More Google denials

All rather sordid and looking ever more like a witch-hunt. Especially so for "totalling more than 14,500 documents"! To me, that looks like a fishing trip for a witch hunt...

There's far more significant issues of privacy than the sniffing of a few unencrypted WiFi links... If the WiFi is such a dire issue, then what of the invasive and intrusive use that is made of tracking people's web surfing and communications habits?...

After all, we are already being stalked by directed Marketing... How much further is there to go?...


To keep on-topic, we certainly can't trust ANY "cloud" offerings from anyone. For that type of system, you have no visibility or control of what happens in the cloud... And I'll bet you will have signed away all of your life and assets in that EULA you clicked away... And you'll be met by voracious multi-million dollar lawyers if you even dare whimper any complaint or question...

For example, what's the latest with Microsoft... You're banned from taking part in any 'class action' lawsuits?...


Keep searchin',
Martin

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See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

There's far more significant issues of privacy than the sniffing of a few unencrypted WiFi links...

Of course there is. It the press again whipping up public hysteria to sell newspapers. In the Google case only those people using unencrypted wifi web connections were caught out. I would suggest that most people probably use hard wired connections, and that 95% of those that use wifi are encrypted. The percentage of web users that were affected would have been very small.

Less than 2 years ago a study found that about half of UK based wifi networks were secure. With the increased usage of smartphones, I'd imagine the number of doestic wifi networks to have significantly increased in recent years. Even when a PC is wired to the wifi router, it is likely exposed if the router is not secure.

What is wrong is that routers are sold unencrypted when new, and it is up to the user to set the encryption and change the default password. Unfortunately that is beyond a significant proportion of users, which is why they are sold to work out of the box. It is a very common occurrence for a block of flats to have 75% of the residents getting free wifi from the unencrypted neighbours. You'd think the ISP's would crack down on their lost income.

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I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

Even when a PC is wired to the wifi router, it is likely exposed if the router is not secure.

As far as I know, a PC hard wired to a router, with the routers wifi disabled, is secure. If you know different I would like to know, and fairly quickly.

"if the router is not secure"

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I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

As far as I know, any pc connected to a standard router with the wifi disabled, and used only by RJ45 hard wired connections, cannot be accessed by anyone else external to the area in which the router and PC are situated. Unless of course they also attach a hard wired connection to that router, and yes of course you can change the routers access password.

Correct, if your computer is connected via LAN, and your Wifi is disabled, you are safe from local attacks. Router firewall options to protect from web-based attack are another issue, however router firewalls are pretty secure out of the box, unlike the Wifi.

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#resist

Hey FBI, if this goes through, then you will have to prosecute Google for providing those links - all one has to do is type in *.* torrents & see what comes up.....

Duplicity at work because money talks, honesty walks"

Again, can we trust the software we use, especially Google?

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As far as I know, any pc connected to a standard router with the wifi disabled, and used only by RJ45 hard wired connections, cannot be accessed by anyone else external to the area in which the router and PC are situated. Unless of course they also attach a hard wired connection to that router, and yes of course you can change the routers access password.

If you got the router from your ISP, 99 out of 100 it has a backdoor port open to allow them to update the firmware. And with a default password too, and you can't disable this open door.

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As mentioned & highlighted in the original post, can we now trust the "engineers" within those software companies?

Since the June monthly update from Microsoft, I've experienced nothing but drive problems on nearly all of my systems. As I'm constantly updating/upgrading on a regular basis as well as drives getting hammered, thought, ok, drives dying.

That's until I get some calls a fortnight ago, with brand new laptops & desktops with exactly the same issues & again, received more calls this week.

The drive letters have been diasppearing with the drives still being seen by the bios, yet windows does not see them. On acting on the "instructions" provided by a msft employee, the issue remained unsolved.

So using a workround, all drives now seen. However the "bumf" received from MS is worrying....do these guys really know what they're talking about?

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Correct, if your computer is connected via LAN, and your Wifi is disabled, you are safe from local attacks.

Negative there ghost rider. Let me clarify for you.

Um....

did you not read the second sentence of my post that you short quoted?

By "local attack" I refer to someone at your residence attempting to hack into your network...

Router firewall options to protect from web-based attack are another issue, however router firewalls are pretty secure out of the box, unlike the Wifi.

How someone uses their internet, was not the point of my post, nor did I say it was. If you go shady places, or do shady things, you open yourself up to shady stuff...

Thanks for taking my statement out of its context, cutting it in half without specifying you short quoted it, and then spinning it around to make it say something I did not. Typical Guy from the Right. (pun totally intended)


(I don't need to be Cisco certified to know any router will allow a connection in, if that request was sent out from a computer on your network...)

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#resist

=P

Correct, if your computer is connected via LAN, and your Wifi is disabled, you are safe from local attacks.

Negative there ghost rider. Let me clarify for you.

If your computer is connected via LAN, and your Wifi is disabled, you are safe from attacks through your Wifi port (if you have effectively turned your Wifi port off).

If your computer is connected via LAN, and your Wifi is disabled, AND YOU DON'T USE IT, you are relatively safe from attacks through your wired port.

