By Robert MacMillan
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
10:03 AM
I am a staunch defender of what I call the average computer user, but I wonder whether it's time to change my tune.
Take this report from the New York Times: Law enforcement authorities are noticing a rise in the counterfeiting of U.S. postal money orders, with the victims getting hooked through e-mail. "In the last six months, the F.B.I. and postal inspectors say, international forgers -- mostly in Nigeria, but also in Ghana and Eastern Europe -- appear to have turned new attention to the United States postal money order," the Times reported. "More than 3,700 counterfeit postal money orders were intercepted from October to December, exceeding the total for the previous 12 months, according to postal inspectors."
The paper cites the case of 56-year-old Manhattan business consultant Kevin McCrary, who sent a $1,500 laptop to someone he met at an online dating service who claimed to be a Nigerian woman named Ogisi Douglas. He received two postal money orders for $950 each and sent the computer to Nigeria. He deposited the orders at a J.P. Morgan Chase branch. Later, when the process began again, he tried to cash them at a post office, where officials told him they were faked.
I've written lots about how the average computer user doesn't care much about how many gigs of memory his computer has. He just wants to know whether it works fast enough to surf the Internet. The average user probably isn't too sure what "defragging" is all about, and I've always said that he shouldn't have to. There are a million other terms that form the basic computer lexicon, but what most computer users want to know is how to turn a machine on and off and how to do the things they bought a computer for in the first place.
But average users need to do something else -- get familiar with protecting their computers against outside threats and do it now. I don't mean burglars coming in through their windows, I mean online thieves coming in through their Windows. For several years now, the rate of identity theft, virus and worms attacks and straight-up online theft of credit cards and other financial data has risen exponentially. The Times piece reminds us that online crime is hot because most computer users still don't realize that they're sitting ducks.
Back to poor Kevin McCrary, who told the Times: "I felt, obviously, a bit foolish for not listening to those little voices that say: 'Something's not quite right here. You don't have all the information on this person.' "
McCrary lost in the end -- he had to eat the cost of the money orders. That's bad enough, but for other people it gets even hairier. Among them, the Times reported, is Phil Barone, who sells hand-made saxophone mouthpieces online. He tried to cash three fake $1,000 money orders sent by a customer in Nigeria. The authorities searched his car and his home, suspecting that he might be part of a scheme to make a profit off the counterfeit orders. Authorities have already put a stop to similar schemes. Christopher R. Zeblisky, for example, was arrested in Wisconsin for trying to cash in on $8,000 in fake orders.
McCrary's words to the Times were eloquent in their simplicity: "I couldn't reach around far enough to kick myself." That kind of chagrin only happens to those who realize they were taken by tricks they should have seen coming. What is astounding, however, is that you can't call McCrary stupid or naive unless you're willing to paint a lot of other people you otherwise respect with that brush.
This is the root of the argument I often get into with techies. Many harbor contempt for the saps who fall prey to the spam e-mails promising preternatural sexual prowess, weight loss without working out and all manner of other come-ons that have beguiled and disappointed the unwary since the first snake-oil salesman set up his tent thousands of years ago. I have always maintained that we need to give Internet users more of a break. People have flocked online in the past 10 years precisely because they discovered that they don't need a computer science degree to have fun and do great work on the Internet. It makes sense that the Internet service providers and other stewards of our online experience should do their part to protect people from online danger.
But I need to modify that point of view. Everyone should know by now that we should never trust e-mail, mobile phone messages or instant messages from strangers who want to deal with our money. If you don't know the source, delete immediately. Some of you will be yawning by now because you know this already, but the Times piece points out a tragic reality that criminals know well already -- a sucker signs on to the 'Net every minute.
Bovine SecurityLots of Internet security experts have unloaded heavy artillery on the technology industry for taking too lax an approach toward computer security, with Microsoft Corp. often taking the most fire. The company's newest version of Windows, code-named "Longhorn," will contain enhanced Internet security features, according to Microsoft's Bill Gates.
Gates, who appeared at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in Seattle yesterday, said that the new Windows version will "make use of cryptographic keys stored in chips built into a PC for the first time," the BBC reported. "Such encryption features are usually kept as data on a hard drive. Having encryption keys actually on a chip makes it harder for data to be compromised through hack attacks."
