Jefferson Graham
USA Today

LOS ANGELES — Sales of stand-alone ink-jet printers are fading fast, replaced by popular “all-in-one” printers that usually combine a printer, copier and scanner.

Prices have fallen so dramatically that all-in-ones are often priced on par with or below single-function printers, and consumers feel they’re getting more for their money. Manufacturers are offering price cuts to help spur holiday sales.

For consumers, buying an all-in-one is like “getting a scanner for free,” says Colin Donahoe, director of the consumer ink-jet division at printer manufacturer Epson.

Scanners aren’t just for making high-resolution copies of old photos. You can also use them to make digital copies of receipts and important documents such as passports and tax returns. Once digitized, they can be stored on hard drives and shared in e-mails.

The Epson RX595, a printer/copier/scanner that sold for $149.95 in September when it launched, is now discounted to $99 in many promotions.

A multifunction printer/copier/scanner from market leader Hewlett-Packard is on sale at Best Buy  for $75 — less than a stand-alone printer cost a year ago.

Lexmark’s  X5470, which also includes a fax function, is selling for $89.99 at Target.

Most popular all-in-ones offer “photo” quality printing, with six ink cartridges for more colorful prints, instead of the four colors used on most stand-alone printers.

In the first three quarters of 2007, some 17.6 million ink-jet printers have sold — 12.3 million all-in-ones, compared with 5.3 million single-function printers, according to researcher Gartner.

That compares with sales of 17 million in the first three quarters of 2006 — 10.5 million all-in ones and 6.5 million stand-alone printers.

Multifunction printers now have 74% of the market, up from 66% at the beginning of the year, says Gartner.

The drop-off in sales of single-function printers is so dramatic that Donahoe predicts they could eventually disappear.

“I see them pretty much going away within the next two years,” he says.

Manufacturers prefer selling multifunction units, which run through ink more frequently as consumers use them for color printing, scanning and copying, says Gartner analyst Federico De Silva. “This way, (manufacturers) make more money on ink sales, where the real money is,” he adds.

Printing manufacturers historically have used the razor/razor blade approach — selling cheap printers, with expensive and highly profitable ink. Color ink refills often cost nearly as much as a new printer.

The scanning quality on early all-in-one printers was inferior to stand-alone scanners, but Donahoe says that’s changed.

Professional photographers, architects and other creative professionals will “still want a (separate) scanner, to make wall-size copies,” he says. “But for the mass market, the scans they get on the multifunctions are perfectly good.”

De Silva says consumers might have a hard time finding single-function printers in 2008, though he believes they will remain available for awhile. “There’s always a need for the low end of the market,” he says.

This pen is mightier than the mouse

Jim Jamieson
Province

Bamboo Fun Tablet computer peripheral

$119.99

You’re tired of RSI cramping up your wrist like a seized gate, and you’d like to be a little more creative than you can with a keyboard.

The idea of using a pen doesn’t compute.

It seems like a simple thing, but anyone who’s ever tried a tablet computing interface knows the kick you get in being able to express yourself in a different way. The Bamboo Fun Tablet brings that to the casual user with a minimum of fuss. Simply plug it into your USB port.

The device allows you to touch up digital photos, draw by hand, create artwork and paintings, and even write in your own handwriting in e-mail or add remarks to typed documents just by touching pen to tablet surface.

The tablet represents your computer monitor digitally, so that when you draw a line or make a stroke, it translates into a corresponding line on the screen.

It’s a welcome alternative to a mouse.

The pen that comes with the device is pressure-sensitive, so you can make fine or bold lines depending on how much pressure you’re applying.

The package includes full editions of creative software such as Adobe Photoshop Elements, with Corel Painter Essentials and Nik Color Efex Pro.

As for hardware, the Bamboo Fun Tablet comes with a cordless pen that includes an eraser and a cordless mouse for use on the tablet.

The tablet itself has about a 100 mm by 150 mm active area.

Each unit also includes four programmable keys for launching frequent keystrokes or applications.

The Bamboo Fun Tablet is compatible with both Windows and Mac operating systems.

Available at London Drugs and other electronics stores.