Careful how you respond to this. This comes from me, a Cisco Network Certified Computer Science Teacher. Anything else but, "yes, you are correct" is going to make me laugh.

Thanks for the clarification. Could you add some more clarity? What's a Wifi port? How can Wifi be used if it is disabled?

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I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

Careful how you respond to this. This comes from me, a Cisco Network Certified Computer Science Teacher. Anything else but, "yes, you are correct" is going to make me laugh.

Man they really must have dropped the standards down a few notches. The errors there are big enough to drive semi's through.

Disabling WiFi makes about 0% difference in your safety. Most local attacks on your router come from your own compromised computer.

Now disabling WiFi will increase your privacy ...

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I'm thinking I should get my CCNA, so I can properly setup my WiFi.

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#resist

ICO Employee now working for Google

So now they'll know just what loopholes there maybe in our Data Protection/Computer Misuse Acts & continue along on their merry way.

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Should I ever be concerned when it comes to the software I am using daily?

For the use of personal computers we are relying on the operating system, typically Windows. Apparently Windows XP is still the more popular.

Honestly, I am personally stuck with Microsoft and Intel platform when it comes to both operating system and processor, but for troubleshooting software there are many other vendors which offer better or more specialized products.

One important aspect or mission of an operating system is to support hardware either internally or by means of externally connected devices and components. In order to do so, the operating system communicates with such devices by means of drivers which either comes with the operating system or the hardware devices themselves.

Secondly, we do have diagnostic and troubleshooting tools available to us in order to diagnose and correct errors and flaws. One such example is Norton Utilities. It has started becoming a little of age now, but in my opinion having this software running in the background is a better way of preventive maintenance.

Thirdly, there exist applications which only are doing specific tasks which are not relating to neither operating systems or diagnostics software, two such examples are Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel.

But it is widely known and accepted that if you are running the Apple PC platform, you should not be prone or exposed to computer viruses. Using Microsoft Outlook as your e-mail client you could risk getting a virus or two in your e-mail even with a possible virus filter included in your Internet subscription.

Personally I have not had a computer virus for quite a long time now. My guess is that you are now more exposed to spyware programs which sometimes may be detected as a trojan (which is not necessarily a virus).

Many vendors are making a good earning on useful tools they make for their customers. In some instances, these tools are valuable when they eventually become needed.

Until malware like buzzcustom.com that for a while, no AV could get rid of.

Hackers are always two steps ahead of the game.

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Yes in general you can trust the software you use, if it is sourced from a reputable supplier, but if you need to connect to the Internet then you need to protect yourself further by running appropriate antivirus software, and keep it up to date.

Well, no, you can't trust it.

We are led to believe that mainstream software is written by the full time paid professionals, and that the hackers & virus writers are amateur nerds, usually in Eastern Europe. Therefore how are they 2 steps ahead all the time???

And if you follow the paid professionals they claim that a professional can write C code that doesn't have buffer overflows. The sheer number of such exploits proves they either are liars or they are not professional.

If any portion of the software you are using was based on C, or its derivatives, C++, Obj C, Obj C++, etc., you can not trust the software. The language has a built in fail mechanism that essentially guarantees there will be buffer overflows in the code, waiting for someone to exploit. The professional programmers refuse to deal with this because doing so might break some existing program.

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The aim of virus writers is to infect as many machines as possible over as much of the world as possible, therefore they will target Wintel machines and MS software, rather than Apple machines, which give them much less of a return for their effort. So of course Outlook as an email program is vulnerable.

There has been documented proof of viruses existing for Macs, and specialized viruses for Linux (but as Martin correctly asserts, none of them are "in the wild"). I've even seen a handful of viruses written explicitly for Firefox and Chrome.

I don't understand why people use Outlook, it is far too far a heavyweight program for what it does. I can only assume that for business use, because it saves its files to a local machine rather that accessing them from a remote server, it is seen as being more secure. Lose the local machine without a backup and you're stuffed. For home use you're better off using a web based email, which you can access anywhere in the world from any pc.

I can't speak for how other businesses operate, but you're only half right when it comes to using Outlook in the workplace.

Where I work, the local "Inbox" is nothing more than a cached copy of what resides on the server. This allows anyone to be able to fetch their current email by using Outlook Web Access or using their phone/tablet for email.

With email being such a common communication form these days, we have a 45 day email retention policy. If you do not move your Inbox emails to a built-in Outlook archive file, you will lose those emails after 45 days. We also use an automated backup software that will backup your Outlook archives once per day (and it uses Microsoft's Background Intelligent Transfer Service [BITS]) to ensure that the backup procedure won't consume all of your network connection's bandwidth, which is really useful for people who work at home.

Outlook is also used because of it's built-in calendaring program. These calendars can also be shared with other people or groups of people for various purposes.

I agree that Outlook is too "heavyweight" for most home users. Mozilla Thunderbird - or simply using web-based email is more than sufficient. Though Microsoft has made some tremendous advancements in making Outlook more secure. I happen to like Outlook 2010 and have resumed using it for my primary email client at home (well, I'm also gearing up to setup my own Exchange Server for use by my friends and select family members).