Celebrity news, holidays & malware

Families certainly don't need computer hassles during the holidays, but this highly social time is right when everybody needs to be a little extra alert to social engineering. Here's what social engineering looks like this week, at the convergence of last-minute holiday distractions and the sudden death of a young actor, Brittany Murphy. "As a young star in movies that were highly popular with a younger audience, Brittany may currently be the search engine topic of choice among your own children," writes Trend Micro's Net-safety activist Lynette Owens in her blog. "Regardless of whether or not you knew who she was or how much talent you thought she had, many people are crowding on the internet to find out more about her and what lead to her death." So what happens? "Alongside the stories about Brittany in a Google search, researchers at Trend Micro found links to hoax Web sites purporting to offer information about her death.... If you clicked on these links you would see a pop-up message telling you that your computer has been infected with a virus and you need to scan it immediately." Select "ok," and you get a screen saying your system's being scanned. Once the fake scan is "done," you get another screen prompting you to download free security software. Click "ok" again, and the intruder opens a door in your system that can give the source of this scam control of it.

Another scam this year is offers of "free" versions of the film Avatar. In its security blog, Symantec says "there are literally hundreds of ... scam sites and pages trying to cash in on the hype around this new film. All of these sites are offering full free downloads or streaming videos of this new film.... Some are collecting email addresses, others are trying to get you fill in surveys, IQ tests, and so on that will eventually ask you to enter in your mobile phone number, which will sign you up for some unwanted and subscription-based, premium-rate services," among other potential problems.

Being up front about monitoring online kids

I see no point in parents secretly monitoring kids' online activities - except if a parent feels a child is in danger and the child is unwilling to communicate or make a change in those activities and is being secretive him or herself. If those exceptional criteria are met and a child is at risk, surreptitious use of monitor software is very probably necessary. Otherwise, the only kind of monitoring I'd recommend - for the average kid who's not at risk offline and is lucky enough to have engaged parents (the vast majority of online kids) - is open monitoring involving lots of communication and maybe technology. Which is why I like the whole concept of Norton OnlineFamily: It's not just about technology. I'm not aware of any other online-safety or parental-control product or service designed from the ground up around in-person parent-child communication. "OnlineFamily is meant to be completely transparent between parent and child," writes USATODAY's Ed Baig in his review of the product. Also good: It's free till next January. "Symantec isn't committing to a price after that but says a one-year subscription is valued at $60," Baig adds. For video on the product, see Good Morning America.

Conficker worm help (aka April Fool's worm)

It has been all over the news today, so a quick summary on what to do if you're concerned about family computers getting infected: You can see if your computers are ok by checking if they have MS08-067 installed. How? The exact steps depend on what version of Windows is on the particular PC, but they go pretty much like this: Go to Start > Control Panel > Programs > View installed updates. If you see among them "Security Update for Microsoft Windows (KB958644)," your machine's all set. That update was issued last October, so if your family's doing automatic security updates, everybody's fine. If you don't see that update in the list, go to Microsoft.com, search for the MS08-067 security update, and install it. Here's CNET's live blog on the Conficker worm, TrendMicro's guide, Symantec's guide, and ConnectSafely.org's Larry Magid talking about it on NPR's Talk of the Nation.

Views of Net users young & old: Studies

Lots of international (individual and family) Internet-user data has been released via various studies this past week, courtesy of Symantec, Google, Yahoo, and Skype. Symantec's Norton Online Living Report was very family-oriented, having gathered the views of 9,000 adults and young people in 12 countries! Some interesting findings NetworkWorld led with were that "one in five children admitted getting caught doing something their parents didn't approve of," and parents are using a variety of means to keep better tabs on their kids online activities. "The UK, for example, has the highest usage of software to control Internet use," e.g., filtering or online curfews. A few other interesting findings: "1 in 5 online youth are more willing to communicate with their family about touchy subjects online than on the phone or in person" (great idea - let a text message about your concern kick off a calm parent-child conversation); "89% of online adults and 90% of online children agree that the benefits of using the Internet outweigh the risks," but 60% of parents feel kids spend too much time online. In another just-released sponsored by Google, Yahoo, and Skype, 90% of users in France, Germany, and the UK expect their Internet service providers to offer open and unrestricted access to the Web, Reuters reports. And the New York Times reports that a survey conducted in the US by TRUSTe, the privacy nonprofit, found that "more than 90% of respondents called online privacy a 'really' or 'somewhat' important issue." But in a separate story, the Times asks the good question, "When Everyone's a Friend, Is Anything Private?"