Kremmen, do you have any comments on this story?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... warns.html

Do I see shades of the uneventful 2000 bug in this story? Remember that story was warning of planes falling out of the air on the 1st of January, computers crashing, businesses disappearing overnight. The panic levels on company boards was out of this world. And then January 1st arrived and the bubble burst as a non event - but sotware houses, IT people, and computer suppliers had made a killing - along with governments raking in all the taxes.

This story appears to me to have all the ingredients of another scare-hype. One in which Microsoft are hoping to frighten users of XP into rushing out to buy the Windows 8 operating system.

If successful, this story could result in massive financial gains for MS, computer suppliers, anti-virus software houses; and of course governments, through their grab on VAT and sales taxes. All with the added bonus that the plebs have their sense of fear and uncertainty raised to new heights, and their atttention distracted away from important stories.

This 15,000 guess is probably the one's in the UK that think it is OK to run with no Anti Virus, still on old or vanilla OS's and click away at email links. It's email phishing links that seem to be main intrusion route.

The real reports correctly identify the risk as small to those of us who keep ourselves up to date.

The best advice I can give, which mimics the experts, is to get a sizeable external USB drive to match your needs and backup all your 'data' and ensure you disconnect the device after the backup permanently connected external drives are vulnerable.

I use SyncBackFree to perform all my backups, both automatic and manual. Make sure you get the install program from 2brightsparks as there are other dodgy clones in a Google search.

http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html

On the millennium bug side of things, this was a simple date string that needed a rework. Old mainframe computers from the 80's used simple dates as YYMMDD. This meant that under normal circumstances 990601 (1st June 1999) would indeed be greater than 981101 (1st November 1998). However, move on a year and here is the problem. 000601 (1st June 2000) isn't greater than 991101 (1st November 1999) and any software that performs date comparisons and subsequent actions will fail as a bug.
The fix was to insert another piece of working storage to include CC (CCYYMMDD). The software would then say if YY < 49 then CC = 20. Else CC=19. The assumption is that by 2049 all this software will have expired but I bet it hasn't so come 2050 there could be some rare issues still.

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Lets be careful out there !

Kremmen, Thanks for your feedback. Over recent weeks I've been plagued with unwanted emails, the majority of them appearing to originate in Russia, Portugal, and Spain. I haven't opened any of them. I finally set up filters on my email server to automatically block and delete them.

You can't help being suspicious about the drive to get us all to update operating systems. I've got various Google services I use that suddenly refuse to appear on my XP laptop. I just get a message telling me to install a later browser or Google chrome even though it all worked fine a couple of weeks ago. Very annoying. I can't stand using my Windows 7 laptop because you can tell it's constantly communicating with the net for no apparent reason, often downloading massive updates I don't even want.

The bolded part is a bit harsh Westonman. My grasp of technology was never too good to begin with, and what little I did know is rapidly deserting me. That doesn't make me a 'pleb' per se. I just want to find a way of learning basic computer skills and knowledge. Not easy when you are pretty much housebound and getting by on ESA.

No no Moley, you misunderstand. Westonman was being ironic.. that's the view THEY have of US.

I've posted a few AV program tips in another thread. It's hard work keeping ahead but consider the email plague.

I have a range of email addresses that I keep for various people:

Banks
Friends and family
Work
Forums
Misc

Always use the Misc one for anything out of the ordinary and perhaps have it as a memorable name followed by a number (kremmen6789) for example. If you start getting spammed on it then just change it to kremmen5678 or some other random number. I've been following the above for years and so far I've never been spammed on any of my email addresses including my misc one.

It also helps identify where the email has come from. If say NatWest only have the Banks email and you get one come in from the Misc one you know it's fake.

I've got all mine as above and an automatic forwarder so all my emails come in to Microsoft Outlook from the 'Misc' one but they are tagged which main one they were sent to. I also have Outlook setup to 'send' all email out via the Misc one so the others don't get revealed.

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Lets be careful out there !

Sorry for not making myself clear Moley, Jon is correct, I was speaking as the 'elite' see us. I was not implying that any of us are "plebs"; whether we are technical experts or otherwise.

Perhaps I should have put the word "plebs" in quotes. From the perspective of the 'elite' we are are all ignorant "plebs" to be abused at will.

To put it in plain language, I regard the lowliest cleaner as one of the most important people in society; if the cleaner and the elitist politicians all went missing, the cleaner would be the first person to be missed. But we can all get by without the elitist politico – as can be witnessed by the extremely long breaks that the parliamentarians take every year – life runs so much smoother without them.

Regarding 'technical experts', I have known some 'brilliant' technical people, who were absolutely useless at dealing with the ordinary chores of life; so mush so that even tying their own shoe laces can be too much for them.

Put any three “experts” in a room, or TV studio, and they will not agree about anything – but one thing they are all good at, is telling the rest of us how to live our lives.

Indeed..... and it's precisely when "all the experts agree" and "all the evidence shows" that I immediately smell a rat.

Computers can be extremely daunting. Hopefully my ramblings will help keep you safer.

If anything doesn't make sense then post away

I do IT for a living for a very large IT services company. My main tasks are service management, programming and generally being a user wet nurse so I'm used to all manner of user understanding. What is almost impossible though is trying to diagnose a fault from afar. You really need to have access to the PC.

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Lets be careful out there !