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Welcome to this week's edition of the Computer Kindergarten Newsletter.
Today is Sunday, July 22, 2007
In this Issue:
Special Feature: New Virus Warning – The Robot Virus
Special Feature: Another Scam - Phone Phishing
This Week's Topic: Using CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs
Websites of Interest: Humor Health Benefits; Symptom Checker; National Hotdog Day
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Special Feature: New Virus Warning – The Robot Virus
From snopes.com
There is perhaps no virus lure more perfidious than one that proclaims to offer users protection from viruses while secretly infecting their PCs. That is the camouflage used by the Robot virus which began hitting inboxes in July 2007 — it looks like a helpful message from a system administrator informing the recipient that his PC is likely infected with a worm (detected by a robot's spotting "abnormal activity from your IP address") and offering a patch the user can install to fix the problem. However, the patch itself is a Trojan (a virus) which installs itself in the Windows system folder.
If you see anything like this in your e-mail, do not open it, just delete it.
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Special Feature: Another Scam - Phone Phishing
From worldstart.com
There’s a new type of phishing scam on the horizon. It's one that mixes the traditional methods, such as sending bogus e-mails, with social engineering techniques. Don’t let it catch you off guard!
As you probably know by now, the term phishing refers to an attempt to gain personal information from end users by spoofing legitimate companies and financial institutions, such as PayPal or Ebay. In order to do this, an attacker sends a message (usually an e-mail) stating there is some sort of serious issue with your account and in order to take care of it, you need to log in with your account information at their site, which is of course, fake.
Once this is done, the attackers have the information they want, which puts the ball squarely in their court. This has been a very successful avenue for attackers in the past. They have been able to harvest various user's personal information with ease. Lately however, the public is getting a little wiser to these sorts of attacks and we aren't so easily fooled anymore.
The one thing about hackers is that they are resilient. You stop one method and they shortly figure out another. Well, the new method appears to be a hybrid phishing attack that blends technology and traditional methods combined with the misplaced security of speaking with someone on the phone.
This brings in phone phishing. Phone Phishing is becoming very popular, yielding a high success rate. The concept remains the same: fool someone into giving you personal information by impersonating another company, but the execution has a slight twist. There are a few different styles of phone phishing, with the most popular being when an attacker instructs the user to call a customer service number in order to rectify the bogus situation.
On the other end of the line, it could be a fake customer service representative or an automated message. It doesn’t matter. Either way, they are going to ask you to divulge personal information. This method has not been in use that long, but it is notably successful. People tend to feel more comfortable giving their information out over the phone instead of the Internet, especially when they feel they are safe.
There are variations of Phone Phishing, which I have summarized below:
* Some methods take advantage of the rich content with the smart phones that are out there today, which can send/receive instant messaging, as well as e-mail. These are both more traditional methods of phishing that have proven to be highly successful in the past.
* There is a method of phone phishing that is identical to the method listed above, but instead of being directed to a phone number, you are instructed to go to a Web site, which is of course, fake and it then requests your personal information.
* A less traditional phishing scam (but still in the same family) is the method in which an attacker will use a police scanner to help capture cell phone calls. This is primarily for older analog phones that have little encryption on the audio transmission. With the newer digital phones, this isn’t an issue due to the encryption placed on the audio. With analog phones however, it is quite easy to steal audio from a transmission.
Fortunately, there is one easy way to defend yourself against any phishing scam. Just simply remember to never respond to communication that is requesting you to call, e-mail or go to a Web site and log in with your personal information. Instead, always go out to the site on your own and log into your account. If there are any issues with your account, you will see them there and you will be able to fix it. The same can go with a customer service number given to you via e-mail. Use the phone number from one of the company's Web sites or from your billing information, if you have it.
These steps will keep your information safe online and over the phone.
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Today's Topic: Using CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs
Over the past few weeks, we have gotten many questions on copying files from the computer to a CD and vice versa. The following articles, taken from our newsletter archives, address some of these questions.
Putting Files on a CD-ROM Disk
Computers that have CD writers generally come with CD writing software. Since CD writing programs vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, the following steps will be very general, but, hopefully, will help you get started.