Missing from cyber-schedule are major U.S. shows

Province

TORONTO — Canadians can finally get their Internet TV fixes by paying $1.99 to download missed episodes of shows such as Corner Gas and South Park from Apple Inc.’s iTunes Canada store.

But what appears to be missing from yesterday’s announcement from Apple is a list of hit U.S. television shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and House.

The pay-per-download phenomenon first hit in the U.S. more than a year ago, but Canadians were not able to access hit shows such as Desperate Housewives on the Internet because of “geoblocking” technology — put in place to protect Canadian broadcasters that had paid for the rights to air the shows in Canada.

It appears shows from the major U.S. production houses are still unavailable in this country.

“We’re off to a great start [in Canada] with hit shows from CBC, CTV, Comedy Central and MTV Networks, along with the best of classic and current NHL action,” Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice-president of iTunes, said.

The programs to be offered by iTunes include: Corner Gas, The Hills, The Sarah Silverman Program, Little Mosque on the Prairie, Degrassi: The Next Generation and The Rick Mercer Report.

© The Vancouver Province 2007

 

Watch out for the ‘evil twin’ when using public Wi-Fi

Dan Fost
USA Today

For the modern nomadic worker, few things are more enjoyable than heading to a cafe, ordering a cappuccino and firing up the laptop to get some work done. As far as anyone you’re e-mailing knows, you’re at the office.

Unfortunately, few things expose your work to greater security risks than latching onto a public Wi-Fi service. Most people don’t realize the risks, and even fewer have the ability to perform the geeky tasks that would fix it.

Computer criminals can “sniff” the traffic in a cafe, or set up a fake hot spot that you might innocently log into. When that happens, watch out: Everything you type goes directly to the host computer, known as an “evil twin.” In that scenario, as soon as you get into your online bank account, the evil twin is ready to grab the password.

The best advice for avoiding those situations is to tap only into wireless connections that you trust. Be wary of connections with names such as “free public wifi.” Ask at the cafe for the name of its network. Even then, be aware that someone sitting next to you could have set up a network with the same name, such as “Starbucks,” that you could tap into unwittingly.

Most security-savvy travelers assume the worst and don’t do anything that could cause trouble if it fell into the wrong hands.

“Every packet that goes out over the Internet is observable” by a tech-savvy hacker, says Brett Levine of San Francisco.

Nonetheless, Levine, a vice president at Internet video start-up Dovetail, remains a dedicated cafe worker. He spoke from Hong Kong, at the end of a business trip in which he communicated with “nothing but my laptop. The only connections I’ve had were in hotel lobbies or cafes. I’m sitting here with my ramen noodles.”

He just makes sure that every e-mail he sends is encrypted. And if he’s doing anything sensitive online, he makes sure the site is secure.

For instance, if a website starts with “https” in the address bar instead of the standard “http,” the site is most likely more secure. “Https” is the standard that banks and online trading firms use.

“If you’re on a wireless network, assume it’s public,” says Alex Stamos, vice president of professional services at iSec Partners, a software security consulting firm in San Francisco and Seattle. “If you’re trading stocks, you should be very careful and make sure you’re going over the ‘https’ link.”

Once you’re over “https,” you generally are safe, though there are caveats, says Zulfikar Ramzan, a senior principal researcher at Symantec in Cupertino, Calif. “What ‘https’ guarantees to you is that whoever is receiving your traffic is receiving it encrypted. But that doesn’t guarantee that it goes to the right person.”

Take care in small cafes

Dave Zaytsev, a co-owner of Goliath Security in Chicago who works as a consultant for identity-theft protection company LifeLock, warns that the risks are greater in small, local coffee shops than in chains such as Panera Bread, which advertise their secure networks.

“The corporate places are locked down pretty decent,” Zaytsev says. “The mom-and-pop places that are just trying to compete, like Joe’s Coffee, they don’t have consultants. They just go to Best Buy, buy a Linksys router and have a friend set it up.”

Zaytsev has tested some cafes for local television stations’ consumer news segments and has often been able to see files stored on individuals’ laptops. He’s also done “man in the middle” attacks, in which he scans the traffic in a cafe, then steals people’s usernames and passwords. (The people in his tests were all willing dupes, he says, usually interns at the TV station.)

