CREDIT: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun Sioux Fleming of Computer Associates gives talks about the dangers of spyware; she says spyware almost always first appears after calls to the help desk.

You’re careful, even obsessive, when it comes to online banking. You never click on URLs in e-mail. You always make sure that the site is really that of your bank. You even check to see that you’re securely connected.

So why is all that money missing — having just been whipped electronically to the other side of the world?

Surprise, you’ve got spyware.

To be explicit, you have a keylogger installed somewhere in the deep recesses of your computer. And it’s recording every keystroke and sending it back on the Internet to folks harvesting user names and passwords.

That’s certainly one of the most dramatic effects of spyware, according to expert Sioux Fleming of Computer Associates, where she’s director of product management for the anti-spyware application eTrust PestPatrol.

But there’s another, far less sexy one, that costs businesses around the world what Fleming has said has been estimated in the trillions of dollars each year, although there are still no solid numbers available.

The more mundane part of the threat is that spyware, sneakware adware, snoopware, malware, or whatever you like to call it — all 30,000 applications tracked by the folks at PestPatrol so far — causes 40 per cent of all calls to corporate help desks.

It also prompts 10 per cent of tech calls to computer makers (where such a conversation can average 25 minutes), and causes, as recently estimated by Microsoft, 50 per cent of all PC crashes.

“The way spyware first appears is almost always calls to the help desk,” said Fleming, in Vancouver Thursday to talk to a Deloitte security seminar. “The computers are slower to boot, they’re a lot slower to connect to the Internet or people can’t use the Internet at all.”

The reason, said Fleming, is that spyware can start with downloading a single program, like one for file sharing, and then grow into several hundred in a matter of days. One program downloads a couple more and those download a couple more and so on.

Soon ads are popping up everywhere, you’re going to websites you didn’t want to see and information about your browsing habits and maybe even your banking passwords are flowing out on to the Net.

“Most of [the spyware programs] are what we call tricklers,” said Fleming. “They will keep downloading more and more things, because all these spyware companies have financial arrangements with one another. They get money for downloading each other’s programs.

Another trick is the pop-up that offers you a free anti-spyware program.

“Those are actually spyware programs,” said Fleming. “When you click on it it will come up and say that for only $29.95 you can get rid of it. So it’s a form of extortion.

Spyware programs are devilishly hard to get rid of, once they’re in place because even if you think they’re gone, if you even leave one in place it starts downloading all the others all over again.

Some applications, said Fleming, can even bring themselves back if just a small part has been left behind.

Oh, and if you remove some of them then that free file sharing program is disabled, too.

PROTECTION AGAINST SPYWARE:

Five things Sioux Fleming recommends you do to battle spyware:

1. Get a credible spyware product. Install it, scan your computer and continue to use it. If you’re not sure what’s legitimate read reviews in respected magazines. Any online pop-up offering an anti-spyware program is probably spyware itself.

2. In a corporation, monitor network traffic going out. If you’re seeing a lot of traffic to a website or an obscure IP address that doesn’t make any sense, shut it down at the firewall level.

3. At work, ask yourself if your users need to install software. At home, ask if everyone in the family needs the right to install software.

4. For random surfing, you might want to switch to a browser other than Internet Explorer or use another operating system than Windows, like OS X for the Mac.

5. At home put a firewall in place, both hardware and software.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

CREDIT: Peter Battistoni, Vancouver Sun Timo Kellokoski’s software system allows homeowners to track home maintenance records.

A Richmond entrepreneur who bills himself as the “home doctor” has come up with a product to take the guesswork out of home maintenance.

Timo Kellokoski of Premso Systems says his unique software-based home-maintenance organizing system is the answer.

“Homeowners can save money in home repair because they have a better knowledge of their homes and can catch problems in the early stages before they need big repairs,” says Kellokoski, a builder and renovator.

He’s devoted the past two years developing the system. The tracking/educational system consists of a binder and software program that helps teach homeowners what they need to know to do proper, preventative home maintenance.

