On 11/06/2010 07:10 AM, Aaron Toponce wrote: > In a random "mom and pop" Internet cafe, I would understand this > concern. In an established environment, such as a major university, that > paranoia might be excessive.
I would say most internet cafes would pose quite a risk. Only recently have I started traveling with a netbook. However I don't think my paranoia is excessive. I have known of a lot of people who had their GMail account hacked in the last year. Even to Linux-savy folks such as many of us. After always being careful where he logs into facebook and gmail (no starbucks), and always security best practices, one friend simply went to visit his parents and logged into gmail and facebook using their windows computer. Suddenly his contacts receive an e-mail saying he needs money wired to him. In one person's case the password on her gmail wasn't changed and so she'd never have noticed she had been compromised if she hadn't noticed some messages in her sent folder (all spam) that she didn't recall sending at 2am every day. And she only used her computer at home and her office computer at BYU. Even though she tried to do things like keep her antivirus up to date, I believe her home computer still probably had a key-logging virus on it. She has now moved to a Mac because of this experience. Just last week another friend had her account compromised somehow and she has been only using the internet at her home in southern utah. Probably a very stealthy virus or spyware on her computer, as she also tries to stay up to date and runs her virus and malware scans regularly. I am not by nature a paranoid person, but I've seen enough of this kind of stuff lately to start to be more paranoid. The people I just mentioned didn't use random internet cafes. They didn't even use random computers at all. Having firefox on a stick wouldn't have helped in any of these cases, though probably booting linux on a USB stick would have. It would seem that even in an "established environment" such as BYU where I work, the battle against MS viruses and spyware has largely been lost. I'm also a lot more paranoid now since my gmail account not only handles a lot of my e-mail, but because it also handles my pictures (picasaweb), and most importantly, my phone. /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
