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Facebook virus hits radio host

by Administrator on Aug.18, 2009, under News

Facebook virus hits
radio host
Jack Harris’ page hacked, virus
infects ‘friends’
Updated: Saturday, 15 Aug 2009, 7:44 AM EDT
Published : Saturday, 15 Aug 2009, 7:44 AM EDT

Shannon Mulaire
TAMPA – Jack Harris joined Facebook.com about a year ago to stay close to friends.

“You get 10, 15, 20 requests a day. So it keeps piling up,” said Harris.

But being a popular radio personality means loads of friend requests. Harris is now up to 2,200 pals.

“It is so exponential, there are a lot of people on there who don’t even know me,” explained Harris.

Harris gets hundreds and hundreds of e-mails a day, but on Wednesday, he got one unlike any other.

“‘Somebody’s put a porn video and it’s cool video and it’s got a virus attached’. And I thought what?” read Harris from the e-mail he received.

Jack had been hacked. Messages from his thousands of friends started pouring in.

“It’s a nightmare and I’ve heard from all 2,200 or however many people there are I think,” said Harris.

Experts say it’s the latest form of hacking. Hackers get into people’s social networking accounts and send out viruses or, sometimes worse, scam people for money. They say some people make it too easy for hackers.

“Traditionally people put a lot of emphasis on their bank account password and on their paypal account password. But sometimes their social networking account passwords, they’re not quite as strict on the way they set up the passwords,” explains Brett Kappes, owner of Performance Computer Group.

Experts say if you get a post from someone, make sure you know them, or at least know if it’s something they would send. The link Harris supposedly sent out was accompanied by an “lol”, code for ‘laughing out loud’ and not a term Harris has ever written. The radio personality has since changed his password and apologized to his Facebook friends, but the aftermath of this hacking is far from over.

“I’m still getting messages here now. This one says ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot Jack for the cool video’,” adds Harris.

Experts say there are ways to avoid this, or at least try to. They say you should change your password frequently and don’t make it simple. It should be at least five characters, including both upper and lower case. Also, make sure your computer has some good anti-virus programs. That will help prevent your computer from being infected.

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Solid State Drives

by Administrator on Jul.30, 2009, under Tech Spotlight

Solid State Drives

The market is suddenly awash in solid-state drives thanks to the growing abundance and greater reliability of flash memory. Here’s what you need to know about today’s SSD storage.

Solid-state drives are new to the PC storage front, and they’re making waves by offering blistering speeds and greater reliability than traditional hard disk drives. For that, you can thank the NAND flash memory chips that make up every solid-state device.

If you’re not familiar with NAND memory, you need only look at your keychain. NAND is the technology that powers the storage on your USB thumb drive… and your mobile devices and the memory card in your digital camera. Whereas your tiny flash card might use but a single NAND chip, SSDs use multiple chips to achieve their higher capacities.

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