If you can use your company’s “virtual private network,” or VPN, you can feel fairly safe. VPNs create secure “tunnels,” in which all online communication is encrypted at both ends. But simply using a top security suite from Symantec, McAfee (MFE), Trend Micro or others won’t protect you in a cafe situation. The companies say that while those programs will protect you from viruses and even phishing scams, they can’t save you from traffic that you’ve sent over the open Internet.

“A security suite will protect you if you did end up at a bad site that tried to install malicious software on your machine, but not if you give your credit card to someone else,” says Symantec’s Ramzan.

TV recording device available in U.S. for years is welcomed with open wallets in B.C. stores

Marke Andrews
Sun

Like many marketing managers, Lee Scherbinsky can talk a blue streak about a new product.

But in the case of TiVo, the television recording device, which arrived in British Columbia stores just days ago, Scherbinsky has a personal interest because he got one for himself.

“TiVo is like a VCR on steroids,” said Scherbinsky, home theatre merchandise manager for Future Shop, from the company’s head office in Burnaby.

“The user experience is so remarkable,” said Scherbinsky, who’s had his TiVo for 10 days.

TiVo, which has been available in the U.S. for almost a decade but only reached Canada within the last two weeks, is known as a “smart recorder” of television programming.

The box device, which requires a permanent Internet cable connection or a wireless adapter, will record shows with very little searching. If, say, you like Clint Eastwood westerns but don’t like his cop movies, you can punch in “Clint Eastwood western” and the TiVo will record every Eastwood cowboy movie that comes up in your service area for as long as you like.

It can record two shows at once, or pause live television in case you have to leave the room.

Like a VCR, it can skip past commercials, a plus for viewers who don’t want to sit through a two- or three-minute delay when viewing shows and movies.

The TiVo box, which has an 80-gigabyte hard drive, sells for $200. A wireless adapter retails for $59.

Customers who purchase TiVo must also pay for a monthly or annual subscription charge for the service, which is $12.95 a month or $129 a year.

Future Shop only got TiVo in all its stores on Tuesday, but accepted pre-orders from customers, who got a free wireless adapter with the order.

Susan Kirk, communications manager at Future Shop, said pre-orders were heavy, and she anticipates TiVo will be a big seller during the Christmas shopping period.

TiVo may have a relatively short shelf life, however, because it does not work with high definition (HD) television programming in Canada.

You can get an HD TiVo box in the U.S., but not in Chilliwack or Vancouver. Because of that, Scherbinsky believes that sales “are going to be tempered, to some degree,” because most televisions bought now are HDTVs, although that doesn’t necessarily mean that the HDTV buyer is receiving HD programming.

“Less than 10 per cent of people who buy an HDTV buy HD programming,” said Scherbinsky, adding that those who want a similar device for HD programming will likely get the Shaw box.

Colin Cottrell, merchandise manager for electronics and audio-video systems at London Drugs, said customer reaction to the TiVo has been very strong.

“The sell-through has been incredible considering we haven’t done any advertising,” said Cottrell, who added that the first ad for TiVo appeared in a Tuesday flyer, more than a week after the stores had the device.

“A lot of customers have known about the product for several years, and don’t need really need much explanation,” said Cottrell.

“Others have heard about TiVo, and are coming in and asking lots of questions, and a good percentage of them are buying.

“It’s been selling extremely well,” said Cottrell, who wonders if he should have ordered more TiVos on his initial order.

Best Buy and The Brick stores also sell the TiVo.

INCREASING COMMERCIAL BREAKS ADD TO TIVO’S APPEAL

Just like VCRs and digital video recorders, the new-to-Canada TiVo can fast-forward through commercials when you play back your favourite shows or movies recorded off television.

Sometimes those commercial breaks seem interminable, running for two, three, four minutes at a time. But, then, who’s counting?

The CRTC, that’s who.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has explicit rules as to how much advertising television stations in Canada can carry.

