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Show of 10-13-2012

Email and Forum Questions

  • Email from Arnie McKechnie: Dear Dr. Shurtz, A few programs ago, you mentioned that Marianne was number one, and you were number two. So you have the iPad II and she has an iPad I – at least prior to your recent Indian and Vietnam trip. I’m not going to go into who has which iPad – that’s dangerous turf. Just the same, we have iPad I’s, the originals, and iOS 6 apparently is not applicable for these iPads. That being the case, we receive all sorts of app updates for iOS 6. The question is: do these updates for iOS 6 bypass our original iPads, or does it just go into them and suck up memory?
  • Second, I understand Apple has started tracking users so that advertisers can target them again through a new tracking technology called IFA or IDFA. Do you have any information regarding this tracking with iOS 6?
  • I don’t know how you get all the detailed information you discuss on Techtalk, but it’s great. Super program. Thanks, Arnie McKechnie, Davidsonville, MD
  • Tech Talk Responds: The bad news is that that iOS6 will not work on iPad1. The good news is that it will not download and install either, so you will not waste any memory.
  • You are right about Apple’s tricky tracking. On iOS6, Apple has started tracking users so that advertisers can target them again, through a new tracking technology called IFA or IDFA.
  • Previously, Apple had all but disabled tracking of iPhone users by advertisers when it stopped app developers from utilizing Apple mobile device data via UDID, the unique, permanent, non-deletable serial number that previously identified every Apple device.
  • With iOS5 you are safe. However, in iOS 6, tracking is most back on. It can be switched off.
  • IFA or IDFA stands for “identifier for advertisers.” It’s a random, anonymous number that is assigned to a user and their device. It is temporary and can be blocked, like a cookie.
  • Advertising use the IFA to deliver relevant ads to your mobile device. The IFA does not identify you personally — it merely provides a bunch of aggregate audience data that advertisers can target with ads.
  • How to disable in iOS6
    • Go to “General,” then “About,” and then scroll down to the “Advertising” section.
    • From there, you need to to turn “Limit Ad Tracking” on – a bit backwards, yes, but it’s Apple.
  • Email from Alice: Dear Doc, I recently noticed a setting in my desktop running Windows 7 Home Premium which I don’t understand. In Control Panel under Power Options, Advanced Settings, Process or Power Management, the system cooling policy, I have an option of a passive setting. It slows down the processor before speeding up the fan. Or an active setting that slows down the processor after speeding up the fan. By default, it was set to passive, but it makes more sense to me setting it to active. What do you think my setting should be? Thanks, Alice.
  • Tech Talk Responds: It really your choice. When your processor works hard, it gets hot. And when it gets hot, it needs to be cooled down. Cooling it down is usually done by a fan that blows air across the heat sink on top of the CPU. You can instruct the computer to slow down; to not work as hard if it’s starting to heat up – so that the processor doesn’t get as hot – so that the fan doesn’t need to turn on as quickly or perhaps run as fast.
  • Or you can keep the processor running faster and use the fan first. In other words, don’t slow down the processor until you’ve done everything else possible.
  • If you never heat the CPU up, it doesn’t really matter what the setting is. I would be inclined to leave it in the active position simply because if I’m doing something that is processor intensive, I probably am doing it for a reason and I probably don’t want it to slow down unless absolutely necessary. I would tolerate a little fan noise.
  • My guess is, if you’re not pushing your computer very hard, the bottom line is it may not make one whit of difference what you set this to.
  • Email from Cathy: Dear Tech Talk, I’ve opened the drive directory of a 500 GB external drive and checked contents and am unable to find the data that’s causing the drive to fill up too fast. It’s probably using an incremental backup method. I own an all an HP computer with a 500 GB drive internal drive with Windows 7 Enterprise. I also have a 298 GB external drive. Love the show. Thanks, Cathy from Michigan
  • Tech Talk Responds: If you are concerned that it’s some kind of an incremental backup method, I would review the backups that you have set up. It’s something that you would have had to configure yourself using whatever backup program you are using. I would review the settings and see if in fact the incremental backups are continuing to accumulate on that drive.
  • Now, let’s assume for a moment you have no idea what’s taking up the space. You can use a utility called TreeSize. TreeSize will actually analyze all of the files on a hard drive and display in sorted order where all the space is being used. I think you’ll find it’s a very quick and easy utility to be able to identify just what files or what folders are taking up all that space on your external drive.
  • With that information in hand, you can then take the next step, which would be to decide what to do. If you discover that your backup program is simply accumulating data, then it may very well be time to reconfigure you backup program to do things in a slightly different way so as to make more effective use of your external drive.
  • Email from Ngoc in Ohio: Dear Dr. Shurtz, I want to move my Gmail. The questions are where, how, when, where? I want to store thousands of old emails on the web and not on a computer. A loyal listener in Ohio. Ngoc
  • Tech Talk Responds: I love Gmail so I don’t know why you are transferring for emails. The options actually aren’t very good. The problem is that moving a large body of existing email from one online web email service to another is almost impossible. It’s certainly not easy.
  • The only approach that I can think of (and this is a stretch; you’re going to want to be careful about how you do this) is to: Get an email program like Thunderbird. You’ll need to use a program on a PC for this approach to work. You won’t have to use it long-term, but you will need to use it to transfer your email. Connect it up to Gmail using the IMAP protocol (Internet Message Access Protocol). The IMAP protocol will actually download all of the email from Gmail to your machine. Once it’s done downloading, you would create a new account on some other service, like Yahoo. Now in Thunderbird, you would set up another IMAP connection to Yahoo’s email services. Now, what you would do is: on your PC, move all of the email from the folders that represent your Gmail account to the folders that represent your Yahoo account.
  • The one thing that it will not do, and the one thing that I simply have no easy way of transferring, is your contacts or your address book. The best you can come up with in a situation like that is to export your contacts from Gmail (probably in a CSV file) and then use that file to import your contacts into either your desktop email program or your new email account on another web service, like Yahoo.
  • Email from Alex: Dear Tech Talk, I can’t copy files from my computer to external location. I’m using Windows XP Professional and an Intel Pentium 4. The first time I attempt to copy a file to an external location, every time I try, a dialog box always pops up saying it is either the file is already opened or the destination is write protected. But I can copy the file within the system. I’d be very grateful if you can help me. Thanks, Alex
  • Tech Talk Responds: Either your external drive is write protected or the file is open and controlled by another program. If the file is already open, you can use a tool like Process Explorer to see who has the file in use. It is possible that you are attempting to overwrite a file on the destination – and that destination  ile is itself in use – which would essentially give you the same result. If that destination file is in use and you try to overwrite it, you can’t because it’s in use.
  • The other factor is: we do need to double check to make sure that, in fact, the destination you selected is a place you can write to. I would suggest you try and create a file there by some other means… not related to the file you’re copying. Just a create a temporary file. You might use Notepad to create a file on the destination drive.
  • If you have a network drive, it is very possible that you can connect to it in such a way that you only have “read” permission. You can read all you want from it, but any attempt to write to it will cause the error messages that you’re seeing here.
  • It really depends a lot on exactly what external device you’re talking about when you’re talking about the destination for your file.
  • Email from Jim: Dear Tech Talk, I have an unlocked iPhone and frequently travel to India. Can I get a prepaid SIM card with data, or do SIM cards only include voice. Thanks, Jim
  • Tech Talk Responds: You can get a prepaid SIM either with or without data. A new SIM card is about $10. You need to request a SIM card that supports 3G data. For instance, a Kiosk in Mumbai that sold SIM cards with 3G specifically included. It included 600 MB for 450 Rs (about $10 dollars). You can add a 2G data pack for 98 Rs (around $2). You must activate 3G by dailing 576#. The phone kiosk can help with the details. Data and minutes purchased are separate. Data plans typically expire in one month.

