Data Doctors
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- Data Doctors: Is personal info stored in my printer?
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Q: I have an old HP scanner/fax/printer. Is it true that it stores your personal info inside somewhere and you should remove it before getting rid of it? I called HP and they denied that. Help! — Julie
A: There are some cases where a printer could be storing lots of information about you, including hundreds of copies of previous items that you scanned or copied or any information that you input when you first set up your printer (name, fax #, etc.).
In order for your previous copy/scan jobs to have been stored, the printer would have to have an internal hard drive installed, which isn’t something a consumer grade printer usually has.
Unless you spent thousands of dollars on a commercial grade network copier/scanner/printer, you don’t have to worry about your past copy/scan jobs as there won’t be a hard drive that automatically stored what was sent to it.
Corporate printer/copier/scanners use internal hard drives to store items that are copied or scanned for a variety of reasons that improve performance and reliability, especially for very large document scans or copy jobs.
Many stories have surfaced over the years of the ability to recover information from hard drives that were installed in commercial copier/scanners that contain a plethora of sensitive information.
We were asked by a local television station a couple of years ago to see what we could gather from a couple of corporate copier/scanners that were headed for recycling and within 15 minutes, we had payroll records from a large restaurant chain.
With this in mind, everyone should be careful what personal records you copy or scan at work, since you don’t have any idea if the internal hard drive will be properly cleansed before it gets returned, sold or recycled.
Business owners should consider having the hard drive scrubbed or removed from their commercial copier/scanners before selling, returning or recycling it to help protect everyone that has ever used it.
On our home printers, this issue doesn’t exist because the queuing is done via ‘volatile’ storage, which is memory that gets flushed whenever we turn off our printer.
It is possible, however, that you stored somewhat sensitive information when you first set up your device, especially if it has the ability to fax.
You can generally figure out what information of this nature might be stored in the printer by going to the printer’s set-up menu (it’s different on every printer, so consult your owner’s manual or the printer company’s support website for specific instructions) and taking a look around.
If the printer is capable of storing any personal information (like your fax #, name, etc.), it will generally have a reset process that will put the printer back to the factory settings.
Most consumer all-in-one printers store the actual user information and the previously scanned/copied documents in the printer software on the computer instead of in the printer itself.
If you really want to understand what a third party can find on your printer, disconnect it from your computer and dig around the settings to see what you can find.
Posted in Data doctors, Money on Saturday, May 12, 2012 3:00 pm. Updated: 11:13 am. | Tags: Printer Software , Multifunction Printer , Hp , Photocopier , Printer Comments (0)
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- Data Doctors: Drive-by downloads now targeting Android users
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Q: Can my Android smartphone really get a virus from the Internet? — Joel
A: The popularity of smartphones and tablets combined with the high rate of daily usage has made them an obvious target for malware attacks.
While the relative threat to date has been pretty minimal, you can count on the underworld of the Internet to continue to develop ways to exploit this very desirable sector of Internet connected devices.
In general, the Android platform has been and will continue to be the most likely to be exploited for two reasons: the open architecture and its market share (it’s now No. 1).
The very thing that attracts many to the Android platform (its lack of restrictions relative to iPhone and Blackberry), is also what is attracting malicious code writers to the party.
Most existing malware designed to exploit smartphones has either been ‘proof of concept’ applications developed by security firms or very crudely written programs that require the user to download and install an infected app.
For the most part, if you are very careful where you get your apps (i.e. Apple’s App Store or Google Play) and don’t ‘jailbreak’ or ‘root’ your phone, which allows you to install apps that have not been approved by the vendor, you can sidestep most of the danger.
Because Android phones can take advantage of ‘sideloading’ apps, which allows the user to install anything they want from any source they want, they can also be exploited in this way.
A recent discovery by Lookout Mobile Security uncovered the age-old exploit used to infect computers called ‘drive-by downloads’ is now being used to attempt to infect Android smartphones.