On Sept. 1, that limit rose from 12 minutes to 14 minutes per hour in the prime-time period of 7 p.m. to 11 p.m., and 12 minutes per hour for the rest of the broadcast day.

Half-hour prime-time shows are limited to seven minutes of ads. A two-hour show can package the ads any way it wants (and the tendency is to place more ads as the show reaches its climax), provided the prime-time total does not exceed 28 minutes.

Specialty services — cable and satellite outlets with paid subscribers — can carry 12 minutes of ads per hour of their broadcast day.

The exceptions are community channels, which cannot carry commercial advertising other than sponsorship ads (although community-based stations and digital services with fewer than 2,000 subscribers can carry 12 minutes of local advertising), and pay-TV services, which carry no ads.

Next September, the CRTC limit rises to 15 minutes per hour per broadcast day. But it’s 2009 when items like TiVo will be in demand, because that’s when the CRTC lifts all time limits on commercials.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

iSign Media links flat-panel message displays to consumers’ wireless phones

Derrick Penner
Sun

The next time you’re walking down Robson Street and your phone rings, don’t assume it’s a friend calling.

In shades of the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report, it could be the Bluetooth-enabled advertising display in the shop or bistro you’ve just passed recognizing your Bluetooth wireless phone and beaming you a message: Would like to receive an advertising offer?

You then have take a couple of seconds to decide whether you think it is mobile spam to delete, or a cool new way for businesses to tell you about deals.

Vancouver-based iSign Media is betting it will be the latter. iSign sells the advertising system, called Bluetooth proximity messaging, as an add-on to the flat-panel advertising displays it has around the city.

It is “the final frontier for advertising,” William Urrea, iSign’s vice-president of business opportunities, said in an interview.

The company is sensitive to the possible perception of the advertising messages as just more spam, so it is working on making sure they are attractive incentives rather than generic promotions.

“It’s consumer-permitted advertising,” Urrea said. “Whatever it is, we want to make sure it’s an actual invitation to participate in something,” whether it is a coupon, a discount or some other giveaway.”

One of its restaurant clients, for instance, offers a free plate of chicken wings if the recipient shows their server the ad.

However, if the person being buzzed with the message declines it, Urrea said the system won’t send that ad to him again, and all the ad boards in its networks will not send other messages for a prescribed period of days, or weeks.

“We’re tweaking the system,” Urrea said.

And when a recipient accepts an ad, they won’t receive the same one again, nor will the same board send another ad message from its rotating roster of ads for an hour or two if the person stays in the same location.

Urrea added that in acknowledgment of privacy concerns, the system doesn’t collect personal information such as your name or phone number. It does, however, record the phone’s identification number to build a profile of the user.

The 19-month-old iSign has 25 of its ad display panels in Vancouver, 15 in Calgary and plans to put up 300 more across the country.

However, the question is whether iSign’s messages can break through the virtual blizzard of ad messages that fly around consumers every day, according to Tom Shepansky, a partner in the Vancouver advertising firm Rethink.

“It is literally thousands [of messages],” Shepansky said. “What are you going to remember? A handful, at best.”

However, Shepansky added that the move towards putting content on mobile devices, the so-called “third screen” following television and computers, is evolving into another medium to which advertising must adapt.

Still, Shepansky said it is a case of “more isn’t better.” However, if iSign can deliver more customized and targeted ads, “maybe it’s better. You would have to test drive it.”

iSign president and chairman Alex Romanov said the technology does build profiles of which ads phones accept, and which they reject. That tells advertisers which promotions are effective.

He added that young people, in particular, are getting more used to communicating and doing business with cellphones.

“In Germany and Japan, people use cellphones to pay bills and shop,” Romanov said, and the potential audience for its ads is growing.

Romanov said company research tells them that there are more than 13 million cellphones in Canada, and 2.5 billion worldwide, with the number that are Bluetooth-enabled rising every year.

Urrea added that if people keep the Bluetooth option on their phones turned off, they’ll never receive ads.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

Edward C. Baig
USA Today

Most consumers seeking a new computer this holiday season will buy a Windows PC. And yet judging by the questions I get, many would-be buyers are considering a Macintosh for the first time, possibly because they’re smitten with the iPod, or because of Apple’s clever Mac guy/PC guy TV ads.

