Wireless bandwidth: Are we running out of room?

Computerworld - Wireless bandwidth is like land in Manhattan -- it's extremely valuable because they're not making more of it.

But we sure are using more of it. The wireless-industry association CTIA reported in October 2011 that the number of wireless devices in the U.S. had, for the first time, exceeded the number of people.

And Mobile Future, a coalition of vendors and consumers, estimated in a March 2011 report that by 2014, voice traffic will comprise only 2% of the total wireless traffic in the United States -- a worrisome statistic because, as the report noted, smartphones consume 24 times more data than old-school cell phones, and tablets consume 120 times more data than smartphones. (See Data needs bandwidth, but how much? for details.)

The result: Wireless networks are edging near capacity, not just in the United States, but all over the world. Credit Suisse conducted a survey last year that revealed mobile networks in North America were running at 80% of capacity, with 36% of base stations facing capacity constraints. The average globally for base station capacity utilization, the report said, was 65%.

Players and perspectives
The carriers
The broadcasters
The regulators
Public safety advocates
How IT copes with the crunch
Extra: Data needs bandwidth, but how much?
Extra: Busting bandwidth barriers
The problem is going to get worse before it gets better. With advancements in connected cars, smart grids, machine-to-machine (M2M) communication, and domestic installations such as at-home health monitoring systems, wireless demands will only increase.

As with all things mobile, there are no simple answers, if only because potential solutions rely on agreement among a sizable and incompatible array of players -- from spectrum owners (both telcos and broadcasters) and regulators to government agencies and, of course, consumers demanding the latest in cool devices and applications.

With all this sturm und drang, what happens to businesses that are increasingly relying on the productivity that mobile devices deliver? Their numbers aren't inconsiderable: According to a recent IDC report, 75% of the North American workforce was mobile in 2010, and iPass reports that 91% of mobile workers use their smartphones for work.

Most carriers have already imposed data caps, and industry watchers say the laws of supply and demand indicate that wireless-plan prices can only go up. When AT&T switched on its 4G access in 11 areas in December of 2011, AT&T Business Solutions chief John Stankey warned that if the spectrum situation remains unchanged, pricing will rise, a prediction borne out by AT&T's announcement last week of new pricing structures for its smartphone and tablet customers.

Some experts fear there could be dire consequences. Richard Bennett, senior research fellow for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), says, "If we can't get spectrum bandwidth for more mobile devices in the next five years, prices will rise, performance will suffer, and innovation will be impaired."

Adds Scott Bergmann, the CTIA's assistant vice president for regulatory affairs, "Companies will have to make some hard choices, including limiting the amount of data employees can use based on job function."



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


Give us a call today: 281-554-5500 or visit Friendly Computers to schedule an appointment.

Meet 802.11ac: The Next Wi-Fi Standard

A question we're hearing with increasing frequency concerns the upcoming 802.11ac standard, which promises to do to 802.11n what .11n did to .11g. While the IEEE 802.11ac standard likely won't be completely finished before the end of 2013, and, while the Wi-Fi Alliance similarly has issued no interoperability criteria for 802.11ac, consumer-grade products claiming compliance with the aforementioned 802.11ac standard could be on store shelves as soon as the middle of 2012.

We should be used to this reversed-from-the-expected order of developments that define progress in the world of wireless LANs (products, then specs from the Wi-Fi Alliance, and finally the standard itself), but the .11ac announcements we're seeing now bring new relevance to the debate.

802.11ac boosting more than just performance

What you need to know about 802.11ac

Even though we're still quite early in the development of the .11ac standard (Draft 2.0 is currently under development), a good number of products - from chips to residential/SMB-class products - were on display at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

I suspect that most of these early residential/SMB products will spend most if not all of their useful lives operating backwards-compatible to 802.11n. And there's some question as to whether residential users will get very much at all out of .11ac, as home Internet connections (to say nothing of residential-class Ethernet switches and router ports) top out well below the 1.3Gbps that a three-stream, 40-MHz. .11ac product can nominally reach.

But just as was the case with .11n, the improvements in both rate-vs.-range performance and overall link reliability even in backwards-compatible .11n mode will provide some market momentum. Video distribution within the home may also provide some incentive to go with early .11ac implementations, although I continue to favor WHDI-based products as a more effective solution to provisioning a dedicated video link.