“Think of a car with good maintenance records compared to one that doesn’t have them. Which car would you want to buy? This can provide the same benefit to homeowners who want to sell their homes,” says Kellokoski.

The easy-to-follow software program requires users to input information about their home and keep their records updated. This can be challenging for many busy people, but Kellokoski noted the software’s extensive file for personal addresses would be a motivation for homeowners to refer regularly to the program to keep it current.

Topics to be entered include basic information about the home such as square feet, financial information such as yearly mortgage rates, insurance information and a personal property inventory. This particular feature allows a homeowner to enter items of value room by room and the software automatically calculates their total worth.

He said this feature, which allows images of the items, is of particular value for insurance purposes if the items were ever lost in a fire or stolen.

Another topic in the software is a “material list” that reminds homeowners of home details, such as what paint colour they used in a room, or whether their fridge has an extended warranty.

Other categories include maintenance tracking that is divided into fall and spring with information on what to check, common problems if it is not done and a place for the homeowner to note when they completed the work.

He says the product makes an ideal gift as a house-warming present and noted many of his clients have been realtors. Realtor Kenny Au is one customer.

“I want to help people get organized about maintenance and they really feel good about that,” Au says in a press release. “Women especially like the product because they know how difficult it is to keep track of maintenance over the long term. But the Premso Maintenizer is like having a live-in expert, who not only keeps track of all details but teaches homeowners what they need to know to do proper, preventative maintenance.”

Kellokoski says while maintenance software has been around for some time for businesses, this is the first easy-to-use software for consumers.

”They can’t believe nobody thought of this before,” he says.

The product is currently only available through the company’s website at www.premso.com. It costs $60 for the binder, $100 for the software or $120 for both.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

American researchers claim to have invented the first Internet search engine tuned to uncover scandal as it unfolds gossip as it’s being dished, and able to monitor the prickly views of an increasingly prominent tribe of “instapundits“: the bloggers.

“Online Search,” the working title for a prototype tool by Accenture Technology Labs, in Palo Alto, Calif., goes beyond mere keyword lookups about products, public figures or trends.

Instead, the search focuses on several thousand influential sources of online news and gossip that have traditionally been less accessible to search algorithms — from chat rooms and bulletin boards, to Usenet groups, fan sites and blogs written by amateur scribes. From those, it identifies hot topics, and monitors people’s positive or negative reaction to The Next New Thing.

Record executives who want to track the “buzz” their artists’ new releases are getting online, politicians looking for instant feedback about a policy announcement or speech, and companies seeking speedier, cheaper ways to conduct post-marketing surveillance after a product launch, are among those expected to benefit from the more tailored search.

It’s a potentially cheaper, more efficient alternative to focus groups or polling. The information is date stamped and refreshed daily, and may be used to chart detailed analyses of competitive issues as they evolve, the inventors say.

“It’s reading the Web well enough to understand what’s being discussed, how analysts or customers perceive your company, how your products and reputation is being compared with others, and analysing your impact in the news,” said Gary Boone, a machine learning expert and project group leader, in an exclusive telephone and e-mail interview with CanWest News Service.

The searches reveal more sophisticated analysis than services like Google Alerts, which automatically sends an e-mail each time a desired keyword appears online.

That method “can tell that you’re being mentioned but it won’t tell you what’s being discussed, or how the online community is talking about a person in relation to others and how that [view] changes.”

“If you’re a political adviser and a scandal appears, you want to correct errors quickly, without inflating the scandal. If you’re a company, you need to gauge when a rumour about your product is large enough that you must respond, [and] shut up the moment it starts to fade,” Boone said.

During the U.S. presidential election, Accenture’s engine trolled political news sites, plotting shifts in voter sentiment between George W. Bush and John Kerry, and accurately gauged the negative impact of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth on Kerry’s campaign, he added.

In the demonstration, engine searches are refreshed daily; but the system could easily be tweaked to capture near-instant monitoring of stocks, Boone said.

The technology can deduce roughly what a conversation is about, even flag musings about the competition. Despite the effort of numerous research groups to design “semantic” searches patterned after information retrieval mechanisms of the human mind, however, no experimental Internet engine as yet could tally how much money a political candidate raised, or predict the outcome of the next election.