I’m a Mac guy, too, though not one who believes bashing Windows is a prerequisite. So consider this column a primer on switching to the Mac. I’ll come back next week with advice for folks who plan on sticking with Windows.

Answers to some key questions:

Why are Macs special?

It’s like explaining the difference between a Buick and a BMW. Both get you from here to there, only the ride is generally smoother and more fun. Put another way, Windows users tolerate their computers to get stuff done. The Mac crowd enjoys its machines, whether managing music in iTunes or pictures in iPhoto.

Mac hardware is beautifully designed; the strikingly thin all-in-one iMac desktop, for example, has an anodized aluminum frame and glossy glass cover. The underlying software is polished, robust and secure, with see-through menus and fanciful icons that spring to life when you click on them. Indeed, Apple’s computers to date have been immune from the scourge of viruses and malware that have long plagued Windows.

Macs aren’t completely trouble-free; programs on my own iMac sometimes freeze up. But the machines are exceedingly reliable, much more so in my experience than their Windows rivals.

Is there a learning curve?

Sure, but it’s not as steep as you might think. Apple’s operating system is known as OS X (pronounced “Oh S Ten”). The latest version carries the nickname Leopard; previous iterations were called Tiger, Jaguar and Panther.

Microsoft’s latest operating system, Windows Vista, adds features that have been part of OS X for a while, including universal desktop search. You’ll have to pick up a new vocabulary, of course. Example: Windows users dispose of files in the “recycle bin.” Mac users dump them in the “trash.”

For $99, you can buy a year’s worth of weekly personalized training sessions at Apple retail stores.

Are there things I can’t do on a Mac?

Occasionally. You may work for a company or take a class whose software requires Windows. But Microsoft has long produced an Office suite for the Mac — a new version is coming — with Word, Excel, PowerPoint and an Outlook-like program called Entourage. So you can read and edit Word files, say, on a PC that were created on a Mac and vice versa.

Mac and Windows PCs can be on the same wired or wireless network, and share printers, common file types, cameras, keyboards and other peripherals. You can even connect a Mac to a PC to move files from one machine to the other.

Printers and other peripherals often work with a Mac out of the box, without you having to load or update software.

Not all programs are superior on a Mac, however. I’ve traditionally preferred the Windows version of Intuit’s Quicken finance software to the Mac version.

Gamers should note that OS X has far fewer titles than Windows does.

You may also run across a website that doesn’t work with Mac’s Safari browser. But the overwhelming majority of sites work just fine with Safari or other Mac-friendly browsers. Microsoft no longer produces or supports Internet Explorer for the Mac.

Aren’t Macs pricier?

Well, you won’t find sub-$400 bargains. The cheapest Mac, the 6.5-inch-square Mac Mini starts at $599 — without monitor, keyboard or mouse.

Among consumer desktops, the iMac line starts at $1,199 (and goes way up from there). It’s sold with a 20- or 24-inch screen.

Apple sells a more expensive Pro line of desktops, but they’re beyond the scope of the typical home user.

Among notebooks, entry-level MacBooks have 13.3-inch displays and cost $1,099 on up; they’re terrific consumer or student notebooks. The MacBook Pro comes in 15- and 17-inch versions and starts at $1,999. It has superior graphics, among other enhancements.

You get a lot of bang for the buck across all the machines, though in some cases you’ll want to splurge for a more generous hard drive and extra memory. New models come with iLife ’08, a slick multimedia software suite for handling pictures (iPhoto), video editing (iMovie), making music (GarageBand) and websites (iWeb).

Leopard has standout features of its own, including Time Machine (dirt-simple backup) and iChat (way cool video chat).

How do I run Windows on a Mac?

Macs with Intel chips — Apple converted all its models over to Intel in 2006 — can run a program called Boot Camp, which comes with Leopard. It lets you boot up into Windows or OS X, but not both simultaneously. And you’ll have to buy your own copy of Windows XP or Vista.

Through so-called virtualization software, available from third-party companies such as Parallels or VMware, you can run the two operating systems at the same time.