Enterprise use of 802.11ac is another matter entirely, however. I do not expect that we'll see many enterprise-class access points using 802.11ac until around the middle of 2013, and significant upgrades to controllers, switches, and even Ethernet cabling in some cases may be required to justify such an upgrade.

As the cost of WLAN equipment continues to decline, it may make sense (and maximize ROI) to simply beef up one's 802.11n deployment with increased access point density and/or three-stream products rather than waiting for 802.11ac. We suspect that enterprise-class WLAN vendors will offer additional capabilities beyond improvements in throughput and capacity alone as a justification to upgrade to .11ac, but we also suspect that, with a few relatively low-cost upgrades - like the inclusion of three-stream access points - many .11n installations will continue to hum along just fine for many years to come.



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


Give us a call today: 281-554-5500 or visit Friendly Computers to schedule an appointment.

Which Smartphone Apps are the Biggest Data Hogs?

Which classes of apps eat the most data? Which single apps in each category are the least data-efficient? We tested various popular Android apps to find out.
By Zohra Ashpari, PCWorld Mar 18, 2012 4:01 pm

Are you aware of how much data your smartphone’s apps are using up? Android phones are averaging about 583 megabytes (MB) of data usage monthly, according to 2011 stats from Nielson.

Some apps are far worse than others when it comes to data usage, and it's important to know which ones are the hogs, especially for those on limited or low-end data plans.

And limited or capped data plans appear to be the wave of the future. For instance AT&T offers tiered plans ranging from 300 MB to 3 gigabytes (GB) per month. When you exceed your monthly allotment of data you're carrier either throttles down your speed or hits you with expensive overage charges.

We tested the data usage of popular apps in six different categories to find out which are easiest and hardest on data. If one of your go-to apps is a data hog, there may be another similar app that does the same things but uses less data.

We tested the apps using a Droid RAZR phone running on Verizon’s 4G LTE network, and used the My Data Manager and Onavo apps to measure the data being used.

Movie Streaming
Netflix streaming used more data than YouTube in our tests.Among the app categories we tested, movie streaming apps chomped up the most data. Consider those YouTube videos you watch on your commute: viewing for just 10 minutes a day can have you pushing a 1 GB limit in well less than a month. And high definition videos take up double the amount of data that standard definition videos do.

But YouTube videos aren't the biggest data hog. Netflix streaming uses more. Data consumption on Netflix varies, because video quality adjusts constantly depending on your connection. In our tests using Verizon’s fast LTE network, 10 minutes of viewing used up between 100 and 200 MB. So streaming just two 2-hour films can all but max out a 5GB-per-month data plan.

Music
If you’re always streaming music onto your smartphone you can easily run into problems with your data plan, especially if you have one of the low-tier plans in the 200-300 MB per month range.

Spotify uses more data than Pandora for music streaming.

Depending on how much music you stream, even a higher-tier data allotment can be pretty easily exhausted in less than a month.

Listening to Pandora for an hour a day for a month will use about 1.76 GB of data.

Spotify differs from Pandora in that it is an on-demand music service and music management platform. While you can do more things with Spotify it does use more data than Pandora when streaming to your phone.

If you choose to stream music at the "medium" bitrate of 160 kilobits per second (Kbps) you will use about 1.2 MB of data per minute. Listening to Spotify for an hour a day for a month will cost you about 2.1 GB of data. So Spotify alone can max out a 2GB data tier.

However, if you're using bud headphones to listen to music and aren't too picky about sound quality you can choose to run Spotify at the 96 Kbps bitrate, which will cost you about a third less data.

Games
Games can be addicting so you should take caution with them, especially those with detailed graphics and online multi-player modes. 3D graphics usually mean large file sizes. For instance, Madfinger Games’ Shadowgun cost us 218 MB to download.

But it's when you get into games that depend heavily on the internet connection to play that you get into some serious, and onging, data usage. Massively multi-player games like Spacetime Studio’s Pocket Legends, for example, uses data at a rate of 17 MB every 10 minutes as you play and interact with others online.

Video Chatting
If you frequently video chat on your smartphone and have both Skype and Google+ Hangouts installed, it may be wiser to use Skype in the absense of a Wi-fi connection. In our tests, Hangouts used roughly six times more data--30 MB per 2-minute session, in contrast to Skype's 5 MB. Even though it uses more data, it’s worth having Hangouts installed as it’s starting to become a widely-used tool for business web-conferencing.

