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 Cyberspace, the last frontier. Warning! Danger Will
Robinson!
Yes, clients call when internet things go wrong. Sometimes they go a little
wrong, sometimes they go alot wrong.
Just the other day a friend and client, let's call her Gerry for privacy
sake, emailed saying "OMG, you would not believe what just came up on
my screen!". Well, I would and I would also have paid to see the
expression on Gerry's face. This is a little gone wrong.
Seriously, what fun would it be to throw funky stuff at
someone who's out there looking for funky stuff? The comic geniuses behind
these attacks want shock value. They got it.
Problem solved, Gerry and I talked about an experience with
another client. This client left his computer on all the time, which is not
a problem. His home office however is one door away from his
master bedroom and during the night he was awakened by the sound of
"donkeys and doors" as he put it.
This guy uses his computer to manage his investments and
communicate with family via email. Thats it, punto final. So you'd wonder
why his internet Home Page got highjacked** to "Katrina Loves
Ponies", but don't forget, they want the shock value. They got it that
time. Again, a little gone wrong.
These people didn't go looking for trouble, trouble was looking for
them. Other people invite trouble in for a few beers and to meet the
family.
One wildcat Mortgage Broker gets a "misdirected"
email from tiffani@catholic-girls-school.edu with an attached
video called "pajama (hehe) party" and he has to
share it with the high-school buddies he's in business with. Next thing you
know we're chasing a virus around the office, which is like trying to herd
cats. Nobody gets email, internet comes up porno, files leaking out all
over. This is a bigger gone wrong.
An extreme case of things gone wrong from Fox News.
Computer malware may have cost a former Massachusetts civil servant his
job, his friends, his health insurance, his pension - and nearly his
freedom.
Michael Fiola entered his own personal hell in March 2007 when his boss
at the Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents told him that a
large amount of pornography, including kiddie porn, had been found on his
state-issued laptop - and that he was being fired immediately.
But on Monday, the state dropped the charges. Fiola's own computer
expert concluded that the porn was the result of a massive computer
infection that was using his PC to secretly store and upload pornographic
images, and the state found no reason to contest that.
"The overall forensics of the laptop suggest that it had been
compromised by a virus," said Jake Wark, spokesman for the Suffolk
County District Attorney, according to the Boston Herald.
Tami Loehrs' 30-page report said the laptop had outdated and misconfigured
virus-protection software, leaving it open to all sorts of exploitation.
Fiola and his wife now live in Rhode Island, where he works as an
insurance salesman and is trying to salvage his reputation.
"I use a laptop now for work, but I do not go online until I go
home," he told PC World. "My days of surfing the Web are over,
because I don't wish this on anybody."
Notice he had to use "his own computer expert" to get
off the hook.
If your family's home PC pops-up Katrina Loves Ponies you've
probably got a virus, or not, that's your business, and that's your
call, and that's Cocktail Talk.
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