Apple owners heap lavish praise on Macs for good reason. These are solid and elegant computers that are well worth your consideration.

Danny Bradbury
Sun

The e-mails began to arrive just hours after the collapse of the World Trade Center, says Audri Lanford, the Internet entrepreneur and operator of online scam awareness site scambusters.org. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, changed the world in ways large and small, and one was evident in the kind of the mail that started flooding Lanford’s inbox in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

“We started to see e-mails asking people to help the victims, and of course they asked people to go to a page and contribute,” she says. “What they really wanted was your bank or credit card information so that they could steal your identity.”

With over a billion people online and the numbers growing daily, there is no end of fraudsters eager to part good-hearted people from their money. E-mails like those that followed the 9/11 attacks now appear after every major disaster. The Katrina hurricane and the 2005 Asian tsunami each spurred fraud artists into action aiming to capitalize on the misfortunes of others.

But online scams try to exploit more than human misery, says Susan Grant, director of the U.S. National Consumers League’s fraud centre. “All scams can be put into certain categories,” she says. “Many offer ways to win money, earn money, or save money. The ‘win money’ ones — the bogus lotteries and sweepstakes — are very popular year-round.”

You might never fall for an e-mail from someone you don’t know asking you to enter a competition. But other common e-mails might well fool you if you’re not prepared. The Internet may be evolving at breakneck speed, but scams rely on aspects of the human psyche that will never change.

THE ADVANCE FEE SCAM

This scam shows up in various guises, but the most common is the 419 scam, often originating in Nigeria and named after the section of that country’s criminal code that deals with obtaining money under false pretenses. The scammer claims to have information about a sizeable fortune, but for some reason needs a third party — the victim — to access it in return for a portion of the cash. If the victim agrees, the scammer begins asking for money to overcome small obstacles such as bribing officials and paying transfer fees. “They will keep going until you stop paying,” Lanford says.

Protective measure: Common sense. If a deal is too good to be true, then it isn’t.

AUCTION FRAUD

Mainly perpetrated via eBay because of the site’s popularity, auction fraud comes in many forms. Escrow fraud is one of the most common. The scammer either wins a bid on an item or auctions a high-value item of their own that doesn’t exist. They then ask the victim to send goods or payment to an escrow company that will hold it until the scammer fulfils their part of the bargain, ensuring that both parties are satisfied. In reality, the escrow company address is operated by the scammer, and as soon as the victim’s assets reach their destination, they disappear along with the fraudster.

Protective measure: Education. Read eBay’s anti-fraud pages at http://pages.ebay.ca/securitycentre/avoiding_fraud.html. Don’t ever settle a deal by transacting outside the auction service.

STOCK SCAMS

Ever received an e-mail offering a hot stock tip? Don’t be fooled. Scammers choose a company with stock traded on low value ‘microscap‘ exchanges, and send out hundreds of thousands of spam e-mails predicting a rise in value. If even a small percentage of those victims fall for the scam and purchase shares, it forces the price up. The scammer, who purchased stock before the ruse began, now sells it off at a huge profit. The price falls and the victims lose out.

Protective measure: Invest wisely. If you’re following stock tips from unknown individuals about unknown companies, you’re in the wrong business.

PHISHING

Scammers send e-mails to the victim pretending to be from a well-known company with online access, such as a bank or online retailer.

The mail uses a ruse such as a security check to persuade victims to visit a linked website and enter their account details. The site is owned by the scammer and tailored to look like the company’s real site. The customer’s information (which may include credit card details) is then used to access real accounts and steal assets.

As consumers get wise to this scam, criminals are refining it, sending out fewer e-mails containing well-researched individual information about the target victim, such as first name and company name.

This technique, called ‘spearphishing‘, can dupe victims who already may be aware of phishing fraud.

Protective measure: Invest in a tool such as McAfee’s SiteAdvisor, which warns you if a site you’re surfing to is a known phishing site.

Reputable online sites never send such e-mails.