“That’s a level of sophistication that will take decades to achieve,” he said.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

CREDIT: Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun People Line marketing director Russ McDermott can use his phone from the Think Bistro to make calls over the Internet.

A Vancouver-based Internet phone service, People Line, has cut the cord for those making their calls on the Web.

Armed with a wireless phone from Zyxel, voice-over Internet protocol (VoIP) users can now take their phones with them and use them from unrestricted wireless hotspots in places such as cafes and coffee shops.

And at home or work they can forget about a portable phone plugged into an adapter box connected to the Net. The WiFi phone simply connects to the home or office network wirelessly.

That means users can simply tote their VoIP phone around the house or even carry it out on to the deck or the yard — as far as their WiFi network reaches.

“I was using it at some cafes with wireless hotspots recently and you can use it just like if I had cellphone,” said Russ McDermott, marketing director at POPstar Communications Inc., which operates the People Line service.

McDermott said People Line is hoping to market the phones largely to residential customers with an in-home wireless network or to small offices of four to 10 people which have wireless networks.

“I think that more and more small business offices are being set up for wireless these days, so this would be a convenient way for people to have phones within the office,” said McDermott. “If they’re travelling, again they can take advantage of wireless hotspots to make their calls from there.”

Currently, the phones don’t work at hotspots where a subscription to use the service is required, although McDermott is hoping he may be able to work out deals with those.

McDermott said that one of the advantages of the WiFi phone is that people are not subject to the charges that can be run up on a cellphone.

“In the home, you have the mobility of a cordless phone and you’ve actually got pretty good range,” said McDermott. “People have told me they have been able to walk out to the playground, so it will give you maximum mobility both in and out of the home, just like a cordless phone.”

People Line sells the Zyxel Wi-Fi phone for $275. It’s basic service for a home line, call waiting, call display, caller-ID block and a free software phone goes for $9.95 a month. If you add call waiting, call display, voice-mail, call forwarding, call hold, call transfer and three-way calling, the price rises to $14.95 a month. Office users can get similar service, plus a separate fax number, and e-mail to fax and fax to e-mail, for $19.95. Adapter or phone rental adds another $5 a month to all the plans.

Unlike most entrants in the Canadian VoIP marketplace, People Line does not base its marketing on long-distance bundles, relying largely on pay-as-you-go (at 2.5 cents a minute in North America). Instead it aims at customers who make the vast majority of their calls within local service areas.

“What we’ve tried to do is differentiate ourselves as to services and features from our competitors,” said McDermott, whose company has been a pioneer in the Fax over IP market. “They won’t have all the messaging services that we have — for fax for example.”

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

RAM’s universal mounts hold GPS, cellphones and PDAs secure during shaky mobile conditions.

The company also manufactures a mount that will allow drivers to use their laptop computers on the go — not to mention an octopus contraption that will carry all of the above.

Each RAM mount uses the company’s patented solid rubber-ball-and-metal-socket construction.

The company even designs mounts that hold devices steady on motorcycles. Imagine tapping away at your PDA while driving your Harley through traffic. Now, imagine the white, shiny walls of the hospital they take you to after the inevitable accident.

Ideal for the clutter-averse, RAM mounts are the perfect afterthought for consumers who buy mobile gadgets only to discover they have no place to put them. See www.ram-mount.com.

© The Vancouver Province 2005

There’s good news and bad news about Bluetooth, the wireless technology that seamlessly stitches together the fragments of your digital life.

First, a refresher: Bluetooth is a technology protocol that lets devices such as mobile phones, cars, laptops, PDAs and home computers wirelessly and securely communicate. You can update your e-mail by being in the vicinity of your computer, co-ordinate your schedule on the fly and access your address book through one device. It has a range of about nine metres, making it a kind of personal area network (PAN) as opposed to the local area network (LAN) most have at the office.

More important for drivers, it allows hands-free use of a mobile phone through the car’s audio system, resulting in better sound and control all around and a sensible, safe way to get around legislation banning cellphone use while driving.

