IE Bug Invites Phishing Attacks

[Mysterious Benefactor]

A new vulnerability was discovered in fully patched versions of Internet Explorer that could lead to a phishing attack. Microsoft is still investigating the issue.

Stay tuned for a patch

[Patti Feinberg]

A new vulnerability was discovered in fully patched versions of Internet Explorer that could lead to a phishing attack. Microsoft is still investigating the issue.

qu'est ce c'est phishing?
Also, what's FULLY PATCHED....??

Thanks MB,

Patti

Okay...also....my father-in-law loaded a new photo program (thanks for the new digital camera dad!)...and on the menu?? bottom (where the time is listed on my system) there's now a new thingy....I've right clicked etc...how do I make it 'disappear'??

[Mark Rainey]

Phishing is the attempt to gain your logins, passwords, and other personal information by making an email or Web site appear to be something other than what it really is; for example, you may receive something purporting to be from Ebay or Paypal that looks very authentic, but it's bogus; the sender is hoping to acquire your personal info to hack your account, steal your credit card, etc.

Fully patched means all the latest Microsoft security updates have been installed on your machine.

To remove icon in the task bar, you must determine what the name of the program is that it belongs to. Then go to the start button, to RUN, type "msconfig," and click the START UP tab. Then find the program, uncheck the box beside it, hit OK, and restart your machine.

--M
http://home.triad.rr.com/smrainey

[Gothick]

"Phishing"??? How on earth do the technogeeks come up with this stuff?  And how do they get everyone to start using it?

I mean, the band just announced they were breaking up.

If there's such a thing as "Mariah Careying" on the computer, I really don't want to find out about it.

G.

[Midnite]

If there's such a thing as "Mariah Careying" on the computer, I really don't want to find out about it.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

"Phishing" How on earth do the technogeeks come up with this stuff?  And how do they get everyone to start using it?

I mean, the band just announced they were breaking up.

But phishing was a computer term before the band Phish even existed. So, perhaps the truth is that the band actually "borrowed" the term rather than what they've led everyone to believe: that their name is a clever spelling based on Jon Fishman's name. 

[Gothick]

MB, this is really OT, but can you give me a clue about this word "meme"?

It's mainly used on the Live Journal site to refer to these little daily quizzes and games, but a woman I know used it to refer to a seasonal party she's hosting, and THAT threw me for a loop.

I don't know that the word is searchable via google, but I might just give it a shot.  It's really getting on my nerves.

Is there a standard pronunciation?  The only time I have heard it spoken, it was pronounced like the French word "meme" (i. e., "mem"), but that was from a Canadian...

G.

[Mysterious Benefactor]

MB, this is really OT, but can you give me a clue about this word "meme"?

It's mainly used on the Live Journal site to refer to these little daily quizzes and games, but a woman I know used it to refer to a seasonal party she's hosting, and THAT threw me for a loop.

Well, in the case of the Live Journal site, meme is probably short for memetics. Check out the Principia Cybernetica Web site for an explanation.

As for your friend using the term to describe a party, that's a new one on me. 

Is there a standard pronunciation?  The only time I have heard it spoken, it was pronounced like the French word "meme" (i. e., "mem"), but that was from a Canadian...

Meme rhymes with dream. 

[Philippe Cordier]

Another problem to be aware of (which we've addressed before) is spyware, and a new one to me that I recently experienced -- browser hijacking.

Save yourself hours of time and heartache by looking into such preventative measures as "Ad Aware" (mostly for spyware it seems) and "HijackThis" (for help in identifying evil "helper objects" that mysteriously get installed on your computer and can take over your Internet browser).

[Mark Rainey]

It's very important to keep all your security software up to date too -- and activated. Occasionally, when I'm running a flight sim or something, I disable Norton AV while I'm playing to improve the game's performance. A couple of times, I've forgotten to immediately reactivate Norton after I've quit playing. Yesterday, I did a Google search for a certain writer, went to one of the sites in the list, and boom. Norton pops up and says my computer has caught a trojan, apparently from the site, which had been infected. I'm running Mozilla, so the trojan didn't auto-activate (as it might have with MS Internet Explorer); but if I'd been browsing without the AV enabled, I might very well have been caught flat-footed. (Hopefully, The Cleaner, which is always active no matter what, would have caught it before it could do any harm.)

--M
http://home.triad.rr.com/smrainey

[Midnite]

MB, this is really OT, but can you give me a clue about this word "meme"?

It's mainly used on the Live Journal site to refer to these little daily quizzes and games, but a woman I know used it to refer to a seasonal party she's hosting, and THAT threw me for a loop.

Gothick, a meme is an idea that's spread through some channel of communication such as word of mouth, email, TV, ads, newspaper, or blog.

[Philippe Cordier]

I know the forum isn't really a clearinghouse to discuss computer problems, but ... does anyone know if there's any danger in opening an e-mail attachment that's from someone you know?  For example, a friend of mine sent me a paper she had written as an attachment -- if her computer was infected and she doesn't know it, could a virus have attached itself to the file she sent?

I'm only slightly paranoid, can you tell? ...

 

[Josette]

Vlad, I have no idea what the answer to that is (I'll be curious to learn, too), but I never take any chances.  Any time I download a file, no matter whom it is from, I run my virus check!

[Mark Rainey]

Vlad -- Sure, if your friend's computer is infected, even if she doesn't know it, an attached file could transfer a virus to your machine. Hopefully, she's running a virus check on outgoing mail and you're running one on all incoming. If it's an MS Word file, there are macro viruses that can infect your Word documents, so it's important to scan document files too.

The probability is lower, but you can always get spoofed emails that appear to come from a friend too. The one time I caught a virus a few years ago was when I was expecting a file from a friend; it arrived, or so I thought, and I opened it. Wham. Bug in my system. It wasn't the file I was expecting, nor was the email really from my buddy Bob. Just by coincidence, I had received a virus from someone else with email address spoof so it appeared to come from Bob. (I should have known something was up when the attachment wasn't a .doc file, but I was hasty.)

--M
http://home.triad.rr.com/smrainey

[Philippe Cordier]

Thanks for the information, Mark.  The situation is scarier than I thought!

I've been deleting all "vague" emails from senders I don't know ...

With all my anti-spyware programs, now some of them seem to be finding "problems" with each other (Ad Aware claims to have found a hijacker in Hijackthis I think it was, Norton Anti-virus claims to have found a virus in Sun Java, which I installed to replace MS Java upon recommendation of a spyware info page) ...

Vlad, I have no idea what the answer to that is (I'll be curious to learn, too), but I never take any chances.  Any time I download a file, no matter whom it is from, I run my virus check!

I didn't realize you could scan individual documents with antivirus software.  I'll have to figure out how to do this without scanning the entire computer.