Member-Submitted Links to Articles of Interest

ArsTechnica article reviewing Backblaze report on Drive failures. Backblaze has thousands of drives and 5 years of data.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / March 2023
Backblaze backup compare 13 SSD drives over 4 years for reliability
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / March 2023
Experian makes it fairly easy for anyone to hijack your credit bureau account by simply adding a new one for you. No check is made as to whether the account already exists!
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / July 2022
Ars Technica article explains how malware starts with the router and takes full control of Windows, Mac, or Linux.
/ Posted by: TimC / July 2022
2021 has seen a growth of 150% in the reported vulnerabilities compared to the previous year, while 29% of the critical flaws in WordPress plugins never received a security update.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / April 2022
The 2022 update to the famous Hive Systems Password Table uses up-to-date hardware and algorithms to explain how password hashing tables are made.
/ Posted by: David Cornelius / March 2022
Read about the major changes in how you consume and pay for Microsoft 365 and Office 365 and about the New Commerce Experience (NCE).
/ Posted by: David Cornelius / January 2022
As an option for some users Norton Antivirus offers a cryptomining pool for a substantial percentage. Interesting article.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / January 2022
If you like the idea of a thin web-connected operating system but don't want to sell your soul to Google, there's finally a good, pure Linux way to do this using Ubuntu Web.
/ Posted by: David Cornelius / November 2021
This is a review of an excellent alternative to Quicken. MoneyDance is a superb personal finance manager
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / July 2021
As of 2020/10/31.
/ Posted by: TimC / November 2020
A tech blogger, disgusted with Facebook's policy changes, increased sluggishness, and ridiculous content publishing rules, removes their presence from the social media platform.
/ Posted by: David Cornelius / August 2020
Windows Ease of Access settings offers some useful adjustments as well as some possible thorns. Here are some I change for myself and clients.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / June 2020
How does the company make money without storing or sharing any personal information on people using this search engine?
/ Posted by: David Cornelius / April 2020
Recorded presentation of Joe Kiniry from Galois and Free & Fair to the OCCA, Jan 28, 2020
/ Posted by: David Cornelius / January 2020
Terry Collins my Equus Rep sent me this: Microsoft Hid The `Use Offline Account' Option For Installing Windows 10, Here's Where To Find It
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / October 2019
Article documents the movement of the search term "Federal Reserve" to special list to purify the results.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / July 2019
Why use (or not) alternative browsers and suggestions.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / November 2018
Notes from the presentation Baltazar Ruiz, Intel Application Engineer, gave at the April 2018 OCCA meeting.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / June 2018
Here is my interview on Tualatin Valley Cable Access with Julia Anderson and Joe Smith about a variety of security issues.
/ Posted by: Andrew Hundt / May 2018
A non-technical guide to having a better relationshipwith your battery. Like many relationships, if you treat it better, it will treatyou better.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / March 2018
What? A bug in Windows 10???Begin:Activate Windows 10:Repeat
/ Posted by: TimC / February 2018
Gibson Research just wrote software to test for Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities. Simple clean understandable. Has good information.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / January 2018
Quad9 a new free DNS server designed for security and privacy. Combining 19 Security groups, over 100 server clusters. How to use it.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / December 2017
Fortunately, the keylogger is deactivated by default. Fortunately, HP has released a patch. The article includes links to the list of HP models and the patch.
/ Posted by: TimC / December 2017
In looking for the recipe to solve a syskey lock, see what turned up. This would be a good reason for some people to upgrade to version 1709.
/ Posted by: TimC / November 2017
Fantastic open source meta search engine Searx reviewed. Privacy. No tracking. Excellent results.Includes configuration help.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / November 2017
12 privacy respecting search engines without tracking. All give excellent results. Many better than Google or Bing.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / November 2017
I was rather surprised to find 75 instances of svchost.exe on one user's Win10 system and 66 on another. So I went hunting. It's legit.
/ Posted by: TimC / June 2017
An extensive review of steps you can take to improve your privacy. Many links.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / April 2017
Huge study of https interception by antivirus products & corporate middleboxes. They generally reduce security, make mistakes doing TLS.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / February 2017
Kaspersky Sytem Scanner. Portable, free, checks much and gives a good system info report. It even checks for programs that should be updated.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / January 2017
The new Windows 7 and 8.1 Update scheme explained: security only quality rollup, security monthly quality rollup, "preview", IE patching, and strategies.
/ Posted by: TimC / October 2016
This is what worked for me, step by step, starting with a refurbished Dell with bare Windows 7 - no service pack installed.
/ Posted by: ylocrn / September 2016
Windows Updates will shift to rollups instead of individual patches. They say this will speed things up. We'll see.
/ Posted by: TimC / August 2016
Effective Sept. 1, 2016; Web Browsers and Systems will be Required to Support TLS 1.2 for accessing various federal agencies.Also see howsmytls.com.
/ Posted by: TimC / July 2016
The Draft Burr-Feinstein Bill makes strong security illegal. This article explains the issue and links to simple action to stop it.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / April 2016
1+ hour video class: Russinovich describes how to use his Sysinternals tools to find and remove malware. Over 2 years old, but really good.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / January 2016
EFF produces a report each year on which companies are or are not protecting your privacy.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / December 2015
Nobody explains it better than Susan Bradley.
/ Posted by: TimC / December 2015
Setup your MySocialSecurity Online Account now, though it could be hacked. Otherwise, someone else may set one up using your name and steal your benefits.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / September 2015
The privacy impact of Windows' telemetry features continues to be scrutinized.
/ Posted by: Scott K. Anderson / September 2015
Think being self-employed is tough? Try being an over scrutinized employee in today's "Minority Report" Corporate World HR Sausage Grinder!
/ Posted by: Scott K. Anderson / August 2015
Windows 10 introduces something new and highly unpleasant for its millions of consumers: the complete loss of control.
/ Posted by: Scott K. Anderson / August 2015
Google sent out thousands of warning emails to webmasters telling them parts of their site were inaccessible. In many cases, those were wrong.
/ Posted by: Scott Hendison / July 2015
Over 200 free books about Microsoft products and services. Even I found some useful stuff here.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / July 2015
Fascinating article describing how to access the web interface and interrogate your broadband modem from your router. Can improve security. Also Followup.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / February 2015
When a client buys a new computer, the additional expenses are often as much as the computer. How to help your clients consider and budget for these expenses?
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / January 2015
The Chrome browser default to always on. It keeps running even after you've closed the browser. Here is how to have Chrome close when you close the browser.
/ Posted by: Steve Shank / January 2015
Four things for couples to keep in mind when deciding when to claim Social Security.Posted by Tim Chalmers, Your Computer Consultants, Inc.
/ Posted by: TimC / December 2014
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