Paranoid About Security…
I tend to be paranoid about security. My Linksys wireless router is set to use 128-bit encryption, rather than the less secure 64-bit standard. All computers at home are behind dual firewalls, except for those few that exist within the DMZ. I usually give out our post office box address instead of our physical home address whenever practical. And I shred any mail, receipts, bills, or other papers that contain personal information that I would otherwise simply throw away in previous years.
When I booted up my laptop this morning, before I even logged in and before any applications were started, underneath my Windows XP login name a message appeared indicating that I had “1 unread mail message”. That concerns me. I’m not running Outlook or Outlook Express due to security issues. No mail applications were running. If the buggy operating system knows that I have mail waiting for me to read before any applications do, who’s to say that someone could not gain access to that mail without even the minimal security constraint of logging in?
I play World of Warcraft — this colossal waster of time is why I’ve been blogging less frequently lately. Blizzard, the company that makes World of Warcraft, does their best to secure their servers and applications, and they have ten years of experience doing so. But a popular plugin called Cosmos that extends some of the user interface functionality of the game also allows users to gather data about where creatures and objects are found in order to aggregate all the information and make it available to thottbot.com, a search engine specifically created for World of Warcraft users. This data is collected and your computer and then uploaded to Cosmos servers. Imagine my surprise when I looked through some of the data files last night out of curiosity to see copies of some of the mail and instant chat messages that I’d sent to other players, mail and chat that I thought were reasonably private (limited to access by Blizzard’s servers), information that I don’t necessarily want broadcast to or aggregated by any Tom, Ðìçk, or Harry who creates a faulty plugin — intentional or not.
Security leaks are everywhere. Be cautious with your private information.
