As PoolSolutions has grown, dealing with PC and Internet issues has become an increasingly large part of my life -- and not one of which I'm all that fond. But, you do what you've gotta do.
I've compiled these pages on Internet issues in order to respond to questions I get, and to share some information that may help some visitors to my website.
As I've had to confront these issues, I've built up an inventory of information and tools which help. I get a steady stream of emails from folks who've had problems, which has led me to conclude that I'm not the only one with Internet problems. Since some of you may also find some of these resources valuable, I'm posting this page, even though it has NOTHING to do with swimming pools.
Internet Security
System Security
Privacy
Spam
Viruses, Emails and Hoaxes
Just the Links, Please
You may think that having your computer hacked is something that happens only to government websites and other big targets. Unfortunately, this is not so. Anyone who's on the Internet a lot is at risk for being hacked. A friend of mine discovered that his home computer was being used by MP3 pirates to store and distribute illegal MP3's. Unfortunately, he deleted these files before he figured out how the hackers had accessed his system. It turned out they had installed Back Orifice in his computer. Once they checked the files and found he had deleted their stuff, they formatted his hard drive, totally erasing everything on his system!
Not everyone is equally at risk.
If you are dialing up to an AOL account, or other large ISP with an ordinary modem and do not have a 'fixed IP address' (if you haven't paid for it, you probably don't have one), and are not 'on the Net' constantly, your risk is fairly low.
But, if you have a cable modem or a ADSL connection -- both of which give you a fixed IP that is always on -- you are at very HIGH risk!
Other folks fall in between. I use a Netgear ISDN router (highly recommended, if you have multiple computers), but since having some attacks, have eliminated my fixed IP address.
There are a number of thing you can do. I STRONGLY recommend purchasing and downloading BlackICE. This extremely simple to use program is VERY effective in protecting your computer from Internet attack. Since setting up conventional firewalls in software or hardware is anything but simple, this program fills a critical need.
If you have a cable modem or an ADSL connection, BlackICE is a must have program.
Please understand that conventional system or antivirus programs, such as McAfee or Nuts and Bolts or Norton, do NOTHING to protect your system being hacked. Once you get BlackICE, many of you will be shocked to see how often your system is probed by hostile outsiders. I know I was.
Every 2 - 3 weeks, I get an email from a subscriber whose hard disk has crashed and who has lost their password (and everything else). This scares me. I've never had a crash like that -- but the frequency with which it happens is much greater than I realized. And it finally pushed me to do something I should have done long ago: I bought SpinRite.
Tape back-up are fine . . . when the tapes are readable. You'd be amazed at how often they are not! South Central Pool Supply, the largest pool industry wholesaler, was both amazed AND dismayed last summer when their back-ups turned out NOT to be readable. They are STILL recovering from the effects of a crash which took out their accounts receivable records for 50+ branches!
I've known about Steve Gibson and his primary product for years, but just hadn't felt the need. You all have convinced me! His product is (I think) the ONLY product that can do much to help you avoid a hardware disk crash. If a disk crash would be as big a problem for you, as it would for me, you'd better get out your wallet and give him a call. Norton, and the other utilities, do NOT effectively address disk hardware problems. It's too complicated to explain what it does, or how, and anyhow he does it better, so visit his site.
One warning: his program takes a LONG time to run on today's large drives: 46 hours on an 11 gigabyte partition on my main computer. The way to run it is just to start it when you leave the computer for the evening, and stop it when you return the next day. SpinRite can be started and stopped freely, and it remembers where it was, and will pick up where it left off.
Steve's essentially a one-man show (like me, only smarter) and has a LOT of valuable information on his website, including some technical explanations of some of the Internet security issues that were the easiest to understand that I've ever read. It's worth checking out.
Invasions of privacy are more severe and more pervasive on the Internet than you might realize. Recent articles (1), (2) about Real Networks' practice of transmitting unique ID numbers from your computer, to their system, make me nervous. Ongoing and substantial coverage of privacy issues is available at Richard Smith's website. Richard was the original discoverer of both this problem and Microsoft's earlier attempts to use an Internet transmitted GUID to keep up with everything you do.