Social Media
Uploading images to social networking sites uses several megabytes of data.Uploading photos to Facebook, Twitter or your preferred social site uses up several megabytes of data each time, which can add up to quite a significant amount of usage if you upload a lot of pictures. If you need to share photos urgently, set your phone’s camera to a lower resolution. You can also capture the images on the phone, then transfer them to your home computer and upload them to the social site from there.

We wanted to know how much data it costs to upload and view images at some of the best-known social media sites. To test this, we uploaded five 60K images, then used our mobile device to view (download) five images on each service.

The chart below shows our results. Pushing images up through the network to the services' servers costs you anwhere from 7 to 13 times more data than viewing images that are already hosted there, depending on the service.

Data Cost of Social Network Photo Sharing
Facebook Twitter Google+
Uploading 8 MB 6.5 MB 6 MB
Viewing 1.5 MB .5 MB 1 MB

Tips for Saving on Data
Data monitoring apps such as the ones we’ve used for our tests--My Data Manager and Onavo--are helpful in keeping track of which apps are eating up your data by the minute. Onavo even sends you an alert on your smartphone if some app is using an unusually large amount of data.

Using the My Data Manager usage monitor can help you conserve data.Alternatively, some wireless carriers, like Verizon, have data monitoring widgets that you can install on the home screen of your device. This allows you to get your data usage numbers from the same people who send you the bill for it.

The wireless carriers also now offer data usage calculators at their websites. Making a quick study of your carrier's calculator can give you a much clearer picture of where your bytes are going every month. Though our tests yielded different results in some cases, we find this Verizon calculator generally useful.

Of course the best thing you can do is wait until you have a Wi-fi connection to download apps and games, watch movies or stream music. You can connect to Wi-fi networks at work, at home, and at public places like Starbucks and even MacDonalds.

We also recommend entering into your Wi-fi settings, and turning on Wi-fi autostart reminders. This notifies you of all the Wi-fi connections available when you launch a data-demanding app like YouTube.

If you absolutely must use your data plan for the aforementioned activities, just be aware of the approximate data cost of each one and check your data usage numbers periodically.

You're paying a lot for your mobile data plan already. Don't line the carriers' pockets by paying overage charges as well.

Which classes of apps eat the most data? Which single apps in each category are the least data-efficient? We tested various popular Android apps to find out.
By Zohra Ashpari, PCWorld Mar 18, 2012 4:01 pm

Are you aware of how much data your smartphone’s apps are using up? Android phones are averaging about 583 megabytes (MB) of data usage monthly, according to 2011 stats from Nielson.

Some apps are far worse than others when it comes to data usage, and it's important to know which ones are the hogs, especially for those on limited or low-end data plans.

And limited or capped data plans appear to be the wave of the future. For instance AT&T offers tiered plans ranging from 300 MB to 3 gigabytes (GB) per month. When you exceed your monthly allotment of data you're carrier either throttles down your speed or hits you with expensive overage charges.

We tested the data usage of popular apps in six different categories to find out which are easiest and hardest on data. If one of your go-to apps is a data hog, there may be another similar app that does the same things but uses less data.

We tested the apps using a Droid RAZR phone running on Verizon’s 4G LTE network, and used the My Data Manager and Onavo apps to measure the data being used.

Movie Streaming
Netflix streaming used more data than YouTube in our tests.Among the app categories we tested, movie streaming apps chomped up the most data. Consider those YouTube videos you watch on your commute: viewing for just 10 minutes a day can have you pushing a 1 GB limit in well less than a month. And high definition videos take up double the amount of data that standard definition videos do.

But YouTube videos aren't the biggest data hog. Netflix streaming uses more. Data consumption on Netflix varies, because video quality adjusts constantly depending on your connection. In our tests using Verizon’s fast LTE network, 10 minutes of viewing used up between 100 and 200 MB. So streaming just two 2-hour films can all but max out a 5GB-per-month data plan.

Music
If you’re always streaming music onto your smartphone you can easily run into problems with your data plan, especially if you have one of the low-tier plans in the 200-300 MB per month range.

Spotify uses more data than Pandora for music streaming.

Depending on how much music you stream, even a higher-tier data allotment can be pretty easily exhausted in less than a month.

