Written September 2010
by Cliff Feldwick
It's gotten a little quiet lately in the case of the Lower Marion High School students being spied on by their school-issued laptops.
In case you missed it, a Philadelphia suburban high school issued laptops to its students, but installed software that enabled the school to turn on the webcam without notice, thus spying on the students in their own homes. An assistant principal pulled one student in and accused him of popping pills (which turned out to be candy) and "proved" it by showing the student a picture taken by the webcam. The parents got involved and started asking how a picture was taken in their home? Oops.
A lot of backpedaling has gone on since, with administrators first saying it was only used to look for lost or stolen machines with maybe a dozen pictures taken, to admissions by the school attorneys that over 56,000 pictures of students were taken, often as they slept or went about in whatever state of dress normal in their rooms.
Besides the basic creepiness of this (and the invasion of privacy, not to mention potential pornographic peeping), a basic question remains: who created this ability, and where else has it been used?
Not Home Grown
Let's face it - the chances that the spy software was coded by someone at the school district is about nil. They bought it from somewhere, probably the outfit selling or leasing them the computers. And if one school district was that stupid, were there others? Who are they? When does that shoe drop?
I’m surprised that the attorneys for the students haven’t glommed onto this. Isn’t one of the precepts of litigation lately “sue everybody”? And don’t you go for the deep pockets? Bet the suppliers have deeper pockets that the schools. Maybe it’s just not showing up in the news coverage, but that’s surprising.
How About You?
Do you have a work issued laptop? Many teachers in Howard County do, usually Macs, depending on their school. Accounting firms often issue laptops to employees so they can work at client’s offices, or work at home, especially during the height of “tax season”, which comes during the period of most uncertain weather. That certainly paid off last year. A lot of salespeople carry laptops so they can enter all the information on the spot, cutting down mistakes and double-labor for entry. You get the point. Do these have spyware on them? Although I haven’t run into it, it would be legal for employers to track email and messaging. But turning on the webcam? No matter how you slice it or rationalize it, it’s creepy.
So have I gotten you sufficiently paranoid yet? OK, get out a roll of black electrical tape and gently cover the webcam sitting at the top of the screen. Oh, get the microphone hole as well. Never know.
As if we don’t have enough (probably sensible) suspicion about our own government spying on us (or Google Maps), add in your boss.
Speaking of Privacy, Google Errs Once Again
Google never seems to learn that people really do want some privacy - their standard behavior seems to be "open everything as wide as possible and see who complains".
The latest episode of this is "Places", a new "feature" in your Google iPhone app. It shows you who else is checked in to the same location as you, sort of like their version of Foursquare. Fine and dandy, but it also shows you to people who are not on your Friend list, and enables you (or someone else) to "check in" other people. Yep, you can "check in" your office mate to a bar where you're spending a few hours, when he's actually off working. His wife can then “see” that he's somewhere he's not. Lovely.
To turn this off, you have to go (on a regular computer, not your iPhone) to Account, Privacy Settings, Customize Settings and change "Places I check in to" to "Only Me" and uncheck the line that says "Friends can check me into Places". The fact that Google starts with these settings wide open is really crazy - didn't they learn anything from their fiasco with Buzz, their stupid social networking attempt, and it's "auto-follow" idiocy?
That’s with a “B”, Folks
In the “someone please explain this to me” category, why oh why did Intel, maker of chips, buy McAfee for 7.6 billion dollars? McAfee had just under $2 billion in sales, and their earnings were $1.5 billion. Not a bad margin, but even if they stayed as profitable, it would take five years to earn that amount of bucks back. And let’s face it – software is a quick changing, now you’re on top and now you’re pointless business. With free (and good) antivirus software such as AVG out there, it’s a ridiculous risk.
And Intel can’t be thinking they could incorporate antivirus software on a chip. You have to go out every week (or more often) to update your virus signature files if you want to be effective. A chip won’t do that.
So what’s today’s lesson? Start writing software, and then sell, baby, sell.
Cliff Feldwick is president of Riverside Computer Consultants, and does PC troubleshooting and network setups for small businesses, when not doing funny things with black tape. He can be reached at 410-880-0171 or by email at cliff@feldwick.com.
by Cliff Feldwick
It's gotten a little quiet lately in the case of the Lower Marion High School students being spied on by their school-issued laptops.
