rise of the Internet and the subsequent explosion of social networking sites, you put quite a bit of information about yourself online every year.  Unfortunately, all of that information may create a much jumbled view of who you are and may be mixed in with information about other people who happen to share the same name as you.  Now there is a new site that has the sole goal of helping you create a single, focused, online profile that collects all of your disparate elements in one place.  That site is Vizify and it is very cool. Read more »

Security is a concern in the tech sector that only continues to grow.  The growth of security services pertaining to computers, smartphones and mobile computing devices is not a reflection on the industry’s unwillingness to adapt; technology continues to change at such a fast rate and hackers continue to adapt as well, necessitating an almost-constant development of new security-related products and services.  While many computers have been protected by the most robust anti-viral software ever created, as hackers take on smartphones and mobile computing devices, many of the major software developers have been slow to react.  Instead, consumers are discovering the benefits of mobile computing protection software, like Reliaty55. Read more »

Since the founding of the United States, one of the fundamental freedoms of the nation has been Freedom of the Press.  Made possible by Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press was intended to keep the citizenry educated and informed, the theory being that such measures could prevent tyranny.  It is a great theory.  However, over the years, political machinations (yellow journalism), business interests (media consolidation) and sloth have weakened the Fourth Estate of the United States.  The final blow to Freedom of the Press may well come from the tech sector as the tech sector is currently eroding some of the last definitive standards of the mainstream press. Read more »

Jargon, words specific to an industry, profession, or setting, tends to pop up with what a layperson might find to be an alarming frequency in articles that pertain to developments within the tech sector.  As a result, readers are bombarded with numbers and terms that many writers simply assume their readers are familiar with: USB, FireWire, Ivy Bridge, etc.  To help demystify the tech sector and make technical jargon more accessible to non-tech readers, we occasionally explore a common jargon term.  Today’s exploration is API. Read more »

Those who lived through the late 1960s laugh at the absurdity of protest today.  Protests since the late 1990s, like when protests erupted against NAFTA or the World Trade Organization, have become highly choreographed events that usually involve getting permits, inviting the media and the like.  They are also remarkably ineffective.  The fact that Occupy Wall Street does not actually feature tents and human chains physically blocking access to the critical financial buildings there illustrates the differences between protest then and protest now.  Protesters of days of yore fought for Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly (Constitutionally-protected rights) using means that were frequently illegal (trespassing).  Today’s protestors seem very pale by comparison. Read more »

Privacy rights are some of the most contentiously debated human rights.  Most people in the United States and other free societies treat privacy as an innate human right, a position which comes into conflict with the views of other governments, agencies within the United States government, and Constitutional literalists (there is no explicit Freedom of Privacy guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution).  As technology has improved, the debate over privacy rights has only become more divisive.  That debate was what inspired Phil Zimmermann to create Pretty Good Privacy. Read more »

With identity theft remaining one of the enduring problems with modern communications, it is unsurprising how many products and services there are that offer to protect your data.  When it comes to data storage, there are several products that encrypt your files to protect them, like the industry-leading Ironkey Flash Drive that makes transporting your data incredibly risk-free.  It is hard to find an analogous product when it comes to communications technology, though.  That is about to change, thanks to Silent Circle. Read more »

With the death of Steve Jobs and movies that focus on how Mark Zuckerberg and his friends created Facebook, many in the media are focused on looking out for the next tech sector wunderkind.  With so many of the current crop of rising stars in the tech sector focused solely on their Internet startups or technological breakthroughs, it is easy to forget that historically, the real geniuses of the tech sector have been well-rounded individuals with a lot of interests.  The fact that these creative geniuses who are interested in many things focus on the technology industry to leave their mark does not negate the fact that the inventors, CEOs and envelope-pushers of the tech sector all had more going for them than simply their career.  That is why Martin Kleppmann is the Internet entrepreneur to watch! Read more »