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Ed’s Advice to the Computer-Lorn
Here are my answers to a few questions that I often end up discussing
with friends or clients who are not information technology professionals.
Backing
Up - Do it Right!
A student at UCLA once told me that his father had been put out of
business because of a virus, and he had lost all of his accounts
receivable. Ironically, the gentleman in question was doing backups
according to a plan he thought would protect himself. If you have nothing
important on your computer, read no further. The rest of us need to
consider several questions. What if:
- Your computer is stolen: If you have backups that weren’t
also stolen, you can probably recover.
- Your office burns down: If you have backups that are kept at
another site, you can probably recover.
- You accidentally delete (or corrupt) a file: If you still
have backups from before you did the damage, you can probably recover.
- Any of the above: If you haven’t backed up recently, you
may not recover.
In short, if you want to protect your data, backups need to be:
- Done frequently: Any work that you’ve done since your last
backup is unprotected.
- Verified: Tapes or CDs that don’t really have good copies
of your data serve only to give you a false sense of security.
- Saved off site: Any backups kept on or next to your computer
are likely to be stolen or lost in a fire along with the computer
itself.
- Kept for a long time: If you back up every day, but simply
rotate through the same three rewritable CDs, then any data that was
deleted or damaged over three days ago is permanently lost.
If all of your user files can all fit on one CD-R, I recommend simply
burning a new one each day. They are inexpensive, they last several years,
and you can put several years worth in a relatively small box or drawer.
But before you file them away, copy everything on them back to a scratch
folder on your hard drive, so you know that your data is really
recoverable.
Furthermore, you may need to backup less data than you think. It makes
little sense to back up your entire hard drive. Most people have a large
amount of software on their disk, and backing it up is pointless. All you
really need to do is make a copy of the software installation disks, and
keep them off site. Then, all you need to worry about backing up are your
user files. (Does that get you back down to one CD-R?)
On the other hand, if you can’t afford to burn one CD a day, or if
you really have so much data that you need to use expensive, high-capacity
tapes, you would be wise to check into the Tower of Hanoi rotation scheme.
The Tower of Hanoi is a puzzle (play it at MazeWorks), but
when translated into a scheme for rotating your backup media, it allows
you to preserve a long history on a relatively small number of tapes. This
scheme is well explained at:
Emergency Email Virus Alert
A title like that is intended to get your attention, but beware! Emails
that ask you to deal with a virus threat can sound really scary. Doing
whatever they suggest can prove even scarier. There are a number of emails
making the rounds which tell the user that if they see a particular file
in their Windows folder, it’s a virus and should be deleted.
Unfortunately, this is all a hoax. That file is a legitimate component of
Windows, and you need it to be in that folder.
What to do: Any time you receive an email asking you to do anything you
aren’t sure about, check into it first. Go to Google and search for the
file named in the email, or some other word or phrase that is particular
to the email. If it has anything to do with a virus, real or otherwise, Google will provide links
to whatever the virus experts like McAfee and Symantec (aka Norton) have to say on the subject. They
can be trusted. There are also sites that specialize in debunking urban
myths and hoaxes: http://www.snopes.com/
and http://www.scambusters.org/
Even if you receive an email about a virus that is real, odds are that
the virus will find you long before the email does. If you don't get
infected, it's because your anti-virus software is working.
(Please don't) Sign this
email petition
Email petitions are a pointless waste of time and resources. They will
not be taken seriously by the government official (or whomever) that
eventually receives them. This is because, by design, they have several
fatal flaws:
The chain letter effect: (do the math) If I create a petition,
"sign" it, and send it out to ten people, there are now ten
copies of my "signature" floating around cyberspace. If each of
those people send it to ten others, there are now 110 copies. And after
three more iterations, there will be 111,110 copies of my signature, and
11,110 copies of those belonging to my original ten recipients, despite
the fact that nobody has ever signed it more than once. So, if you were a
public official, and you received a flood of petitions, with millions of
"signatures", what would you do?
Ease of fraud: On a computer, it takes nothing more than cutting
and pasting to generate a large number of purported signatures. If you
want to be clever, you can use a spreadsheet or database to generate
millions of random-looking signatures. On the other hand, old fashioned
paper petitions usually ask for an address or phone number, allowing
recipients (at least in theory) to spot check them for fraudulent
signatures.
Against the rules: Additionally, as chain letters, they are also
in violation of the Acceptable Use Policy or Terms of Service of nearly
all Internet service providers.
Link Checking
(all right, this one IS for webmasters)
If you want to check your web site, to see if all the links are still valid,
there are some utilities out there that attempt to automate this process. If
your site is relatively small, I recommend that you do this by hand. Otherwise,
you can check out some of the free utilities covered in my review of free link checkers.
I am not a lawyer
The opinions on this page are simply that: my opinions. They do not in
any way constitute legal advice. If my opinions don’t make sense to you,
or you disagree, … oh well, … (But your comments, questions, and
opinions are always welcome.)
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