It’s now technically possible to have an infected program slipped onto your Android smartphone simply by visiting a hacked website that has been rigged with malicious code.
The good news is that it’s fairly rare and still requires you as the user to approve the installation of the app to complete the infection. Even if you allow the install, the current Trojan (NotCompatible) doesn’t do any real damage or take advantage of your personal info (yet!)
The bad news is that they figured out how to sneak apps onto your phone just by coaxing you to visit a website and you can count on this being just the beginning of this type of exploit.
It’s still pretty easy to avoid being a victim of this newest exploit by making sure that your Android phone does not allow apps from ‘unknown sources’ to be installed (go to Settings/Applications/Unknown Sources and make sure there is not a checkmark).
If you are in the high-risk category (rooted or jailbroken phone and you install apps from outside sources) you may want to consider installing Lookout’s free security app (https://www.mylookout.com/download for iPhone or Android).
Lookout watches over several areas of your phone to alert you when suspicious activity is detected.
The downside is that it may also cause some performance issues as it becomes a constantly running overlord in order to protect you from yourself, so only load it if you think you need the extra protection.
This is a fast developing arena that will continue to be targeted by the bad guys, so make sure you keep your smartphone updated (regardless of which platform you are on) and avoid installing any apps that you really don’t need.
Posted in Data doctors, Money on Saturday, May 5, 2012 9:01 am. Updated: 12:06 pm. | Tags: Android , Smartphones , Cloud Clients , Technology_internet , Iphone , Malware , Drive-by Download , Smartphone , Apple , Itunes , App Store , Computer Virus , Appstore Comments (0)
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- Data Doctors: The ‘Zen’ approach to computing, Web browsing
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Q: About a year ago, I heard you guys mention having a couple of browsers on a computer, so I installed Firefox. My Web browsing has gotten HORRIBLY slow these days. BTW, I installed Chrome and everything loads fine. Should I assume I picked up a virus that affects Firefox? — David
A: There are a number of reasons for having multiple browsers on your computer (Windows or Mac), one of them being so you can more easily troubleshoot Internet issues.
It’s certainly possible that you have a malware infection, but I’m more likely to guess it’s something else since Chrome is running fine.
One of the reasons so many people like Firefox as their primary browser is because of all the add-ons that are available to customize your browsing experience and enhance security.
Unfortunately, this wonderful feature is also a large reason many Firefox users experience performance issues.
Just like with your computer, if you load it up with tons of programs and utilities, it will take forever just to get started and it can be sluggish in use as it tries to juggle all the code added by the add-ons.
Taking the Zen approach to computing (minimalism) will go a long way to keeping your computer and browser from getting stuck in the mud, so always be picky about what you allow to be installed.
The easiest way to test this theory is to try starting Firefox in ‘safemode’ which tells it to open a session with the bare minimums, which will strip off all your add-ons. To do this, open Firefox and click on the ‘Help’ menu and select ‘Restart with Add-ons Disabled’ (if the text menu is not at the top, tap the Alt key to expose it).
When the ‘Firefox Safe Mode’ window pops up, don’t click on any of the boxes, just click on the ‘Continue in Safe Mode’ button at the bottom to begin your test.
If everything speeds up again, you will know one or a combination of the add-ons is causing the performance issuer.
You can manually disable your add-ons , one at a time to track down the offending add-on by hitting Ctrl-Shift-A, (Shift-Command-A on Macs) which will open the the Add-ons Manager. Make sure you disable everything (one at a time) in the Extensions, Appearance and Plugins sections as they all contain add-ons that could be causing your issue.
It’s a tedious process, but unless you are willing to throw all your add-ons out and start over, it’s the only way to track down the problem (welcome to the world of computer troubleshooting!)
If running is Safe Mode didn’t improve the speed, it’s possible that your profile database is need of some optimization, especially if you use Firefox a lot. There’s a free utility called SpeedyFox (http://evtnow.com/speedyfox) that will compact your profile database and clean up the corruption or fragmentation that comes from installing a lot of add-ons.