WORK AT HOME

Often appealing to stay-at-home mothers, such scams are particularly distasteful because they can incriminate the victim. A common version is the reshipping scam, where the scammer asks the target to transfer goods or funds overseas on a fictional company’s behalf.

The assets are normally obtained via another scam.

For example, “the scammer buys goods with stolen credit cards and has the goods shipped to the victim because many vendors won’t ship internationally,” says Grant.

Some victims are asked to take funds transferred from another bank account to theirs, shipping it to the scammer via Western Union.

The victim acts as a money mule for funds that have been stolen by phishing or other fraudulent activity, and will be the first (and possibly only) port of call for law enforcement.

Protective measure: Use your head. Treat any get-rich-quick schemes with healthy skepticism.

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

 

Darcy Keith
Sun

When gadgets want to speak to each other these days, they can do it in secret.

Bluetooth, a wireless technology that connects all manner of electronic devices, has become ubiquitous in our daily lives and has made life more convenient and less cluttered.

But this no-wires-attached world has cybercriminals plotting to listen in. They are ready to turn it into a pathway to your bank account or other sensitive information.

Bluetooth has taken a big bite out of the global wireless market in recent years, with an increasing number of consumer products using the short-range radio frequency technology.

Providing a life free of annoying wires and cords, Bluetooth is available on everything now from desktops, printers and automobiles to cellphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile computers.

Just look around, and you will probably find someone talking on one of those headsets with the blinking bright blue LED light — the telltale sign of a mobile phone that doesn’t require any hand-holding thanks to Bluetooth.

But as the popularity of Bluetooth increases, so does its interest to identity thieves hungry to get personal information either being transmitted online or stored on your mobile device.

Many security issues involving Bluetooth centre around mobile devices, such as cellphones and PDAs, in part because they can now hold a great deal of this sensitive information.

“Mobile device security in general, in my opinion, isn’t really getting an appropriate amount of attention,” Ollie Whitehouse, security response researcher for Symantec Corp., the world’s biggest security software maker, said in an interview from London. “There are people downloading more sensitive information to mobile devices that may have things like their credit card numbers. However, people rarely treat them with the same respect, or as seriously, as say their house keys. Yet potentially the data on the device is just as important, and the impact of losing it and misuse is potentially just as high.”

Security threats to Bluetooth emerged a few years ago, and it didn’t take long for the attack jargon to arrive. There is Bluesnarfing, which involves secretly obtaining sensitive information such as address books and e-mail from user devices; Bluejacking (also known as Bluespamming), where an unauthorized individual sends a text message or file anonymously from one Bluetooth device to another, and Bluebugging, or the theft of mobile-phone commands using Bluetooth technology without notifying the device owner.

Bluebugging is a key concern because it allows the hacker to do such things as initiate phone calls, send and receive text messages, eavesdrop on phone conversations and connect to the Internet. Imagine if a hacker sends a text message warning of a bomb threat, and it looks as though the sender was you. There is even the potential for an intruder to place a virus on your handheld device, wreaking the same kind of havoc it would have on your computer.

But Mike Haro, senior security analyst with IT security company Sophos, notes that the security threat arising from Bluetooth use in cellphones and PDAs is still at the “proof of concept stage.” Actual cases of identity theft have been hard to find.

“Everything we’ve seen to date has been examples of ways in which Bluetooth can be exploited or how any infection could be spread via handset. . . . We haven’t seen anything that’s actually been largely propagated in the real world.”

To reduce your risk of identity theft, experts recommend turning off the “discoverable” mode of your Bluetooth cellphone or PDA, which sends a signal indicating it’s looking to pair with another Bluetooth gadget to transmit data. When left on, an attacker could detect the signal and attempt to pair with your device for the purpose of stealing your personal identification number. That’s when the real troubles begin, because with that PIN in hand, that attacker could retrieve all sorts of stored information.

To further minimize your risk, it’s recommended that you use a good PIN code, at least five digits long, that’s harder to crack. And perhaps more simple yet, avoid storing sensitive data such as your social security and credit card numbers.

© The Vancouver Sun 2007

A new website matches restless users with people who want to buy their existing contracts

Gillian Shaw
Sun

When Bijan Shahrokhi heard Apple’s new iPhone was coming out he decided as soon as it reached Canada he would get one.