The good news is, after eight years in the “coming soon” headlines, Bluetooth is hitting the marketplace as an affordable and practical solution. Acura has made it standard in its TL, MDX and RL vehicles in French and English, while Chrysler offers it in the 300C and Pacifica. Other manufacturers have similar offerings in their higher-end products.

For those who want to retrofit, some automakers are producing in-dash CD/MP3 players with Bluetooth features retailing for about $200.

The bad news? You can run from the pressure of work and society, but it’s getting more difficult to hide and unplug from the grid — thus extending that workday even more.

Bluetooth — named after a Viking legend — is the big step toward a totally wireless world, and its first breakthrough is in the vehicle, making it truly mobile technology. Beyond entertainment and phone calls, however, there are other practical possibilities on the design boards: Remote starting to warm the car in the winter or start the air conditioning in summer, iPod or MP3 players streaming to the audio system, a remote parking garage or home garage door controller, payment for gas at the pump and toll road payments — the list goes on.

For the first wave of acceptance, though, the key is the phone function. With more than 70 per cent of mobile calls made while driving and with safety concerns, it’s a rich deposit for manufacturers to mine.

“I like it because, when I’m driving and sometimes the phone conversation gets really quiet for whatever reason and I can’t hear, I just turn up the volume,” says Anton Yewchyn-Pawczuk, a public relations manager at Honda Canada.

Like BMW, DaimlerChrysler and other manufacturers, Acura sees a growing world of Bluetooth enhancements.

For now, Bluetooth simply eliminates wires. This means wireless headsets for about $150 that keeps the phone in your pocket while you talk. In a Bluetooth-enabled vehicle, it means the car audio system takes over the phone function.

“At first, when we introduced it in 2004 vehicles, the questions we got at the customer call centre were around which manufacturers’ phones were compatible,” Yewchyn-Pawczuk says.

With more phones and converged devices, such as the BlackBerry, offered as Bluetooth-enabled, it’s not as much of an issue.

“You just set it up once, all done by voice commands, and then, whenever you get in the car with your mobile, the car recognizes you and transfers the phone function to the car,” he says. “The phone icon will light up on the dash.”

Dialling numbers is a matter of announcing a name or barking out the numbers to the microphone built into the car.

BMW was first to market Bluetooth as part of the BMW Assist package, and it’s extending it through the line.

Cort Nielsen, BMW Canada’s product and technology specialist, says the protocol has taken off in Europe and has just started to pop up in North America. With the growing proliferation of Bluetooth-enabled phones — as in Europe — Nielsen expects the demand for compatible technology in vehicles to also grow.

“Certainly, BMW customers are not afraid of technology,” Nielsen says. “And, I’m a tech head and I love it.”

He says it was easy to incorporate Bluetooth into the BMW 5 and 6 Series because those platforms use fibre optics.

Bluetooth-equipped vehicles also have a function that allows more than one user with a different phone access through the car system. It will prioritize the most frequent driver as the default setting.

There’s a privacy setting so that drivers can switch to a headset or to the mobile phone to take a call they don’t want passengers to hear.

Tejas Rao, Nokia technology director, says although Bluetooth devices have made a breakthrough with automobiles, consumers and business users will begin to see other applications offered as carriers such as Rogers, Telus and Bell look for ways to spur revenues from the data traffic on their networks.

“Games certainly are a big thing,” says Rao, pointing to Nokia’s popular N-Gage platform, which allows users to indulge in multi-player RPGs such as shoot-‘em-ups or snowboarding across Bluetooth networks.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005

This Valentine’s Day you could be looking for love in all the wrong e-mail — and, while it might not break your heart, it could shut down your computer for a day.

A particularly obscene and nasty-minded piece of virus email is floating around this season of love and romance, according to Vancouver-based virus and spam experts Sophos.

It has the subject line “First Love Story” and contains an attached file called FirstLove.vbs.

Click on the attachment and you won’t see anything happen, Sophos security analyst Dominic Wild said Friday.

However, on Feb. 14 the virus — the new VBSWG-D worm — will display a message that says “Happy F***ing Valentine . . . !!!”

