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https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/22/fbi-ad-blocker/
This holiday season, consider giving the gift of security with an ad blocker.
That's the takeaway message from an unlikely source — the FBI — which this week issued an alert warning that cybercriminals are using online ads in search results with the ultimate goal of stealing or extorting money from victims.
In a pre-holiday public service announcement, the FBI said that cybercriminals are buying ads to impersonate legitimate brands, like cryptocurrency exchanges. Ads are often placed at the top of search results but with "minimum distinction" between the ads and the search results, the feds say, which can look identical to the brands that the cybercriminals are impersonating. Malicious ads are also used to trick victims into installing malware disguised as genuine apps, which can steal passwords and deploy file-encrypting ransomware.
One of the FBI's recommendations for consumers is to install an ad blocker [...]
[...] If you're looking for a widely recommended ad blocker, uBlock Origin is a simple, low-memory ad blocker that works for most browsers, like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Opera, plus the extension is open source so anyone can look at the code and make sure it's safe to run.
You can also get content blockers for Android and iOS, which block ads from loading on your device [...]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Thursday December 29, @03:44AM
Writing a database in assembly. Makes me wish I had been born 30 or so years earlier, that I might have done such things. Sure, you can still do it, but not as a Windows process! Ugh!
I'm doing some work at a tiny company I occasionally do work for. They seem to buy a new printer at least every year. I have _no_ idea why. So there's this HP (ptewey) OfficeJet Pro 8025e that I'm trying to print through. My Win7 laptop sees it, adds it, but spat out a ton of garbaged up paper. Checking HP's website- only Win10 and 11 are "supported". They do have older files available, but I'm not going to download and install an over 200MB file on MY computer and risk the mess it might cause, and still have no printer working. I'm okay with change if it's necessary and things get better, but far too much of the world is hooked on change for the sake of change. I have better things to do! Now I'm trying to print to another (Epson) printer in the next room... Win7's stupid "add a printer" wizard must have forgotten to bring his magic pixie dust. Sigh. I might have to print it at home on a much older HP laser that Just Works.
I hear you re: Doctor House, MD. Probably my favorite show of all time. I think I've seen every episode 3 times, many of them more than that. I hope nobody takes this the wrong way, but I identify with him a bit too much. I'm a pretty good diagnostician, and often get great compliments and praise for things I do and fix, but I'm, for some reason I can't understand, greatly misunderstood by people. But I don't act like House, nor irritate people (not intentionally, anyway!), so nobody treats me badly (other than my sister...)
I don't know much about the airlines' problems, but last I looked into it they mostly use software and systems from Unisys? Pretty much a monopoly lock-in situation? If that's true, and from what I know of recent Unisys and its culture, they're some of the worst example of change for the sake of change- just a horrific mess of people trying to cram in the latest and greatest, without anyone taking a moment and trying to figure out what is needed, how to best do it.
A few years ago I knew a couple of people who worked for Unisys, and they said the place is all very young people. Ahem.
Airlines would do better to contract with major financial transaction computing firms. THAT has to be mind-numbing. They, whoever they are, have designed their own specialized transaction processing chips! "Normal" IT stuff isn't fast nor reliable enough for them.
Yeah, the good MBAs know the "It ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra. Most MBA-types in more engineering companies think their profits come from constant change. Well, the short-term profits do, but long-term, well, keep your resume updated and out there.
My main point was supposed to be: use virurtotal and jotti before you believe _any_ specific antimalware software.
Another tidbit- when I'm very concerned, or scanning any computer that's unfamiliar to me, I'll pull the HD and scan it as a secondary (don't boot from it). There is malware that cleverly infects system files on shutdown, so when you boot, your OS image in RAM is infected. While booting said viruses copy an uninfected version of the system file back in, so scanners won't find it. But if you don't boot from that drive, you can find the virus in the infected system file.
Now if humans could put all that cleverness to solving cancer or some other thing...