But between him and the iPhone was the small but pricey matter of two-years-plus left in a cellphone contract that would cost him hundreds of dollars to get out of before he could sign up with Rogers, the network the iPhone would use if it came to Canada.

The dilemma led the University of Toronto electrical engineering grad to launch CellClients.com, a brokerage site that brings together buyers and sellers of cellphone contracts.

It gives customers like Shahrokhi — who want to escape their long-term contracts — a way out. And it offers buyers a chance to pick up contracts that may have better terms than current ones. Sometimes phones and even cash incentives are thrown in.

Shahrokhi sees it as a win-win-win situation. Disgruntled customers get to leave without incurring the full financial penalty of breaking a cellphone contract. Buyers get to pick and choose the best offerings. And mobile phone carriers get a new customer instead of simply losing an upset one.

“It is actually permitted by the wireless providers and it is beneficial to them because we help them replace an unhappy customer with a happy customer,” said Shahrokhi. “The benefits of getting out of a cellphone contract are clear. On average it costs people $400 to get out of their contracts — that’s based on the average number of remaining months when contracts are cancelled which is 20 based on our statistics and client surveys.

“And if you are buying it, you receive free activation, a free SIM [subscriber identity module] card, and a free cellphone handset.”

The website also offers an interesting demonstration of the widely varying rates people are paying for cellphone service. For example, on CellClients.com you can choose from a plan with 200 weekday minutes and unlimited early nights and weekends for $25 a month — or you pay $60 a month to get only 150 weekday minutes and unlimited evenings and weekends. It would take a spread sheet analysis to compare the pluses and minuses.

If you want to spend $50 a month, you can choose plans ranging from 150 weekday minutes to 1,000 minutes. Like the carrier offerings, the contacts being sold represent a range of features and limitations so buyers have to figure out for themselves if it’s a good deal.

But at a time when the Canadian government has announced it is opening up the wireless market to increased competition starting in 2008, price and service discrepancies are going to become increasingly important to consumers here who are already paying rates among the highest in the world.

On CellClients.com sellers who have less popular contracts, phone models that no one wants or a very long time left on a contract, must spice up their offerings with cash incentives.

“Sellers will say, ‘I’ll give you $100 to get out of my contract,’ ” Shahrokhi said.

Potential buyers e-mail the seller if they are interested in a particular contract offering and the sellers then pay CellClients.com a one-time fee of $14.90 to unlock their mailbox and read the messages.

Once they unlock their messages, it is up to the seller to get in touch with the buyer and agree on terms.

“All they need to do is call the provider and let them know they want to transfer the ownership,” said Shahrokhi. “The provider does a credit check with the new customer and then the buyer takes over the contract.”

Terms and conditions may vary with the carrier and the contract, but generally speaking and depending on the type of contract, carriers don’t prohibit such transfers.

Shawn Hall, spokesman for Telus, said that company’s cellphone contract can be transferred subject to a successful credit check on the new subscriber. The new subscriber must also agree to terms and conditions of the contract, along with paying a small fee.

Rebecca Catley, representing Rogers, said transferring a Rogers account from one individual to another is a legal ownership change requiring consent from both parties and a credit check of the new account holder. Outstanding balances at the time of transfer remain the liability of the account holder under whom the charges were incurred. She said some contracts allow for transfer of ownership and some not. For example, plans designed for a particular business couldn’t be transferred to an individual.

Shahrokhi’s site has been running for 31/2 months and it just passed the 1,000 active member mark. Some 250 contracts have been transferred through the site.

As for Shahrokhi, he’s still waiting for the iPhone to reach Canada and then his cellphone contract will be up for grabs.

THE GREAT CONTRACT ESCAPE

You can get out of that cellphone contract by selling it, and you can get into a shorter-term contract by buying one with only part of the time remaining on it. Here are some examples of what’s for sale on CellClients.com.

(For space reasons, not all the details of these example offers are included. Some plans, such as the Telus example, included features such as text messaging and voice mail not shown here.)

 

© The Vancouver Sun 2007