Profiles in IT: Thomas Anderson

  • Thomas “Tom” Anderson is an Internet entrepreneur who co-founded the social networking site, MySpace.
  • Tom Anderson was born November 8, 1970.
  • Anderson’s father was an entrepreneur. As a teenager at San Pasqual High in Escondido, California, Anderson was a computer hacker under the pseudonym Lord Flathead.
  • Anderson studied English and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, after which he was lead singer in a band called Swank.
  • He spent some time in Taiwan, before returning to the U.S. to study for a degree in Critical Film Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles
  • Anderson was a product tester and copywriter at XDrive, a digital storage company in 2000, where he met Chris DeWolfe.
  • He initially joined XDrive as a product tester after answering a flyer advertisement while still at film school and looking to earn extra money.
  • When XDrive went bankrupt in 2001, he and DeWolfe founded direct marketing company ResponseBase.
  • They sold ResponseBase to Brad Greenspan’s eUniverse in late 2002.
  • With other eUniverse employees, Anderson set up the first pages of Myspace in August 2003. He founded the site partly as a reaction to Friendster and that social network’s policy of blocking accounts that did not use real names.
  • Anderson and DeWolfe inviting local bands and club owners to post pages and allowing other users to become their “friends.”
  • Hating the idea of any rules, Anderson and DeWolfe insisted on building an “open” site.
  • Any stranger could peruse any profile, join the community, and post pretty much anything he or she pleased. They had trouble raising money.
  • In February 2004, eUniverse recruited a new CEO, Richard Rosenblatt, who embraced social networking. He invested in MySpace.
  • Myspace became one of the most popular social networking websites in the US.
  • Anderson became president of Intermix Media, the successor of eUniverse, when it was sold to News Corp for $580 million.
  • Anderson had trouble delegating and became a bottleneck to further development. He was replaced as president in April 2009 by News Corp;
  • By 2010, Anderson was no longer the default “friend” on Myspace, being replaced by a profile called “Today On MySpace” or “TOM”
  • In late May of 2012, Anderson announced that he would be joining RocketFrog Interactive as an adviser to the 16-person, Los Angeles based company.
  • RocketFrog has created a Facebook app that allows users to play poker, blackjack and a variety of other games with friends, and win prizes from participating advertisers.
  • On his various website, Anderson claims that he is now retired. He apparently loves to travel.
  • His Google Plus Account: https://plus.google.com/+myspacetom.
  • His MySpace Page: http://www.myspace.com/tom

