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CyberArtisans Web Developers Newsletter |  |
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Welcome to the September 2008 issue of the CyberArtisans newsletter! Each month we try to present information that will be useful to you as a website owner and as a user of the web. If these newsletters are useful, please forward this to a friend. To unsubscribe, follow the directions at the bottom of this email.
Cloud computing is the collective name for online services that keep your data on a server somewhere rather than on your desktop or laptop. One growing area is medical records. After you sign up for the service, you enter your all medical records there using your browser. They are stored on the services servers, and you can access them anytime you need to from anywhere. There are lots of advantages — for example, since you can access your health records anywhere, if you are rushed to an emergency room far from home your health history would be immediately available to the attending physician. But there are some obvious, and some less-obvious, causes for concerns about privacy. The administrators of these services (both Microsoft and Google offer them) are adamant that their security is the very best available. Counterbalancing that claim is a recent (April) breach of security at Wellpoint, the largest health insurer in the U.S. where the health records of as many as 130,000 of its customers accidentally became publicly available on the Internet. But the biggest area of concern is not security breaches but data mining. If, for example, you give an insurance company access to your online health records as part of an application for life insurance, you then have no control over where that data goes once it leaves the medical records service computers. And many companies have found that selling data is very lucrative. It's not well-known, for example, that all 51,000 pharmacies in the U.S. are wired for data mining. Selling prescription records is a multibillion-dollar-a-year industry according to a FAQ published by Patient Privacy Rights, a major consumer-health and privacy-rights organization. How about HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act? Doesn't that protect your data? Not really. There are many exceptions within the law. And both Microsoft and Google claim their health services are not subject to HIPAA regulation since they don't actually offer health-care services. This will probably be challenged in the courts, so it's worth staying tuned to the news on this. If you are thinking of using one of these services, read the privacy provisions of the site carefully before signing up.
There have been concerns by some that the new Hadron Collider in Europe would create black holes that would destroy the earth (and possibly a lot more). Fortunately, there is a website that is monitoring the situation. Check it out here. For those of you who still wonder about how techie minds work, this is actually a techie joke. It turns out it is not simply a site with a single word in it. Instead, it has JavaScript code that (allegedly) tests whether the world has ended. For the very techie amongst you, here is the code:
if (!(typeof worldHasEnded == "undefined")) { There is also a money-back guarantee in the code: <!-- if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn't yet updated please email mike@frantic.org to receive a full refund --> Clearly some people have way too much time on their hands.... Incidentally, if you'd like a crash course in what the Hadron Collider does, a fun way to get it is to watch this video Yes, it's a rap song. And yes, it's an accurate (if grossly simplified) description of what scientists are hoping to find out with the Hadron Collider.
In a moment of distraction, one of us clicked on an attachment to an email that purported to be an e-card. Suddenly a screen popped up notifying her that her system had detected a virus. Once we analyzed it carefully, however, it was clearly a non-event. The antivirus portion of ZoneAlarm was telling her it had detected the virus, put it in quarantine, and was simply reporting this fact to her. Her system was fine and she didn't need to do anything other than close the window and say Thank you. Sometimes it's nice to know that things work the way they are supposed to.
Be on the alert for Spam that purports to be offering a security product called "Anitvirus XP 2008" or "XP Antivirus 2009." Ironically, running this attachment actually infects your system with a virus that puts up a false alert about a virus and then offers to sell you something to remove it. The objective (surprise!) is to relieve you of some of your money. The virus can be removed but it's a little messy, involving editing the Windows Registry. This is not a problem for computer folks who have done it many times before, but since making an error editing the Registry can completely disable your system, most computer owners understandable don't want to take it on. Your best defense is to be alert for it and not open the attachment. But if you have already become infected you should contact your computer support person and have them clean your system. Don't have a computer support person? Contact us and we can point you to someone who can help.
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