INFOGRAPHIC: Control of your personal data online

I'M not usually a fan of these 'shocking' infographics as it's quite difficult to check their sources and verify the information contained within. But as someone who receives scam emails via Gmail on a regular basis, this one seems more or less accurate (or at least believable).

There has been an increase of online fraudsters who seek to control your personal data worldwide, so it is certainly something to be cautious about. There is also a good word of advice here, that being the use of strong passwords. According to this “YOU ARE NOT SAFE ONLINE!” infograhic, it takes a mere two hours to crack a password with 8 lowercase letters whereas it would take 200 years or so if you throw it just one capital.

Control of your personal data

GEOTAGGING: Internet safety and online privacy

THE Internet and privacy have been major concerns in the past decade — and rightly so. Facebook alone has been caught up in several court cases in the past few years, which has seen the service making major revisions to their privacy policies.

Facebook aside, several of the latest gadgets on the market today automatically make use of geotagging. This infuses media such as photographs with location-based information or metadata, which is perhaps the bigger concern when it comes to privacy and security online.

What is geotagging?

The following definition of geotagging is taken from the official homepage of the U.S. army, which is trying to discourage troopers from using social media services and risk compromising their positions.

“Geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification to photographs, video, websites and SMS messages. It is the equivalent of adding a 10-digit grid co-ordinate to everything you post on the Internet.” - www.army.mil

iPhones, iPads, smartphones with built-in GPS, and several other devices automatically create such metadata when content is shared or posted on the Internet. Smartphones in particular automatically embed geotags in pictures taken — often with users being unaware.

Social networking services, on the other hand, are being forced to be a lot clearer when it comes to geotagging photos and videos in particular when posting them on the Internet. Photo sharing sites such as Flickr and Picasa for example, offer geotagging options, but this is not an automatic function.

The fear is that tagging photos or videos­ with an exact location on the Internet allows random people to track an person’s location and movement patterns.

Understand what you're using

It is therefore important to understand the characteristics of any hi-tech device you might own. Study its manual to determine how to switch off GPS functions. This is, of course, if you fear for your own safety.

Perhaps the real concern involves parents of teenage children. There is a prevalent belief that pedophiles living in basements scan the Internet on a daily basis and use such services to find their next victims. It would be foolish to think that such people don’t exist, but it would also be a shame if technology was avoided altogether because of a fear of them.

The bottom line is to practise being a savvy and cautious Internet user and teach such practices to your children. Social networking is all about bringing people together and sharing experiences with family and friends. It has also been used to successfully capture criminals online. Good measures are already in place to keep things private and secure and are being continuously improved. The choice to behave in a relatively risk-free and secure manner online lies entirely in the hands of the user.

Geotagging, the Internet & online privacy: final thoughts

As soon as you sign up for a Google account or join a social networking site or service, you immediately begin building an online track record. Deciding who you connect with, and what information you choose to supply online, will determine who gets to learn what about you.

If you use services such as Gmail, Twitter or Facebook, look under your “settings” tabs to access and edit privacy options.

Of course there are risks of genuine breaches to private information; but, if you have nothing to hide and are savvy and cautious­ when online, the chances of geotagged media seriously harming you or your family are about the same as being struck by lightning.

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GMAIL: Why Google Mail is the best

DID you know that more than 70% of the Internet is comprised of spam? We usually find these in our email inboxes – often in the form of Viagra adverts.

If you wish to rid yourself of spam (or want to get email for the first time) then Gmail is definitely the way to go. You can sign up for free by visiting www.google.co.za and clicking on the Gmail link up top. You only need to create a username and password and you’re ready to get spam-free email that is 100% free.

An extra bonus of getting a Gmail account is that you can use the same username and password to access other Google services such as Google Talk, Google Analytics and Google AdSense.

The amount of space that Gmail offers its users is close to 7.5 Gigs each. This means that you can send and receive large emails with attachments and store them within your Gmail or Google account. It also has the best spam protection so you’ll never have to receive a Viagra advert again.

That’s all for this time.

Kind regards,
That Tech Guy

The home PC has evolved into what is now considered a modern-day home entertainment system. Capable of behaving like a television, home cinema, game station, work station, music player and much more, the home PC is far more capable than it has ever been before. But with all these capabilities come complexities, and there are several things to consider when investing in any form of home entertainment. This is what Easy PC plans to simplify.

