Newsletter ArchiveSUBJECT:Data Hacked - Stopping Spyware In Explorer The Internet 800 Directory - http://www.inter800.com The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter This issue is for Friday, July 23, 2004 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents 01. Data Hacked 02. Stopping Spyware In Explorer 03. Tip Of The Week --------------------------------------------------------------------- *01 Data Hacked Wednesday of this week Scott Levine, a middle-aged businessman from Florida, was charged in a 144-count indictment of conspiracy, unauthorized access of a protected computer, access device fraud, money laundering, and obstruction of justice. These charges were filed in U.S. District Court in Little Rock, Ark. Little Rock is the home of Acxiom, one of the largest data companies in America. Acxiom has information concerning nearly every adult in this country. It manages and interprets this data for banks, insurers, marketers and credit bureau TransUnion. If you need information, Acxiom can deliver it. They do it by using most sophisticated data analysis software and the best data in the world. The Government even uses Acxiom for some of its homeland security screening programs. According to the indictment, Levine who "effectively controlled" Snipermail.com, an online advertising company (Spammer), secured access to the Acxiom data by misusing a valid password and user name while working for a company that did business with Acxiom. During a 16-month period from 2002 to 2003, Levine and others at Snipermail.com firm stole 8.2 GB of data. Six of the other people associated with Snipermail.com have agreed to cooperate in the case. With today's personal hard drives holding hundreds of GB of data, don't be fooled, 8.2 GB is a lot of data. Just how much information is in GB of data? In books: 1 Gigabyte=10 yards (that's ten paces for an average sized man) of books on a shelf. In Web pages: An average web page (including graphics) should be about 50 kilobytes in size - you can download around 20,000 web pages for 1 gigabyte. So if you looked at 200 pages per hour of surfing, you could surf non-stop for about 100 hours per gigabyte. It appears that, while the stolen data contained personal information about a lot of people, it was not used. We dodged a bullet here and everything worked out this time. Acxiom found out about and corrected a problem in their system make their data more protected. The justice system is coming down hard on the alleged thief, hopefully making other think before hacking. However my fear is this just the tip of the iceberg in this new area of datacrime. These types of databases are very tempting targets in this information driven age. Chuck Arning at chuck@inter800.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- Are you paying too much for your toll free calls? Visit http://www.saveontollfree.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- *02 Stopping Spyware In Explorer Last newsletter I tried to get you to switch to Firefox (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/), but I know many of you are still using Explorer. If you are using Explorer, Spyware and Adware programs are still threatening your privacy. There are many anti-spyware products on the web but I thought I pass along one to you that easy to use and free. The program is IE-SpyAD. If you know a site is serving up spyware it's easy to protect yourself. How do you find out if a site is trying to add bad programs to your computer? In this case, IE-SpyAd has done the work of finding these sites and will add these sites to your restricted zone. Listing them in the restricted zone does not block them from appearing, but keeps them from downloading ActiveX or running malicious scripts on your system. The file is maintained by author Eric L. Howes and is built from information gathered from anti-spyware vendors and web sites. You will find IE-SPYAD at: https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ehowes/www/resource.htm Chuck Arning at chuck@inter800.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- Once every second someone searches the Internet 800 Directory looking for someone to supply them with goods or services. Will they find you or your competition? Call 800-299-1879! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Tip of the Week Copy and Paste Tips To highlight a word, select the word and click once. To highlight a paragraph, select the paragraph and click three times inside the paragraph. Different programs will create different results; experiment and see what results you get. When copy and pasting, you don't have to cut then paste it - you can highlight the text and drag it to where you want it on the page. This works with most programs. If you want to type over an entire paragraph or sentence, just highlight the text and start typing. To clear your clipboard, just hit the CTRL and the X key simultaneously. If you have any tips or shortcuts that you think the readers of this Newsletter will find useful, send them to chuck@inter800.com Banners? Pay-per-click? Why not target your market with links or information placed in relevant content? The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter offers direct access to business people who are interested buyers. Advertising: Information on how to sponsor this publication: Call 800-299-1879 Thanks for taking the time to review our newsletter for this week. If you know of anyone that might benefit from receiving this newsletter, send them to (http://www.inter800.com/news800/ ) where they can subscribe. 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