To the Ai Squared team,
I would like to personally thank you for such a quick and comprehencive
update regarding the Gw Toolkit app. I believe I must have surely been
at least one of the first to report on it last week, and within 24 hours
(truthfully probably less than that from a technical perspective) you
had resolved everything! Good job! Way to go! Right on! Thank you! Keep
up the great work! To those of you who, like me, may be concerned to a
more significant degree than most about the security and integrity of
your computers, I offer you these words of encouragement. Calm down.
Take a breath. Take a step back for a minute. Quiet your mind, still
both your tongue, and your fingers, lest you write something rash that
you'll only afterward have to apologise for saying. In short, relax,
will ya? The incident was cause for concern to me as well, as I have
only one PC, and it is not exceptionally well protected. Oh, sure, I've
implemented a basic hardware firewall, I have AVG set up to run nightly
scans, I do have thorough scans enabled, I have the same program
referenced above set up to update prior to running its nightly scans, I
have set it up to utilise heuristics when and while scanning, I have
archive scans enabled, I have removable storage scans enabled, and I
have it set up to scan everything, not just what it considers infectable
files. I check on a daily basis to ensure that everything is both
enabled, and up-to-date save the software firewall, as like I said, I've
already implemented a hardware firewall. Both my web browser and email
client (Firefox and Thunderbird respectively) only keep cookies until I
close them, I've instructed both of those apps to tell websites that I
don't want to be tracked, and I regularly clean out the %temp%, temp,
and prefetch folders of my machine to keep it running at its best. I
also run a disk defrag the last day of each month to further maximize
efficiency. Don't worry, I'm not using a SSD, which of course don't
require disk defrags. What I'm getting at here is that's my basic
security protocol, but unless you use a program like Deepfreeze (I don't
even know if it's compatible with todays operating systems) there's
nothing that's gonna give you one hundred percent security and
integrity. I am of the opinion that if that's what you're looking for,
then your only hope would be to seek out something like Deepfreeze,
install it, learn how to effectively make use of it, then physically
disconnect your machine from the internet and work with it that way
forever. As for me? No way. That's not my style at all. I know it can,
in some ways at least, be like the legendary wild west out here in
cyberspace, and I'm ok with that. I am a full supporter of net
neutrality, and associated apps and services built with that in mind
like Tor, Bit Torrent, and Bitcoin. If things like that frighten you,
then I can only encourage you to be very, very, cautious if, and when,
either interacting, or transacting, online. It is far from a safe haven
out here. Having said that, I would like to personally with this letter
offer a word of commendation to Ai Squared, who reacted both quickly and
comprehencively, to both address and resolve the recent Gw Toolkit
scare. Good job team, way to go! Seriously. I'm not being patronising, I
genuinely mean it. Good work !Keep it up, will ya?
Respectfully submitted,
Brandon Dean Miller
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