Be Cautious With 2010 Census Workers
My hope is that most of you have already seen this information but it’s worth a repeat as we roll into 2010…
“The big question is – how do you tell the difference between a U.S. Census worker and a con artist? BBB offers the following advice:
“If a U.S. Census worker knocks on your door, they will have a badge, a handheld device, a Census Bureau canvas bag and a confidentiality notice. Ask to see their identification and their badge before answering their questions. However, you should never invite anyone you don’t know into your home.
“Census workers are currently only knocking on doors to verify address information. Do not give your Social Security number, credit card or banking information to anyone, even if they claim they need it for the U.S. Census. While the Census Bureau might ask for basic financial information, such as a salary range, it will not ask for Social Security, bank account or credit card numbers nor will employees solicit donations.
“Eventually, Census workers may contact you by telephone, mail or in person at home. However, they will not contact you by e-mail, so be on the look out for e-mail scams impersonating the Census. Never click on a link or open any attachments in an e-mail that are supposedly from the U.S. Census Bureau.”
Source: BBB Alerts Consumers about U.S. Census Workers: Be Cooperative, But Cautious! – BBB News Center.
Five Myths About Cybersecurity
A short read on a few myths surrounding your safety and security while online. The bottom line is that you are responsible for your own safety and your own security. Government can do things to help, but the effectiveness of government efforts rely upon the efforts of private citizens in their day-to-day activities.
Source: ExecutiveBiz Blog» Blog Archive » Five Myths About Cybersecurity.
Amateur Radio Bill Passes Senate, Moves to the House
I think this is great news for the Ham community. We’ve been a terrific resource available to the communities we live in for a long time. Unfortunately, modern technology has led many to feel that our services are no longer needed nor desired however I think that the results of the study will show otherwise.
The biggest thing I would like to see out of this extra attention is for everybody to just get along. We as Hams have a desire to put up antennas and communicate, no surprise there. Homeowners and city officials have a desire to maintain property values and aesthetics, no surprise there either. We can, however, coexist and meet in the middle. Maybe it’s limiting antenna size, maybe it’s just agreeing on the placement, but whatever we can do to work together will be welcome.
I hope this Congressional attention will help all of us to start communicating.
Portable Clonezilla Backup Drive
I’m a supporter of open source software and one package I’ve been working with lately is called Clonezilla. It’s a program much like Norton Ghost that is used to backup and restore the contents of entire hard disks. My goal was to create a complete backup solution using an external hard drive that I could transport to a number of locations for backups and restorations. I’ve been using Western Digital external drives but I’m sure the instructions below will work for for just about any type of drive.
To create a Bootable USB backup drive:
- Boot the computer using Gparted Live
- Make a single partition on external drive using fat32 formatting
- Set the “boot” flag on the external drive, clear the “lba” flag
- Restart into Windows
- Copy Clonezilla Live files onto external drive maintaining folder structure
- Open Command window
- Switch to the external drive and change to the “utils/win32” folder
- Run “makeboot”
- The drive should now be bootable
To perform an image backup, restore, or live-cd creation:
- Boot from the external drive
- Start Clonezilla
- Select “device-image”
- Select skip (the external hard drive is automatically selected)
- Select “Beginner”
- Select the option for what you want to do and follow the prompts
Notes:
- For some reason, making the partition with Windows doesn’t always work
- Make sure the LBA flag is cleared, for some reason it causes a problem making the drive bootable
- The beginner option automatically segments at 2GB
- For restorations there is no easy way to restore to a smaller hard drive, restoring to a larger drive is not a problem
This is still a work in progress but Clonezilla paired with a reliable USB hard drive has provided exactly what I needed in a backup solution.
Infosecurity (UK) – RSA Europe: Identity theft is too easy and can even be automated says IT security expert
A followup on the article I posted yesterday…
This describes a presentation that was given during a security conference where the presenter went through the steps he took to obtain the data necessary to steal an identity. Not altogether easy he said, but there are tools available that make it simpler. Search engines themselves do a lot of the work.
Bottom line is that you must resist the urge to share personal information that we generally just don’t think of as personal. We try to be social and have fun but don’t always think of the risk. It’s easy to say “who would really want to steal my identity?” After it actually happens I don’t think that’s what you’ll be saying…
Identity theft a growing menace to social networkers – The Irish Times – Fri, Oct 23, 2009
This is a great article about the dangers of social networking. I’ll agree, it’s fun and I enjoy making connections with people I haven’t seen in years. It is, however, a risk.
Post a birthday here, a mother’s name there, place of birth on another site…pretty soon you’ve given out all the information needed to steal your identity as soon as someone connects all the dots. Even worse, many parents have already done it for their kids also.
Source: Identity theft a growing menace to social networkers – The Irish Times – Fri, Oct 23, 2009.
New twist on scareware locks up your PC – Technology Live – USATODAY.com
This is a nasty one.
I’ve warned before about the scareware threat where warning boxes pop up, tell you that you’re infected with some virus, and then tell you that the quick remedy is to “click here” to fix the infection. These new perpetrators are worse…they essentially lock out your computer until you pay.
Your best friend with these little popups is the hot key combo “Alt-F4″ which will close the active window without clicking on anything.
As always…be careful while you surf…
Source: New twist on scareware locks up your PC – Technology Live – USATODAY.com