I guess I'm a bit paranoid, but I'm not enthusiastic about a company that I don't really know or trust, keeping tabs on every bit of audio media I've ever listened to -- and that's what Real Networks was doing. The odds are, you already have Real Player installed on YOUR computer, and Real Networks already has YOUR listening habits recorded. Real Networks has released a fix for the Real Jukebox snooping, which you can download.
Since other companies besides Microsoft and RealNetworks are almost certainly using their software -- already installed on your computer -- to spy (literally) on you, via the Internet, the only complete way to protect against this is to control what's sent out by your computer. Fortunately, there's a neat FREEWARE program, ZoneAlarm, that allows you to exercise absolute control over which programs can access the Internet. Free and easy -- hard to beat.
One of the most pervasive and aggressive efforts to track everything you do on the Internet, and to then use this information to create a commercially valuable database identifying you, and all your interests, is being made by the banner ad marketers like DoubleClick. DoubleClick and similar companies place cookies on your computer each time your browsers loads a banner ad they have sold. They then use the ID's in these cookies to track everywhere you go on the Internet.
It's tempting to just turn cookies off, but for most users, that's not a good idea. For example, almost all Internet online catalogs HAVE to use cookies to keep up with your order. Disallow cookies, and it becomes very difficult for an e-merchant to process your order.
An inexpensive shareware program, Cookie Pal allows you to easily solve this problem: just keep the cookies you need -- say from Amazon.com and the NY Times -- and ban the rest. (Basically, you want to permanently exclude any cookies from sites that have "ad" or "market" or "media" or "click" in their names.)
Finally, there's a basic strategy I've begun following: database poisoning.
This simply means providing totally spurious and useless answers to any questions you are asked which are none of the questioner's business. For example, when my PoolSolution's surveys ask about your pool, and about my website, obviously, these are on-topic questions. From paid subscribers, I request phone numbers, with which I track them down when their email address changes and they forget to tell me. But, if I were to ask which brand of coffee you prefer, it's equally obvious I'm trying to collect marketing data to sell to someone else: an appropriate reply would be "Gerald's Green Gopher Beans".
In response to nosey surveys by new magazines, software companies (Intuit, maker of Quicken, is AWFUL), and so on, I have been, variously, 13 or 92, male or female, unemployed or corporate CEO, making less than $5,000 or more than $300,000, and so on. I generally work for MYOB, Inc., 123 Nothere St., Noseyville, GA, 30799, and my phone number is 706-555-1212. Recently, when one form rejected the info number (555-1212), I gave them the number of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation instead. Of course, I give valid addresses to people who may legitimately need to mail me something.
One thing you should almost NEVER give out, unless you have to, is your social security number. Quite a few of you have your SSN on the checks you've sent me to pay for a subscription or testkit. It gives me chills just to think about it. With your SSN, identity theft -- a serious problem that's getting worse -- becomes frighteningly easy, and all sorts of private records become dangerously available. Don't put the SSN back on your checks, next time you renew. And, while you are at it, request a driver's license number that is NOT the same as your SSN, the next time you renew it! Amazingly, many state motor vehicle departments are selling complete driver's license data, with SSN's intact. However, most states who do so, have an opt-out program. More information is available from Privacy.Net
Spam is a fact of life for almost everyone who has an email address. AOL'rs may have it particularly bad, but I have heard that AOL has begun to take effective action to eliminate spam -- aside from the stuff THEY send your way.
There ARE some things you can do to help, though.
Avoiding Spam
(If you are a real Internet neophyte, you may be wondering what spam is. The term is applied generally to bulk mail sent from people or businesses you've never heard of before. It would include all those "get-rich-working-at-home", "valuable-secret-stock-tips", cure-your-itches-and-excess-nasal-hair-herbal-remedies", and "see-me-ALL-of-me" offers cluttering your email Inbox each morning. If you are NOT getting any, consider yourself lucky, but keep reading, so you can continue to avoid the problem.)
