Offices in Red Wing, MN & Hudson and Janesville, WI
Phone: 888-385-0607
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.startech-comp.com
Editor: Julie Winger, Director of Business Development
NEWSLETTER - February 2011
It’s the Super Bowl Time of Year!
As you can imagine we have many
Green Bay Packer fans in our
offices along with many Minnesota Viking fans. Well we have
some pretty happy Green Bay
Packer fans these days. Since I
am a loyal Green Bay Packer fan
I’d like all of you to cheer on the
Packers!
Phishing Facts
By: Eric Meng, Network Engineer
In the computer world, “phishing”
is a criminal activity regarding the
fraudulent procurement, through
deception, of sensitive personal
information such as passwords
and credit card details. This is
done by masquerading as someone trustworthy who legitimately
needs the information. eBay and
PayPal are two of the most targeted companies and online
banks are also common targets.
Coined in the mid 1990’s,
“phishing” was a term crackers
used to describe their attempts to
steal AOL accounts. A cracker is a
person who breaks into a computer system or network. In this
instance, they posed as an AOL
staff member and sent an instant
message to a potential victim. The
message would ask the victim to
reveal his or her password, to
"verify your account" or to
"confirm billing information".
Once the victim gave their password, the attacker could access
the victim's account and use it for
criminal purposes, such as spamming.
The term "phishing" is sometimes
said to stand for password harvesting fishing, though this is likely
a backronym, a retroactivelycoined acronym. The computing
community tends to use creative
spellings as a sort of jargon. Still
other theories accredit the term
"phishing" to originate from the
name "Brian Phish" who was the
first to allegedly use psychological
techniques to steal credit card
numbers in the 1980s. Others believe that "Brian Phish" was not a
real person but a
fictional character used by
scammers
to
identify
each
other. And of
course the term “phishing” also
alludes to the use of increasingly
sophisticated lures to “fish” for
user’s financial information and
passwords.
Today, online criminals put phishing to more directly profitable uses. As stated earlier, popular targets are users of online banking
services, and auction sites such as
eBay. Phishers usually work by
1
sending out spam e-mail to large
numbers of potential victims.
These direct the recipient to a
web page which appears to belong to their online bank, for instance, but in fact captures their
account information for the
phisher's use.
Typically, a phishing email will
appear to come from a trustworthy company and contain a subject and message intended to
alarm the recipient into taking
action. A common approach
is to tell the
recipient that
their account
has been de-activated due to a
problem and inform them that
they must take action to reactivate their account. The user
is provided with a convenient
link in the same email that takes
the email recipient to a fake web
page appearing to be that of a
trustworthy company. Once at
that page, the user enters their
personal information which is
then captured by the criminal.
Checking the URL in the address
bar of the browser may not be
sufficient. Some browsers can
fake the URL as well. However,
the file properties feature of several popular browsers may disclose the real URL of the fake
webpage.
If you are contacted about an
account needing to be "verified,"
you should contact the company
directly, or type in the address for
their webpage.
Be especially concerned about an
address containing the "@" symbol,
for
example
http://
[email protected]
d.com/. These addresses will
attempt to connect as a user
"www.google.com" to the server
"members.tripod.com". This will
very likely succeed even if the user does not exist, and the first part
of the link may look legitimate.
The same is true for misspelled
URLs or subdomains, for example
www.yourbankdomain.com.spam
domain.net. Of course this is an
obvious one, but it is just an example of how careful we all need
to be when dealing with the
online world.
Healthy Living Tip
It is important to manage stress in
order to stay healthy. While
stress is a part of all of our lives,
we cannot let it overtake us or it
can inhibit our immune system; it
can also make you tired and depressed, lead to headaches and
insomnia, and induce a host of other health problems.
Feeling stressed?
Try these steps:




Identify current stresses
Pinpoint what you can
control and what you cannot
Identify areas in your life
where you can take care
of yourself better, physically and emotionally
Make
these
positive
changes a reality, whether
through healthier eating,
more physical activity,
relaxation techniques,
building social networks,
or
finding
guidance
through others
If you would like more information, the following website will
be of help:
www.livehealthyredwing.org
Focus on Jason Fouks
Jason Fouks, Network Specialist
II, joined StarTech Computing in
February of 2009. In Jason’s own
words “ I’ve been at StarTech for
2 years and loving it”. He really
does enjoy the fast pace of bleeding edge technology and always
likes to experiment with new
“toys”. Jason went
to Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College and has 10
years in the business
of supporting computers and networks. He says he
“speaks two languages” - MAC
and Windows and is certified in
both. Jason grew up on a dairy
farm around the Clear Lake, WI
area. When not spending time
with his wife Tiffani and 3 children, Jason gives back to the
community by being an EMT. We
are proud to have Jason on our
team!
Benefits of Upgrading Your
Browser
Most of us do not realize how
much an old and out-of-date web
browser can negatively impact our
online lives, particularly
our
online safety. Upgrading to a
modern browser (Mozilla Firefox,
MS Internet Explorer, Google
Chrome, etc) is important for
three reasons. 1) Old browsers
are vulnerable to attacks as they
2
may not be updated with the latest security fixes. 2) Many new
features on today’s websites will
not work on older browser versions. 3) Old browsers slow down
innovation
on
the
web. If a lot
of Internet
users cling
to older versions, web developers
are forced to design websites that
will work with both old and new
technologies. Have you upgraded
your web browser lately?
Did You Know...
Did you know StarTech Computing has a development team?
They can assist you with:


Websites—either updating
your current one or creating
a new site
Custom application development
There is not a project too big or
too small. Contact us anytime!
Special Dates for StarTech
Computing
February marks the Anniversary
Start Dates of several StarTech
Computing employees— Tim
Agen, Neal Foster, and Jason
Fouks all started at StarTech
Computing in the month of February. Happy Anniversary to all of
you! February also marks the
birthday of Mike Benoy. Happy
Birthday Mike!
Thank you for your business—we
appreciate it! Call us anytime with
comments on how we are meeting
your needs. We value your feedback. Please contact Julie Winger,
Director, Business Development @
888-385-0607.