Is that your check book driving away

Is Your Check Book On The Curb ---------------------------- This is an article about people throwing away their home computers with all their financial and banking information on them and easily accessible. A very simple first step to financial and identity theft and it happens all the timeputer Disposal and Identity Theft go hand in hand. Since Hurricane Wilma, our city has stepped up bulk trash pickup to every month. Bulk pickup is when you can put out pretty much anything; dressers, vacuum cleaners, and of course computers. Early in the morning on each bulk pickup day people come around with pickup trucks to see what they can grab prior to the city trucks showing up. Some are looking for throwaways that can be refurbished and re-soled, while others work for charities that are looking to provide less fortunate people with items that are useful. Identity Theft & Home Computer Disposal -------------------------------------------------- This morning my wife reminds me that not only is it trash day, it is bulk pickup day (And for some people, possibly Identity Theft day). So I take out the trash and put out the other large items. As I approach the curb, a truck full of discarded goodies pulls around the corner. He asks me if I am throwing that stuff, and if so could he put it on his truck. I said sure, and lifted it on to an already huge pile of discards. When he drove away, guess what I saw on top of the pile, three desktop computers, and one laptop. From the look of them, they were a few years old. I wonder why they were put out on the curb? Where they inoperable, or did their owner just get tired of how slow they were and bought a new one? Even if they weren't working quite right, I wonder how much effort it would take to repair them, probably not much. Throwing Away your Computer, Money, and Identity ---------------------------- Jackson Morgan, a contributing author for Defending The Net, wrote an article called "Computer Disposal - Throwing Away Your Computer, Money, and Identity" a few months ago. In this article, he interviewed people at the dump to see what was on their discarded computers. And the results were quite surprising, actually, to us they were not surprising. And now I am writing this article to give you my own personal experience / observation Do You Take Computer Security and Identity Theft Seriously ---------------------------------------------------------- There are so many articles written about wireless security, Internet security, and computer security and how your identity and private information can be stolen. Some people are really concerned about this. I wonder how many of those discarded PC's on the truck this morning had owners that secured their wireless Internet connection? I wonder how many of those computers had their hard drives removed or destroyed. More importantly, I found myself wondering where those computers were going to end up? Someone Just Sold A Thief Your Checking Account ----------------------------------------------- Let's think up a reasonable and viable scenario. Let's say that this gentleman is working with a charity. This charity takes discarded, yet useful items and cleans them up and distributes them to people who are less fortunate or down on their luck. One of the PC's really had no problems except that it was loaded with Spyware and Adware and needed a thorough cleaning inside and out. This was a great find, the Operating System is intact, and it's full of useful applications. Applications like Microsoft Office, and more importantly, QuickBooks. The computer is given to someone who cannot afford such a convenience, and all is well. Then about a week goes buy and something pops up on the screen. What do we have here, a QuickBooks reminder and notification of account balances. And look at that, a checking account with $80,000 in it. I wonder what else this computer contains. And were going to find out because there is no password to get into the application. I don't know about you, and I am sure several people are going to think I'm being harsh with my following statements, but this scenario scares the you know what out of me. This does not apply to all those who are down on their luck, but how many people in a situation like this would ignore the information or be tempted to further investigate it. What if they already have little to lose? What could they do with this information and access to someone else's financial information. Maybe they don't do anything with it directly, but there is someone they know who would be willing to pay for access to a bank account with $80,000 in it. Not to mention the rest of the information that is most likely on the computer. Wouldn't be ironic if your financial information fell into the hands of a thief for $300? All because someone else was trying to help someone out. Conclusion ---------- I find it quite strange that many people are concerned about the technical aspect of security yet overlook the most basic things. Do yourself a favor, before putting a computer out on the curb, take out the hard drive and label it "destroy" and take it to local metal shop when you have a chance. They can cut in into tiny little pieces or melt it down for you. Don't think because you have just a home PC that you don't need to have a userID and password to login to it. You do need this, for many reasons. Also, buy yourself an inexpensive paper shredder and make sure to shred all your important, but no longer needed paper documents. If you think you can't lose everything you have worked for over the last 10 to 20 years by making just a tiny mistake your are quite mistaken. You may reprint or publish this article free of charge as long as the bylines are included. Original URL (The Web version of the article) ------------ defendingthenet/NewsLetters/IsThatYourCheckBookDrivingAway. htm

