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We’re sorry: we’ve been breached, here’s credit monitoring

Hi folks,
I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of these breaches. I don’t think they prove anything. According to Krebs on security a source I look at to keep up with the breach notifications, we’re pretty much seeing a story of one breach a week. I don’t know about you guys, but I think its time to take a stand. Today, I just got a letter from Washington saying that I am one of I don’t know how many people who are potentially breached as part of the Office of Personel Management. On top of that, I remembered where I was signed up before with the last breach, and somehow, the parent company was breached by purchasing a third party contractor or something, from what I remembder. I wonder what, if anything, normal citizens can do to tell these agencies, how important, safeguarding our personal information is.

When I had my customer list through my PC only, I stored it on a database only I had access to. Now, that has shifted to freshbooks who is behind a username and password, and I trust because I’ve not heard of a single incident of identity issues, although, every issue I’ve encountered has been resolved. None of it was a loss of customer data, and none of the people who pay me through the platform, have notified me that they have done anything wrong.

Credit freezes are difficult when you are not making much money. Each credit bureau charges $10 to freeze and unfreeze your credit. This means you’re paying $30 per freeze and $30 per unfreeze. These charges can be difficult and I don’t think it will stop thieves from taking the stuff to begin with. According to Brian, this can prevent new credit lines, bank accounts, and other things that could harm your credit, and in that case, I support it. However, is that the only solution? I believe companies should be held accountable on protecting our most sensitive information such as SSN’s, drivers liscence, and other information that could harm us. Our name and E-mail address may be important, however, its only the beginning. If an agency has to store other info such as SSN, drivers license, and other identifiable info, my honest opinion, don’t store it online. Store it offline, and back it up somewhere such as a trusted service that will keep it safe.

I know if I had to keep my customer database safe, Sendspace may be a good option, because even if you had the free version, the files are not linked unless you publically link to them, and no public directory can be made unless you do it via folder. The route of your account is secured, and even an outsider can’t access that without logging in to the account. If you didn’t want to use that, you could use something like Carbonite which does charge a lot, but you can back up everything. There are other services I’m sure, that could keep your stuff safe.

I don’t expect everything to be 100 percent secure, but I do think personal info that could get you in to trouble should not be easily changed, and if it does need to be changed, phone is the only way, with multi-factor authentication such as SSN, and a security code only used to talk to a representative. I’m only contemplating right now, maybe other people have information that could be of use.

I honestly don’t know what major companies could do, since we are moving toward an online world, but daily or weekly breaches won’t get us anywhere.

If you have any thoughts, E-mail me, or comment through the blog. We’ll be talking about this on podcast 230. Thanks for reading!

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NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday | Reuters

I think this is about time. I know a lot of us had nothing to hide, and people were saying it was meant for foreigners, but it didn’t help much according to this article. Article is linked below. Thoughts?

The U.S. National Security Agency will end its daily vacuuming of millions of Americans’ phone records by Sunday and replace the practice with more tightly targeted surveillance methods, the Obama administration said on Friday.

Source: NSA to shut down bulk phone surveillance program by Sunday | Reuters

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tech 229 is out

Hi all,
On our RSS feed, you will find podcast 229. Here are the show notes.

Lots of various things including an update on My Telespace VS Philmore stuff. Sipmeeting VS Philmore … is what you need to read. We talk about some security and tech stuff, and also we talk about scams.

What to read

The podcast is 2 hours and 18 minutes. Enjoy!

We hope you’ll enjoy the cast.

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sipmeeting vs Philmore, at war: again?

Updated November 25, 20115

After the original story published on the 23rd, Sip Meeting and the Jared Rimer Network had a skype chat clarifying some things. First, John clarified that there was no joke, the system was legitimately shut down because of some rule violations. He went on to talk about how a system can be up even if there were an investigation that would take place toward the a user with the courts, but the system as a whole would not be shut down for that reason.

He writes: “Jared, The system wasn’t down for a joke, it was down because people were breaking the rules and calling the phone company about issues on the system, this was unacceptable then to top it off someone told me the system was a joke, and no one liked it. Also The Phil Scopes thing is funny… I did that, he is very inappropriate laughing at someone elses misfortune, it’s also the reason the system is back. The good news is I can do what I want to the system at any time because it’s a free system. I am giving away my time and my energy, to be made fun of, told things aren’t funny, that my time is a joke. So Please consider that I lose money on this every month everything I make I have to payback to the community. And now because of this mishap it’s actually going to cost me MORE money as I have to pay another administrator.”

Let me clarify that I was not talking about the shutdown being a joke, as I feel Sipmeeting had their reasons, but the Phil Scopes file being a joke, was in John’s opinion quite funny. The file was later removed during our chat, and the system is operating as normal.

