LewRockwell
July 17th, 2009, 04:28 PM
Privacy, Security, Intrusions, Spam, And The Absolute Beginner Experience
First of all we would like to ask the forum administrators and moderators to leave this in the Absolute Beginner Talk area. Our decision to place it here versus the security area was specifically because we just did a search for "privacy" "security" and "spam" and only received two results. Both of those results were uninformative with respect to the basic information we now present.
Secondly, we would ask the reader to take this journey with us as we contemplate the current reality that each and every human being on the planet now has the potential to directly communicate with each and every other human being. Depending on your method and/or methods, you'll be directing your communications to individuals with emails, groups with forums, and the entire planet with websites. The best and the worst of human existence(depending, of course, on the individual) is now at your fingertips twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year(24/7/365). Feel free to show us what you've got, but be prepared for what others will show you! As always, the philosophical maturity found as students and advocates of the non-aggression principle will guide us in mutual respect of individual expressions.
Let's touch briefly on our terminology to make sure we are on the same wavelength:
Privacy is a two-way street. You'll find many people who demand their own privacy but then, in the same instances, demand to violate yours! That behavior is rampant within and amongst most structures of what are commonly referred to as governments. Some simple examples are the door to door salesman, the tele-marketer, and websites. The salesman knows your address because he's at your door. The tele-marketer knows your number because they called you. The website records your visit and whatever information about the specifics of the connection it can, and most often attempts to place one or more cookies on your computer. You will find, however, that the salesman, tele-marketer, and website principles most often WILL NOT surrender their own personal addresses, phone numbers, and network/computer/equipment/software information to YOU! Don't expect to have your own privacy if you aren't willing to respect the right of others to maintain their own privacy.
To further our understanding of the correlation between these we'll consider our reactions and solutions to them. With the door to door salesman we simply place a "No Soliciting" sign on the door and enforce it as we see fit. With the tele-marketer we simply screen all incoming calls by human or machine to our own discretion. Internet privacy has various factors and considerations and these will be addressed individually as we progress.
Why should you guard your privacy? One word, TIME. Your time. Your most valuable and precious commodity. Your existence, your life is the product of the equation expressed as "YNH and X seconds" where "YNH" equals "Your Name Here" and "X" equals the exact finite number of seconds you exist alive. Sure, you can change your name, but you can't change your timeline. Of course, nobody knows "X" until they put it on your toe-tag and/or tombstone. Hey, that's life!
Security, intrusions, and spam all can consume your time and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Now that you're convinced, let's move on shall we! It should also be noted that this effort and commentary is directed at the home internet user although IT professionals and their superiors will want to carefully consider how they act, react, and interact with respect and consideration towards all other netizens. (Special note to website creators, maintainers, and administrators: Someday soon you should make a sincere attempt to visit your own website using a variety of browsers and also utilizing varied security measures. We can assure you that...while your website may look good in Internet Explorer...it may look absolutely terrible and/or may not even function if the visitor is using a different browser and/or has cookies disabled and/or has java turned off and/or has javascript turned off and/or has flash media restricted and/or has absolutely no scripting allowed in their browser functioning. Not to mention all those bugs and mistakes that Validator and W3's other utilities(http://validator.w3.org/) find. Shameful, especially when the tools and utilities are right there for EVERYONE to use and enjoy!)
Let's start becoming interactive here. Please visit the following websites in order and make/take notes if you wish(suggested). If any links have changed and/or fail to operate correctly, please do a simple search in an attempt to find a current and/or updated page/website(s). It should also be noted that these sites were picked via a basis search and we receive absolutely NO compensation or consideration from them.
http://whatismyipaddress.com/
http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/lookup-ip
http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/is-my-ip-address-blacklisted
http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/can-someone-find-me
https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2
http://www.scroogle.org/
We would also encourage privacy-minded individuals to thoroughly investigate, and perhaps utilize, one or more proxy servers/services/finders.
(the discussion, selection, and application of proxies and other developing stealth technologies and procedures is beyond our scope here)
For those who wish to have a greater understanding of IP addresses you may enjoy the following:
(again, there are many informational, tutorial, and educational websites containing a wide breadth and depth on these topics/issues)
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note09186a00800a67f5.shtml
Here is an older forum discussion about networking that we found interesting and we've included a separate link to the graphic showing a network example.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15850432
http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/992294~ec5fe0cad49063a312da8cba7df3b2cf/LAN-0013.jpg
***********************************
So now you're in need of some rest and relaxation after visiting those sites and probably following links to others as well. Whew! Feel free to bookmark this post or even just save the whole page to your machine. You might even share it with others since even the prevention and/or discovery of a few zombie machines can cut down on thousands, perhaps millions(over time), of instances of spam.
