2-Factor Authentication

The short guide to going online in public really should point out the danger of key loggers and the importance of two- factor authentication. Here are two tips that I suggest if you ever "need" to do sensitive work on a public computer:

1. Setup your email and any other accounts with two-factor authentication whenever it is available. This must be done beforehand. Gmail, PayPal and eBay are three online services that offer two-factor authentication. There are many others.

2. If you can't or don't use two-factor authentication, you must assume that whatever username/password you type on the public computer will be recorded. For this reason, it is critical that you change the password on all of those accounts as soon as you have access to a secure computer. You should also monitor those accounts for suspicious activity and report any violations immediately. - DF

Editor's Note: Simply put, two-factor authentication is an approach to authentication requiring two different confirmations that someone is who they say they are. This lessens the ability of the hacker to get into your account.

Facebook Friend or Foe

"How sad it would be if people took your advice and hid on Facebook. It's a great public place and treated with the same respect you would in any public place it's wonderful. Those sad people who are locked down miss the wonderful world it is. But I guess fear is your business like any insurance sales person (Editor's Note: Not really, you can look me up on Facebook any old time)."

My Twopenn'orth: Wrong analogy. I'd say Facebook is not 'any public place'. It's more like trusting people through a front gate and into the back yard. Usually OK, but some people are not trustworthy, and will use that space for their hidden purposes: a bit of sneaky vandalism, an opportunity to embarrass, bully, or defraud you without witnesses [so they think]. I'm not a fearful person, but I'm older now, and live 'alone'. I've learned to be more cautious, and not to be so quick to trust the friendly smile and plausible talk of those who are looking for situations where they'll find people they deem to be more vulnerable. In truly 'public places' there are plenty of witnesses, and 'the bad folk' cannot so easily hide themselves and their actions.

I don't find your mailings increase my fear level - they simply alert me to possibilities. When I had an email from a friend last year, with a link to something she knew would interest me, I read the email through again, thought about it, and didn't click on the link. Email deleted.

Why? Because you had just highlighted the growing problem of false emails, and the opening greeting was not her usual style. Later I had another email from her, warning me someone had got hold of her address book, and had sent out viral emails to all her friends. Thank you, Larry. - DJ

Repair Outlook data files (.pst and .ost)

If you can't open your Personal Folders file (.pst) or your Offline Folder file (.ost), or you suspect that your .pst or .ost data file is corrupt, you can use the Inbox Repair tool (Scanpst.exe), to diagnose and repair errors in the file.

Quit Microsoft Outlook if it's running.

Double-click Scanpst.exe, located at drive:\Program Files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\LocaleID folder - where LocaleID is the locale identifier (LCID) for the installation of Microsoft Office. The LCID for English - United States is 1033.

In the Enter the name of the file you want to scan box, enter the name of the .pst or .ost file that you want to check, or click Browse to look for the file.

To specify scan log options, click Options, and then click the option you want.

Click Start.

When the scanning is completed, and if errors were found, you will be prompted to start the repair process.

To change the name or location of the backup file created during the repair process, in theEnter name of backup file box, enter a new name, or click Browse to look for the file.

Click Repair.

Start Outlook using the profile that contains the .pst file that you tried to repair.

On the Go menu, click Folder List.

In the Folder List, you may see a Recovered Personal Folders folder containing default Outlook folders or a Lost and Found folder. The recovered folders are usually empty, because this is a rebuilt .pst file. The Lost and Found folder contains folders and items that the Inbox Repair tool recovered. Items that are missing from the Lost and Found folder cannot be repaired.

If you see a Recovered Personal Folders folder, you can create a new .pst file, and then drag the items in the Lost and Found folder into the new .pst file. When you have finished moving all items, you can remove the Recovered Personal Folders (.pst) file, including the Lost and Found folder, from your profile.

NOTES

If you are able to open the original .pst file, you may be able to recover additional items from your damaged .pst file. By default, the Inbox Repair tool creates a file called file name .bak, which is a copy of the original .pst file with a different extension. The .bak file is located in the same folder as your original .pst file. You may be able to recover items from the .bak file that the Inbox Repair tool could not recover. Make a copy of the .bak file, giving the file a new name with a .pst extension. Import the "bak.pst" file, and then move any additional recovered items to the new .pst file that you created.
A copy of the log file is written to the same location as the .pst file.

Word of the day: Big Mother

Big Mother is the concept of pervasive parenting, in which parents use modern geolocation, wireless and video technologies to constantly track the activities of a child.

The term is a play on the Orwellian construct of "Big Brother," in which government "Thought Police" monitor a population by using human agents armed with hidden cameras and microphones. The Big Mother phenomenon has seen a sharp spike in recent years as relatively inexpensive wireless digital cameras and GPS devices have become available to parents who are unable to monitor their children in person but are still concerned about their safety.