Also, John indicates that there will be two administrators now, not just one. The other, is James, the one we mentioned in our original story below. James has been known to Sip Meeting for many years, and can be trusted implecitly. When I braught up the fact that Philmore Productions indicated in their update they would take down all systems in a non-compete clause, John said: “Yeah. The worst part was I wasn’t even trying to provoke him, he called and left the voicemail on our office numbers. It was just low”

One last thing. One of the users has been removed from the system due to rule violations. I don’t think this particular user understands the implecations of keeping personal information private. If a particular individual including one that was removed comes back with that in mind, the system may be shut down again. The JRN stands by our decision below on not updating our programming any longer on this system, mainly due to low call counts, and also, we don’t know what will happen. With any system, it can go, but I’m not worried about the others at this time.

The original story is below.

Original Story

Hi folks,
On November 23, 2015: MyTelespace came back online, with several changes. First, we have a message from Philmore Productions blasting Sipmeeting about how they lost, and talked about how they had just lost and talked about how he wouldn’t do that to his customers. This Philmore vs Sipmeeting has gone on for way too long. Both companies are to blame here. First, Sip Meeting did not give us, the users, enough time to get whatever we wanted out of our boxes. Next, the web site for mytelespace where users can upload was still accessible even while we couldn’t call in.

I called over there on Saturday, one day after the supposed shutdown of the system and asked for an E-mail telling me why the system was closing. As of press time, they have not responded to that message, nor E-mail or skype asking what happened even though John notified the network it was back up and running.

As far as the JRN is concerned, no data was lost during the outage, in fact, one caller indicated he was using mytelespace to upload podcasts to his various options during the downtime. The JRN can’t confirm who is administering this system at this time. It has been reported that Gordon has lost full admin rights, and someone by the name of James Bond is taking over. He even left a message on 11/23 stating he was the new admin. The JRN can’t confirm or deny what is happening.
Herbie Allen, a person who has experienced both systems has this observation.
“Today, Mytelespace has sunk to a new low. By posting that message from Phil on there main number, they have shown that all they care about is the drama aspect of this and showing up Phil in a humiliating manner. I had thought about rejoining the system to promote my station, but after hearing that, I’m completely turned off.”
He whent on to make this prodiction, “It wouldn’t surprise me if this whole thing with Mytelespace being offline and Gordon no longer being an administrator is just a gag to stir up Phil. I just can’t see Gordon willing to give up so easily what he helped create, and My Telaspace turning over the system to someone using the name James Bond.”
He concluded with this statement. “I’m not defending Phil’s action’s in anyway. It was just as wrong for him to glote as it was for My Telaspace to post his message. They both need to recognize that neither system is going away and move on with life.”

The JRN first thought that Sipmeeting had a court order for information in regards to some potential legal issue, so they had to preserve and turn over the information. It would not be up in 4 days unless they did turn over said info. Gordon has not run mytelespace very fairly, the JRN thinks, because someone who has any criminal record which is confirmed, should not be on there talking about their experience, and supposedly continuing to give out personal information of others. The last the JRN heard the main board, death threats were made toward this individual, the administration has done nothing about it. The drama never stops on either of these systems, and the JRN will not participate in such activity.

As of November 23, 2015, the JRN will no longer upload anything to mytelespace, and will have the podcasts uploaded through other lines where there is no drama. We’re sorry it has to come to this, but the JRN is better off this way. If either company wishes to comment, our lines are open. Thanks for reading.

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Podcasts 227 and 228

Hi folks,

Podcasts 227 and 228 were recently published. Here are the respective show notes for each.

Welcome to podcast 227. We have ransomeware, something from radio lab on the subject, and go metro version 3.x part 1. The link goes to the app store in IOS. If you want to review android and let us have it for inclusion, please contact me through the site or contact info at the end of the podcast. Thanks for listening, and enjoy!

On this podcast, Jared Rimer has go metropart 2, and UEB discussion part 1. Mytelespace news of interest as well. We’ll keep you informed if we can, but we will be causcious on how we present it.

From the blog:

mytelespace has been closed down

Podcast is 2 hours 36 minutes.

We hope you find these podcasts of use, and podcast 229 will be out soon.

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Apple unreasonable policy: what do you think?

Hi folks,
I just saw a thread on the apple vis web site entitled Apple unreasonable policy with a bunch of comments. Most companies now a day record calls and lets every caller know that their call may be recorded. As one person stated, they expect to be recorded, and I can agree with that. I had started to read a book many years ago and I don’t believe I finished it. I don’t exactly know why, but I wish I had. Think the book would be good for my books podcast. The book was entitled: The digital person : technology and privacy in the information age and it is a good book. It is available in braille from BARD. Here is the information from BARD about this book.