Listening to Pandora for an hour a day for a month will use about 1.76 GB of data.

Spotify differs from Pandora in that it is an on-demand music service and music management platform. While you can do more things with Spotify it does use more data than Pandora when streaming to your phone.

If you choose to stream music at the "medium" bitrate of 160 kilobits per second (Kbps) you will use about 1.2 MB of data per minute. Listening to Spotify for an hour a day for a month will cost you about 2.1 GB of data. So Spotify alone can max out a 2GB data tier.

However, if you're using bud headphones to listen to music and aren't too picky about sound quality you can choose to run Spotify at the 96 Kbps bitrate, which will cost you about a third less data.

Games
Games can be addicting so you should take caution with them, especially those with detailed graphics and online multi-player modes. 3D graphics usually mean large file sizes. For instance, Madfinger Games’ Shadowgun cost us 218 MB to download.

But it's when you get into games that depend heavily on the internet connection to play that you get into some serious, and onging, data usage. Massively multi-player games like Spacetime Studio’s Pocket Legends, for example, uses data at a rate of 17 MB every 10 minutes as you play and interact with others online.

Video Chatting
If you frequently video chat on your smartphone and have both Skype and Google+ Hangouts installed, it may be wiser to use Skype in the absense of a Wi-fi connection. In our tests, Hangouts used roughly six times more data--30 MB per 2-minute session, in contrast to Skype's 5 MB. Even though it uses more data, it’s worth having Hangouts installed as it’s starting to become a widely-used tool for business web-conferencing.

Social Media
Uploading images to social networking sites uses several megabytes of data.Uploading photos to Facebook, Twitter or your preferred social site uses up several megabytes of data each time, which can add up to quite a significant amount of usage if you upload a lot of pictures. If you need to share photos urgently, set your phone’s camera to a lower resolution. You can also capture the images on the phone, then transfer them to your home computer and upload them to the social site from there.

We wanted to know how much data it costs to upload and view images at some of the best-known social media sites. To test this, we uploaded five 60K images, then used our mobile device to view (download) five images on each service.

The chart below shows our results. Pushing images up through the network to the services' servers costs you anwhere from 7 to 13 times more data than viewing images that are already hosted there, depending on the service.

Data Cost of Social Network Photo Sharing
Facebook Twitter Google+
Uploading 8 MB 6.5 MB 6 MB
Viewing 1.5 MB .5 MB 1 MB

Tips for Saving on Data
Data monitoring apps such as the ones we’ve used for our tests--My Data Manager and Onavo--are helpful in keeping track of which apps are eating up your data by the minute. Onavo even sends you an alert on your smartphone if some app is using an unusually large amount of data.

Using the My Data Manager usage monitor can help you conserve data.Alternatively, some wireless carriers, like Verizon, have data monitoring widgets that you can install on the home screen of your device. This allows you to get your data usage numbers from the same people who send you the bill for it.

The wireless carriers also now offer data usage calculators at their websites. Making a quick study of your carrier's calculator can give you a much clearer picture of where your bytes are going every month. Though our tests yielded different results in some cases, we find this Verizon calculator generally useful.

Of course the best thing you can do is wait until you have a Wi-fi connection to download apps and games, watch movies or stream music. You can connect to Wi-fi networks at work, at home, and at public places like Starbucks and even MacDonalds.

We also recommend entering into your Wi-fi settings, and turning on Wi-fi autostart reminders. This notifies you of all the Wi-fi connections available when you launch a data-demanding app like YouTube.

If you absolutely must use your data plan for the aforementioned activities, just be aware of the approximate data cost of each one and check your data usage numbers periodically.

You're paying a lot for your mobile data plan already. Don't line the carriers' pockets by paying overage charges as well.


Give us a call today: 281-554-5500 or visit Friendly Computers to schedule an appointment.

How to Protect Your Laptop

Follow our guide to safeguard your laptop, as well as the data that resides on it.
By Sarah Jacobsson Purewal, PCWorld Mar 12, 2012 8:00 pm

A laptop’s portability makes it convenient--and an easy target for thieves.

Losing your laptop can be devastating, especially if you keep important documents and files on its hard drive, without a backup. Here are five ways to protect your laptop from being stolen (or from remaining stolen), as well as to safeguard the data you store on it.