After that it will send itself to everyone on your contacts list and then shut your computer down.

For the rest of Valentine’s Day the virus will continue to shut your computer down every time you start it up.

“The payload has a delay, so its not actually until Monday that they’ll actually see the message appear,” said Wild.

Another Valentine’s Day email, said Wild, carries the Kipnis-H worm and has “Happy Valentine’s Day” in the subject line. The body reads: “With the coming of Valentine’s Day! I very much love you.”

Click on the Valentine.exe attachment and the worm turns off all your anti-virus protection, installs a backdoor trojan which allows cyber-criminals to control your computer to send spam email and sends itself to all your contacts.

“If you see an e-mail, even if it’s promising love at this time of year, try not to succumb to it,” said Wild. “It’s important to just delete the mail.”

Also, said Wild, with the arrival of Valentine’s Day, as with most holidays, there will a definite spurt of spam messages like “FREE Valentine’s Day Chocolates” and “Don’t wait — 15% Off All Valentine Fresh Flowers lestrunum” and “Valentine’s Day Gifts for FREE*”.

“We’re expecting another spike this weekend,” said Wild. “The weekend seems to be a prime target for spammers who know people are at home and looking at their e-mail boxes.”

Wild said that while the messages may be from legitimate companies that will actually deliver the goods advertised, it only encourages spammers to reply to them.

On a lighter note, Nokia has announced the availability of a cellphone shell that allows users to paint romantic (or other) messages that appear to hang in the air.

Available from Rogers Wireless, the Xpress-on Fun Shell, uses an array of LED lights to paint messages like “I love you.”

GLENN BAGLO/VANCOUVER SUN Ian McEachern is president and CEO of Silvertip Marine.

It took a would-be boat thief to convince electrical engineer Ian McEachern to develop a wireless marine security system that would not only alert owners to break-ins, but also track the robbers down if they tried to take the boat away.

McEachern had docked his 20-foot bow rider power boat in Pender Harbour one night when the water was too rough to continue his journey. Checking into a local resort, he stepped onto the dock the next morning to find his boat askew at its moorings and the cover in disarray. It was only the robber’s lack of technical expertise that saved the boat from being taken for a joyride or worse.
   “They tried to hotwire it,” said McEachern, who is at the Vancouver Boat Show to display his company’s ESP 3000 Marine Security System. “They took a bunch of stuff, tools, key for my truck. That’s when I decided I need some protection.”
   According to the RCMP boat thefts in Canada result in over $60 million in losses annually. Opportunistic thieves will also jump into power boats at a dock and use them to transport drugs, a practice made easier by our proximity to the U.S. border.
   The Victoria police marine unit have reported that as many as 12 boats a month are stolen on southern Vancouver Island, with the thieves using them to run marijuana to the U.S.
   McEachern, who has worked in satellite communications, including a stint as chief technology officer at Norsat International Inc., turned to wireless technology that would combine traditional anti-theft measures with GPS (Global Positioning System) to create a made-for-marine security solution. His start-up company, Silvertip Marine, introduced its first security system last year and over the summer started selling it to boat owners. The company has a lab and production facility in Delta.
   The security system, which sells for $2,000, has been marketed to individual boat owners as an after-market add on. Most recently, the company has signed on to provide it as a factory option on Svfara performance tow boats. The system is also available as an option on Monaro power boats.
   The Marine ESP 3000 can monitor everything from someone’s stepping on the deck of a boat, to temperature, its bilge, all windows and doors, to smoke and gaseous fumes. At the first sign that anything is amiss, it sends a wireless signal to the owner. Notification is by phone, text message or e- mail and if the system doesn’t get someone on the first number, it will go through backup numbers to sound the warning.
   An owner can check the status of the boat in real time, checking to see which sensors have been triggered. An owner can also configure the system remotely, turning it on and off.
McEachern said many thefts of small trailer-towed boats come when the boat isn’t even in the water. “People are driving by, they see no one is around and they just hook on and go,” he said. If the boat is moved, the security system will alert the owner to its location via GPS.