I stay up late at night watching TV and I see a lot of advertisements for computer security products.  As far as I know all of these products are legitimate but some of them may not be such a good deal price wise.  Then there are the fake scareware programs.   My definition of scareware is simple.  Scareware is any program  that temps the user to buy it by scaring them and could have criminal potential.  The least that can happen to...

I don’t know if I am angry with the Federal Government for skirting their responsibility to protect us on the Internet or happy that they are not messing it up.  It seems lately that most of the laws Congress has been trying to pass “for our protection” are aimed at protecting special interests such as the music industry and Hollywood.  Can’t say I will lose any tears for either of those guys. The Federal Government has a...

Today’s article contains some quirky news items that I use to illustrate some common problems that occur when technology is involved. Lucian Constantin of the IDG News Service reports that a German police officer was concerned that his daughter was hanging out with a bad element.  In order to protect her he installed a parental control system in the computer that monitored her activity.  It appears that the father was correct in being...

A fantastic new opportunity is coming for Internet crooks.  ICANN is the organization, chartered by the US Commerce Department, to oversee the Domain Names for the Internet.  The organization is international in scope and wants to be more international by loosing the controls by the US government.   When you enter a domain name such as www.cybersoft.com it breaks down in the following way; the .com is the top or first level domain...