[Magdalen] Computer help

[James Oppenheimer-Crawford]

The cloud is not a cloud. It is a data farm on solid land somewhere.  Your
access is controlled by your user name and password.  However, anything can
be hacked, as we find.  The access of YOUR information will not motivate
anyone to make much effort (assuming you do not have valuable, sensitive
data in your stuff) The problem is that this is no small amount of data,
and if one can figure out a ruse of some sort to defeat the encryption
protocols, say an insider sells part or all of the encryption algorithm,
and compromise all of the data, then all bets are off.  The data you had
locked up in a steel safe suddenly is available to whomever can find or buy
a way in.  It is not terribly likely that they will even care about your
data or mine (see above caveat), but it is possible for a program to
harvest info from millions of users at the same time, and if their interest
is in getting money, then yes, that's a major issue. I never did figure out
how my data was compromised a couple years ago. They cleaned out my
checking account. If they play their cards right, you don't even know
you've been hit til a month or so later.

The best advice seems to be to follow all the precautions about how to
choose hard to defeat passwords, and change them often.

I think the whole notion of the cloud is brand new to all of us. The
thieves are just getting started. When they make a major hack and
compromise millions of users' data, then we shall see how secure the whole
thing is. I could be right to say, it's only a matter of time. Or I could
just be overly paranoid.

James W. Oppenheimer-Crawford
*“A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved,
except in memory. LLAP**”  -- *Leonard Nimoy

On Wed, Jul 27, 2016 at 7:05 PM, Lynn Ronkainen <houstonklr at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 2 questions:
>
> Can someone clarify and comment on the cloud and whether it eventually
> comes with a cost.
>
> And with iPhones actually being little computers now increasing vastly the
> number of Apple "computers" out on the world, aren't they more attractive
> hack and virus magnets?
> Lynn
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jul 27, 2016, at 5:19 PM, Scott Knitter <scottknitter at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I was as Mac as they get back in Quadra, SE, and Fat Mac early days,
> but now my work world is Windows, so that's where I have to swim.
> Windows 10, Office 365. Cloud, although hardly Cloud 9.
>
> > On Wed, Jul 27, 2016 at 5:06 PM, Jay Weigel <jay.weigel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Sitting over here in Mac-land smiling.. I shouldn't say anything, I
> guess,
> > but I am SO glad I left Windoze all those years ago.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Scott R. Knitter
> Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois USA
>