The Older Geek

As if we didn’t have enough things to be concerned about. Identity theft and data theft is a growing problem. Hackers and other criminals are increasingly interested in our data instead of our money. This has insidious repercussions, as once stolen and abused, it is very difficult to get your good name and good credit [...]

I never altered my privacy settings or anything, but one day while logging my status of Facebook, I saw that Facebook was now displaying my location for all to see. I never gave Facebook permission to do this. But that has never stopped their privacy intrusions before… *sigh* Here’s how to remove your location from [...]

You may have heard rumors circulating that the United States FBI will shut down the Internet on March 8, 2012. Is this true or false? Well, both. It depends. If your computer is infected with the trojan program DNSChanger, then you will experience an Internet “shut down.” If your computer is clean, you will not [...]

Just recently, two pals of mine had their blogs hacked. Apparently, the hackers gained access through the website themes. The themes were either coded poorly or contained loopholes though which hackers could gain access. It’s a very vulnerable feeling to have your blog hacked. All your precious posts and comments can be wiped out in [...]

Can anyone remember the time before Amazon and eBay and PayPal when we all actually used to DRIVE to stores and hand CASH to a REAL human cashier? The Internet has certainly changed things. Not only is the Internet the “information super highway,” it’s become the shopping megaplex of the world. I remember my initial [...]

“The Cloud” and “Cloud Computing” are the latest buzzwords in consumer computer-speak: what exactly does it mean? You may already utilize cloud computing and not be aware of it. As a matter of fact, if you own a smartphone or tablet, play online games or maintain a blog, you are part of “the cloud.” The [...]

If your WordPress theme utilizes the well-known and popular timthumb.php script, update your theme as soon as possible. The TimThumb script is a relatively common function. It resizes images on WordPress blogs according to your theme’s custom settings. I use the script on a few of my blog themes. According to the TimThumb develeper site, [...]

In a previous post, I reported the prevalence of “social engineering,” which is a new technique that’s been developed by hackers. Now that computers and browsers are becoming more secure with improved bug fixes and firewalls, hackers are looking to deceive computer users– YOU and ME. According to one report, 1 in 14 downloads is [...]

Everyone sings the same old tune… “back up your data, back up your data.” Honestly, between all the backing up we have to do with our hard drive (photos, documents, emails, etc etc), it is very laborious to have to back up our blogs, too. It’s even more arduous if you have lots of blogs. [...]

Wow, a news story I read at Computer World sure shocked me! According to a Microsoft report, 1 in 14 downloads is malicious! The next time a website says to download new software to view a movie or fix a problem, think twice. There’s a pretty good chance that the program is malicious. In fact, [...]

Oh spam, how I hate thee. Email spam is bad enough. Email spam may carry viruses or sordid images or be just plain annoying. But a simple “delete” takes care of it. Email spam, while annoying and time-consuming, costs you nothing. Cell phone text messaging spam is another matter. Most of us do not subscribe [...]

Surprise, surprise. Another Big Brother company is watching our every move, storing the data and keeping it in a safe place for anyone (except the user, of course) to access. In case you haven’t heard, Wired.com reported that Apple devices (iPod, iPhone, 3G iPads) track and log your location and data. When you sync your [...]