1. Use a Physical Lock
Physically locking your laptop to an immovable object isn't exactly the coolest thing you can do, but it works. Just about every laptop on the market is equipped with a small lock slot that works with laptop locks such as the Kensington ClickSafe Keyed Laptop Lock ($45) or the Targus Ultra Max Laptop Cable Lock ($50).

A laptop lock isn't svelte, but it is secure.These laptop locks work just as bicycle chain locks do: You find a large, immovable object, such as your desk, and wrap the metal cable around it. Insert the lock into your laptop's lock slot, and your computer becomes virtually theft-proof, assuming that the thief cares about keeping it in working condition. This isn't a viable solution for many places--you're unlikely to find a lot of immovable furniture in a coffee shop, for instance--but it is useful if you need to leave your laptop alone for any amount of time (say, in a hotel room).

2. Install Tracking Software
Well, your laptop has been stolen. Or perhaps you lost it, and some unscrupulous individual picked it up (in other words, they stole it).

How can you retrieve it? Fire up the laptop-tracking software that you had the foresight to install on your machine.

A new breed of laptop security software has arrived, and it's very effective. Using several different elements, including IP address locations, Wi-Fi positioning, and even the ability to turn on the laptop's webcam remotely, laptop-tracking software can help you get your laptop back.

Flipcode's Hidden, Absolute Software's LoJack for Laptops, and ActiveTrak's GadgetTrak are just a few examples of laptop-tracking software.

A small Mac application, the $15-a-year Hidden uses IP addresses to pinpoint your laptop's location. On top of that, Hidden can take photos remotely using your laptop's webcam, as well as capture screenshots of what the thief does on your computer, so you can identify the culprit by both face and name (if the person happens to log in to an email account or social network).

LoJack keeps tabs on your laptop.LoJack costs $30 a year, and works on both Windows and Mac computers. In addition to tracking your stolen laptop, LoJack lets you freeze your computer remotely, create a custom message to display on its screen, and remotely erase files from your laptop--a huge plus for business users who might be carrying sensitive documents.

GadgetTrak works with both Windows and Mac machines, and costs $20 a year. GadgetTrak uses Wi-Fi positioning to find the location of your laptop within about 10 to 20 feet, and lets you take remote photos of your laptop's captor. The software is also tamper-proof, so no one can modify it on the laptop unless you deactivate the software from the GadgetTrak website.

Having laptop-tracking software installed on your portable doesn't guarantee its recovery, and you'll have to combine the software with some old-fashioned sleuthing (checking your local Craigslist ads for laptop fire sales, for example) in order to catch the thief. But it's definitely a start.

3. Back Up Your Data
Losing a $1000 piece of machinery is pretty bad, but losing a $1000 piece of machinery with all of your important files on it is much, much worse. If your laptop ends up in the wrong hands, the last thing you want is for all of your data to land there too.

For this reason, you should probably invest in a physical external hard drive, such as the supertough IoSafe Solo Pro ($350 for 1TB), which is both waterproof and fireproof, or the versatile, hot-swappable LaCie 2big Quadra ($369 for 2TB). You don't have to back up your computer every 5 seconds, but it is a good idea to back up the machine whenever you can remember to do so. It's also wise to keep sensitive documents off portable machines and drives entirely, if at all possible.

For backing up recent documents, I prefer using cloud-based backup services such as Dropbox or Mozy. Cloud-based backup services are much more convenient because you can access them from anywhere you have an Internet connection, and you don't have to plug your laptop into a physical hard drive.

Secure your files in the cloud with Mozy.
Dropbox gives you 2GB of free storage space, which isn't enough for an entire hard-drive backup, but is usually plenty of room for recent documents and files. Dropbox works by putting a folder on your system: All you have to do is save a file in that folder, and it automatically syncs with Dropbox's server. The benefit of this autosync process is that even if someone steals your computer right then, you'll still be able to access that file by signing in to Dropbox from another computer.

Mozy is more of a traditional backup service. For $6 a month, Mozy gives you 50GB of space for backing up your entire hard drive (if you so choose). Mozy also offers multiple restore options, including Web-restore and DVD-restore, as well as through the Mozy software client. Restoring files from the Mozy cloud is a more involved process than simple syncing, though--it's backup software, not file-sharing software.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/251719/how_to_protect_your_laptop.html#tk.hp_pop



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


Give us a call today: 281-554-5500 or visit Friendly Computers to schedule an appointment.

