Nothing is Free on the web! Well, very little anyway. The TCP web site is one of the very few anymore. The web started out with a reputation for free ideas and information and that notion has stuck beyond it’s use. Think about it though. You hear that companies like Google are rolling in $$$ and yet their search engine is “free”. According to one source, Cnet, of the $66 million dollars that Mozilla corporations made in 2006 (owners of the popular browser “FireFox”), $56 million came from Google. This is how much it was worth to Google to direct your searches and track your links. Some charge that Google is not free in any sense. Have you tried to get to www.Google.com, the American site? Try it, bet you can’t do it. It will say you can, it will even supply a button to do it but more than likely when you select it, it will go right back to www.google.com.au. (This is for Australian users) Just like China, you are not privy to whatever the rest of the world see’s. Search results appear to be tailored to the desire of the clients who bid the most.. whoever that might be. It’s even possible that Google engages in censorship. A letter was sent from TCP twice to Google in California asking if it was true that Google suppressed or enhanced normal search results for money in Australia and if the Australian government was a client. They refused comment. A search engine can make money from presenting you to the highest bidder, by suppressing targeted sites, and from collecting your every move whilst using their program, to name just a few.

TCP has just located a search engine that may be pretty good. A group in Germany got tired of the Google way and started their own. It is called MetaGer. Otherwise Yahoo gets my nod for now but if Microsoft acquires it as they are trying to do as I write this.. well, all bets off then.

Every web site has the ability to know your individual IP address if they want to. That means they can know where and who you are, full stop. A search engine knows your computer and it’s location, what you look at and keeps that information. If they wish they can sell your “private” information to anyone willing to pay, and if you accept certain plug-ins or up-dates, can provide actual access to your computer to a third party.

Nothing may be more costly than a FREE program. Never download a program from the web unless you are very certain of the integrity of the source. Do not trust a site just because it is from a big corporation or known brand. Taking your private information, copying your personal records from your computer, including your passwords is not illegal for these operations unless they use that information for a direct fraud. If they use your banking details to draw money from your account, that is illegal... as far as I know. But if they sell your passwords to another party that wants to insert their advertising in your computer or steal your email address files, that is business as usual. You do not know what you are getting. The description given to you about a program may be little to do with what it really does, after all, you wouldn’t do it if you knew it was spyware. You may think it was a neat little photo gallery system... well that too, but it’s main job may be to infiltrate your computer and provide a permanent portal into it that activates every time you go to the net. Notice that your computer is running slower than it should? Then chances are you already have someone else’s program running on your computer. Once that program is installed the owner may sell access to your computer to anyone. If you download an executable file (that is, the file name ends in .exe for example) you are putting your complete faith in the source..

Updates... especially “critical” updates... 98% Bullshit! Some vendors purposely sell their programs with defects so that you are required to install an update early on to fix it. This allows the vendor to know the computer that the licensed program is installed on and prevents multiple and unauthorised use of the disc that it was purchased on. Some vendors do improve or respond to a particular threat and provide a download via their web site. These improvements will be available for you to install voluntarily but rarely is there a need to update automatically and daily is absurd. Everybody wants to get in on that action. TCP bought a cheap printer for printing out emails at a cost of $55. The program that came with it was desperate to have me allow “automatic updates”. The sales value of the access was probably worth more to the company than the profit in the hardware. When you allow an “update” you are opening a portal into your computer.

Anti-virus software.. 95% bullshit! One persons spyware is another persons anti-virus program. For purposes of this discussion lets define virus as any program that shows these three traits, 1, the official description of it’s function as supplied by the source of the program is incomplete or deceptive or vague to a computing novice. 2, the program may install itself without direct and clear invitation to do so. 3, Once installed will not allow complete uninstall by normal means, ie,”add, remove” programs file. Using that description I find many of these so-called anti-virus and search engine programs are almost all spyware with just enough stated function to provide legal cover. The worst computer damage I have seen that I could attribute to a particular piece of software was from one of those $40 antivirus things that people will buy when they pick up their new computer or buy when they already think they are in trouble. Doomed! The minute you load that it’s a problem but when the thing takes you to their “security centre” on the web it is often all over except the flowers.

What about email?? The best way to describe email is that it is very similar to the idea of sending mail through a conventional post office except your mail is not enclosed in an envelope! The tenders of the mail system (your mail may go through several servers) are supposed to be careful of their security so that no unauthorized person wanders into the room to read that open mail. The system that most of you use is called “Simple Mail Transport Protocol” or SMTP. Some email can be improved in security but unless it is encrypted, none of it should be considered secure or private. Any person in the various servers along it’s path can read or edit anything you send or receive. Any entity that gets their hands into your computer via any of the methods above, or that invades your server can access your email files and do what they like including... Identity theft, sending mails as you. This has happened to TCP and one of the reasons TCP has a new and more secure email address and system. If you received an email purporting to be from TCP that was trying to sell you anything, it was absolutely bogus and the parties involved were criminal pieces of low life shit... but other than that I’m sure they are very nice people. Modification, anyone along the way can edit or delete your mail. Repudiation, because normal emails can easily be forged, no email can be regarded as genuine in any legal or important sense. Australian Customs use of email for notification has been under criticism from people that are familiar with SMTP. Anyone on either end can claim anything they want and there is no way to prove either way.

