Everyone’s friend Don Schenck is going to be presenting a 90-minute class to some of his neighbors on the topics of Phishing, Spam, Virii (etc.) and how to protect one’s computer. If you have any papers, links, etc. pertaining to any of these subjects, he’d appreciate if you’d send them along.
i'd hope as well that after your presentation, you could publish a lot of the things people sent to you and your notes., so you can help us, help others.
Brian - but of course!
Don,
The International Association of Privacy Professionals has a daily (week-daily) email newsletter on issues related to the things listed above.
They always have a lot of links to news items and reports.
Also, check out the Information Security Forum. Many publications and it's an organization that a lot of big (as in big-ass) companies are invovled with to build better information security.
Hey Don, I don't know if you were already planning to discuss this in your talk, but you probably should also include something about protecting WiFi networks and WiFi-enabled computers, and what you should/shouldn't do when using WiFi in a public location like a coffee shop. I've got my WiFi network protected at home, but I'm not sure whether it's safe to do things like check my e-mail or do online banking while I'm on a public WiFi network, and I bet there are a lot of other people out there who are wondering the same thing.
Brad -- Wow, excellent idea. I hadn't considered that.
I'll toss that in. But ... what CAN one do at, say, Starbucks or Panera, to protect their WiFi data?
This simple info is surprisingly hard to find on the Web, and I can't find anything about it in the helpfiles on my computer either (which came with a WiFi card installed). I remember David Pogue wrote an excellent piece about it in one of his weekly e-mails from the NY Times, but I didn't save it and can't remember what he said.
I've never taken my laptop to one of these public places, because I don't know if it's possible for a lurking hacker to capture things like my e-mail password or my online banking username and password through the air. My firewall's on and none of my computer's directories are shared, so they shouldn't be able to get into my computer but I do worry about what info they might be able to snoop in on while I'm online. Anyone know the answer and what if anything can be done to prevent it???