How To

I sometimes enjoy playing with codes and ciphers. In fact, a long time ago (eighth grade, 1966), I got my introduction to cryptography from a book aptly named Codes and Ciphers written by Alexander d’Agapeyeff. My friends and I had some good laughs getting caught passing encoded notes in class; the nun couldn’t decipher them. [...]

I get a lot of ”Ask the Geek” emails from people whose computers won’t shut down properly, either hanging up or rebooting endlessly. (Sometimes, nothing at all happens and you have to press and hold the power button.) Rather than trying to answer each question, I figure it’s time I made this tip available.
So, I wrote a [...]

A computer term you should be familiar with is sandbox. Software developers often run their untested code in a protected environment called a sandbox. If the software misbehaves, the sandbox is shut down and everything returns to normal, no harm done. It’s a great way to prevent viruses and other malware from infecting your machine while browsing the web. [...]

In Maxim #7, I said that data security is senior to physical security. While true, physical security is only slightly less important. Taking steps to prevent theft of your computer is common sense. Sure, encrypt your data to make it useless to a thief if he manages to steal your hardware, but make it as difficult as possible [...]

I get questions all the time from clients over at Ask the Geek about using a mail client’s message preview feature. Opinions vary, of course, but for this geek, it’s a bad idea. In order to preview a message, it has to be opened or rendered by the HTML engine. Think about how a PC [...]

In How to Secure Your Computer: Maxim #4, I told you what to avoid when coming up with passwords. You want a password that is either unguessable or difficult to guess. By far, the most unguessable password would be a string of random characters like ‘Qt6W’{/b?@mn,QL”Q% and the longer, the better. You can get ready-made “perfect” [...]

Over the last couple of months, Ask the Geek has gotten a spate of questions regarding XP problems that weren’t catastrophic, but which caused shutdown problems, CD ejection errors, and a myriad of other annoyances. Back in the Windows 95/98/ME days, when users would see “This program has performed an illegal operation…,” I would always scandisk/defrag first, [...]

In How to Secure Your Computer: Maxim #3, I stressed the importance of changing the default username and passwords of all configurable network devices. That’s good advice. But a weak password, one that is easily guessable, is almost as bad as no password at all.
For example, if you use a password that conforms to common [...]

In my previous post, How to Secure Your Computer: Maxim #1, I said that the best security measures are useless if you invite attackers into your PCs and networks. Several people have taken me to task on that statement, saying that they always practice safe surfing, never click on links in emails, etc., etc. I listened [...]