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Internet banking is  a scary thing, and most people don’t realize it.

There are multiple ways for the bad people to get your credentials, through email phishing (fake emails), to installing a screenshot grabber or keylogger when you land on an infected website (usually ads serve this to you), and a new method allows them to use javascript from one page, wait until you go to your internet banking site and throw a popup asking for credentials.

The easiest way to make internet banking safer, on the user’s side, is to make sure you always run virus scan, spyware checkers, close your browser and clear your browser cache before using your bank’s website.

But the BEST way to ensure your safety, is to:

• Downaload and install Microsoft VirtualPC (free)download
• Download and install Ubuntu or OpenSuse
• Configure a new Virtual Computer using MS VirtualPC
• Install Linux (Ubuntu or OpenSuse) on your newly created Virtual Computer
• Only use this Virtual Computer to do your online banking, and only do your online banking inside this virtual computer.

The next part will guide you through installing MS Virtual PC, configuring and creating your virtual computer.

Apparantly, the past week Toshi’s been doing excercises when he wakes up in the morning.  Very cute.

I found this excellent article explaining how cellphones work.

http://db.tidbits.com/article/9796

One very interesting thing that popped up is why sometimes you’ll get a VoiceMail notification even when the phone didn’t ring (and also why texting will work when you can’t call).  Basically, text and notifications are sent on a dedicated channel, so even when the regular voice channels are all busy, you can still text and receive notifications.

Early on when they invented GSM, someone decided it would be useful to dedicate a small part of this signaling to sending messages to your phone. They added a feature to send 160-character messages over the signaling channel. The initial idea was to use it to alert you to new voicemail messages, but then someone thought it might be nice to also send some short text messages, and thus the Short Messaging Service (SMS) was born.

That’s why you sometimes get voice mail notifications without hearing your phone ring. If the local voice channels are all filled, the call can’t get through and callers are forced to leave a message, but since the notification uses that signaling channel, it still reaches you right away. A nice side benefit is that SMS messages will often go through even when regular calls won’t. When I’m wearing my part-time hat as a disaster worker, I often find myself using SMS when I can’t make regular calls. If you are at that big concert, game, or Steve Jobs keynote you might try SMS instead of battling your neighbors for scarce voice channels.