Cell phones are a common way for parents to remain in contact with children throughout the day. Other technologies, like RFID tags, may be embedded in schoolbags or clothing to track the location of children within school or day care grounds, a practice that has already been implemented in select institutions in California. Some schools provide parents with access to secure Web sites, where they can sign in and watch their child at school or play and keep tabs on what homework has been assigned. Parents can even use debit or charge cards as a relatively low tech tracking device to monitor their child's dietary choices in the school cafeteria or purchases at the local convenience store. In the neighborhood, parents can use security cameras to watch children interacting with other children, enabling correction of deviance from a desired parental norm by cell phone or push-to-talk (PPT) phone.

School-age kids are not the only people Big Mother is watching. Anyone who interacts with children is fair game. School bus drivers, for example, can have their busses equipped with GPS-navigation systems to let the parent know where the bus is and how fast the bus is moving. In the home, parents may use stuffed animals or other toys to hide cameras to watch nannies or babysitters.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1: To Install or Not to Install

First of all, the service pack is not mandatory. You can install it through Windows Update but it won't be pushed to you automatically; it's an optional update so you have to select to install it. Should you do that? It depends. This service pack doesn't add a lot of cool new features, but it does improve some behaviors and performance of the OS. Many of these only affect a limited number of users. If you need to print XPS documents that contain a mixture of pages in the landscape and portrait formats, you might have had problems getting them to print correctly before. The service pack fixes this problem. There's also a fix for problems some folks had with HDMI audio devices after a reboot. If you check the "restore previous folders at logon" option in Explorer's folder options, you might have noticed that the folders show up in a cascaded group when they're restored. That can be annoying - you want them to come back positioned as they were before. Well, the service pack fixes that. Finally, there's added support for a new processor extension called AVX and new hard drives that use 4KB sectors.

All in all, not terribly exciting. Of course, SP1 also contains all the security updates that have been released individually for Windows 7. If you've been installing those as they became available, you already have them and don't need SP1 for that. However, if you've had auto updates turned off and haven't been keeping up with the monthly patches, installing SP1 is an easy way to catch up and get your system security up to date.

I installed SP1 on one of my main computers. The other, which has had all incremental security fixes installed, I left alone. The full download from the Microsoft download site ranges from 538 MB for the 32 bit (X86) version to 903 MB for the 64 bit (X64) version, so it may not be a quick download, depending on the speed of your Internet connection. It took about four and a half minutes on my FiOS connection. The installation itself went smoothly on my Dell Inspiron (a.k.a. the Bedroom Computer) and took around half an hour. The Windows Update version may be smaller because it downloads only the files needed for your particular system, but if you prefer to download the service pack from the Microsoft Download Center, you'll find it here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyId=c3202ce6-4056-4059-8a1b-3a9b77cdfdda&hash=xoX2ZJ0I%2FyoKQBxVNZdfZKYFuTWtotYEpPl4kQdR81siOU6XUGhyN2eAgEoA0qLDGMoBx6F5uWOhJCE5mgjLGQ%3D%3D

The file is an executable, so all you have to do is double click on it to start the process. You should be logged on as an administrator and make sure that no other users are logged on, and you'll need to close all your programs before you start installing. If you should happen to have installed the SP1 beta, uninstall it first. We'll tell you how to do that in this week's "How To" section below.

I had no problems with the SP1 installation and based on what I'm hearing from readers who have installed it, and from monitoring the web forums, it's going well for the vast majority of Windows 7 users. However, something could always go wrong. A service pack updates critical operating system files, and a power glitch or hardware failure during the installation could have a devastating effect. Thus I recommend you back up all important data to an external disk or network location before you proceed with the installation. I know most people probably won't do it, and most won't suffer any ill effects from that decision, but it stinks to be the one who loses irreplaceable data because you tried to save a little time. Also, if you're updating a portable computer (laptop or Windows 7 tablet), be sure you plug it into A/C power before you start the installation. Even if you have a full battery, it's best not to risk a power failure during installation. Finally, you might need to temporarily disable your anti-virus program. Some AV programs can interfere with the service pack installation. If you do, don't forget to turn it back on as soon as you finish installing the service pack.

Have you installed SP1 on your Windows 7 computer yet? Did you run into any problems? Were you disappointed that the service pack didn't really seem to change anything or add any noticeable new functionality? What changes were hoping for, that you'd like to see in SP2? Or is it a very good thing that Windows 7 is already so stable, fast and user-friendly that no dramatic changes were necessary? Should Microsoft have just skipped the service pack and waited until it had more to offer?

How to uninstall the SP1 beta

You need to uninstall the beta of Service Pack 1 before you install the final release. Here's how you do that:
Click Start | Control Panel | Programs and Features (if you're not in Classic view, this is in the Programs category).
Click View Installed Updates.
On the Uninstall an Update page, click "Service Pack for Microsoft Windows (KB 976932)
Click Uninstall.
Follow the instructions to remove the beta from your machine.

Audio volume recorded by Sound Recorder is lower than in XP

Have you noticed that when you record audio through a microphone, using the Sound Recorder application in Windows 7 (or Vista), playback volume is lower than in XP using the same input volume settings? That's because the Sound Recorder now has different default settings. KB article 973446 tells you how to adjust the record volume.

The audio volume recorded by Sound Recorder in Windows Vista or in Windows 7 is lower than in Windows XP