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QUESTION:
I have a Macbook Pro that I use when away from home.
Would you consider it safe to use library and motel
Internet connections to do online banking?
—
Gerry Sweet
,
Bloomington, Minn.
ANSWER: I
wouldn't do it because it's a huge risk.
Public
Wi-Fi hotspots are good for Internet browsing, but not
banking, because security is weak and even encryption
(coding) is no guarantee of protection.
Public
wired Internet connections have a certain unknown
quality—you don't know who has access to the Web
server you're using, and that should make you cautious.
But the
wireless security issue is the most pressing one, if for
no other reason than free Wi-Fi is proliferating in
libraries, coffee shops and restaurants. In any of these
places, it's possible for another computer user in the
same Wi-Fi hotspot to snatch and read your unencrypted
Wi-Fi messages as they move through the airwaves. Even
encrypted wireless messages aren't safe from being
decoded and read.
In
addition, an unscrupulous person with the right software
could use his or her computer to masquerade as the Wi-Fi
hotspot, so that you'd actually be communicating with
the thief instead of the public Wi-Fi. The thief could
harvest your passwords, then gather even more personal
information by passing you on to a phony banking website
that looks exactly like the one you're trying to
contact.
———
Q: I
recently tested the data backup function of Windows
Vista and discovered that it worked well. But it was
just a test and now I want to delete the contents of the
restore folder.
However,
Vista won't let me delete some of the items, and I'm
left with more than 8 gigabytes of backup files with
names such as Adobe and Windows Media Player that serve
no apparent function. Can you help?
—
Greg Wright
,
Ottawa, Canada
A: By
denying you the right to delete your backup files, Vista
is saying that "you aren't the boss of me" —
even though you should be.
Why? To
protect your PC from tampering, Windows Vista limits the
ability of users to change settings. Only one person is
the primary user who can control everything on the
computer; everyone else who uses the PC is a secondary
user with limited discretion. To become that primary
user, you need to alter Vista's settings to give you
both "ownership" of the files you want to
delete and "administrator" status so you can
delete them. The process to do that, which includes 30
steps, can be found at tinyurl.com/2df6rnm. Follow the
directions, and you'll be the undisputed boss of your
PC.
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