Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
|
Home Repair (alt.home.repair) For all homeowners and DIYers with many experienced tradesmen. Solve your toughest home fix-it problems. |
Reply |
|
|
LinkBack | Thread Tools | Display Modes |
#41
Posted to alt.home.repair
|
|||
|
|||
{OT] Preventing Tracking, Blocking Ads, Stopping Malware, EnhancingFacebook, Managing Privacy Settings on Facebook and LinkedIn
On 2/1/2015 5:38 PM, SMS wrote:
On 1/30/2015 7:20 PM, Mayayana wrote: You don't say what "accounts and settings is. It looks like settings for a cellphone. given what you said about AV I'd assumed you were talking about Windows. A couple of thoughts: * I'd agree about avoiding anything from Symantec. It's all bloated junk. Avira causes too many false positives. I've installed Avast for friends, as the lesser of the evils. Personally I don't use AV and would never use Malwarebytes. It's not that I don't think people should use them. It's just that they take a lot of resources and don't work very well. The whole idea is outdated. But for people who don't know how to protect from malware, AV is better than nothing. A great many users fall into the trap of renewing their Norton or McAfee "protection" every year and then get very defensive when it's pointed out that equivalent, or better, protection is easily available for lower cost, or free. McAfee actually scores pretty well in independent tests. The independent test labs no longer test Symantec because there is no longer a standalone Norton Anti-Virus program. They don't test Norton? http://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/...ows/windows-7/ |
#42
Posted to alt.home.repair
|
|||
|
|||
{OT] Preventing Tracking, Blocking Ads, Stopping Malware, EnhancingFacebook, Managing Privacy Settings on Facebook and LinkedIn
On 2/1/2015 4:44 PM, Ron wrote:
On 2/1/2015 5:38 PM, SMS wrote: A great many users fall into the trap of renewing their Norton or McAfee "protection" every year and then get very defensive when it's pointed out that equivalent, or better, protection is easily available for lower cost, or free. McAfee actually scores pretty well in independent tests. The independent test labs no longer test Symantec because there is no longer a standalone Norton Anti-Virus program. They don't test Norton? http://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/...ows/windows-7/ Go back and read it again. Look about two thirds DOWN the list and you'll see it. |
#43
Posted to alt.home.repair
|
|||
|
|||
{OT] Preventing Tracking, Blocking Ads, Stopping Malware, Enhancing Facebook, Managing Privacy Settings on Facebook and LinkedIn
On Sun, 01 Feb 2015 14:25:34 -0800, SMS
wrote: On 2/1/2015 1:21 PM, Oren wrote: On Sun, 01 Feb 2015 09:13:33 -0800, SMS wrote: Browser add-ons like Ghostery block things like "Facebook Connect." For giggles I installed Ghostery FF add-on this morning out of curiosity. I'm impressed. Opt-in and allow the purple bubble that shows what trackers were blocked from tracking you. https://www.ghostery.com/en/home It's amazing just how many different trackers one web site can have! Yes. It's about money. I was aware of all the data mining and targeting. I tried another FF add on, but was not satisfied. Ghostery seems a better solution for blocking them. I like it, even though I only installed it this morning |
#44
Posted to alt.home.repair
|
|||
|
|||
{OT] Preventing Tracking, Blocking Ads, Stopping Malware, EnhancingFacebook, Managing Privacy Settings on Facebook and LinkedIn
On 2/1/2015 6:23 PM, Unquestionably Confused wrote:
On 2/1/2015 4:44 PM, Ron wrote: On 2/1/2015 5:38 PM, SMS wrote: A great many users fall into the trap of renewing their Norton or McAfee "protection" every year and then get very defensive when it's pointed out that equivalent, or better, protection is easily available for lower cost, or free. McAfee actually scores pretty well in independent tests. The independent test labs no longer test Symantec because there is no longer a standalone Norton Anti-Virus program. They don't test Norton? http://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/...ows/windows-7/ Go back and read it again. Look about two thirds DOWN the list and you'll see it. I'm the one pointing out that they do test Norton. |
#45
Posted to alt.home.repair
|
|||
|
|||
{OT] Preventing Tracking, Blocking Ads, Stopping Malware, Enhancing Facebook, Managing Privacy Settings on Facebook and LinkedIn
On Sun, 01 Feb 2015 13:12:56 -0800, SMS
wrote: You don't understand. First of all, e-mails tend to be ignored because people get so many e-mails. Unless you set up e-mail filters to sort them and depend on people to include the organization name in the subject line so they can be sorted. I have 5 email accounts. 1. My own personal one for friends and relatives. 2. For my small business 3. For contacting businesses (which is the one that gets spam and mailing lits that I did not want.) 4. Specific for mailing lists that I want to be on. 5. Misc. (for whatever dont fit any of the above). The band could have one just for band business, free emails are easy to get. I dont ignore any emails, unless they are obvious spam. I apply filters for repeated spam, such as LinkedIn I have everything from that site, or using their name, blocked. |