If you can avoid doing so, NEVER post your REAL email address in a newsgroup or website discussion. Instead, get a 'throwaway' address from HotMail or Yahoo. (Hotmail just began using (11/13/99) the RBL list to exclude many spammers.) Both of these sites allow you to create totally anonymous email addresses. You don't have to submit your real name or information, and given the privacy problems with the large Internet companies, you may not want to do so. There's no benefit, that I know of to giving them accurate information about yourself, unless helping their marketing departments is one of your personal goals. You can use these websites to send and receive email semi-securely, and completely anonymously. And, once a email address becomes useless, due to spam or whatever, you can simply abandon it!
Somewhat less safe, but still effective is getting a Bigfoot account, which forwards email to your real email address, instead of requiring you to read it online. One advantage of a Bigfoot address is that you can keep the same address, even when you change ISP's -- you simply have to change the forward-to address.
You can use these email addresses for anything you like. For example, if you buy products online, you will often find that the email address you submit becomes the focus of 'targeted marketing emails', which is just a way of saying that it's spam you might like. Using a disposable email address means that when this stuff builds up to an intolerable level, you can dump the address.
Meanwhile, use you real (local) email address for your friends, relatives and people or businesses you trust. Or, you may want to use a Bigfoot address as primary, use a Yahoo address for a 'public' email address, and not give out your local address at all.
And folks, please, please . . . don't BE a spammer, yourself.
When you first get on the Internet, every piece of email seems special. You'll get over it. Trust me, everyone who's been on the net a while already has. Don't send chain letters, EVER. Don't forward email that's already been forwarded, unless you are SURE that the recipient wants it.
A general rule of thumb? If the TO: or CC: address lines of your email have more than five names in them, you probably ought to ask yourself, "Self, do all these people really want to get this stuff?" Often, the answer is, "Not really.".
There are exceptions.
I welcome the family letters we receive, that are broadcast by cousins, aunts and other relatives we rarely get to see. But I'm amazed that one uncle -- the last person I'd EVER have expected to be so gullible -- continues to send fraudulent emails that have been forwarded to him by some "reliable source".
Oh, well.
Dealing with SPAM
Unfortunately, for most of us, it's too late to completely avoid spam.
Many times, the most efficient way to handle it is simply the aggressive use of the [DELETE] key.
But, if you want to spend the time, or are simply getting deluged, as I periodically
am,
there is more you can do.
Possibly the simplest thing you can do is request that your local ISP use the
RBL.
This rather technical resource, from www.mail-abuse.org,
allows your ISP to automatically block email from a continuously revised
list of a huge number of known spammers. It takes a little effort up front,
so some ISP's don't bother. But, if you and your friends ask, they may get
around to it.
The next step is to get more personal. To do so, you need to know how to find the email headers in the spam you received. They look like this:
Return-Path: <[email protected]> Received: from mail.nameservers.com (mail.nameservers.com [206.215.191.11]) by earth.voyageronline.net (8.8.6/8.8.7) with ESMTP id RAA05062 for < ONE OF MY EMAIL ADDRESSES >; Thu, 11 Nov 1999 17:40:00 -0500 (EST) From: [email protected] Received: from calafia.uabcs.mx (calafia.uabcs.mx [192.100.161.180]) by mail.nameservers.com (8.8.5/8.6.9) with SMTP id OAA00415 for < ONE OF MY EMAIL ADDRESSES >; Thu, 11 Nov 1999 14:40:04 -0800 Received: from pool-209-142-28-234.mdsg-pacwest.com by calafia.uabcs.mx (AIX 3.2/UCB 5.64/4.03) id AA18394; Thu, 11 Nov 1999 15:36:44 -0600 Message-Id: <[email protected]> Date: 11 Nov 99 2:31:46 PM Reply-To: [email protected] To: [email protected] Subject: INCREASE SALES FOR THE HOLIDAYS WITH BULK E-MAIL X-UIDL: 6502c6771aa2a5e52607035322604fb6
In Microsoft Outlook, you can see them by opening the spam and then going to [View] and [Options] on menu
Most other email programs also make the headers available, but you'll have to hunt around to find out how to get to them.
Once you've found the header, copy it to the Windows clipboard, open Notepad, and paste the header in Notepad. Then, go back to the spam, open it and copy the spam message, and paste IT into Notepad, below the header.