If none of that works, your next step would be to uninstall Firefox completely and reinstall it with the latest version from the Mozilla website: http://firefox.com .
If you have an older computer or one with a small amount of RAM, it’s possible that you opening too many tabs at the same time for your computer to handle. You can easily test this by browsing old school: only open one tab to do all your browsing.
Posted in Money, Data doctors on Sunday, April 29, 2012 1:28 pm. Updated: 5:04 pm. | Tags: Firefox , Computing , Free Software , Mozilla Firefox , Technology_internet , Mozilla , Google Chrome , Ftp Clients , Add-on , Web Browser , Safe Mode , Add-ons , Web Browsing , Zen Comments (0)
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- Do my smartphone pics show where I am?
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Q: Is it true that if I post a picture from my smartphone on Facebook that it will show where I took the picture? — Candice
A: Facebook’s new Timeline makeover includes a Map section that can show where certain photographs were taken, so if you upload a picture and tag it with the location (from your smartphone or your computer) it will show the location in the post and it will appear as a pin on your Timeline Map.
In general, simply uploading a photo via your smartphone will not automatically include the exact location information which you can easily verify by clicking on the Map section on your Timeline.
If you want to make sure you can’t tag your location on any post from your mobile device, you can turn off Location Services for the Facebook mobile app on your phone.
It is true that depending upon your smartphone’s settings, an image may contain location information (specifically longitude and latitude) in what’s called the ‘metadata’.
Metadata is hidden information that is imbedded in photographs that records a number of details.
Metadata is essentially data about the file itself that is common to many digital file formats including most of the images and documents that you generate.
In the case of photographic images, the metadata can contain any or all of the following:
• Date and time the picture was taken and any subsequent edits.
• Camera settings such as make, model, ISO speed, aperture, shutter speed, focus length, whether flash was used.
• Any software that was used to edit or touch up the photo.
• General description of size, resolution and copyright info.
• Longitude and latitude (but only on cameras that have a GPS, such as smartphones and some specialized digital cameras).
The list of potential data that can be mined from photographs is actually quite extensive and easily viewed on your computer by viewing the properties (right-click on any image in Windows and click on the Details tab).
The location issue (or geotagging as it’s often called) came into play when smartphones that were equipped with both a GPS and a camera became popular. Depending upon your smartphone, the location data may be automatically captured on your photographs and available to anyone that knows how to view this hidden data.
While this could be of concern in some obvious situations, not all pictures taken by a smartphone and posted on the Internet contain all of this information.
Facebook, for instance, removes any of the user-generated metadata when you upload images so your location info (if it exists) is automatically stripped from the image that the public can access (the original file that Facebook has on their internal servers, however, will still contain all of the original info).
Flickr (and most photo-sharing sites) also strips out metadata for any picture that it resizes and only allows metadata to be retained on originals for those with paid accounts, which means you have to pay and purposely want that info on their network (professional photographers may want this ability for copyright purposes).
The biggest risk for most smartphone users is if you take pictures with your GPS enabled smartphone and e-mail the picture from your phone to others, then the location information will generally be included.
The easiest way to eliminate location information from your smartphone photographs is to turn off the location services while you are taking the picture (airplane mode will do it).
On some smartphones, you can specifically turn off location services for all photographs, but have it remain in use for everything else. IPhone users can go into the Settings/General/Location Services to turn it off for the built-in camera or any third-party apps.
Android users can turn off location info by going to the ‘Camera app’ menu and making sure the ‘Store Location’ option is turned off.
Blackberry users can go into picture taking mode, press the menu button and choose ‘Options’ and set ‘Geotagging’ to disabled.
Posted in Data doctors, Money on Saturday, April 21, 2012 3:00 pm. Updated: 9:14 am. | Tags: Metadata , Smartphone , Global Positioning System , Iphone Comments (0)
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