Homeland Secure IT Alert for Thursday, October 28, 2010

In the news today you will find that a new variant of the infamous Koobface is making the rounds via social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.

Unsuspecting users are enticed to click a video link in a direct message which links to a bogus YouTube page where they are presented with a thumbnail of the video, which when clicked runs a JAVA applet, and the user will then accept it, thinking they are going to see the greatest video ever. Instead, they get a blank screen more times than not, and have just given access to their computer to the bad guys.

According to various sites, the applet affects Linux and Mac in a different manner than the Windows based systems because it remains running longer, giving attackers a long time to exploit the machine for evil purposes. (So all that wonderful uptime you get from a *nix machine works against you as a Microsoft Windows machine gets rebooted more frequently).

It is suggested that you keep your operating systems updated, your JAVA updated, and keep current and quality anti-virus products on your computer such as Trend Micro. Even an anti-virus package like clamAV is advised over nothing at all. Mac and Linux users need to be very aware that the good old days of running “bareback” are over.

As always, avoid sketchy sites, don’t run JAVA apps unless you trust them. If you are on social media, use some common sense and don’t click on odd looking links, even if they come from your friends.

If you feel you may have been compromised, contact a computer service professional immediately. If you need assistance in Greenville or Upstate SC, we provide complete computer service, virus removal and cleanup and sales of Trend Micro and Symantec security and anti-virus software. 864.990.4748

Homeland Secure IT Alert

If you have been paying attention, you know about the Social Story Conference put on by Trey Pennington here in Greenville today at the Warehouse Theatre (@WarehouseGVL). Pamela and I played hooky from work and attended it, feeling a bit naughty, like a kid skipping school!

The speakers were Tim TV, Sean Buvala, Amber Osborne (@MissDestructo), Rick Murray, Olivier Blanchard (@TheBrandBuilder), Trey Pennington (@TreyPennington), and moderated by Phil Yanov (@ThinkHammer).

The topic was “Building your social story”, and while social media was discussed a good bit, it was not the focus of the conference.

It was a total blast! Let’s do it again!  If you missed it you can travel to the next venue!  www.SocialStoryConference.com for more information about it.

I would like to thank the speakers for traveling to see us, especially @MissDestructo who is responsible for getting me into Four Square and has brightened many days with some words of wisdom! Also, to the staff at Bit Tyrant (Aaron Von Frank, Susan Sebotnick and Kat Hardaway), you guys did a bang up job, and your volunteers were awesome too.

Here’s what I am looking forward to this month in Greenville:

Trey Pennington (@TreyPennington) has created the “Social Story Conference” which is going to be in Greenville, SC on September 24th. Trey, along with some other awesome people will be speaking on the subject of social media and social stories.  In short, how businesses can, and do, connect with people and form relationships, rather than force-feeding marketing down a one-way pipeline.

If you want to learn more about how to connect with your customer base, how to share in their lives, and how your products or services are part of their lives then you should consider going. If you are just wanting to continue to “broadcast” your information in the hopes that someone is going to listen, then avoid this conference by all means. Let’s face it, if you are constantly blathering on twitter about the $29.99 special your company offers without ever taking the time to follow your followers or listen to what they have to say, you are going to be unfollowed or filtered, just like the annoying car dealership commercials are muted by TV viewers.

The line up of speakers for Greenville is exciting! In addition to Trey Pennington, we’ll get to hear from and connect with Amber Osborne (@MissDestructo), Tim TV, Sean Buvala (@StoryTeller), Olivier Blanchard (@TheBrandBuilder), and Rick Murray… The emcee will be Phil Yanov (@ThinkHammer).

This is not about the social media platform, it is independent of the transport mechanism. It’s not about Twitter, or Facebook, it’s about connections.

More information is on the Social Story Conference website at http://socialstoryconference.com/ and you can also follow the hash tag of #SocialStory on Twitter.

Homeland Secure IT is proud to help sponsor this event and we can’t wait to see you there!

If you are reading this blog post, you probably know that I am pretty involved in Social Media. Some may say I am addicted to it!

I am active on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Plaxo, and still have a MySpace account, though I don’t really use it that much. I haved tried out Google Buzz, FriendFeed, and several business only SM sites. (Heck, I have even checked out Chat Roulette and Omegle – but that is an entirely different story)

Out of all of these, one that I fail to see the value in for a computer service, repair and sales business like Homeland Secure IT is FourSquare. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. I use it constantly, and get very frustrated when it isn’t working like I think it should. But I use it for personal purposes. If you have not played with FourSquare, it is a geolocation based social media “tool” that lets you “check-in” to a venue or location when you get there using your GPS equiped smartphone. Assume you go to Starbucks for a quick Dark Cherry Mocha Frapp – you “check-in” and now the whole world can see what you are doing.  You can brag to Twitter & Facebook that you have disposable income you can spend on yummy coffee.