Spam is always such a waste of your time. Hopefully you both understand and regulate spam effectively. Whatever you do, DON'T respond/reply to ANY spam! Email providers have spam filters that may or may not meet your needs. Some filters are so aggressive that you don't receive the correspondence you rightfully should. You'll need to set the filter modestly and then frequently check the spam folder to make sure you're not throwing important stuff out via the spam folder which usually automatically clears/deletes spam after saving it for a certain period.
You may be wondering where spam comes from and why people spend time creating it and sending it out. There are different reasons and we won't go into most of them as they are beyond the scope of this commentary. You should feel free to do your own investigative research into the sad existence of the spammer.
Of course spam steals your time, we've already covered time considerations. But what about the spam you send? Yes, we said your spam! All those "forwarded" jokes, funny photos/videos, inspirational messages/images, oh the list is long and egregious. The rule of thumb is, if you can't spend the time to "clean it up" and "make it your own" instead of just a darn "forward/fwd" then STOP YOURSELF AND DON'T SEND IT! We don't want it! If it's important enough to clean and freshen-up then fine, do it and send it.
FORWARDED CORRESPONDENCE:
This deserves a little attention of it's own for several reasons related to privacy and security. Most people consider their email addresses to be "private" as opposed to being spread/posted across the interwebs. Email addresses are harvested by automated programs that search the whole world wide web for all sorts of valuable information, not the least of which is your name, address, phone number, email addresses, work addresses, social affiliations, religious associations, and any other data-mining targets that someone else might be willing to pay for! There are also the additional factors of theft, robbery, extortion, blackmail, identity-theft,etc. You might ask what that has to do with personal email correspondence? Quite a bit when you consider that some repeatedly-forwarded(those not cleaned-up first) messages can contain literally dozens(and in some cases, hundreds) of PRIVATE and CONFIDENTIAL email addresses. One "wrong" recipient and your private email address is fair game for anyone and everyone. You might even require a new one and all the effort of informing the appropriate people of the change/switch. What a pain and what a TIME STEALER, but you probably did it to yourself. You emailed the town busybody or put your undisguised(bot-readable) information on a website comment area or forum that was then data-mined and now you're in spam hell.
IS YOUR MACHINE A ZOMBIE, SENDING OUT SPAM OR OTHER ATTACKS WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE OR PERMISSION:
While any equipment connected to the internet can be at risk, residential broadband and dsl customers certainly provide the largest potential target group. For those subscribers who currently connect the computer directly to their cable or dsl modem(where the modem is NOT also a configurable router of some type), you should obtain a router at your earliest convenience. You can be sure a new router will be set at its factory defaults because you've received it "NIB" new in box. For used routers you might find it necessary to follow some "resetting" procedures. The most common of these will be the "factory default reset" and this can most often be accomplished in one of two ways. If you are able to access the configuration set-up area of the router, most often the manufacturer has provided a "return to factory default settings" selection and after selecting this option you will want to be sure to use the save button to do the actual reset(HERE IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE ALREADY FIGURED OUT WHAT THE DEFAULT USERNAME AND PASSWORD ARE/AND WILL BE AFTER THE RESET!). If you are unable to access the router set-up because the previous administrator/owner failed to either reset it or provide you with the appropriate username and password information, then you will be required to use the manual "hard" reset feature if one is provided. To learn more about your specific equipment you may visit the original manufacturer's website or perhaps after-market websites and forums where others share their knowledge and experiences with that particular product. As an example, a router may have an external reset button that resets the equipment back to its original factory defaults including username and password. This button might need to be continuously depressed for more than thirty seconds while the device is in its fully powered state. Again, you'll need to confirm the exact information and procedures for the router you have selected and acquired.
So now you have a router with factory default settings. What to do with it now? You'll connect the ethernet port of your modem to the internet port on the router. Then connect your computer to one of the other ports which will be considered the "LAN" local area network ports side. With the router set to defaults you will have much more protection against intrusion than before. As you learn what your router is capable of, you might find a change in some settings will provide you with even greater security and peace of mind. We would also point out that many routers are both wired and wireless. If you've selected a dual-functioning router with wireless but you aren't currently using the wireless, please consider using the configuration interface to turn the wireless off until you require it. Those using and administering the wireless will want to be aware of the available and/or recommended security for those portions of the network(s).
For just one example of a well written tutorial you might check out these links:
(Again, this is a random example...there are many such tutorials online...as always, your mileage may vary!)
