Tech Alert: Update Java NOW

[lolmac]

How recently did you install an update to Java?

If your answer is "Last week" or "Last month" or "Huh?  What's that?" or, in fact, anything other than "Yesterday" or "Today", go thou and update.  Now.  Then come back here and I'll tell you why, but seriously, DON'T WAIT.

http://www.java.com/en/download/inc/windows_upgrade_xpi.jsp

It usually comes as a

Comments

[thothmes]

Thank you for the sage words of advice, and the fascinating reading that you linked to in giving them. The five computers in the house are now all nicely updated and winnowed of their old versions, and I've (no doubt) insulted the IT intelligence of my offspring in the Philly area by letting them know too.

Middle Daughter (who has strenously resisted parental efforts to teach her about computer security vulnerablilities and best practices, because she and her little friends know allabout computers, unlike some of us fogeys who don't know a thing about navigating Facebook, so she doesn't need to heed our warnings, right?) has had her email hacked today. She wouldn't listen to me and do anything about it, so I just sent Beloved Husband in to put the fear of God (or at least hackers) in to her. Let's hope she'll listen to him.

*headdesk* *headdesk* *headdesk*

[lolmac]

*headdesk with you*

Gaaah. One of the biggest issues in my professional life, at present, is dealing with the fallout from clients whose emails have been hacked . . . we're one of the subsequent targets, and it's part of our job to keep our compromised clients safe from fraud and theft.

[thothmes]

And this kind of willful ignorance is also why she is not allowed to use the computer I'm on now. I've password protected her out.

Knocking down my 2 TB drive and making it non-functional was its own consequence. She lost most of her music, which she'd uploaded to the drive, and then left the original CD's in a friend's truck, where her then-boyfriend stole them.

The only thing I lost and didn't have backed up was my TurboTax files, because I had hard copy instead, and didn't like the idea of my tax files sitting around where they could be easily hacked.

Paranoia is our friend!

[campylobacter]

That's teenaged logic for you: knowing how to use 30% of Facebook's user interface features 90% of the time = understanding admin-level security issues for operating systems & web browsers. >___<

[thothmes]

It's all complicated by the fact that her generation has lived so much of their lives out in public on Facebook and other sites, that they have no concept of privacy and security. She sees it as "So a hacker gets into my computer. So what. It would just be a matter of oversharing, really." She doesn't have personal finances or places where she orders things at this point

[campylobacter]

"Oversharing"? Wow, that's a cavalier spin on a breach of private information.

One day, a decade from now, she'll say, "Mom, I was such a rotten teen. How did you ever put up with me?"

[thothmes]

Nah, she's a good kid, earnest and hardworking. She's just very sure right now that she knows it all, and that the things that she and her friends know from their experience is more valuable and pertinent than what I've learned from 54 years of navigating the world with eyes, ears, and heart wide open.

After all, how could I know things if my taste in music and my fashion sense is so execrable. Clearly I stopped learning a long time ago.

Everybody has to be young and stupid sometime. Now is her time. She'll learn.

[lolmac]

Ah, she's only just learning that people can and will do horrible things just because they can, huh? Better to learn it now than enter adulthood clueless. I've come to the conclusion that adults who haven't figured this out aren't just targets: they're vectors. They do an increasing amount of collateral damage as they pass through life. Witness every person in a position of authority who's handwaved away complaints of harassment or bullying.

(I personally got my initial lesson in it while I was still in grade school. It sucked at the time, but it's actually been a source for plenty of high-quality lemonade.)

[thothmes]

I learned that lesson much earlier too, but I think a late start on that is both the curse and the blessing of growing up in a very small town. In an environment where there are hardly any strangers, this kind of behavior is less common. Of course it occurs, but when you are deliberately harming someone you know well, and they know you, it takes a far higher level of depraved indifference towards others, or a genuine desire to harm with intent. It's less likely to be a thoughtless crime of opportunity. The middle school and high school have six towns feeding into them, and kids who are used to having anywhere between one and twenty kids in their whole grade feed into a class of 70 to 90 kids. The temptation to act badly has less of an immediate and visible downside at that point. All of my kids have thus far only learned that lesson in middle school or high school, rather more the latter than the former, because the middle school is more rigorously supervised

[lolmac]

Yup, that's the math! A variation of it can also be found in many straight white male business owners.