Ransom Trojans Spreading Beyond Russian Heartland

Ransom malware has moved out of its traditional Russian market and is starting to become a measurable problem in countries such as the US and Germany, figures from Trend Micro have confirmed.

As reported by Trend's Smart Protection Network cloud, the US headed the list with just over 2,000 infections, ahead of Germany on 1,203, and Hungary on 561. Other countries reporting in the hundreds include France, Russia, Australia, Italy and Taiwan.

This volume of infections isn't large by comparison with other types of malware but ransomware doesn't set out to hit large number of people at any one time. The modus operandi is to attack smaller numbers using below-the-radar campaigns, extracting relatively large amounts from each victim.

The extent of ransomware's success can only be gauged by the growing volume of attacks, which implies a worthwhile success rate.

Ransomware is really the ultimate form of social engineering malware in that people are invited to agree to defraud themselves. The trick is to get people to believe there is no alternative to agreeing to their malware's terms.

After existing at very low levels for years, ransom attacks suddenly started to spike in mid-2010, examples of which include an attack in which Windows users were accused of running a counterfeit version of the OS and asked for a $143 (£91) payment.

Trend itself reported on a worm that used the more common tactic of locking the PCs of victims (the exact method varies in severity from example to example but is often relatively trivial), demanding a small payment to have control returned.

Closer to home, a ransom Trojan affecting UK users impersonated the Metropolitan Police in order to persuade users that porn had been detected on their computers, requiring a payment to be made. Versions of this scam have appeared in almost every European country.

Trend comes up with two explanations for the form's growing popularity among criminals, the biggest of which is the recent disruption of the industry behind fake antivirus scams. This has sent developers to new types of attack that can make use of payment channels less dependant on credit cards, which create an evidence trail.

"Ukash and Paysafecard are widely used online payment methods that do not require personal details. Such level of anonymity has naturally earned the attention of cybercriminals and, as we can see, is now being abused for the ransomware business," said Trend threat engineer, Roland Dela Paz.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/251630/ransom_trojans_spreading_beyond_russian_heartland.html#tk.hp_pop



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28

Which Android Security Tools Are Worth Your Time?

As Android smartphones and tablets grow in popularity, it's no surprise that the number of malware outbreaks is growing. Mobile antimalware apps can give your phone or tablet an extra layer of protection--but which ones do the job? Independent security testing lab AV-Test evaluated 41 virus scanners for Android, including those by mainstream security companies like Norton and Trend Micro. AV-Test used the Android emulator built into the Android SDK and ran each of the apps through a series of malware detection tests. To ensure that everything lined up, all the results from the emulator were tested on a real device.

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Only 7 of the 41 virus scanners had detection rates above 90 percent, with over half of the remaining apps having detection rates under 40 percent. The top 7 apps were Avast Mobile Security, Dr. Web Anti-virus Light, F-Secure Mobile Security, IKARUS Mobile Security Lite, Lookout Mobile Security, Kaspersky Mobile Security Lite, and Zoner AntiVirus Free. Out of those 7, Kaspersky and F-Secure had the highest detection rates, followed by Avast.

AV-Test was quick to point out that, just because an app wasn't included in the top 7, that doesn't mean it didn't provide some form of protection. Several apps with detection rates over 65 percent included useful features such as remote wiping and locking capabilities. AV-Test also mentions that several of the apps in this group did an overall good job at detecting malware, missing only one or two strains that may not be present in all regions around the world.

Apps from vendors like AVG, Norton, BitDefender, and Trend Micro all had their fair share of strengths. Most of the apps tested had both free and paid versions, though AV-Test did not find any difference between the paid and the free version of an app when it came to malware detection.

As long as you have an app from a major security software vendor, you'll likely have adequate coverage. McAfee seemed to be the only major security vendor whose app had less than a 65 percent malware detection rate.

Malware on Android: A Growing Problem

So far, we haven’t seen any doomsday-level attacks in the Android world. Security experts say the number of malware variants is growing, but we haven’t had a single widespread outbreak that’s brought Android users to their knees. At least not yet.