Here is Rick Wanner's blogspot commentary on his tutorial:
http://rwanner.blogspot.com/2006/01/securing-linksys-wrt54g.html
And here is a link to the page where the PDF file may be downloaded from:
http://www.infosecwriters.com/texts.php?op=display&id=368
Now you can easily check to see if your computer is generating traffic by observing the indicator lights. If the machine shouldn't be creating or entertaining traffic and you see such activity, you can then investigate and attempt to confirm which program or programs are the offenders. Here, Microsoft Windows users will be most comforted by the increase in security and we would also recommend using a third-party firewall(Zone Alarm has a no-charge offering that millions enjoy) or, if you must...the firewall found in Microsoft Windows XP or Vista might not disappoint you if you have never tried anything better. Windows users will also want to maintain a current anti-virus installation and engage in regular updates and a routine regiment of full system scanning(Avira seems to be a favorite right now and they offer a no-charge version for home use).
Wow, who knew protection and security could come in so many varieties and flavors. What a work-out and we're not done yet!
Those using Mac OS X and/or the many flavors of *nix/unix/linux will still enjoy the extra security and utility provided by the modern wired and/or wireless router!
No commentary on routers would be complete without mentioning the availability of third-party firmware for certain routers. One example may be found and investigated at http://www.dd-wrt.com/ as it is readily apparent that many enthusiasts prefer the added versatility and functionality. It must be noted that utilizing third-party firmware will, unless otherwise noted, VOID ANY PRODUCT WARRANTY! For most this is inconsequential as the added benefits far outweigh the risk of product failure. We should also mention that the firmware flashing process requires a certain amount of attention to detail and power to the devices involved MUST NOT BE REMOVED, either intentionally or not. Learn more about "bricking"(and some possible recoveries from the bricked state) BEFORE you experiment and venture into the unknown.
Epilogue:
We're sure we've omitted and neglected more than we've provided, but if it causes you to ponder and/or reconsider what you now know to be an unsecured and/or under-secured arrangement then so much the better. We have received no payment/compensation/consideration from any mentioned persons, businesses, associations, and/or websites. We have gladly shared a little of our precious time with you in a sincere attempt to empower you and to encourage you to honor yourself and all of us by PAYING-IT-FORWARD! After all, that 73 year old that you help tomorrow afternoon may very well be one of us!
.
First of all we would like to ask the forum administrators and moderators to leave this in the Absolute Beginner Talk area. Our decision to place it here versus the security area was specifically because we just did a search for "privacy" "security" and "spam" and only received two results. Both of those results were uninformative with respect to the basic information we now present.
Secondly, we would ask the reader to take this journey with us as we contemplate the current reality that each and every human being on the planet now has the potential to directly communicate with each and every other human being. Depending on your method and/or methods, you'll be directing your communications to individuals with emails, groups with forums, and the entire planet with websites. The best and the worst of human existence(depending, of course, on the individual) is now at your fingertips twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty five days a year(24/7/365). Feel free to show us what you've got, but be prepared for what others will show you! As always, the philosophical maturity found as students and advocates of the non-aggression principle will guide us in mutual respect of individual expressions.
Let's touch briefly on our terminology to make sure we are on the same wavelength:
Privacy is a two-way street. You'll find many people who demand their own privacy but then, in the same instances, demand to violate yours! That behavior is rampant within and amongst most structures of what are commonly referred to as governments. Some simple examples are the door to door salesman, the tele-marketer, and websites. The salesman knows your address because he's at your door. The tele-marketer knows your number because they called you. The website records your visit and whatever information about the specifics of the connection it can, and most often attempts to place one or more cookies on your computer. You will find, however, that the salesman, tele-marketer, and website principles most often WILL NOT surrender their own personal addresses, phone numbers, and network/computer/equipment/software information to YOU! Don't expect to have your own privacy if you aren't willing to respect the right of others to maintain their own privacy.
To further our understanding of the correlation between these we'll consider our reactions and solutions to them. With the door to door salesman we simply place a "No Soliciting" sign on the door and enforce it as we see fit. With the tele-marketer we simply screen all incoming calls by human or machine to our own discretion. Internet privacy has various factors and considerations and these will be addressed individually as we progress.
Why should you guard your privacy? One word, TIME. Your time. Your most valuable and precious commodity. Your existence, your life is the product of the equation expressed as "YNH and X seconds" where "YNH" equals "Your Name Here" and "X" equals the exact finite number of seconds you exist alive. Sure, you can change your name, but you can't change your timeline. Of course, nobody knows "X" until they put it on your toe-tag and/or tombstone. Hey, that's life!