Same thing goes for attractions like amusement parks, ball games, and stores like say, “Target”. If you check-in enough times, you become the “Mayor” of that venue!

Here is where the value of FourSquare comes in… Assume you check-in and become mayor of XYZ Sandwich Shop. You have been announcing this for a while, everytime you visit there. The whole world has seen you were there, giving free advertisement to XYZ! But, if XYZ is smart, they will reward you for your loyalty and offer a free sandwich when someone becomes Mayor, and maybe a free drink every time the Mayor visits after that. A very cheap price to pay for this type of advertising.

Many places, especially restaurants, will offer specials that popup when you check-in near their venue. These will show up as a “SPECIAL NEARBY – Check out the great ribs at ABC BBQ”, which can help bring new business into these places. And still other places will offer you a free entree when you visit several of their location. FourSquare itself offers “Badges” for accomplishing certain feats, such as checking into three Starbucks locations.

All that said, our business does not have foot traffic nor visitors, so offering a “Free Virus Cleanup” to a mayor would be silly. I believe I am the only person to check-in to our location in the months that I have been using it. But it does bring up a pet peeve of mine. Today I was ousted as Mayor of a local coffee shop – BY THE OWNER OF THE PLACE. Wow, that doesn’t do anything to help with loyalty. My suggestion to places that want to check-in themselves, create a second venue, call it XYZ Sandwich Shop STAFF, and let the staff go crazy checking in!

I would further suggest that business owners who can benefit from FourSquare’s power of (free) advertising, take advantage of it the way it was meant to be used. Offer Mayors a treat, some recognition, and encourage them to remain the mayor and others to try and oust the current mayor. 4sq is both a FUN, and a very useful business tool, when used properly.

BTW: If you can think of a way 4sq can be used to promote our computer repair business here in Greenville, and increase loyalty, well I’m all ears, but until that happens, I will be trying to take my place as mayor of every great business in the Upstate!  Watch out Mayors, I’m coming for you…   

BTW: Have fun, it is only a game!  (But seriously, I’m coming for you)…    Also check out other geolocational based SM tools / toys like Gowalla, Gypsii, BrightKite, Loopt, etc…

As I sit here, I am reading a friend’s status on Facebook that says, “well…ugh!!! no more waiting on the mail….got denied my unemployment cuz the state says i had disregard for my employer when i posted on facebook i was loosing my job. ??? SO…ADVICE….NEVER talk about your job, and NEVER have coworkers as friends on facebook!!!!! now, if i could just find a job, none of this would matter!”. I heard from her two weeks ago, and she had lost her job officially because the business she worked for saw her post that she was afraid she was losing her job and they let her go. There is probably more to this story, like the position she was in was being phased out, etc, and when she heard about it, she posted on Facebook that she was worried about her job and they took that as an opportunity to go ahead and eliminate her.

That is a sad story, but there are plenty more like them. A few weeks ago, I remember seeing someone post on Facebook that they had been terminated from their job because of questionable content on their personal Facebook, and there have been several higher profile cases make the mainstream media that are similar. Person posts something on a social networking site, employer sees it, employer fires worker.

While we are talking about the bad sides of social media, we might as well hit upon these: Business secrets are leaked, time is wasted, bandwidth is consumed and disputes with clients and rival businesses happen.

But what about the good aspects? Some businesses uses Social Media as a means for following what the world is saying about their products or those of their competitor. Network Solutions for instance saw me ranting on Twitter one day and started up a conversation to ask how they could help me. That is a great customer service and marketing tool in my opinion. Many other businesses use social networking as a vehicle for promoting their products or services in a more direct way, which can be annoying, but for the most part, business in general does not “spam” their offerings to the world.

Another good side of social media would be the ability to keep up with trends and to catch the latest breaking news in your industry. Due to Twitter I have been able to see security information instantly instead of waiting for email notification from the various sources. Staying up to date is vital to keeping our clients operating properly.

There are obviously two sides to this coin. If your business finds itself in need of blocking certain content, such as access to social networking sites, this is possible through the use of firewalls and software packages that can permit access to a particular site while blocking access to others, or you can disallow everything across the board. If you would like to discuss how content filtering can help you or your business, please contact us for a free consultation.