Fake H1N1 (Swine Flu) alerts lead to malware | Zero Day | ZDNet.com

ZDNet reports a malicious email is out and about suggesting you download software for Swine Flu protection. I am impressed by the quality of much of today’s attacks on our mail and our web browsing.

So take this as another simple call to be vigilant, don’t just refuse to open email attachments easily but beware of all links in email as well.

Be safe out there!    

Google Translate

I happened to use Google Translate recently and realized they have changed its face since my last visit. If you don’t know about this service visit the link. When you visit a website in a language you can’t read just visit this site and put the link in the form.

If you have Google Toolbar installed it can have a button or right click link to automatically open the translated page.

I don’t use it often, but each time I am reminded how limited I am knowing only one language well. I am grateful for my family’s effort to have tried to teach me French as a child and for my father’s teaching me to understand etimology listings in Webster’s Dictionary for each definition. We red necks don’t consider how much of our American ‘English’ is based on other languages.

10 Solid Tips to Safeguard Your Facebook Privacy

This link above leads to an excellent article on a topic I discuss periodically. I am not paranoid, folks are really out to get us! 

Aside from the time we waste on Facebook there can be a real security problem. If you write things you shouldn’t have co-workers or bosses see then you may just be foolish. But many of the more innocent things we post would pass muster if they were just not brought to the attention of these folks.

The default starting point in Facebook is for all your friends to be treated equally. Maybe this is dangerous, but its what it is. So what the linked article describes is how to create Friends Lists, and then make posts viewable just by the right lists and further how to hide information from searches.

It’s a good read. Could save some trouble down the road and still let you enjoy the benefits of using Facebook.

Enjoy!
-=Lare=-

Bing & Google :: Add-ons for Firefox

Microsoft is now offering some competition to Google search with its new Bing.com website. In the interest of studying them both I wanted to give Bing a try. My browser, Firefox, has a search field in its upper right which you can add search sites of your choice. But in looking for a Bing option I discovered this Bing vs. Google addon for Firefox and I like it.

Now when I type in a string to search I get a page split in half with one side Bing and the other Google. This allows comparing results of the two engines one on one (they scroll together) and you can change the view from side by side, upper lower, or one or the other with links in the pages header.

So far I have been surprised at how directed to Google feature sites Google is compared to Bing. The surprise is how many other good results Bing does show that are not YouTube, Blogger, and Google Sites hosted. To be expected I suppose but I had thought Google was more fairly weighted. Live and learn.