Enhance employee productivity with a dual core proxy server

Sharing a single Internet connection among multiple users has never been simpler and UserGate also lets untrained people (not System Administrators) limit the Internet connectivity of their employees. With a single external Internet connection and multiple users you simply decide on your priorities. If you are managing an office or a corporate network, security and employee productivity take precedence. One factor that is not commonly recognized is that unlimited Internet connectivity can harm employee performance. When it comes to business networks 'fast' and 'unlimited' do not optimize productivity. The Internet is rife with spyware and viruses that can significantly threaten your corporate security and productivity. It only takes one virus getting through your security defenses to corrupt or even destroy the information on all of your networked computers, costing you days and weeks of recovery time. Spyware routinely steals sensitive information such as passwords and private documents. Spyware dramatically decreases computer performance and it displays annoying pop-up windows that distract and have to be closed off. Viruses and spyware have effectively paralyzed even the most technologically sophisticated corporations and you can now benefit from what they learned with the safeguards built into UserGate. Expensive productivity threats are not always as covert as viruses or spyware. The Internet holds many distractions to your employees' attention. It has become common for employees to use their office computers and their work time to play online Flash games aptly called 'office killers'. Online chats and instant messengers are a close second to computer games in wasting employee time. If you pay for Internet traffic, an employee using your Internet connection to download music, games or even movies will cost you directly. If your organization uses VoIP to save on long distance bills, it is vital that no employee can use your Internet connection's entire bandwidth. Otherwise your calls will not go through, and you can easily lose a client because of a missed call or because the conversation quality is embarrassingly poor. Even though these various threats are real and are severe, some very highly trained engineers put together a simple solution that minimizes them and increases your employee productivity. UserGate proxy server produced by Entensys ( entensys/) provides Internet connectivity to your entire organization while eliminating the usual threats and performance bottlenecks caused by Internet Connection Sharing. UserGate blocks viruses and spyware with its advanced dual-core anti-virus*. UserGate limits your employees to their work assignments instead of socializing over the Internet or wasting time, and it saves on your Internet bills by monitoring, limiting and optimizing the bandwidth used by each employee. *Dual-core anti-virus is very real and very powerful. When Intel released its first dual-core processor, the benefits of increased performance and smoother multitasking became obvious to even the most conservative users. With two anti-virus cores-Panda and Kaspersky-and real-time online updates, UserGate provides tighter security and higher reliability than any single anti-virus solution. Being a proxy server, UserGate prevents spyware and viruses from getting onto your employee computers by scanning all external Internet traffic. Once installed, UserGate becomes the only connection between your employees and the Internet. Workers cannot access anything beyond your corporate network and external influences cannot affect your computers. This approach allows for extremely effective control over how and when your employees can use your Internet connections. You can prohibit access to specific file types, sites, resources or protocols making it impossible for employees to chat, download personal-use files or play online games during their work time. VoIP connections can be prioritized over end-user traffic, allowing for crystal clear phone calls over the Internet. Additionally, thanks to extensive journal support, you will always be able to see exactly what has been accessed by each employee and the bandwidths they consumed. In spite of its sophistication (or because of it), UserGate is easy to install and configure, and it requires no further administration or any extra attention. UserGate improves corporate security and increases employee productivity with no extra effort and zero administration. Download your free evaluation copy now from entensys/

Advice on choosing software to create proffesional looking slide show presentations

When considering the best software packages to convert your digital images into slideshow presentations it is important to choose one that will cover all your requirements whether you are a beginner or an advanced user. As a beginner you will be looking for ease of use and the possibility to use a “wizard” – a simple menu driven option – to create impressive slideshows quickly and easily. The ability to add background music to the slideshow and even commentary recorded easily via a microphone will be essential. Once you have the basics have been mastered, the software should then to offer a range of sophisticated features and functions in order that you can get the maximum benefit from your digital images and photographs. Images can be uploaded from digital cameras of course but it is important also to have the facility to use images that have been scanned into the PC and this feature is an absolute must when considering which package to go with. Some packages also limit the number of images that can be used in a presentation. This is not helpful when designing large presentations so ensure that you choose one that offers the option to include an unlimited number in your slideshow. Think about how easy it will be to organise your all your images, sounds and music into the final presentation. There are packages on the market that can split presentations into smaller files or “chapters” which allows you to stay organised at all times. These chapters fit into a “timeline” which is an excellent way to lay out your presentation in much the same way as movie director will have scenes in a film script. The timeline allows the use to align all the object such as images and music against a point in time and synchronise flow of sounds and images. Music and sounds that can be faded in and out by defining the volume with the slideshow also add a professional touch to the finished article. One of the most important factors in creating exciting and impressive slideshows is the number of different ways in which individual “static” images can be moved around the screen to create the impression of animation on the screen. Not only a single image at time but even collages of several images! It is almost as if the photos are living! Make sure that you select a software package that enables you to take an image (or even just part of that image) and make it move through complex movement paths including rotation, zooms and camera pans. Fine tuning of these functions will produce an extremely professional-looking presentation. A good slideshow is not just about the images but also the text to accompany the pictures. The very best slideshow packages will allow you to use a huge variety of effects on your text to make it fade in and out, fly across the screen around or even through your images, transitioning between the effects and adding many text features such as 3D. All the time you need to be able to control the timing of these effects for the most professional finish. Once your slideshow is completed it is absolutely vital that it can be easily burned onto VCD or SVCD for playing on a PC or better still onto DVD so it can be watched on a television. If you can find a single package that does all of these things and is simple to learn and use through a series of tutorials then you will creating fantastic slideshow presentations in no time!