The Dangers of Easy Electronic Communication
I have just created another twitter account so that I can post to LinkedIn using Twitter. There are a few reasons for this. But it’s mainly to enable me to update my network status for LinkedIn from Tweetdeck.
I like Tweetdeck. Admittedly Tweetdeck is not Open Source. I got introduced to it at Social Innovation Camp Scotland 2009. I run multiple Twitter accounts from it, some personal, some organizational. It’s an extremely powerful tool enabling you to follow mentions of a subject or users. Plus I can be logged in to multiple accounts at once. It’s running nicely on my upgraded Karmic Koala Kubuntu Laptop as it runs on Adobe Air so it’s not a tool dependent on the operating system, you just have to make sure that you can run Adobe applications on your chosen system.
The trouble is that so many social networks are actually trying to connect to each other now. Since I am trying to be more accessible to groups that I am professionally socializing with I want to connect up with them in anyway that I can. Although then there is the worry of posting the wrong thing, at the wrong time, to the wrong audience. Admittedly this could still happen on Tweetdeck, I’ve added in my Facebook and Myspace accounts as well. You trade off on a higher risk for more convenience.
I have a net-name that I have been using for years. For the non business socializing, it was used at first for all of my on-line interactions. It’s easy enough for someone to google that and know that it’s me. Which is not always a good thing. I’ve been using the onepict blog to post about Open Source and how it affects my and my dealings with other people. I’m very easy to find on-line now. I don’t however want to pollute my on-line CV (which LinkedIn effectively is) with my social tweets. Especially the ones from down the pub.
So I have created a new twitter account @onepict. My LinkedIn profile points at this website and I have a LinkedIn button on here. People will still know who I am and will connect my other on-line identity to me. In-terms of what people can find on the Internet, a mildly net-savvy person will find you. They will be able to join the dots. I don’t however have to put a great big light bulb flashing sign on my CV about my past net history though. They need to work a bit harder than that.
Once I have some more tweets that are appropriate I will change the Twitter feed from my @shandydann one. I’m planning a more personal website that’s for the non Open Source part of my life anyway so the @shandydann Twitterfeed will sit on my shandydann.com site anyway.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone too far with the on-line mullarkey.
Twitter account hacking
I was informed by my partner that my twitter account had been hacked. Now I had a secure password set for my account and I do not have a windows desktop or laptop. I run Ubuntu Linux Jaunty Jackalobe. Of course the only windows device I have is an htc touch pro, which is windows mobile 6 pocket PC. I use hellotwitface to tweet when I’m out and about. So could that have compromised me? I’m unsure. The passwords been changed on my twitter account and I’ll see what happens before I tweet from my phone.
My account tweeted one weightloss spam advert. The tweet was done from the web. You’ll see my initial tweets after the event on the site as I have a twitter feed on it. The thing is I have advertising on this blog. However I try to keep it discreet and on the sidebar and at the bottom of the web page. But I expect my microblogging to be ad-free. No one want’s ad-spam.
According to my initial google foo, my account was one of hundreds being used to send out this spam. According to Ben Parr on mashable, last week twitter apparently suspended thousands of accounts that had been compromised and were sending out spam after being infected with malware Koobface/Win32. The only advise symantec gives is make sure bluetooth isn’t turned on. There’s no sign of infection on the phone, plus no initial sign of hellotwitface being the culprit.
Of course it isn’t the first time twitter’s been hacked. Back in july drabdavid wondered if twitter had been hacked. Although this was because of all the porn followers that that appear out of no where and do not tweet. I suspect that’s just bot account creation though.
Although perhaps someone has guessed the password to a twitter staffer again and has managed to use the account to send out tweets with thousands of accounts. The staffer compromise happened earlier this year and thetechherald has a bit more detail about the account compromisation and how the news broke as someone posted images of how they got the staffers password through social engineering. So does ZDNET which details how the person got onto the account in the first place and promptly offered access to various high profile accounts back in January.
I’ve always felt that you do need a bit of psychology to be able to get past peoples barriers to get at secure system. The greatest danger to the security of any system is always the human element.
It’s very embarrassing being told that your method of communication is being hacked. I remember losing my mobile and thinking I’d left it in my flat. I only got alerted to the fact that someone else was using my phone by my partner when he got rude messages from my phone that were completely out of character. Of course they’d signed my phone for porn and I had to change my mobile number. So I feel I’ve got off lightly this time.
Regardless of what’s happened or how it’s happened, I’ve changed my password. Deleted the tweet and explained what happened to my few followers. I’m just waiting to see what happens with my facebook account. In fact I think I’ll head over there and change the password on that too . Then I’ll need to put a lock on my phone.
Messaging Forum in Edinburgh
Two and a half years ago I stood in a newly opened office hosting a get together of people in Scotland who used and sold Open Source products. We all had to introduce ourselves with a little bit of what we did. I introduced myself as somewhat of a newbie who would be in a position to decide whether I would use Open Source in my business or not.
I am there now.
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Changing Focus in my work.
I have recently changed jobs and industry.
In my former job I was supporting a windows environment in the Oil and Gas industry. The company was fairly closed minded to Open Source Technology. However that did not mean that we ignored Open source entirely.
I have found that being general support in any company means that you will inevitably end up supporting user’s own machines, or they will ask you for advice. Sometimes they even ask you for a buckshee (pirated) copy of Office or windows. I do not condone pirating of software. So I would give them copies of open office, which my boss supported as we didn’t have the office licences for home use. If you want to find free alternatives to paid software, look at my blogroll.
Some useful Resources for Ubuntu beginners
Those of you who decide to take the plunge to try Ubuntu might be wondering where to start to get advice and to get the most out of your system. To this end I thought that I would give you a few links to some on-line resources and some books that I’m reading and using as any issues come up.
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Why I started using Linux
I don’t think I’ve ever stated why I started using Linux in a post. I thought that I’d started using it 6 months ago but I’ve been using it for about a year. I’d already started to go down the route of Open Source Software around about 2 years ago when I started to use firefox. I’d gone there after using Opera for a while. Yes there were teething problems, but the tabbed browsing along with the staggering amount of plug ins convinced me to stay. Even though Internet Explorer 7 has tabbed browsing, I think that the tabs are a bit to big and clunky. Plus in Microsoft’s aim for a simple GUI, it seems to be twice as hard to find options or the other useful menus that it has. It also doesn’t like Outlook Webmail in terms of the security. Not a good thing for my company’s external access to email.
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Ubuntu Linux and Coffeestayne
I’ve recently rebuilt Coffeestayne’s PC again. This is partly because of a hardware fault and partly because his Windows XP installation has always been a bit ropey. One factor that did not help was that every time my little brother borrowed Coffeestayne’s pc to go on the internet, he would use windows messenger. This meant that despite all of Norton and my attempts to block the dangers, the PC would be infected with spyware, malware and viruses. Even the firewall (admittedly a software one) couldn’t stop them. Thankfully Coffeestayne is on dial up but still.
So I have cried enough after a very difficult recovery of Coffeestayne’s data from a very corrupted hard drive. We put in an 80GB hard drive that Coffeestayne purchased and I have installed Ubuntu. I’ll post about ubuntu later for anyone that is curious.