The first step is finding your CD writing program. Open the Start menu and look under Programs. Look for CD writing, burning or something similar. Open the program.
If you get choice for writing manually or using a wizard, pick the wizard. If not, proceed to the next step.
You will have to choose what type of CD you want to create, music/audio or data. If you want to put files on the CD, choose Data.
The next step would be selecting the files you want to put on the CD. Most programs will show the Windows file structure, with the folders and files in one pane, where they can be selected and then added to the Write list. You may see an Add button, or be able to drag and drop the file into the pane to create your Write list.
Once you have added all the files you want, look for the option to write to the CD.
Some CD writing programs will give you the option to test the CD. You may want to test the CDs the first few times you use the writer. If they always test ok, in the future you can skip this step.
While the CD is being written to, do not work with your computer, especially opening or closing programs. The CD writing process can be interrupted, causing what is called a buffer underrun error, and it could make your disk unusable.
The CD Writing program will usually let you know when the process is complete. You can then close the program and remove the disk from the drive.
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Copy to a CD with Windows XP CD Copier
Question: How do I put my files onto a CD? I use Microsoft Word and Windows XP.
Answer:
If you are using Windows XP, you do not need to buy expensive CD-recording software. If your computer has a CD-RW or DVD-RW drive, Windows XP comes with built in CD burning software that will do the job for you.
When you insert a blank disk in your ROM drive, Windows XP will ask you if you want to open a writable CD folder. Click OK.
This folder is where you will temporarily store files that you want to put on a CD. You can copy files to this folder by dragging and dropping them or open Windows Explorer, copy the file and paste into the temp folder.
When you have all the files you want to put on the CD, you are ready to write to the disk. Click on Write these files to CD, which you will see on the left side of the CD folder window. All the files that you put into the temporary folder will be copied to the CD.
Note: files can be copied to a CD-R disk only one time while a CD-RW disk can be used over and over. If you are using a CD-R disk, make sure that you put all the files you want to copy into the temporary folder. Once you have put these files on the CD-R, you will not be able to add any more.
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Copy Files from a CD to Your Computer
Question: How can I copy the contents of a CD to my hard drive?
Answer:
First, make a place on the hard drive to store files from the CD. For now, make a folder on the desktop. That will be easy to find later. And, in the future, if you want to move it to the My Documents folder, all you have to do is drag it in.
To make a folder, right click on a blank spot on your desktop. In the menu that you now see, point to New and then click Folder. A folder will appear on the desktop with the name New Folder highlighted in blue. Type a name for your folder, and it will replace the highlighted name.
Now you have a folder on the hard drive for the CD files. Double click on it to open it.
Put the CD in the drive and close it. A window should open automatically, listing all the files on the CD. If it does not open, double click on the My Computer icon, and then double click on the CD drive.
There are now two windows open on your desktop; one has the contents of the CD, and the other is the empty folder on the hard drive.
Arrange the windows so they are side by side, each taking up approximately half of the screen. To do this, right click on a blank spot on the taskbar (the bar across the bottom of the screen). From the resulting menu, click Tile Windows Vertically. The two windows will now line up next to each other.
In the window with the CD files, click Edit on the menu, and then click Select All. All the files will be highlighted. Point to any of the highlighted files, hold down the left mouse button, and drag into the other window (the empty folder on the hard drive). Give the files a few moments to copy.
The files from the CD will now be in the folder on the desktop. You can remove the CD from the drive.
To open any of the files you copied from the CD, double click on the folder icon, and then double click on the file you want to open. The file will open in the appropriate program.
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Websites of Interest:
Humor Health Benefits
Here is a great article about how humor and laughter positively influence your health and how you can bring more humor into your life.
http://www.helpguide.org/life/humor_laughter_health.htm
Symptom Checker
If you have an ache, pain, cough or otherwise do not feel well, take a look at this site from the Mayo Clinic. Select your symptom and you will see a page with matching conditions. Its does not replace a trip to the doctor but at least gives you someplace to start.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/symptom-checker/DS00671
National Hotdog Day
Monday, July 23, is National Hotdog Day. Have a frankfurter in recognition of the holiday.
http://www.hot-dog.org/ |
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