#46
Posted to alt.home.repair
|
|||
|
|||
{OT] Preventing Tracking, Blocking Ads, Stopping Malware, EnhancingFacebook, Managing Privacy Settings on Facebook and LinkedIn
|
#47
Posted to alt.home.repair
|
|||
|
|||
{OT] Preventing Tracking, Blocking Ads, Stopping Malware, Enhancing Facebook, Managing Privacy Settings on Facebook and LinkedIn
SMS wrote:
Some recent posts in other threads in alt.home.repair indicate that there is some lack of awareness of the need for browser extensions and applications to manage privacy. I read all the suggestions by in this thread including those of SMS and Mayayana in particular. While most are good ideas they all involve huge amounts of effort which gets added to the maintenance one has to do on a regular basis. The complaints about the laziness of the average user ignore that he's already inundated with upgrades to numerous programs including the O/S and browser each of which requires analysis to ensure that the upgrades don't disable or change other carefully installed ad-ons or modifications. Sometimes you can't even tell that disaster is a few keystrokes away. For example I eventually upgraded Adobe Flash plug-in for Firefox because of the annoying whining and -- whoops -- another add-on that changed the color of "read" articles stopped working not only for future items but for all those (thousands) I'd read in the past ten or so years. They all reverted to the unread category. The solution for the future was to re-install the add-on. There is no solution for the past items. What a mess! What's necessary is all-out war on the spammers, trackers, privacy violators, bloat ware installers, and generally programmers who want to keep their jobs. (My son, who's in the spamming business, goes ballistic when I tell him, "Software is forever".) But this isn't a war you can win on an individual basis. Really you need help. An honest company that can stop the bad guys in their tracks by making their efforts futile. For example, by telling a nosy inquirer that you're not using AdBlock Plus or Ghostery or similar and returning plausible but erroneous information to the sender. Any ad the sender thinks he making your computer display will simply drop into the bit bucket. Since most of these pages are in fact ads themselves I see nothing immoral about lying to the owners. Probably,with some minor exceptions, the days of the protection for free seem to be over. It's unlikely that anyone trustworthy is going to write (say) a sample hosts file complete with annotations as to what each item means so it can be intelligently customized by the user. Similarly if the anti-ad, tracking, etc package becomes popular, Google and other schemers are likely to find a way around the protection. Like an arms race someone will have to update the software regularly to deal with the scum. So the answer has to be some form of payment (horrible though that thought is), not donations (don't work) and certainly not ads. And it must pass the general approval test. The more comments and whining the better provided that the originator actually takes notice. *********** And, slightly off topic: Those who suggest using the ISP as an email provider ignore the fact that one would like to change ISP's occasionally without killing all the contacts one has established over the years. Further one of my email accounts is with Verizon, my ISP. They have no anti-spam functionality and they keep wanting me to change the port. I just ignore them and so far all (except for the spam) is still well. Nor is it practical to use a free email account. Last time I checked they all seem to be in Bangladesh or other third-world countries and are likely of short longevity. Nope, we're stuck with gmail or similar. ************ And even further off-topic (although someone mentioned it) is the inexcusable use of interpreters like .net. About 5 years ago I changed my back-up program and one of the parameters I insisted on was that it was written in a compiled stand alone language (Assembler, C, or similar) and only relies on the O/S for something everyone has to rely on it for (like writes to media). It also has to be portable and produce a back-up file that can be used just as is. I.e. it's a vanilla copy program (no compression or special file format) but it doesn't copy identical already backed-up files. I'm not going to turn this into spam so no names but it is right priced (i.e. free) and with the addition of a replaceable hard drive (several of them) I have a fast easy copy of my entire system. Change that prevents change is possible. |
#48
Posted to alt.home.repair
|
|||
