oregonnerd: differing views

An Easy Danger to Avoid

December 1, 2008 at 6:09 pm Leave a comment

Don’t stay logged into a web (“social networking”)application like Facebook while not using it, and don’t stay logged into Gmail.  In fact, it’s basically best not to stay on the web unless actively using it.  I was initially a proponent of an instant-off similar to the dialup modem.  In fact, I still am.  Just try shutting down your firewall.  Eventually all sorts of programs will begin to have hysterics because they can’t phone home to mommy.  Best of all, it takes not only a real expert to identify all running processes (particularly ones that can use others for internet access–svchost.exe? you cannot identify it without more information because it’s used by a lot of processes) but the ability to go ahead and trace threads back.  In real time.  We’ll leave out various temp files.  Pre-fetch files.  Which in some cases have to be identified in order to identify a process as (probably) friendly or hostile.

So, essentially–and I’m saying this now because of a rise in a kind of intrusion on the net in the last couple of months–try to keep track of when you’re on the net, and get off it when you leave your computer.  Passwords are a fundamental pain, and unfortunately that’s good.

–Glenn

[My stepdaughter’s car won’t start at this point.  It has leaks enough to point to a broken head gasket.  Maybe someone has a surplus of older cars at truly giveaway prices.  I’m tapped.  Living in the Rogue Valley, I somewhat doubt there’s liable to be an angel for our little angel, so to speak.]

Entry filed under: computers/tech, current news, how to. Tags: internet, safety tip, stepdaughter's car.