Did I obfuscate my usenet newsreader and who I am in this posting?
I've read up on how to remain anonymouse on the internet and one way they say is to obfuscate my usenet postings.
I wonder if you can help me to tell me if you can easily figure out what newsreader, operating system or whatever else you can figure out from this post.
I hope you can't figure out anything about me but that is why I am asking. I will monitor this thread to see if anyone can figure out anything about me and my newsreader, os, isp, whatever so that I can learn more.
My routers can be pinged. However, all have "no ip redirects" to prevent Smurf attacks. Responding to ICMP ping is not necessarily a security risk or indication of cluelessness.
Steve Gibson is a mixed bag of useful and useless information. Much of what he says is quite interesting. His tools are also quite good. However, much of his alarmist rantings and incorrect conclusions are rubbish. He's such a good writer, that I often have trouble making the distinction. Tread carefully.
(to 2004).
ShieldsUP is fine for looking for open ports. There are other online firewall checkers and port scanners that will do the same thing. I prefer to run my own (offline) test using NMAP.
The problem I have with GRC is his analysis of the collected information and what he considers a vulnerability. Using his criteria, all open ports are evil, dangerous, and a security risk. That's not the case as it really depends what is running on the open port.
The orginal had nothing to do with wireless, and nothing to do with security. It has to do with whether "Tamara?" can be identified. However, topic drift is always fun.
I've used Gibson's tools before, but I'm not familiar with Omicron. Can the *average* user handle those tools [i.e. won't do more harm than good trying them]? bj
Huh? It's a simple menu driven web page. Click here to test your security. I think even a below average user can handle that. Same with Shields UP and other port scanners. They're easy to use. Hmmm... the one on DSLReports.com is offline. There are also commerical "test your security" services.
The problem is in interpreting the results. Most scanners will find holes in the firewall installed by UPnP. Is that safe or a problem? Well, that depends on your level of paranoia. Same with open ports on
8080 for remote admin or various ports for remote control. *YOU* determine if it's safe or not. If in doubt, there are security mailing lists and newsgroups that can help. Think of it like the diagnostic scanner for your automobile. It gives you a number that tells you what it finds. What you do with the number is your problem.
None of the scanners make any changes to your router, so I think it's fairly safe to run them. My big worry is if the site run by some hacker that later comes back and uses the reports to attack the scanned systems.
Incidentally, try running:
on your router. I've seen a few routers that hang on some of the tests.
I know. I just prefer to be invisible to pings, etc. so my router is set to "Block Anonymous Internet Requests".
Interesting sites. Like anything else, one must separate the wheat from the chaff. Steve seems to have a lot of knowledge on his site, I've learned a few things from visiting it.
I tried that site. It ran a scan but didn't show any results past "Scan Finished", just an icon for a broken connection. Maybe that's because I have my hosts file set to read only.
True.
Well, we've located her in Southern California but haven't found her name, SSN, etc.
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