The San Jose Mercury News also reported on this: "'If you had to take one area where we put the most investment in, the security area would be the head of that list by a significant amount,' [Gates] told about 3,000 engineers. That may be the most critical message Microsoft gives to the computing world, now under incessant siege from destructive viruses and other bugs, said Greg DeMichillie, senior analyst with Directions on Microsoft , an independent research organization."
Waving the Pink FlagBill Gates has a distinctly different issue to deal with at Microsoft, that of whether to support legislation in Washington State that would ban discrimination against gays and lesbians. The company created a furor when it decided to take a neutral stance on the legislation after supporting it in previous years, but Gates is reconsidering that decision after gay rights groups protested.
"The legislation was rejected by one vote in the state Senate last Thursday, prompting outrage toward Microsoft among advocates for the legislation. The reaction was fueled in part by a story in The Stranger alternative newspaper that suggested Microsoft had caved to pressure from a fundamentalist Christian pastor. Other papers followed up on the story, including The Seattle Times and The New York Times, which ran its story Friday on its front page," the Seattle Times reported . "Microsoft denied that it had been influenced by the pastor or anyone outside the company... 'Next time this one comes around, we'll see,' Gates said. 'We certainly have a lot of employees who sent us mail. Next time it comes around that'll be a major factor for us to take into consideration.'"
Today's Washington Post also covered the uproar.
Kids These DaysParents anxious to get a read on how much booze and sex their kids are getting into on prom night need no longer extrapolate based on their own hazy memories. Now they can just rocket into the blogosphere to get the full download, the East Valley (Arizona) Tribune reports :
"[P]arents can go on the Internet, along with complete strangers, and view photographs of their children carousing early Sunday morning in a hotel suite following Hamilton High School's prom. One snapshot shows a girl holding a beer with the caption: 'Still rockin at 6 in the AM,' the paper reported. "A Scottsdale student reports on her blog that she did not have sex following Chaparral High School's prom on Saturday... Meanwhile, a student from Tempe's Corona del Sol High School returned from prom at 2 a.m. Sunday and reported on her blog: 'No alcohol was consumed tonight by me, and I'm still a virgin.' But her mother, apparently, was not impressed. A follow-up message Sunday begins, 'What I learned from my mom today: I am a horrible excuse for a human being.'
Mesa Unified School District webmaster Loyal Clarke told the paper that kids think the blogs are only available to people whom they want to see them, so it's a rude awakening when they discover that blogging stands in diametrical opposition to traditional teenaged obsessions such as privacy. Example: Sarah Hayden, 14, high-school freshman: "It would be just as if they were sneaking into our room and looking through a diary," she said, "because they would be doing it when they know that we don't want them to." The best part of the article, however, is saved for Chandler High freshman Nicole Yannacci, 15, who notes that parents wouldn't know how to find their blogs if they tried.
I Got Your Law and Order Right HereLatest tale from the iPod crime files: The daughter of former "Law & Order" star and Woody Allen regular Dianne Wiest was arrested for beating up a classmate at her Upper West Side Manhattan school and stealing his iPod, the New York Post reported .
"Emily Wiest, 17, and two other teenage girls were arrested Friday afternoon for allegedly roughing up a male classmate from the Beekman School and stealing his digital music player, court papers say. Asked for comment, her actress mom said through the door of her Upper West Side apartment, 'I don't know what you're talking about,' and declined to say anything else," the Post said. " A law-enforcement source said Emily Wiest, Lara Zieden, 18, and Leah Rucinski, 15, had gotten into an argument with the 16-year-old boy inside the East 50th Street school early Friday -- and plotted to finish the fight that afternoon. That's when the three jumped the teen, whose name was being withheld, during a recess about a block away from the school, court papers say. All three 'punched and kicked' him 'about the body,' their criminal complaints say. The three beat the teen to the ground, where his iPod and sunglasses fell out -- and were then scooped up by his attackers, the source said."
The Daily News also carried the story.
Send links and comments to robertDOTmacmillanATwashingtonpost.com.