Security, intrusions, and spam all can consume your time and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Now that you're convinced, let's move on shall we! It should also be noted that this effort and commentary is directed at the home internet user although IT professionals and their superiors will want to carefully consider how they act, react, and interact with respect and consideration towards all other netizens. (Special note to website creators, maintainers, and administrators: Someday soon you should make a sincere attempt to visit your own website using a variety of browsers and also utilizing varied security measures. We can assure you that...while your website may look good in Internet Explorer...it may look absolutely terrible and/or may not even function if the visitor is using a different browser and/or has cookies disabled and/or has java turned off and/or has javascript turned off and/or has flash media restricted and/or has absolutely no scripting allowed in their browser functioning. Not to mention all those bugs and mistakes that Validator and W3's other utilities(http://validator.w3.org/) find. Shameful, especially when the tools and utilities are right there for EVERYONE to use and enjoy!)
Let's start becoming interactive here. Please visit the following websites in order and make/take notes if you wish(suggested). If any links have changed and/or fail to operate correctly, please do a simple search in an attempt to find a current and/or updated page/website(s). It should also be noted that these sites were picked via a basis search and we receive absolutely NO compensation or consideration from them.
http://whatismyipaddress.com/
http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/lookup-ip
http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/is-my-ip-address-blacklisted
http://whatismyipaddress.com/staticpages/index.php/can-someone-find-me
https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2
http://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?rh1dkyd2
http://www.scroogle.org/
We would also encourage privacy-minded individuals to thoroughly investigate, and perhaps utilize, one or more proxy servers/services/finders.
(the discussion, selection, and application of proxies and other developing stealth technologies and procedures is beyond our scope here)
For those who wish to have a greater understanding of IP addresses you may enjoy the following:
(again, there are many informational, tutorial, and educational websites containing a wide breadth and depth on these topics/issues)
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note09186a00800a67f5.shtml
Here is an older forum discussion about networking that we found interesting and we've included a separate link to the graphic showing a network example.
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,15850432
http://www.dslreports.com/r0/download/992294~ec5fe0cad49063a312da8cba7df3b2cf/LAN-0013.jpg
***********************************
So now you're in need of some rest and relaxation after visiting those sites and probably following links to others as well. Whew! Feel free to bookmark this post or even just save the whole page to your machine. You might even share it with others since even the prevention and/or discovery of a few zombie machines can cut down on thousands, perhaps millions(over time), of instances of spam.
Spam is always such a waste of your time. Hopefully you both understand and regulate spam effectively. Whatever you do, DON'T respond/reply to ANY spam! Email providers have spam filters that may or may not meet your needs. Some filters are so aggressive that you don't receive the correspondence you rightfully should. You'll need to set the filter modestly and then frequently check the spam folder to make sure you're not throwing important stuff out via the spam folder which usually automatically clears/deletes spam after saving it for a certain period.
You may be wondering where spam comes from and why people spend time creating it and sending it out. There are different reasons and we won't go into most of them as they are beyond the scope of this commentary. You should feel free to do your own investigative research into the sad existence of the spammer.
Of course spam steals your time, we've already covered time considerations. But what about the spam you send? Yes, we said your spam! All those "forwarded" jokes, funny photos/videos, inspirational messages/images, oh the list is long and egregious. The rule of thumb is, if you can't spend the time to "clean it up" and "make it your own" instead of just a darn "forward/fwd" then STOP YOURSELF AND DON'T SEND IT! We don't want it! If it's important enough to clean and freshen-up then fine, do it and send it.
FORWARDED CORRESPONDENCE:
This deserves a little attention of it's own for several reasons related to privacy and security. Most people consider their email addresses to be "private" as opposed to being spread/posted across the interwebs. Email addresses are harvested by automated programs that search the whole world wide web for all sorts of valuable information, not the least of which is your name, address, phone number, email addresses, work addresses, social affiliations, religious associations, and any other data-mining targets that someone else might be willing to pay for! There are also the additional factors of theft, robbery, extortion, blackmail, identity-theft,etc. You might ask what that has to do with personal email correspondence? Quite a bit when you consider that some repeatedly-forwarded(those not cleaned-up first) messages can contain literally dozens(and in some cases, hundreds) of PRIVATE and CONFIDENTIAL email addresses. One "wrong" recipient and your private email address is fair game for anyone and everyone. You might even require a new one and all the effort of informing the appropriate people of the change/switch. What a pain and what a TIME STEALER, but you probably did it to yourself. You emailed the town busybody or put your undisguised(bot-readable) information on a website comment area or forum that was then data-mined and now you're in spam hell.
