You Are the Merchandise

If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. ~ blue_beetle, Metafilter discussion.

Any time you think you're getting free stuff, think again. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Free radio, free TV, free email, free health care, free education. Forget it. It isn't free. You're being sold.

Just out of college, I was the chief engineer for a radio station. The radio station had a sales department. Did the sales department go door to door, soliciting listeners? No, the sales force went business to business selling listeners, selling time to advertisers to propagandize the listeners. Sure, there is some kind of symbiosis between listeners, advertisers and the radio station. The station needs listeners in order to sell their time to the advertisers, so the radio station provides useful services and entertainment to the listeners, because more listeners means higher ratings, which translate into more advertising dollars.

Listeners don't like advertising all that much, but they tolerate it for the free music and news. But make no mistake, the listeners are the merchandise. If you watch free television, or use free services on the web (Google maps, Google mail, etc.), then you, your activity patterns, and your privacy are being sold. Someone has to pay for all that free stuff. And it's you. Oh, right -- it's the advertisers. But who pays the advertisers? You do. In response to their propaganda advertising.

What about public broadcasting? Aren't PBS and NPR supported by viewers like you? Aren't their programs made possible by grants from The Ford Foundation, or The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Or Mobile? Well, maybe insofar as individual viewers do make a pledge now and then, yes. But the foundations? The commercial supporters? Those are mini-advertisements. And, PBS and NPR have to keep doing what those foundations like, or they'll stop supporting public broadcasting. It's still propaganda.

Which brings us to government grants for public broadcasting. Everything up until here has been voluntary. Listeners who don't like being sold can turn off their radio. You don't have to patronize the advertisers, or contribute to NPR, or the foundations and corporations making public broadcasting possible. You can opt out at any time. Except when it comes to your taxes. The government taxes you, and you have no recourse but to pay -- under penalty of law -- without any significant say in how your taxes are spent, even if it goes against your beliefs (no taxation without representation -- are your beliefs being represented? Anything? Hello?)

When the government buys listeners from NPR and PBS, they are buying your eyes, ears and mind, and NPR and PBS are selling propaganda time. Public broadcasting is always in need of cash, and the government has tremendous power over them, because it can withdraw its grants any time it doesn't like what the network says or does. You say it can't, or doesn't happen in America. Really?

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. ~ James Madison (Federalist 51)

The Conficker Worm

Hello, I'm taking a break from politics to talk about computer malware. Specifically, Conficker. Conficker is one nasty worm. It has security professionals very concerned, because it is a general purpose program that can install other malware on command from "home" -- wherever "home" is -- some clues point to somewhere in the Ukraine. Conficker uses many strategies and tactics to hide itself, and to prevent detection and removal. There is no doubt that other bad guys are emulating Conficker, and soon a whole new generation of very sophisticated attacks will crop up that emulate Conficker in some or all ways. It is nearly impossible to completely harden systems against it, but you can certainly lower your risk by doing some specific things.

1. Use a virus scanner and keep it up to date. Virus scanners aren't infallible, but they're better than nothing. Conficker is good at hiding from virus scanners, though, and it’s always a race between the virus scanner providers and the bad guys.
2. Keep your operating system up to date. For many Windows users, the easiest thing is to enable automatic updates. Not using Windows might give you some temporary security through obscurity, but I would not expect the top two or three operating systems, especially MacOS, Linux and all of its variants, to be immune to Conficker for very long. It's authors are very knowledgeable and devious.
3. Run with the lowest authority possible. I know it is annoying, but if you don't really need to be an administrator, don't be. Running as administrator gives you and every program you run -- accidentally or not (including worms) -- full control of your computer.
4. Connect to the Internet through a NAT router* and/or at least make sure you use a personal firewall, such as Windows Firewall that ships with all currently supported Windows versions. Keep in mind, though, that personal firewalls can be defeated by malware, and certainly Conficker knows how to do this, and will if it has administrative access. It is much harder for malware to affect your router. But...
5. If you use a NAT router, turn off Universal Plug'n'Play (UPnP). Conficker uses UPnP to open up your router to the internet, so that it can phone home and get instructions, and then run spambots and other nefarious applications.
6. Use strong passwords for all of your accounts (especially administrative) on your computer and on your router. DO NOT leave the default passwords. Conficker contains a dictionary (frequently updated by its perpetrators) of all the default passwords for all of the popular routers, as well as all the passwords commonly used by humans everywhere. If it has your admin password, it owns your system, and by extension, it owns your identity.

Here's a link to a Reuters story with more information.

*NAT router, also called "broadband router" means any of a number of hardware routers from providers such as DLink, Linksys, Belkin, etc. They are designed for general networking, wireless networking, and sharing a single internet connection among several computers. While networking and sharing an internet connection might be the reason you bought it, security is one of the primary benefits. Just make sure you set it up for optimal security, and change the default administration passwords.