Technology Blogs

Eric Niewoehner and his Tablet
Me, my tablet, and my passion for birds

While I would love to write fiction every day, thirty-eight years of IT experience makes it difficult not to comment on what I observe in the IT world. The world breathes on social media. It affects what we know, what we think, and what we do. We are seeing before us how social media, with all it’s potential, can show the worst in humanity. Despite its fundamental propensity toward freedom, it can also be used to apply the most penetrating censorship and control. IT has introduced phenomenal innovation, yet with this new technology we face new challenges.

Complete Listing of Articles

  • The E-mail De-activation Scam

    Ever get a notification that your e-mail account is about to be de-activated? Is it for real or a scam? The Scam You receive an e-mail saying your e-mail account is about to be de-activated. Click the link below if you wish to keep your account active. The scam is amplified further by the fact…

  • Censorship: What is Hidden?

    What the world needs to know about Australia’s Censorship Regime. The case of the Wakely knife attack on a Christian priest.

  • Parler Reborn. What happens to your personal information?

    Ever wonder what happens to your information when a website goes out of business? Our personal information is an asset, and assets sell. Such is the case of Parler.

  • Is a Website a Scam? The Case When It is Not So Clear

    Ever encountered on the Internet a business and wondered if this website is a scam? The answers are not always cut and dried. Getting the big picture can help you avoid several pitfalls.

  • The Trials of Alaska Communications (ACS)

    For most of my IT career I worked in some aspect of security. I have seen some pretty strange stuff but ranking near the top is the way ACS handles the customer’s password.

  • Big Tech Cancellation: The Case of the Racist Doorbell

    What do you do when Big Tech cuts off your access to security and communication services?

  • The Internet is Slow – Is It Just You?

    What do you do when the internet service suddenly gets really slow? Is it your computer? Is it your router? Or is it the internet provider? Where do you begin?

  • A Play on Words

    The question that one must ask is not what is offensive, but what will happen when the inevitable sin is committed

  • Spam Update — How to Avoid Spam

    In a previous posting, one of the key things I suggested was to set up multiple e-mail accounts and delegate their use based on risk. Did it work?

  • Can PayPal Be Trusted?

    How can you trust a business that arbitrarily, without explanation, suspends your service?

  • Are You Ready to Rumble?

    Is it possible that Rumble may one day challenge YouTube?

  • The Alaskan Congressional Rodeo

    A peculiar election. Ever walked out into the wilderness and get struck at how quiet it is? You hear no birds, only a gentle breeze in the trees. That happens often in Alaska. This election is sort of like that.

  • The Gift of Gab

    What is Gab?  It is a competitor to Twitter, yet twice deplatformed from the Internet.  Is this justice or simply pure monopoly power pushing out the competition

  • What’s Up with Parler

    Will Parler survive? Parler is part of the monopolistic fringe, small companies that eat away at the edges of empire.

  • Out of Control? – Security Vulnerabilities in Control Systems

    Control Systems.  Are they possibly the biggest security vulnerability? By now almost everyone has seen the news media on the cyberattacks stemming from Russia. So far nothing dastardly has occurred at the same scale of the Colonial Pipeline fiasco in 2021. That event involved the deployment of ransomware across the corporate network. As a precaution,…

  • The Case of Lorie Smith

    Can a web designer be compelled to create content?

  • The Case of Josh Renaud

    Accused of hacking a website of the State of Missouri, a journalist and his newspaper are being charged for criminal activity.

  • SHAKEN, But Not STIRred

    What to do with those mysterious links in text messages. A closer look at a new protocol that may help reduce spam and scam. The new protocol is called STIR/SHAKEN.

  • Can GoDaddy Be Trusted?

    As business owners and managers or IT consultants, you have to seriously evaluate the nature of content being communicated over the Internet. If there is any possibility of risk of censorship, the effects could be catastrophic

  • Tracking Scams in Phone Messages

    Ever wonder how to respond to a suspicious message? Here are a few tips on how to learn more about the scammers.

  • Ransomware and the Mechanical Pencil

    Review of the WannaCry ransomware attack of 2017 and what is fundamentally wrong with how we utilize operating systems.

  • Disaster Recovery — The Case of Parler

    The day has now arrived where you will need to have alternative cloud and DNS registry platforms, as well as other redundancies.

  • Why Parler?

    Elements of the Internet have obviously evolved to the status of “common carrier”. What was done to Parler violates, fundamentally, the principle of free speech. But it also demonstrates the monopolistic power of what is coined as Big Tech: Apple, Google, Amazon and an array of powerful Internet companies that can erase your existence on…

  • Transparency

    Now we have the Internet – where will it lead? Will we be mature enough, as a society, to handle the ongoing presentation of raw information? Will reactionary mobs be the norm, or can we engineer a system of governance that can more effectively respond to raw information?

  • Computer Vision Syndrome: CVS Update

    Follow-up article on Computer Vision Syndrome, a debilitating malady that can affect your performance at work.

  • Fake News Update

    You, and no one else, are the best protection against fake news.  Educate yourself.

  • Solution to Fake News

    A continuation of an earlier discussion on Fake News. How is the best way to identify it and to fight it?

  • Spam Filtering: Mastering Your E-mail

    It is now a fact of life that e-mail traffic is largely spam, unwanted solicitations for your time and money, if not worse. Spam cannot be avoided, but it can be controlled.

  • E-mail: A Method to the Madness

    I had finished writing this piece when the latest blow-up over the Clinton e-mails grabbed the headlines.  I’ll speak on that later because what I wrote below pertains to them as much as to you.  Needless to say, whether you are Sarah Palin or Hillary Clinton, how you handle e-mail has significant repercussions.