IS YOUR MACHINE A ZOMBIE, SENDING OUT SPAM OR OTHER ATTACKS WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE OR PERMISSION:
While any equipment connected to the internet can be at risk, residential broadband and dsl customers certainly provide the largest potential target group. For those subscribers who currently connect the computer directly to their cable or dsl modem(where the modem is NOT also a configurable router of some type), you should obtain a router at your earliest convenience. You can be sure a new router will be set at its factory defaults because you've received it "NIB" new in box. For used routers you might find it necessary to follow some "resetting" procedures. The most common of these will be the "factory default reset" and this can most often be accomplished in one of two ways. If you are able to access the configuration set-up area of the router, most often the manufacturer has provided a "return to factory default settings" selection and after selecting this option you will want to be sure to use the save button to do the actual reset(HERE IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE ALREADY FIGURED OUT WHAT THE DEFAULT USERNAME AND PASSWORD ARE/AND WILL BE AFTER THE RESET!). If you are unable to access the router set-up because the previous administrator/owner failed to either reset it or provide you with the appropriate username and password information, then you will be required to use the manual "hard" reset feature if one is provided. To learn more about your specific equipment you may visit the original manufacturer's website or perhaps after-market websites and forums where others share their knowledge and experiences with that particular product. As an example, a router may have an external reset button that resets the equipment back to its original factory defaults including username and password. This button might need to be continuously depressed for more than thirty seconds while the device is in its fully powered state. Again, you'll need to confirm the exact information and procedures for the router you have selected and acquired.
So now you have a router with factory default settings. What to do with it now? You'll connect the ethernet port of your modem to the internet port on the router. Then connect your computer to one of the other ports which will be considered the "LAN" local area network ports side. With the router set to defaults you will have much more protection against intrusion than before. As you learn what your router is capable of, you might find a change in some settings will provide you with even greater security and peace of mind. We would also point out that many routers are both wired and wireless. If you've selected a dual-functioning router with wireless but you aren't currently using the wireless, please consider using the configuration interface to turn the wireless off until you require it. Those using and administering the wireless will want to be aware of the available and/or recommended security for those portions of the network(s).
For just one example of a well written tutorial you might check out these links:
(Again, this is a random example...there are many such tutorials online...as always, your mileage may vary!)
Here is Rick Wanner's blogspot commentary on his tutorial:
http://rwanner.blogspot.com/2006/01/securing-linksys-wrt54g.html
And here is a link to the page where the PDF file may be downloaded from:
http://www.infosecwriters.com/texts.php?op=display&id=368
Now you can easily check to see if your computer is generating traffic by observing the indicator lights. If the machine shouldn't be creating or entertaining traffic and you see such activity, you can then investigate and attempt to confirm which program or programs are the offenders. Here, Microsoft Windows users will be most comforted by the increase in security and we would also recommend using a third-party firewall(Zone Alarm has a no-charge offering that millions enjoy) or, if you must...the firewall found in Microsoft Windows XP or Vista might not disappoint you if you have never tried anything better. Windows users will also want to maintain a current anti-virus installation and engage in regular updates and a routine regiment of full system scanning(Avira seems to be a favorite right now and they offer a no-charge version for home use).
Wow, who knew protection and security could come in so many varieties and flavors. What a work-out and we're not done yet!
Those using Mac OS X and/or the many flavors of *nix/unix/linux will still enjoy the extra security and utility provided by the modern wired and/or wireless router!
No commentary on routers would be complete without mentioning the availability of third-party firmware for certain routers. One example may be found and investigated at http://www.dd-wrt.com/ as it is readily apparent that many enthusiasts prefer the added versatility and functionality. It must be noted that utilizing third-party firmware will, unless otherwise noted, VOID ANY PRODUCT WARRANTY! For most this is inconsequential as the added benefits far outweigh the risk of product failure. We should also mention that the firmware flashing process requires a certain amount of attention to detail and power to the devices involved MUST NOT BE REMOVED, either intentionally or not. Learn more about "bricking"(and some possible recoveries from the bricked state) BEFORE you experiment and venture into the unknown.
Epilogue:
We're sure we've omitted and neglected more than we've provided, but if it causes you to ponder and/or reconsider what you now know to be an unsecured and/or under-secured arrangement then so much the better. We have received no payment/compensation/consideration from any mentioned persons, businesses, associations, and/or websites. We have gladly shared a little of our precious time with you in a sincere attempt to empower you and to encourage you to honor yourself and all of us by PAYING-IT-FORWARD! After all, that 73 year old that you help tomorrow afternoon may very well be one of us!
.