Can you spell, 'Anti virus?'
Of course, Dear Reader, YOU have already installed your favourite anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-everything program. (If not, please go over and do that - - THEN come back here.)
It has been a harrowing month for all of us who are on the Internet first, on April 8, Microsoft carried out their threat to abandon those who had been using windows XP by not giving them protection from hacking.
Welcome to the XPocalypse, complete with 'Windows XP survival guide'.
A goodly number of us were / are still using it; I have it on two computers in the house, a Dell desktop and a Dell laptop, and even the local health care centre uses it! I hope they have a good support extension program from Microsoft – which is (naturally!) very pricey – to keep them in a more secure zone.
What to do to replace Windows XP?
First, Microsoft wants us to buy a new PC, or upgrading the OS, to Windows 7 or Windows 8, for a minimum of hundred dollars and download all of that. (Money grab.)
A few months ago, Apple upgraded our iOS to 'Maverick', for FREE!
What I want to do instead is download 'Ubuntu', whose demo I have already tried out, for free.
(So what if I’m simple, and cheap!)
I have already tried a download that but the bloated files in the Dell desktop did not allow for a complete procedure. The iMac download didn't work out either. So now I'm left with having to order the 'Ubuntu' on the DVD (slight charge), because I couldn't have burned it anyway, or I risk using Windows XP.
- - We thought that was bad enough, but then the 'Heartbleed' problem came upon us, complete with its own logo and web site. That involved all our contact with those secured companies on the Internet that have ‘http’ with an ’s’ and the little lock.
Google and Facebook and Microsoft — and as I found out early in the game, the Canadian income tax system — were all involved, and began to fix it.
For three or four days, we were unable to communicate on line with the taxman or with most other Canadian government sites on any topic whatsoever! Of course, when they came back on, I quickly and successfully filed my income tax return.
It was quite a harrowing time for a lot of companies and for a lot of individuals, because you didn't know if some site had been infected and you had to visit and rely on a website to tell you what the level of security now was FOR THAT SPECIFIC SITE.
Classic case of 'flying by the seat of their pants,' although the big companies had known about the problem for months!
- -Of course they seemed the best to last (or so we thought): Microsoft announced a couple of days ago that its ‘Internet Explorer’ programs have been hacked, and were now totally vulnerable to those who want to steal passwords and all the personal information that they can get their hands on.
We note that this Huge IE Attack includes all the versions of 'Internet Explorer' from the old ones that were about 10 years old, up until the present time.
Microsoft didn't seem to be in a hurry to even acknowledge the problem, but they have given us some advice: mostly, do stay clear of Internet explorer and go into one of their other more secure systems, while they decide if they can patch when they can patch and when they can send the patches to us.
- - Yesterday, the topic was: Adobe issues emergency security patch for Windows.
I didn’t have to seek out that patch; Apple sent it and installed it.
As you might appreciate, this is all very confusing, and there is probably more mayhem to come.
Stay tuned, but please surf carefully.
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