Poet Ponders the Digital

RFID chip pulled from new credit card (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley October 5, 2015 Deadline November 2015 Issue This summer, I had a credit card “cloned” while driving along the Interstate 76 Tollway. Because I check my credit card statements online after any trip, I noticed the fraudulent charges and cancelled the card. Credit cards remain one of the easiest targets for criminals and no easy solution seems likely. Two years ago, I had another credit card number stolen by a waiter. Local police informed me that such thefts remained the most common form of credit card fraud. In both instances, I did everything “right” and was still a victim of thieves. The waiter stealing card numbers asked to see my driver’s license before walking away from the table. He was writing down numbers, expiration dates and card verification values while standing behind a low wall. With these data, another criminal ran charges at a convenience store, listing charges as...

English: An HP LaserJet 4200 dtns printer (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley August 31, 2015 Deadline October 2015 Issue Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek hacked a Jeep in July of this year. Chrysler recalled 1.4 million vehicles to fix issues with the “Uconnect” network, which used cellular Internet connections to enable features like remote access. If you’ve wondered how OnStar and similar services, like Uconnect, unlock car doors, now you know. They use the Internet. Uber, the ride-scheduling app company, hired Miller and Valasek in August to work on security for Uber’s autonomous automobile project, since a self-driving car requires network and GPS access to function properly. Everything in an autonomous vehicle is computerized and this invites potential mischief. Uber hired hackers to identify security vulnerabilities. General Motors, Volkswagen and other car companies have been tested by hackers. The 2016 Corvette’s braking system has been hacke...

An illustration of an example IPv6 address (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley July 27, 2015 Deadline September 2015 Issue That convenient flashlight app knows where you are. So do your social media apps, your Web browser, your clock and many other apps on your phone, tablet and computer. And there’s not much you can do to hide. Many people don’t understand how their devices offer the functionality we love and worry upon hearing our devices and software track us constantly. And much of that information remains behind on our devices, or stored elsewhere beyond our control, because we agree to that in return for features, convenience and cheap (or free) apps. When you download an application or operating system, you agree to various terms and conditions. For example, to use Adobe Creative Cloud or Microsoft Office365, you agree that your computer will connect to corporate servers weekly and verify your subscription is paid. Adobe and Microsoft servers ...

English: Dual disk drive (Combo Floppy drive) for 5.25 and 3.5 inch with floppy disks Deutsch: Duales Diskettenlaufwerk (Combo Floppy Drive) für 5 1/4 und 3 1/2 Zoll Disketten der Firma Canon Modell MD5511-V6 mit Disketten (Kombilaufwerk), Herstellung ca. 1995 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley March 1, 2015 Deadline April 2015 Issue Sharing files and collaborating elevate computers beyond being glorified typewriters, ledger books and filing cabinets. I appreciate the convenience of using a word processor compared to typing on my old manual Smith Corona and nobody wants to trade spreadsheets for paper, but it is the portability of data that makes computing revolutionary. Beyond automating and improving the efficiency of tasks, moving data allows us to collaborate and develop better ideas. Today, we use “the cloud” to share data via the Internet. We upload files to servers operated by Google, Microsoft, Apple and several cloud-specific companies like D...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley February 4, 2013 Deadline March 2013 Issue Infection Prevention: Phishing, Trojans, Viruses and Malware Shock. Horror. Anger. Informing a small business owner that her computer had 4912 infected files, four rootkit viruses and a phishing redirect affecting her Web browser, I witnessed a range of emotions that understandably concluded with anger. A simple mistake led to a panicked early morning phone call to me. “I clicked on a link I thought was to a YouTube video. The message was from a friend, I thought,” my client explained. “And now, I can’t get anything done. Am I going to lose all my data?” Her situation demonstrates a chain of events that is all too common. Tracing the events will help others avoid this same experience. The series of events began when a friend of my client accidentally give away her e-mail password to an evil “phishing” bot. This was not a skilled hacking effort, but a simple ruse. Phishing requires bait. Criminals ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley January 24, 2011 Deadline March 2011 Issue Archives Aren’t Backups: Storing Data for the Future Do you remember WordStar? Lotus 1-2-3? Harvard Graphics? If you’ve been using computers as long as I have, you created documents, spreadsheets and graphics in too many applications to remember. Yes, I have 25-year-old data. I have copied those files from floppies to Iomega Zip disks , from Zip disks to CDs , and most recently from CDs to a trio of external hard drives. Each time I upgrade computers, I migrate data to whatever happens to be the leading archival format. I migrate data every two to four years. That is important, because media do fail. However, what has enabled me to use old documents is a habit of storing data in two or three formats. In my “Documents” directory, I have created folders named “Archives of…” to store data in neutral formats. Recently, I wanted to use an old image created in a DOS-based application. I tried several applic...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley August 2008 Issue July 7, 2008 You Can Always Go Back, If You’re Prepared Digital pictures and digital music. My life is stored in bits on my laptop hard drive and an iPod. I can’t remember the last time I had film developed and my last music purchase was a hard-to-find jazz track downloaded from Amazon. My life is definitely digital. Memories are convenient… and at risk. I was thinking about this while watching the residents of Big Sur and Santa Barbara try to gather their belonging to flee fires. Like the victims of this summer’s horrible floods in the Midwest, these families sometimes had only minutes to gather important possessions. Losing pictures of my wife, my family (including the pets), and special moments from our lives would be devastating. I realize the Valley is extremely “safe” when compared to many other locations. We don’t have hurricanes, tornado seasons, or horrible fires. It is easy to forget we should protect our digital ...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley March 2007 Issue February 11, 2007 Wireless Conveniences… and Risks “Join open network Tom’s Place?” The dialog box on my laptop’s screen was puzzling. Beyond the obvious problem that my name isn’t Tom, something unfamiliar and strange was happening. Why was my computer wanting to join Tom’s Place? Wasn’t my place good enough? Welcome to the convenience of wireless networking. I had turned on my laptop without first turning on my wireless router, so my laptop had automatically searched for any nearby wireless networks. The newest computer operating systems take it upon themselves to locate and join wireless networks, which is much better than the way things were only a few years ago. The downside of this automation had just revealed itself, though. Because I don’t know “Tom” (not the real name, of course), but assumed he must be one of my neighbors, I told my laptop “No” and suddenly another dialog appeared. Did I want to join the network “D...