Don't let campaign season make you gullible

| | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)
donotopencdssmall.jpg After one of the Presidential candidate debates held at Drake University earlier this year, I went out to my car and found this CD or DVD sitting on my windshield, just like others all over the parking lot.

I'm a pretty technology-friendly kind of guy, so why don't I know whether it's a CD or a DVD?

Because I threw it into the trash after taking this picture.

While I admire the enthusiasm of any legitimate organization that uses new media to reach out to spread their message (that's a First Amendment right, after all), I would never, ever put a CD or a DVD into my computer unless I knew exactly who gave it to me, and why.

A study was conducted last year in London to determine just how many people would accept a "free CD" outside a train station, and then try it out on a workplace computer. The number was huge: 70% of the discs were used.

The problem is that those discs could have contained anything: Spyware, viruses, or even backdoor codes that could have allowed outsiders to gain insider access to company networks.

Unless you know exactly who's sending you a CD or DVD, and why they're doing it, leave the stupid things in the trash. Just because we have the first-in-the-nation caucuses doesn't mean we have to be gullible about our computer security.

0 TrackBacks

Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Don't let campaign season make you gullible.

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://desmoinesist.com/cgi-sys/cgiwrap/gongol/managed-mt/mt-tb.cgi/8

Leave a comment


About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Brian Gongol published on November 2, 2007 2:33 PM.

Don't tell me the rest of the world is more beautiful was the previous entry in this blog.

Suit and Thai is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Powered by Movable Type 4.261