LinkedIn Scamming Customers?

Anyone who is active in the professional world loves LinkedIn. (In my opinion) it is an absolutely flawless way to network, get your name out there, and build up on online resume that is able to be referenced on websites,blogs, or emails. It allows companies seeking employees an easy venue to find qualified personnel, helps skilled labor to find a company looking for someone just like them, and rekindles old flames left to die. Okay, so maybe isn't the hotbed of romantic activity on the internet, but its great for business. Especially LinkedIn's bottom line.


"How can LinkedIn benefit from networking?"

When you sign up for LinkedIn, you are asked to complete a resume of sorts. This initial information includes your name, date of birth, field of business,location and interests. Then you of course have the option of adding where you have worked, gone to school, and clubs/associations you are a part of. After all these personally identifiable things, you are then given the option of Joining Linkedin "Groups". These are generally trade groups or groups that allow a person to further network their profile. In short, LinkedIn has developed a complete advertiser's dream scenario. A company can buy your profile information from LinkedIn, and are provided with all of your information, along with means of contact for you. In general, LinkedIn has a full demographical breakdown of you and anyone you "Invite" to LinkedIn. And whereas the majority of LinkedIn users are over 40 and have incomes of over $100,000 dollars- they are the ideal targets of marketers, both legitimate and not. Recently LinkedIn decided to advertise merchandise to its users, but in a selective manner. For example, if Mercedes decided to advertise its new model, it would go to LinkedIn and they would choose from the member database the ones that fitted the marketing campaign. Then, LinkedIn decided to make a little more money by offering Premium Business and Premium Business Plus. With a regular membership you couldn't just send someone an e-mail, you had to be introduced first; with the new types of membership, this was no longer an issue. HR companies saw a great opportunity in this and for good reason. All they had to do was pay and they had access to all sorts of potential job candidates.

Their new Enterprise Corporate Solution gives access to all 23 million users of LinkedIn.

Open Source Routers!

Netgear has announced the launch of its WGR614L open source Wireless-G router.

The fully-featured wireless router is designed to support a variety of applications created by the open source community.

The router supports Linux-based Tomato and DD-WRT firmware and will soon support OpenWRT.

It is powered by a 240MHz MIPS32 CPU with 16KB of instruction cache, 16KB of data cache and 1KB of pre-fetch cache, and incorporates 4MB of Flash memory and 16MB of Ram.

"There has been growing demand for more powerful platforms to support open source enthusiasts seeking to create more robust, commercial-grade applications for their wireless routers," said Som Pal Choudhury, senior product line manager for advanced wireless at Netgear.

The router features a single 10/100 internet Wan port, a four-port 10/100 Lan switch, an 802.11g access point and all of the most common security and logging features.

"An important feature of our offering is the dedicated and responsive open source community which enables users to easily exchange ideas and troubleshoot issues," explained Choudhury.

"New applications currently being developed include traffic shaping applications, redirections to captive portals for hotspots, guest access via a separate SSID, upstream and downstream QOS and intelligent bandwidth monitoring. "

Ironically the router is also 'Works with Windows Vista' certified. The WGR614L is available now for around $69.

Is Windows the Problem?

Using virus and malware-laden software used to just be a bad for one's productivity. As it turns out, it can also be a bad idea for one's career.

Michael Fiola, formerly an investigator with the Massachusetts Department of Industrial Accidents, was charged with possession of child pornography. He lost his community's respect, many of his friends, and his family. His crime? He was given a Windows-based laptop that was riddled with vulnerabilities that were or became prey to malware.

An investigation showed he hadn't downloaded the pornography. His computer did:

When the DIA issued Fiola his Dell Latitude laptop in November 2006, it was so badly configured that it may well have already been hacked, said Tami Loehrs, a forensics investigator hired by Fiola's defense team. The Microsoft Systems Management Server software on the laptop was misconfigured and was not receiving critical software updates, and the laptop's Symantec antivirus software was either misconfigured or not working properly, she said.

"He was handed a ticking time bomb," she said.

In this case, it's called Windows. Or, more accurately, an IT department that inflicted a poorly implemented Windows environment on Mr. Fiola. Could this have happened with Linux or the Mac? Yes and maybe. Yes, because weak IT yields weak security. But maybe, because both of these Unix-based systems handle security much better than Windows traditionally has. But that's not really the point.

The real villain here, of course, is the pornography swine that would inflict themselves on unsuspecting users. There are enough losers out there interested in porn to not have to trick them into viewing it or distributing it.

We like to think of our computers as tools. In this case, however, it was Mr. Fiola that became the tool, however unwittingly.

This calls to mind just how critical it is to ensure our systems are secure. If, in fact, Linux or Mac are more secure from this sort of problem (a point that is debatable), then the "low cost" associated with Windows and ease of use must be balanced against the very real problems that can arise from using Windows (or, at least, older versions of Windows).

Did Microsoft create this problem for Mr. Fiola? No. If anything, it sounds like his IT department is to blame. But if it were me, I'd be asking for a Mac when joining a new company. With the Mac, my odds of having a Fiola-esque experience go down dramatically.