Search Traffic is Trending Down

  • Notably, total core organic searches declined 4 percent y/y, representing the first decline in total search volume since we began tracking the data in 2006.
  • While this month marks the first y/y decline in total search volume, growth rates have been decelerating since February’s recent peak at 14 percent y/y growth (for the prior two years, growth rates were largely stable in the high single-digit to low double-digit range).
  • Tech insiders have been predicting this would happen for some time, as people shifted from using websites, where search is a natural activity, to using mobile apps.
  • Steve Jobs made this prediction in 2010 at the D8 conference:
  • People are going into apps. They’re not just going onto to websites. And people love apps. This is an entirely new thing—they aren’t using search, they’re using apps like Yelp or Flipboard.
  • That’s terrible for Yahoo, which depends on search for most of its profits.
  • It’s also horrible news for Microsoft, which continues to spend and lose billions of dollars to catch up with Google in a market that, it turns out, just peaked.
  • It’s fantastic for Apple, of course, which doesn’t have a stake in the search business but has a lock on most of the profits in the app economy.
  • It’s also good for players like Amazon, Yelp, and eBay, which handle specialized kinds of commercial searches that work well when packaged into a mobile app.
  • Google is not as bad off as it might seem. It has its own mobile ecosystem in Android, so it’s positioned to capture consumers as they shift from searching on the Web to using specialized apps to express and fulfill their desires.
  • And with YouTube and Google+, it has strong social properties that don’t depend on search.

Skype IM Worm spreading installs Ransomware

  • A malicious worm spreading through Skype instant messages threatens to take control of a victim’s machine and hold its contents for ransom.
  • The issue, which was first brought to light Friday by GFI, tricks users into downloading a ZIP file by displaying the socially-engineered message, “lol is this your new profile pic?” along with a link that also spreads the message to other Skype users.
  • The ZIP filed contains an executable file that installs a variant of the Dorkbot worm and creating a backdoor via “Blackhole,” an exploit kit used by criminals to infect computers through security holes.
  • The backdoor allows a remote attacker to take control of the machine and install the ransomware, a malicious application that locks the user out of the computer via password or encryption and demands a payment, or ransom, in exchange for its contents.
  • This particular strain demands a payment of $200 within 48 hours or risk having their files deleted.
  • PC users are also presented with a screen (see below) that claims the computer has been used to visit sites of a nefarious nature, including the downloading of MP3s, illegal pornography, gambling, and illegal drugs, and threatens to send that information to the “special Department of US government” via a program called “System Cleaner,” which it claims was developed by the U.S. government “to prevent crime and illegal activity on the Internet.”
  • The malware also employs click fraud, imitating legitimate user behavior by clicking on ads to generate revenue for its authors. And it’s not a few clicks; GFI said in a 10-minute span it recorded 2,259 transmissions.
  • Skype said it is investigating the matter and recommends upgrading Skype versions and making sure the machine’s security software is up to date.

Iran Behind Saudi Cyberattacks

  • The US believes Iran was behind a major cyberattack on Aramco and a Qatari gas firm, according to a former US official.
  • In a major cybersecurity speech on Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta issued a veiled warning to Tehran that Washington is ready to take preemptive action to protect US computer networks, the former official said.
  • US government agencies have concluded that Iran orchestrated the “shamoon” virus that disabled tens of thousands of computers at Saudi Aramco and struck Qatari natural gas firm RasGas as well, said James Lewis, who has worked for the State Department and other government agencies.
  • American officials had “more than a suspicion” that Iran was to blame for the August attacks, that also possibly included recent denial of service attacks on some US banks.
  • In his speech, Panetta referred to the “shamoon” virus for the first time publicly, saying it erased critical files on about 30,000 computers at Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company.
  • The “shamoon” virus wiped out crucial files and replaced them with images of burning American flags.
  • Two weeks after the August 15th cyberattack on Saudi Aramco, the company announced it had restored its main internal network and that the assault had not disrupted oil production.
  • The Pentagon chief also spoke of “foreign actors” probing sensitive US networks and cited denial of service attacks on some large US financial companies in recent weeks.
  • While he reiterated US concerns about cyber threats linked to Russia and China, Panetta said Iran was building up its digital capabilities.
  • In the same speech to business executives in New York, Panetta said the United States had improved its ability to track the origin of digital attacks and suggested the military stood ready to take preemptive action in cyberspace to protect vital networks.