Then go to SpamCop, and report the spam by pasting the stuff from notepad into their submittal form. They do a pretty good job of automatically figuring out who to complain to, and sending the complaint where it will do some good. To actually submit spam, you have to sign-up. But there's lots of worthwhile antispam information there.
Finally, for those of you who are more advanced, Sam Spade can help you identify open mail relays and otherwise track down a variety of Internet related info. You can use their tools online, or download SamSpade for Windows. And, if you know enough to use the tools, you may want to go to Mail-Abuse.Org and investigate their RSS list. If you understand how to identify open mail relays, you can submit open relays from which you've received spam, and have them listed the same day.
Computer viruses get both more and less coverage than they sometimes deserve. But, I know some of you do have problems with computer viruses.
How?
Because some of you -- unknowingly, I hope -- email them to me. Probably 3 dozen folks sent me emails infected with the Happy99 virus. One or two sent me emails with the Melissa virus, and so on.
So, let me start with a primer on how to AVOID viruses. (Avoiding viruses is MUCH better than cleaning up after them.)
Of course, using current anti virus software is a good idea, and it will come with it's own instructions. Just remember to update it regularly.
Email Hoaxes
Less dangerous, but possibly more annoying, are the hoaxes that regularly get mailed around.
Let me keep it simple: there's a 99% chance that any email that has been forwarded more than once is a hoax. If it's been forwarded more than once AND it starts with, "You may not believe this, but . . . ", well, don't believe it.
All the rules that apply in the real world, apply to the virtual world, too:
Nobody is going to give you something for nothing!
What sounds too good to be true, almost always is!
Chicken Little was wrong, and so far, all her chicks have been, too!
But, as LeVar Burton puts it, "You don't have to take my word for it!". (If don't have kids who watched PBS, you won't get it!) You can check it out for yourself. The resources at CERT are outstanding, and can help you quickly get the scoop on the latest viruses and hoaxes. Rob Rosenberg's site can quickly help you identify some of the 'urban myths' that wander around the Internet, and the similar UrbanLegends site is entertaining, even when it's not useful. The virus information sites at either IBM or Symantec can be valuable, too. Both McAfee and Trend Micro also have sites, but if you visit them, submit bogus email addresses, unless you want to be bombarded with emails from them.
Finally, please, PLEASE, don't send chain letters. They are often illegal, and they are almost always irritating to at least 50% of the people you send them to. A good rule of thumb: if there are more than 4 people in the To: or the CC: address field, think twice before sending it, unless you WANT to irritate the recipients.
Internet Security
BlackICE http://www.networkice.com
System Security
SpinRite site http://www.grc.com
Privacy
Real Networks articles
CNet
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1426044.html
BBC-UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_508000/508340.stm
Richard Smith's website: http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/index.html
Privacy
update for Real Jukebox
http://www.realnetworks.com/company/privacy/jukebox/privacyupdate.html
ZoneAlarm http://www.zonelabs.com/
Cookie Pal http://www.kburra.com/
For really hardcore info and web privacy options, visit Privacy.Net
http://privacy.net/
Privacy.Net Drivers' License Info http://privacy.net/dl/
Spam
HotMail http://www.hotmail.com
Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com
Bigfoot http://www.bigfoot.com
mail-abuse.org http://www.mail-abuse.org
RBL (Real Time Blacklist) http://www.mail-abuse.org/rbl
SpamCop http://www.spamcom.net
SpamCop signup http://www.spamcom.net/anonsignup.shtml
Sam Spade http://www.samspade.org
SamSpade for Windows http://www.samspade.org/ssw/
Viruses, Emails and Hoaxes
Microsoft security site
http://www.microsoft.com/security/
Microsoft software update site
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
CERT general security,
virus, & hoax info http://www.cert.org/other_sources/viruses.html
Rob Rosenberg's urban legend's site
http://www.kumite.com/myths/
UrbanLegend.Com http://www.urbanlegends.com/
IBM Virus Info
http://www.av.ibm.com/InsideTheLab/VirusInfo/
Symantec Virus Info
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/index.html
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