More Easy PC Tech Advice:

1. Virus Scans
2. Wires and Dust
3. Buying a new PC
4. Setting up Skype
5. Legal Downloads

CLOUD COMPUTING: And how it could help fight global warming

ONE might think of the Internet as some intangible entity that exists somewhere in the clouds and is simply powered by the people that use it. In reality, the energy required to run the Internet and associated hardware and IT infrastructure is on par with the airline industry.

To put it simply, the Internet consists of huge data centres worldwide that host web pages and online content — some of which act as Internet service providers. The reason for the web’s extra large carbon footprint is that each data centre requires power as well as cooling systems in order to function. Furthermore, information technology is the fastest growing industry on Earth, and is becoming a real threat to sustainable development.

The concept of cloud computing, also known as distributed, Internet-based computing, is the idea of decentralising these data centres and sharing the available infrastructure on a global scale. The goal is to have applications and files stored on large, centralised supercomputers or networks. Rather than storing files and programmes on individual PCs, end users are able to store and access their files via the web.

According to www.howstuffworks.com, the concept is very simple: “On your desk, you would have a very low-cost computer with just a processor, a keyboard and a monitor. There would be no hard drive or CD/DVD drive. It would be hooked up to the Internet and would link to a central supercomputer, which would host all of your programs and files.”

Servicing the cloud with Google

In 2007, Google and Apple had a plan to take things forward. Apple was to develop inexpensive consumer computers that were small and portable. This was to leverage the computing power of the vast data centres Google has been building to hold the apps and the data for millions of users.

Unfortunately, development was halted due to different market demands, but Google has made progress since then with its growing library of Google apps. Apps like Google Documents, Spreadsheets and Gmail are all examples of cloud computing that people already make use of.

If we think about it, we do not use an installed programme to check our e-mail. Rather, you log into a web e-mai­l account, such as Gmail or Hotmail remotely. The software and sto­rage for your account doesn’t exist on your computer, but rather on the ser­vice’s computer cloud. We can think of the term cloud simply as a metaphor for the Internet, or a part of it.

How cloud computing works

GRAPHIC: www.howstuffworks.com

So, we have cloud computing to thank for storing all our e-mails and spam and there is more than enough web-space to go around. Gmail accounts alone provide users with close to seven-and-a-half gigs of space. I don’t think I have ever exceeded over two percent of my e-mail quota.

Things get a little more exciting with Google Documents and Spreadsheets. Developed in part as a solution to e-mailing documents back and forth, Google Docs allows several people to edit or revise the same document in real-time. This simplifies the remote process by having a single updated document and speeds it up by having Google store the data.

There are, however, privacy implications, as any data stored by Google has the chance of being accessible to anyone on the Internet. As a small safety measure, one is able to access previous versions of a Google document and is notified when others are using it. As with everything concerning the web, one simply has to be wary when publishing anything online.

Cloud computing: Cloudy Business

Cloud computing has huge implications for business in terms of cutting costs. Web-based companies invest millions into their IT departments — a large portion of which is spent on software licences for each computer that uses corporate software.

With cloud computing you would only have to load one application, which would allow employees to log into a web-based service, which hosts all the programs and files required. Remote machines owned by another company, such as Google, for example, would run everything from e-mail to word processing to complex data analysis programs.

"This technology allows for much more efficient computing by centralising storage, memory, processing and bandwidth. In September 2009, an Aberdeen Group study found that disciplined companies achieved on average an 18% reduction in their IT budget from cloud computing.” – www.howstuffworks.com

Of course, all these open-source applications are as good as they are by virtue of the fact that they are free; or at least still free. No doubt more complex apps would demand some sort of fee in order to be used so extensively. I don’t foresee many large web companies hosting the world’s data for nothing, and as much as it makes sense to decentralise the existing infrastructure, monopolies will emerge (or stay in power) that will profit hugely from cloud computing.

The cloud allows sharing of infrastructure and reduces the carbon footprint of IT. The prophecy speaks of creating something that is globally sustainable — providing greater capacity and higher performance at lower costs. This utopia would bring the world together by moving away from indivi­dual silos and data centres and “into the clouds”. Unfortunately, this is not nearly a reality for bandwidth-stricken countries such as South Africa, and will not be as cheap and fair as it should with the existence of Internet monopolies.

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