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.
The Latest
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Keeping Score – Solving the Problem of Fake Accounts
Social media is flooded with fake accounts. One way of solving that riddle is to introduce a scale, or a score, that will verify that the account is a real person or busin
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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.
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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?
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Facebook and Death
I recently posted invites to a garage sale. I created an event in Facebook which eventually presented an opportunity to designate who will receive the invite. Amongst the list of friends I counted seven that I knew had been deceased.
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Facebook and The Forensics of Phantom Buyers
In April this year I wrote an article on what I call “phantom buyers”, these pretend accounts on Facebook that exploit security vulnerabilities in Facebook’s Marketplace. I have been heavily engaged in Facebook’s Marketplace for the past few months because we are preparing to move back to Missouri. So I have been quite intrigued by…
Complete Listing of Articles
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Keeping Score – Solving the Problem of Fake Accounts
Read more: Keeping Score – Solving the Problem of Fake AccountsSocial media is flooded with fake accounts. One way of solving that riddle is to introduce a scale, or a score, that will verify that the account is a real person or busin
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The Trials of Alaska Communications (ACS)
Read more: 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.
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Big Tech Cancellation: The Case of the Racist Doorbell
Read more: Big Tech Cancellation: The Case of the Racist DoorbellWhat do you do when Big Tech cuts off your access to security and communication services?
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The Internet is Slow – Is It Just You?
Read more: 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?
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A Play on Words
Read more: A Play on WordsThe question that one must ask is not what is offensive, but what will happen when the inevitable sin is committed
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Spam Update — How to Avoid Spam
Read more: Spam Update — How to Avoid SpamIn 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?
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Out of Control? – Security Vulnerabilities in Control Systems
Read more: Out of Control? – Security Vulnerabilities in Control SystemsControl 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,…
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The Case of Josh Renaud
Read more: The Case of Josh RenaudAccused of hacking a website of the State of Missouri, a journalist and his newspaper are being charged for criminal activity.
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SHAKEN, But Not STIRred
Read more: SHAKEN, But Not STIRredWhat 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.
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Tracking Scams in Phone Messages
Read more: Tracking Scams in Phone MessagesEver wonder how to respond to a suspicious message? Here are a few tips on how to learn more about the scammers.
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Transparency
Read more: TransparencyNow 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?
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Computer Vision Syndrome: CVS Update
Read more: Computer Vision Syndrome: CVS UpdateFollow-up article on Computer Vision Syndrome, a debilitating malady that can affect your performance at work.
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Passwords – the Gremlins of Cyberspace
Read more: Passwords – the Gremlins of CyberspacePasswords. They may be too weak, whatever that means. They may be too many, each having to conform to a password standard of a particular web site. They are forgotten, confused and yet hacked by somebody out there. What is it with passwords? Can we master these little devils?
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Spam Filtering: Mastering Your E-mail
Read more: Spam Filtering: Mastering Your E-mailIt 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.
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E-mail: A Method to the Madness
Read more: E-mail: A Method to the MadnessI 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.