|
|||
{OT] Preventing Tracking, Blocking Ads, Stopping Malware, EnhancingFacebook, Managing Privacy Settings on Facebook and LinkedIn
|
#49
Posted to alt.home.repair
|
|||
|
|||
{OT] Preventing Tracking, Blocking Ads, Stopping Malware, Enhancing Facebook, Managing Privacy Settings on Facebook and LinkedIn
| I read all the suggestions by in this thread including those of SMS
| and Mayayana in particular. While most are good ideas they all involve | huge amounts of effort which gets added to the maintenance one has to | do on a regular basis. I think there's a limit to what one can do without some work. It's a complex system. There's a joke in the programming world that the ideal design for business software is "one button, no directions". The problem is that a program with one button can only do one thing. Computers are very complex and capable machines. We can't have it both ways. That desire is part of the reason that tablets are successful, but tablets also reduce functionality, software options and control. I don't think it's so different from anything else. If you want to control it you have to make an effort. If you want to eat healthy food you need to study not only nutrition but also the food business. You can't just trust that Dunkin Donuts or Panera Bread is offering something edible. They're corporations in the business of making money. The same goes for most farmers and grocery stores. Home repair could also be used as an analogy. If you want a good house you need to learn about upkeep. Or you need to find someone you trust and pay them to do it. You can save a lot of work by using tools, like NoScript for Firefox. But even getting that far is a level of tech expertise that only a tiny fraction of people will ever master. I provide an information webpage for people interested in privacy. At the beginning I explain that there could be 3 categories of people delineated: People who don't care about online spying, people who care but don't want to make an effort, and people who care and do want to make an effort. Most people are in the 2nd category. Ostrich mentality. They think that caring will somehow be helpful. The only people who can be helped are the ones in the 3rd category. | And, slightly off topic: Those who suggest using the ISP as an email | provider ignore the fact that one would like to change ISP's | occasionally without killing all the contacts one has established over | the years. Further one of my email accounts is with Verizon, my ISP. | They have no anti-spam functionality and they keep wanting me to | change the port. I just ignore them and so far all (except for the | spam) is still well. | | Nor is it practical to use a free email account. Last time I checked | they all seem to be in Bangladesh or other third-world countries and | are likely of short longevity. Nope, we're stuck with gmail or | similar. | This is a great example of the problem. You want honest, non-spyware email, but you don't want to make any effort. (Verizon has switched the port once, maybe twice over the years. The latest change is to make it more secure. It requires two minutes of paying attention on your part to make that change.) Google says, "Hey, go with us. It's effortless." So you do. OK, but don't then complain about sleaziness. I have ISP email. If I changed ISPs then so what? I'd have to let people know. Most of my email I do through my own domain. I pay yearly to keep ownership and pay $9/month for hosting. Again, you can get cheaper or even free web hosting, but if you want real service without sleaze it costs a bit. It also requires learning a bit about how to have a domain hosted. You can also get real email for a couple of dollars a month from an independent company. My techy niece is using something called hushmail lately. I haven't looked into it, but it looks like it might be a good choice. Telling everyone that we're stuck with GMail is just fooling yourself. I'm not stuck with gmail. I've never used free webmail and never will. On some of my email accounts I auto-delete incoming webmail. If people want to reach me they need to use real email to do it. I don't agree that the sleazy webmail companies (Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, especially) have a right to essentially rifle through my desk and copy my papers at will. You going along with that sleaze is *exactly* what makes it possible for them to do it. |
Reply |
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
CADCAM Technology Leaders Group On LinkedIn... | Metalworking | |||
A Little Taste Of Just How Good My LinkedIn CADCAM Group Is: | Metalworking | |||
The Ultimate Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter & YouTube | Home Ownership | |||
The Ultimate Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter & YouTube | Home Repair | |||
TV does not remember channel settings, image settings, and sound settings after having been shut down | Electronics Repair |