Your computer was infected with pop-up pornography because you visited a popular travel Website to look at hotel room prices in Orlando. And you have a well-known Company's Internet Security Suite.
Or maybe, because your ISP promised you they'd scan all your e-mails for you, before they got into your Inbox.. you thought they really did, and you also thought that made your e-mail safe. You clicked on a link in one of those e-mails... (it said it was from your Uncle Victor..) and, voilà! Someone's using your credit card.
In Malaysia.
To buy big-screen TV's.
Like, six of them.. so far.
Perhaps you did neither of those things. But.. your friends wanna know why you're sending them all this junk e-mail, and your ISP is threatening to turn you off if you don't stop sending mass-mailings. Huh?
Turns out, you happen to have CoolProgram 6.0* on your machine, and a cracker has "exploited" the code and turned your machine into a spambot. Your machine has been merrily sending out thousands of e-mail come-ons for generic drugs, male enhancements, and penny stocks... all while you were asleep in bed.
Or you brought home a new digital picture frame...
Does this sound like a bad sci-fi movie to you? It does to me. But, sadly, this is our current reality.
You haven't done anything wrong (or, really stupid) and you've even tried to protect your machine, but you got hijacked anyway.
I, for one, think there's something seriously wrong with this state of affairs. When I think about the state of the Internet, I start feeling like that guy in the movie.. you know the one..
Why is this happening? Many reasons. Some are:
* Software companies are, to this day, releasing programs which contain insecure code.
* Hardware manufactures don't include any extra features-- like hard-wired security.
* In their rush to bring us new and exciting technology (he who's first to market, wins), nobody stops and ponders the consequences.. or the vulnerabilities.
* For a long time, nobody took the hackers seriously enough.
* Cost. (I put this last because this can be offset.)
Believe it or not, there are steps the IT Industry can take to remedy a lot of this, and counteract this unsecured Internet. They could be doing much more to combat spam, malware, and hackers. There's also steps we (us "consumers") can take as well.. which space restriction has run out of room for today, and I will discuss tomorrow.
To be continued...
Today's free link: I have recommended other graphics manipulation/image editing tools in the past, and it is only fitting that I give space to another winner: Paint.NET is simply the closest thing to Photoshop I have seen. 5 Star-rated by C/Net.
* Pick a program, any program. "CP 6.0" is simply my generic example.
Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved.
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