The most common way malware gets distributed in the Android universe is that malware makers will rip off popular games and apps and sell ones laced with malware under their own title. If you aren't sure who makes a particular app, a quick Google search can save you hours of headaches later. Also, make sure you’re installing the app from a trusted source. While there have been a few breakouts of malware in the Android Market, most of the strains we hear about in the news come from third-party markets that are usually made up of pirated applications.

Mobile malware is still in its infancy, but as more and more of our personal data ends up on our smartphones and tablets, it’s increasingly important to safeguard our devices from malicious software.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/251345/which_android_security_tools_are_worth_your_time.html



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


Give us a call today: 281-554-5500 or visit Friendly Computers to schedule an appointment.

6 Security Trends to Watch For

For security researchers, there's never a dull moment; online criminals constantly find new security holes to exploit, and new ways to get at your personal data. At this year's RSA security conference in San Francisco, I got to speak with representatives from several companies about what to expect in the coming months. Here are some of the dangerous new malware trends to watch for in 2012.

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SSL Not So Safe? When you see the padlock icon in your browser's toolbar, you might think that your data is safe, but hackers have found ways to get at your information before you send it securely on the internet.

These new forms of malware can identify when you've visited sites protected with SSL--the encryption technology used to keep data safe from prying eyes as it travels across the Internet--and it can grab your username and password before the encryption kicks in. In addition, these sorts of attacks, according to security software maker Webroot, will ignore all Web traffic except encrypted sites to filter out information that it isn't interested in.

More Targeted Baddies: Also on the rise is super-targeted malware. Some malware can access your browser history, and will only infect you if it sees that you've visited certain sites. For instance, a piece of malware designed to steal online banking login information might check to see if you visited a particular bank's website. Expect more malware that goes after certain groups of people or specific bits of information.

New Malware Harder to Spot and Remove: You may be infected with malware and not even realize it. While older malware used to make itself known on your PC, newer forms of malware may not even have an interface, and they may not seriously impact your PC's performance. Instead, it all runs in the background, seemingly invisible to you.

This hard-to-spot malware can also be hard to remove. For example, a relatively new rootkit called ZeroAccess buries itself deep into your system, and it's extremely difficult to disable, since it effectively kills any program that tries to access it (hence the name ZeroAccess).

Malware Holds Your PC for Ransom: Ransomware is nothing new--it's been around for a few years in various forms, including fake antivirus software that won't go away unless you pay up. But the guys at security software company Malwarebytes see it as a growing problem. The company pointed to one example where a piece of malware would lock you out of your computer entirely unless you pay up.

Of course, ransomware means you can get hit twice: If you pay to remove the infection, you will likely end up giving your credit card information to criminals who might go on to use your account fraudulently.

Old Problems Come Back: At the same time, look for some older types of malware to make a resurgence. Researchers with security company CheckPoint expect to see bots make a comeback in 2012. Meanwhile, Webroot expects to see an increase in dynamic, targeted threats similar in nature to the Storm worm from a few years ago.

What About Mobile Malware? One of the big stories out of last year's show was the rise of malware for Android, and we saw a large increase--at least in terms of growth rate--in malicious apps for Android over the last few months of 2011. Is it time to panic?

Not so fast, says CheckPoint. According to the company, there has yet to be a massive malware outbreak on Android, despite the overall increase in mobile malware. That said, the company says that mobile malware is the "logical next step," so while there's no need to panic, you do need to keep your guard up.



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


Give us a call today: 281-554-5500 or visit Friendly Computers to schedule an appointment.

What Happens When You Get ‘Throttled’?

When your wireless company applies the choke hold, it doesn’t feel good. We intentionally exhausted our T-Mobile monthly service allowance and then looked at the download speeds that the carrier gave us afterward.
By Mark Sullivan, PCWorld Feb 29, 2012 8:00 pm

Lesson one: It's pretty easy to use up all of your wireless data service for a given month. Lesson two: When you do that, the phone company says that it'll knock your speed down into 2G territory--and it's not kidding.

Here's what the T-Mobile terms of service say: “To provide a good experience for the majority of our customers and minimize capacity issues and degradation in network performance, we may take measures including temporarily reducing data throughput for a subset of customers who use a disproportionate amount of bandwidth.”

It continues: “In addition, if your total usage exceeds 5GB (amount is subject to change without notice; please check T-Mobile's T&Cs on www.T-Mobile.com for updates) during a billing cycle, we may reduce your data speed for the remainder of that billing cycle.”