What to do?!!? There is a lot you can do. To guard against virus/privacy attack your first line of defence is a good firewall, no, not that poor thing that came on your windows computer. If you are connected via adsl or dial up, your modem should have a good one built in. If you don’t know if it has one, assume it doesn’t and go spend the $100 or whatever, to replace it. If you are connected to the web via a wireless system like Marinanet, you are probably OK as they have a good one on their system. There is firewall software for sale or download all over the place but... see the “free program” issues above. Seciruty programs are the favourite of the spyware crowd as a means to infect you.

Some FREE programs are OK. Look for “open source” software that is free of ‘tag-along’ programs. These are programs that are transparent and available to the web in source code. This means anyone can know what is inside them, no dark secrets. These are not what a low life wants to have anything to do with, no where to hide. There are some very good office programs for example. I like “Open Office suit” better than "Word" and its free or very low cost. Linux is a great example of an operating system that I prefer in many ways to windows and it is free. Even the open source programs that I use are carefully examined and I prefer to pay a few dollars for a disc to be sent rather than download. I’ll have much more to say about that in a later edition or on the web site.

Updates.. TCP computers are absolutely forbidden to allow updates from anyone. If you wish to disable windows updates, here is how. For you windows XP users, just disabliling from the little panel on your desktop is not good enough. Windows is full of controls that have false or at least redundant controls. To be sure to disable go to START>CONTROL PANEL>ignore the “security center” icon and look to left and see; SWITCH TO CLASSIC VIEW>ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS>SERVICES (DOUBLE CLICK) which will bring down a list of program functions, double click on “automatic updates” and disable. While you are in there, if you have XP pro, you may have a function called “REMOTE REGISTRY” Unless you are intending to network your computer via the web, you may consider disabling this function as it is intended to allow someone outside your computer to run it as their own. Dangerous...

Anti-virus.. At TCP we use two common antivirus programs that you can download but to defeat the invasion they want to do.. (critical updates and definitions etc) they are NOT loaded onto the hard drive but copied from a documents file to a disc and then delete the documents file. After that they are run from the disc. Without the program on the hard drive it can't attempt to call on the dogs. These are “Ad-Aware” and “Spy Bot”. The Ad-aware does create the occasional false alerts. Don’t panic. They will be the same one or two and not a worry if they were genuine. Gotta look like they are working you know. If it comes up with more than two they are probably genuine. TCP uses one more sometimes but for the sake of our security it can’t be mentioned here.

Cookies.. These are small programs that a visiting web site may try to launch into your computer to send information back to the web site from your computer. Cookies sometimes have legitimate use, such as a secured site that you interchange important information on. They can help the site insure who it is communicating with but usually they are just mild spyware. The worst offenders? Australian government sites will clog your files with cookies. TCP web site will never launch a cookie at you computer. If you don’t know how to stop cookies you should. TCP computers do not allow cookies except for a few sites that have legitimate use. For Windows Internet Explorer, see TOOLS>INTERNET OPTIONS>PRIVACY and set the sliding control to "Block all Cookies". You can always change it temorarily if you need to. Always delete the cookies when done. See TOOLS>INTERNET OPTIONS>GENERAL and delete cookies.

Email... Besides acknowledging the material above, what you can do is not forward those bloody messages that ask you to forward to everyone you know. DON’T DO IT!!! They will try to appeal to your dark side, your humanity or generosity, your sexy nature, your concern for some small child suffering.. whatever. They are all a lie!! My favourites so far are the ones that say Bill Gates has too much money and will reward anyone who forwards the message a fabulous amount of money or the alert that there is a person running around getting women to try a sniff of perfume which is actually a sleep inducing chemical thus robbed and raped or the letter claiming that schools in England are now not acknowledging the holocausts because it offends Muslims. And a classic that is running around again, the one warning of a virus and wanting you to forward to all your contacts to help protect their computers. They are not without a sense of humour, those scum bags! When you forward these thing all the names that you send it too are automatically added to the spammers mailing list that sent out the bogus message in the first place. That is how you wind up on the list that gets the mail for penis enlargers, viagra, cheap shares, offers to make a million on a quick deal, all they need is your bank details.. or the mail that wants you to log onto a web site to save your bank account details or paypal account. (Beware, no financial institution of any kind will contact you via email for any matter of import. If you are contacted by a mail that appears to be that, it is a lie, don’t go there, do not go to their site and for crying out loud, do not use your pass word there.....)

If you are sent something you wish to forward, copy/paste the material unto a new page and put the list of your contacts in the BCC (blind carbon copy) option.

The web is a wonderful thing. It allows TCP to distribute world wide with the press of a button among many other virtues but it has a side far darker than most net users understand. There is virtually no regulation. No consumer protection of any meaningful sort. Our government monitors web activity, this is proved by government press releases announcing arrests for people downloading illegal porn, but it is not interested at all in protecting you from fraud, privacy invasion or malicious destruction. It’s the wild wild west out there.