News for the Week of February 26, 2006
Computer security was the top family-tech story this week, with reporters talking about the newest PC health risk and new solutions...
The new PC security risk
Great. Just as we Net users were getting smart about phishing and viruses, online criminals have moved on, the New York Times reports. "In some countries, like Brazil, [phishing] has been eclipsed by an even more virulent form of electronic con - the use of keylogging programs that silently copy the keystrokes of computer users and send that information to the crooks." That means they're capturing whatever people type, from passwords to credit card numbers, at least on PCs infected with these programs.
This is a much easier exploit for malicious hackers than the social engineering of phishing emails. Even kids are exploiting them. Brazilian federal police just arrested a ring of 55 people around that country, 9 of them teenagers, for stealing $4.7 million from 200 different accounts at six banks, according to the Times.
These little keylogger programs (just like the kind in monitoring software parents use, hopefully openly, to check up on online kids) can also be embedded in files traded on file-sharing networks and, of course, in malicious Web sites (see No. 2).
Software that advises surfers during Web search
It's hard to imagine busy Web surfers (especially young ones) bothering with the slight slow-down SiteAdvisor represents to the search-and-surf experience, but we may be looking at our surfing future. SiteAdvisor is a think-before-you-click software product that, when you've turned up a bunch of search results in Google or MSN Search, tells you whether it's safe to click on links to specific sites. It's a free (in beta-testing) add-on to the Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers that Washington Post security writer Brian Krebs has been testing.
The reason why it may be our future is because it deals with the sad new reality of Web surfing: all the bad stuff that gets on our family PCs when we click on the rapidly proliferating malicious sites that send the stuff (also known as "drive-by downloads" - see TechWeb's definition). Some of that clicking happens in emails and IMs; the rest, Brian reports, happens when people click on "unfamiliar links that turn up in Google, MSN or Yahoo search results." So that's the other big PC-security headline: Web searches themselves are another PC security risk.
Where kids and teens come in
Young surfers love games, music, contests, and all the sites and technologies that deliver them and allow the uploading of them. They're also known to click, upload, download, and surf fast, freely, fearlessly. Unfortunately, that's a spyware and malicious hacker's dream user profile. A just-released study at the University of Washington found that "the worst neighborhood for drive-by downloads was, hands-down, made up of sites that offered pirated copies of software, games, music, and movies," but included sites where you can just play games or get the latest celebrity gossip," Yahoo News reports.
Another "neighborhood" to be careful about is music-lyrics sites. In his test of SiteAdvisor, the Post's Brian Krebs searched for "lyrics" ("song-lyrics sites are notorious for installing spyware and adware," he wrote). You have to read his account to believe all the crud lyricsplanet.com downloaded on his PC (do not go to that site!).
Tell your kids: We all need to be really alert about clicking on unfamiliar Web links in emails, IMs, and search engines - even if they're really tempting! And family PC owners need continued vigilance about Microsoft security patches (or automate them), firewalls, and antivirus protection. Here's the New York Times's sidebar, "Protecting Yourself from Keylogging Thieves". Mac users, see "Is Mac OS as safe as ever?" at CNET and "Straight talk on Mac security risks" at MacWorld.com.
In other news...
- "Big brother" factor in blogs. Kids aren't just worried about parents reading their blogs, Business Week reports, and this is a good thing. Reportedly, it's sinking in with teen social-networkers that they need to protect themselves "not only from predators and scam artists, but from nosy employers and campus authorities" too. For example, Business Week tells of a University of North Carolina professor who scanned Facebook profiles "to determine which students to accept into his class." So interesting workarounds are developing. Some bloggers sprinkle their profiles with fiction to throw off readers outside their peer groups. Others are actually using the services' privacy features (blocking strangers).
- Microsoft's new parental controls. They're called "Family Safety Settings," and Microsoft just launched their beta-testing. The parental controls will be part of the new Windows Live services (like OneCare and the Safety Center) and will be included in the next version of the Windows operating system, called "Vista," CNET reports. "The parental controls software lets people filter online content... create individual accounts for children, and see activity reports on the Web sites they visited. The service can be disabled when the parents themselves go online," according to CNET, citing product information from Microsoft. Here's more from PC World and limited info at Microsoft's site.
- Apple-flavored home entertainment. Apple this week announced the $349 iPod Hi-Fi (aka "iPod boombox" or "home stereo"), "an all-in-one speaker system housed in a case roughly the size of a shoebox," the New York Times reports. With the announcement, too, of the new Mac Mini, which talks to TVs, it's a sign the company is moving into home entertainment big time, Larry Magid of CBS News (and SafeKids.com) reports. Here's coverage, too, by PC magazine (calling the Hi-Fi a "boombox") and USATODAY.
- Schools blocking MySpace. Adding MySpace.com to their black lists of sites to be blocked is happening in increasing numbers of US school districts Reuters reports. For example, "the Rhode Island Network for Educational Technology, a nonprofit that handles Internet networks for the state's 36 public school districts, said 80% of the schools had requested an Internet filter to screen out MySpace.com," according to Reuters. It adds that "school districts in Florida and several other states and private universities have also installed filters on their Internet networks that block the site."
- An X-rated game promoting an R-rated movie, as the National Institute on Media & the Family's president David Walsh put it, was an interesting marketing strategy for "Running Scared," a film that did not get great reviews and with a "story line" highly populated by prostitutes, pimps, mobsters, bad cops, and pedophiles (the Chicago Trib's reviewer did have "a sneaking suspicion" that the film "could become a cult classic, and an even better hunch that it will top the box office this week.") Of the film's companion videogame's two versions, found at its Web site, the one rated "M" (for 17+) has sexually explicit content on Level 2 (which has a form of age verification with the required registration). The Minneapolis-based National Institute issued a parental alert, and WCCO-TV in Minnesota reported that the "racy interlude has apparently [since] been removed". The Institute does an annual "report card" on videogame violence.