Maxing Out My Data
For this test I intentionally maxed out my T-Mobile data plan by downloading some movies from the Internet Archive. It took only two movie downloads for me to reach my plan's 2GB limit.

Nowhere in its terms of service does T-Mobile say anything about 2G speeds, but that's what I got fairly soon after I reached the limit. And the text messages that T-Mobile sent me as I neared, and then passed, my limit explicitly stated that my subsequent data transfers would be slowed to 2G speed:



The movie I was downloading did finish successfully, and I didn't notice an immediate change in the download rate after I had passed the limit.

I dialed #web# on my phone (an HTC Amaze) and (on the second attempt) got this pop-up:

"You have used 2.0207 GB."

Speeds Fell Sharply
My plan was to max out my data allotment and then check my throughput speeds every day for a few days to see whether the carrier would gradually reduce my phone's data transfer rate to 2G speed, or whether it would immediately throttle the rate down all the way. The second hypothesis turned out to be the true one.

This little chart lists my speeds before and after I maxed out my data:

DATE & TIME Download speed Upload speed Latency Mode Bars
February 23, 2:05pm 7.9 mbps 1.8 mbps 59 milliseconds 4G 3/4
February 23, 4:48pm 0.07 mbps 0.08 mbps 125 milliseconds 2G, 4G 3/4
February 24, 4:56pm 0.07 mbps 0.10 mbps 78 milliseconds 4G 3/4
February 27, 4:47pm 0.07 mbps 0.10 mbps 87 milliseconds 2G, 4G 4/4

As you can see, when I tested throughput a couple of hours before I maxed out my data plan on February 23, I was getting pretty fast service. At about 2:51 that afternoon, I received the text from T-Mobile informing me that I'd passed the limit; shortly thereafter, my phone's download speed dropped from almost 8 megabits per second to 0.07 mbps.

At that slow speed, a Web page that had taken just a few seconds to load before I hit the limit instead took 17 seconds to load. A 1-minute YouTube video that had taken about 1minute, 3 seconds to load and run all the way through now took 4 minutes, 35 seconds. Connecting with the Android Market and downloading an app from it took so long that I gave it up as not worth doing.

To have my 4G speed restored for March, I'll have to pay my regular monthly bill early.

The End of Unlimited
Starting with AT&T, most carriers have done away with unlimited data plans. Sprint is the only carrier clinging to the truly unlimited concept, but even it requires subscribers to pay a $10 "data fee." AT&T and Verizon have adopted tiered pricing plans for data, under which they charge hefty overage fees if you exceed your monthly allowance. AT&T even decided to throttle subscribers who are still on one of the old unlimited data contracts.

And why not? With just four national carriers accounting for almost all U.S. subscribers, the nation's wireless market isn't very competitive. Among the "Big Four," competition isn't especially strong, either: AT&T and Verizon claim a combined 85 percent of the business. So they don't have much market incentive to offer unlimited anything.

Sprint can be seen as the insurgent here, but the company is so troubled--financially and technologically--that the other large carriers aren't inclined to view its unlimited data plan as much of a threat. Most people in the industry believe that Sprint will eventually capitulate and end its unlimited data plan in favor of a tiered scheme with overage charges. In fact, Virgin Mobile--the low-price, prepaid leg of Sprint--has announced that it will begin throttling down users who exceed 2GB a month, beginning March 12.

A False Scarcity?
Wireless carriers have found that it makes economic sense to impose tiered pricing systems on customers, and to profit when customers use too much data. For cover, the wireless carriers have invoked a tried-and-true "sky is falling" scenario, saying that putting restrictions on data use is essential to preserving network capacity in the face of skyrocketing data demand and a dearth of available wireless spectrum.

There may be some truth to this cover story, but the carriers' abandonment of unlimited plans probably has more to do with maintaining healthy profits. The research firm Validas recently reviewed the phone bills of 11,000 users and found that the data usage of so-called "bandwidth hogs" on both restricted (throttled or tiered) and unlimited plans was effectively the same. It appears that data usage restrictions don't even serve the goal that the carriers identified for using them--namely, to preserve network capacity.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/251008/what_happens_when_you_get_throttled.html#tk.hp_fv



By Friendly Computers Copyright: 2010-01-28


Give us a call today: 281-554-5500 or visit Friendly Computers to schedule an appointment.