In case you missed it, a Philadelphia suburban high school issued laptops to its students, but installed software that enabled the school to turn on the webcam without notice, thus spying on the students in their own homes. An assistant principal pulled one student in and accused him of popping pills (which turned out to be candy) and "proved" it by showing the student a picture taken by the webcam. The parents got involved and started asking how a picture was taken in their home? Oops.
A lot of backpedaling has gone on since, with administrators first saying it was only used to look for lost or stolen machines with maybe a dozen pictures taken, to admissions by the school attorneys that over 56,000 pictures of students were taken, often as they slept or went about in whatever state of dress normal in their rooms.
Besides the basic creepiness of this (and the invasion of privacy, not to mention potential pornographic peeping), a basic question remains: who created this ability, and where else has it been used?
Not Home Grown
Let's face it - the chances that the spy software was coded by someone at the school district is about nil. They bought it from somewhere, probably the outfit selling or leasing them the computers. And if one school district was that stupid, were there others? Who are they? When does that shoe drop?
I’m surprised that the attorneys for the students haven’t glommed onto this. Isn’t one of the precepts of litigation lately “sue everybody”? And don’t you go for the deep pockets? Bet the suppliers have deeper pockets that the schools. Maybe it’s just not showing up in the news coverage, but that’s surprising.
How About You?
Do you have a work issued laptop? Many teachers in Howard County do, usually Macs, depending on their school. Accounting firms often issue laptops to employees so they can work at client’s offices, or work at home, especially during the height of “tax season”, which comes during the period of most uncertain weather. That certainly paid off last year. A lot of salespeople carry laptops so they can enter all the information on the spot, cutting down mistakes and double-labor for entry. You get the point. Do these have spyware on them? Although I haven’t run into it, it would be legal for employers to track email and messaging. But turning on the webcam? No matter how you slice it or rationalize it, it’s creepy.
So have I gotten you sufficiently paranoid yet? OK, get out a roll of black electrical tape and gently cover the webcam sitting at the top of the screen. Oh, get the microphone hole as well. Never know.
As if we don’t have enough (probably sensible) suspicion about our own government spying on us (or Google Maps), add in your boss.
Speaking of Privacy, Google Errs Once Again
Google never seems to learn that people really do want some privacy - their standard behavior seems to be "open everything as wide as possible and see who complains".
The latest episode of this is "Places", a new "feature" in your Google iPhone app. It shows you who else is checked in to the same location as you, sort of like their version of Foursquare. Fine and dandy, but it also shows you to people who are not on your Friend list, and enables you (or someone else) to "check in" other people. Yep, you can "check in" your office mate to a bar where you're spending a few hours, when he's actually off working. His wife can then “see” that he's somewhere he's not. Lovely.
To turn this off, you have to go (on a regular computer, not your iPhone) to Account, Privacy Settings, Customize Settings and change "Places I check in to" to "Only Me" and uncheck the line that says "Friends can check me into Places". The fact that Google starts with these settings wide open is really crazy - didn't they learn anything from their fiasco with Buzz, their stupid social networking attempt, and it's "auto-follow" idiocy?
That’s with a “B”, Folks
In the “someone please explain this to me” category, why oh why did Intel, maker of chips, buy McAfee for 7.6 billion dollars? McAfee had just under $2 billion in sales, and their earnings were $1.5 billion. Not a bad margin, but even if they stayed as profitable, it would take five years to earn that amount of bucks back. And let’s face it – software is a quick changing, now you’re on top and now you’re pointless business. With free (and good) antivirus software such as AVG out there, it’s a ridiculous risk.
And Intel can’t be thinking they could incorporate antivirus software on a chip. You have to go out every week (or more often) to update your virus signature files if you want to be effective. A chip won’t do that.
So what’s today’s lesson? Start writing software, and then sell, baby, sell.
Cliff Feldwick is president of Riverside Computer Consultants, and does PC troubleshooting and network setups for small businesses, when not doing funny things with black tape. He can be reached at 410-880-0171 or by email at cliff@feldwick.com.