Author: Solove, Daniel J., 1972-
Title: The digital person : technology and privacy in
the information age / Daniel J. Solove. [braille]
Published: Washington, D.C. : National Library Service for
the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress,
2006. (Braille International, Inc., transcribing agency.
Braille International, Inc., distributor.)
Description: 3 volumes of press braille ; 28 x 28 cm.
Series: Ex machina
Book Number: BR 16095
Dewey No.: 343.730858 ANF 22
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Availability restricted to persons meeting the
eligibility requirements of the National Library Service for
the Blind and Physically Handicapped, Library of Congress.
Law professor examines the proliferation of
databases that store information on individuals’ activities,
interests, and preferences assembled through computers and
the Internet. Examines privacy and legal concerns including
identity theft, the debate over public records, and the use
of government access to profile people for criminal or
terrorist activity. 2004.
Also available for download from BARD/Web-Braille
as digital braille. Users must register with their
cooperating library.
Transcription of: New York : New York University
Press, c2004. 0814798462
English Braille, American Edition (contracted
braille).
Description based on the print edition used for
the braille transcription.
Subjects: Data protection — Law and legislation — United
States.
Electronic records — Access control — United
States.
Government information — United States.
Privacy, Right of — United States.
Public records — Law and legislation — United
States.
Downloadable books.
Nonfiction.
Braille books. lcgft
Location: DLC-B BR 16095 NLS/BPH
Control No.: 425555

If you guys have not read this book, I really think you should. I do want to read this book inf full, I don’t think I ever did. I think a lot of what is happening today was covered in this book. If you have any thoughts, I’m interested to hear what you think. Have you read the book? If so, what did you think? Our books podcast would love to hear from you if you want to do a review. We hope yoiu found my comments of interest, and feel free to check out the post, and let me know what you think.

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Announcing NVDA 2015.4 Release

Hi folks,
I just wanted to drop by tonight and pass along some news I saw on twitter. Announcing NVDA 2015.4 Release is a blog post talking about the latest in NVDA, the free screen reader. I know of a few users using it, but I’ve not used it myself. I wonder what you think of it, and if you want to do a demo of its use, I’d love to hear it.

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mytelespace has been closed down

Mytelespace has been closed down as of November 20, 2015. A tweet sent through the mytelespace account just indicated that after 8 years, the system was closed. It also said that money for the football contest may be worked out to be refunded. When you call 832-999-8600, John, the voice that was on there, indicated that because of a few, the system is closed. This is absolutely sad. I know Philmore Productions is going to have a field day with this one. While I’ve been distant from there for awhile, this is just sad. I had my board, and was looking forward on checking in with it again. This is absolutely rediculous that a system to bring people together by telephone, would be shut down because people can’t understand how to get along. I am deeply saddened that it has come to this, and I know people hjave bashed me. We’ve talked about Mytelespace on our podcast, and sadly, because of a few, the system is closed for the forseeable future. Thanks for ruining it for those of us who enjoyed going out there when we had time, and thanks for cutting off one of my programming options for telephone. Absolutely terrible.

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Technology podcast 226 is now available!

Well, I just released podcast 226 of this podcast. On it, Lastpass, ransomewear, and other odds and ends. It was definitely nice to learn about the recent arrests we talk about in my security news segment. Very cool to read.

Lastpass, Sirius XM radio, ransomeware, and more for this podcast.

articles:
Arrests in JP Morgan, eTrade, Scottrade Hacks

Podcast is over 2 hours long.

We hope you’ll come back for more reading and podcasts coming very soon!

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Ransomware Now Gunning for Your Web Sites

I just read this article today from Bryan Krebs entitled: Ransomware Now Gunning for Your Web Sites and it makes me a little bit scared. I’m glad I have my web site backed up in dropbox and I do visit my web pages from time to time to make sure nothing has gotten in to them. The story is worth the read, because this can effect any web site, hosted anywhere, if the right thing to the page is done. I never thought I’d ever read something like this in my life. I guess I’m not surprised to be reading this at all. What are your thoughts?

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Technology podcast 225 is now available!

On this podcast, Spinrite is covered from GRC. Other odds and ends are discussed and presented as well. Get the podcast through our RSS feed.

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Podcast 224’s show notes

Hi folks,
Quite a bit ago, we released podcast 224. I’ve been in the midst of some tech issues with a drive, and got that resolved. I’ll talk about that in more detail on podcast 225 coming out shortly. In the meantime, find the RSS feed to get your copy of 224 and here are those show notes.

Welcome to podcast 224 of the technology podcast series. On this podcast, we have Lastpass, Accessible apps, and security news. Here are the links that were gathered for the cast.

Podcast 224:

Apple vis links

App links:

Podcast length is 2 hours and 7 minutes. Enjoy!

If we’ve posted thiese show notes, I apologize for the double post. I don’t think it made it to the blog.

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