Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist

Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Journalist @baltimoresun writer artist runner #amwriting Md Troopers Assoc #20 & Westminster Md Fire Dept Chaplain PIO #partylikeajournalist
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

Thursday, February 07, 2019

USDA launches high-speed broadband e-connectivity resource guide


Broadband e-connectivity guide available

USDA launches high-speed broadband e-connectivity resource guide

PUBLISHED ON February 6, 2019

WASHINGTON — Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett today announced the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has launched a new toolkit to help support the deployment of high-speed broadband e-Connectivity in rural communities.

“High-speed broadband e-Connectivity is becoming more and more essential to doing business, delivering health care, and, for schoolchildren, doing homework in rural communities,” Hazlett said. “This user-friendly tool will help rural customers find the many resources USDA has available to support the expansion and use of e-Connectivity in rural America.”

The e-Connectivity Toolkit (PDF, 4.3 MB) features 27 USDA programs that support broadband deployment. The easy-to-use resource is a simple guide that allows customers to identify their type of e-Connectivity project and locate resources the federal government offers for planning, equipment, construction, research and other e-Connectivity projects. Resources such as grants, loans and technical assistance are available from multiple Mission Areas at USDA, including Rural Development, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Farm Service Agency, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Forest Service.

The toolkit highlights examples of how e-Connectivity resources are being used to increase access to broadband services in rural communities. It is free and available to the public online, and can be easily printed for offline use.

USDA’s launch of the e-Connectivity Toolkit closely follows Secretary Sonny Perdue’s unveiling of the ReConnect Program, a pilot program authorized by the Consolidated Budget Act of 2018, to facilitate broadband deployment in rural areas that lack sufficient access to broadband.

In April 2017, President Donald J. Trump established the Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity to identify legislative, regulatory and policy changes that could promote agriculture and prosperity in rural communities. In January 2018, Secretary Perdue presented the Task Force’s findings to President Trump. These findings included 31 recommendations to align the federal government with state, local and tribal governments to take advantage of opportunities that exist in rural America. Increasing investments in rural infrastructure is a key recommendation of the task force.

To view the report in its entirety, please view the Report to the President of the United States from the Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity (PDF, 5.4 MB). In addition, to view the categories of the recommendations, please view the Rural Prosperity infographic (PDF, 190 KB).

USDA Rural Development provides loans and grants to help expand economic opportunities and create jobs in rural areas. This assistance supports infrastructure improvements; business development; housing; community facilities such as schools, public safety and health care; and high-speed internet access in rural areas. For more information, visit www.rd.usda.gov.

–USDA

For more articles concerning infrastructure, click here.
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Carroll County Times: www.tinyurl.com/KED-CCT
Baltimore Sun Carroll Eagle: http://tinyurl.com/KED-Sun
Westminster Fire Dept. and MTA Lodge #20 Chaplain and PIO
Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://www.kevindayhoff.com/
Tumblr: Kevin Dayhoff Banana Stems www.kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/
Kevin Dayhoff Time Flies: https://kevindayhoff.wordpress.com/

Tuesday, February 05, 2019

Shutting down Google+ for consumer (personal) accounts on April 2, 2019



What a total PIA!

Shutting down Google+ for consumer (personal) accounts on April 2, 2019

January 30, 2019

In December 2018, we announced our decision to shut down Google+ for consumers in April 2019 due to low usage and challenges involved in maintaining a successful product that meets consumers’ expectations. We want to thank you for being part of Google+ and provide next steps, including how to download your photos and other content.

On April 2nd, your Google+ account and any Google+ pages you created will be shut down and we will begin deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts.

Photos and videos from Google+ in your Album Archive and your Google+ pages will also be deleted. You can download and save your content, just make sure to do so before April.

Note that photos and videos backed up in Google Photos will not be deleted.

The process of deleting content from consumer Google+ accounts, Google+ Pages, and Album Archive will take a few months, and content may remain through this time. For example, users may still see parts of their Google+ account via activity log and some consumer Google+ content may remain visible to G Suite users until consumer Google+ is deleted.

As early as February 4th, you will no longer be able to create new Google+ profiles, pages, communities, or events. See the full FAQ for more details and updates leading up to the shutdown.

If you’re a Google+ Community owner or moderator, you may download and save your data for your Google+ Community. Starting early March 2019, additional data will be available for download, including author, body, and photos for every community post in a public community. Learn more

If you sign in to sites and apps using the Google+ Sign-in button, these buttons will stop working in the coming weeks but in some cases may be replaced by a Google Sign-in button. You’ll still be able to sign in with your Google Account wherever you see Google Sign-in buttons. Learn more

If you’ve used Google+ for comments on your own or other sites, this feature will be removed from Blogger by February 4th and other sites by March 7th. All your Google+ comments on all sites will be deleted starting April 2, 2019. Learn more

If you’re a G Suite customer, Google+ for your G Suite account should remain active. Contact your G Suite administrator for more details. You can also expect a new look and new features soon. Learn more

If you're a developer using Google+ APIs or Google+ Sign-in, click here to see how this will impact you.

From all of us on the Google+ team, thank you for making Google+ such a special place. We are grateful for the talented group of artists, community builders, and thought leaders who made Google+ their home. It would not have been the same without your passion and dedication.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

The latest of the clumsy error messages folks get on their computers is one that reads: “Sorry, Backup and Sync needs to quit.”

The latest of the clumsy error messages folks get on their computers is one that reads: “Sorry, