In a move that defines the term “monumental stupidity”, Lenovo has been delivering laptops with pre-installed adware that totally exposes their customers data since last fall. Built into Lenovo’s version of Windows is a piece of adware called “Superfish”. This software intercepts advertising being delivered from pages you visit and replaces it with their...
Author: scottm
Centurylink DSL Service Major Disruption
Centurylink is having issues in Missouri, Arkansas, and Illinois today… Here’s the map:
If You Use Time Warner You Might Not Be Able To Read This
There was (is) a huge outage on the Time Warner Internet Access Network this morning. Starting around 4:30am a maintenance upgrade has gone horribly wrong. Which is to say, if your on Time Warner Cable it’s likely you can’t read this (until your service is restored, anyway). Here’s the constantly updating map of the Time...
Microsoft Shows Us Why Automatic Updates Arn’t A Good Idea
Oh, don’t get us wrong.. We love being able to update systems at the click of a mouse! But, having systems updates just “happen” is rarely a good idea. And Microsoft has shown us all why in a big way. This past “Patch Tuesday” update from Microsoft is causing Windows7, Windows8, and Server2013 systems to...
Change Your Passwords and UserNames Now
It appears that the “Russian Mob” has pulled off something big… Stealing 1.2 Billion (yes, with a B) usernames and passwords from a wide range of sites. Anytime something like this happens, OPENRSM suggests you change everything. Including usernames, passwords, on all accounts and computers. The New York Times has the story….
Just How Much Personal Info Are You Giving Away?
It’s pretty well known that many websites make an effort to track you online. Even when your not on their site! But, just how much tracking is going on? We decided to do a “quick and dirty” look at a few popular websites to see just how many different trackers are deployed. And, it’s not...
AT&T Has Security Breach, Doesn’t Bother To Tell Customers
Another day, another sad story about a big company losing customers private information, and not telling anyone about it. In April, AT&T confirms employees of an outside contractor hacked customers’ information including Social Security numbers. The contractors employees attempted to unlock phones to put them on another network. Did they sell the names/SSNs? Nobody (including...
How To Stop Annoying Interactive “Creepy” Ads
Have you noticed that when you search for something on Ebay, Amazon, Google, that the advertising on pages seem to know what you’ve been looking for? For Example, look up “LED 3051 Strips” on Google and suddenly ads for lighting fixtures, Ebay auctions, LED suppliers and the like now appear on every page you look...
OPENRSM Advises Changing AppleID Passwords Immediately
It seems to be Apple’s turn in the data wars between “fast buck” artists and real companies. Apple iPhones/Pads are locking up all over Australia and the UK and being held for ransom by a scammer that has managed to gain control of the devices. Apple has yet to comment but incidents in the US...
OPENRSM Advises All To Change Ebay and PayPal Passwords Immediatly
Last nite, an official PayPal blogpost contained nothing but a title… “eBay, Inc. to Ask All eBay users to Change Passwords.”. Which was quickly taken down only after being tweeted and posted to Facebook many times. Later, Ebay reported on it’s own official blog that their corporate network security had been breached… In late February...