Have a Monster.com Account…Yeah Your Information Was Probably Stolen

To show why we need a Data Privacy Day, Monster.com has informed their customers that someone has stolen account names, passwords, email addresses, and phone numbers of their Monster.com accounts.  Have you ever posted your resume or applied for a job through Monster?  If the answer is yes, then you had an account with them.  There is some confusion as to if the information stolen was all accounts, or just the “recruiters” accounts.  

Regardless of which accounts where stolen, how does Monster inform their customer base that this happened?  An email, a letter in the mail?  Noooooo, a little ity bity link on their website with a note that some information was stolen…What makes this even worse, this has happened to them 3 times in the past…3 TIMES! The last time they were hacked was in 2007.  

If you had an account with Monster, the first thing you should do is either log in to your account and change your password, or two delete your account like I did.  If you use the same login information across the web you might want to think about changing your passwords since someone might have them now.  Your banks, or places you pay bills (a.k.a. where you have credit information stored) might be the first place to start.  If you want to read the sorry press release that Monster released click the link below.  After reading it, if you want to go punch someone from Monster in the face they are based out of  Maynard, Massachusetts.

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GMGs Are Gone…Or Are They?

For those who visit my blog through the website instead of using an RSS feed reader, you might notice one less heading at the top of the website this morning.  I had a section devoted to things that “Grind My Gears”.  Yes I stole it from Family Guy, but I thought it was a neat addition that I wanted on my site.  I had the intention of doing more artsy stuff with that page, but it became difficult to keep up with it being that I had to be at my Mac at home to make any changes.  So to make up for the loss of the page, I am going to start making GMGs blog posts with that as the category.  This way I can add items on the fly, and will still be able to keep them separate by filtering the category.  Since on a daily basis there is typically at least one thing that gets to me, you should see frequent posts under that category.  :)

In addition to adding this new category, I’ve also decided to add a new section to the sidebar of the website (at least on the blog page).  This will allow you to choose a specific category and see all the posts with those tags. I hope this makes the site easier to navigate now that the number of total posts are increasing steadily.

7 Tips To Secure Your Mac’s Data

Did anyone know it was Data Privacy Day yesterday?  Anyone…anyone???  Yeah I didn’t either.  The Unofficial Apple Weblog has some tips on how to keep the data on your mac secure.  Though they are quite mac-centric, the ideas themselves could be implemented on whichever platform you use.  Click the link below to read more.

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Gmail Now Available Offline

Google released instructions on how to save your g-mail email to your local machine for viewing when you are away from an internet connection.  Seeing that I spend most my time at work or at home, which both have connections, this doesn’t really help me all that much.  That being said, I believe this could really benefit people that travel for work a lot, or are travelling to different sites all the time. I know at my last job it would have been helpful to have access to attachments etc, when I was at a client site with no network connection. Click the link below if you would like the instructions on how to set your computer up for offline viewing. 

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Digital TV Conversion Delay Rejected by The House

For those that follow such things, the House flatly rejected the proposed delay of the digital tv conversion.  For those who haven’t been following, all tv station must change their analog broadcasts over to digital format by February 17th.  For those who live in the 21st century, you might not even notice a difference, but for those who still use rabbit ears to get their tv signals or a tv that was made in the 1950s, you might need to get a digital converter box to continue to get your 4 free channels.  Congress was worried that people weren’t going to be ready, and that they would have a mob of seniors screaming that they could no longer see their stories.  Another reason for delay was that Congress’ coupon program was running out of money…yes tax dollars were being used to the tune of 1.3 billion dollars to help people purchase a digital converter box so people could continue to get free tv.  If people cannot afford cable or satellite tv…I understand..Cable tv can be a pricey monthly bill to pay…but for those who cannot afford a 40 dollar converter box, maybe you should be doing something other than sitting on your butt watching fuzzy tv signals.  I am mad that my tax money was being used for this, and I am mad that millions of people are still not ready for the conversion even though the FCC has been blasting messages for the past 24 months. I am glad that the House put the kibosh on the delay and moved forward with the original plan.  If you would like to read more about this, click on the link below:

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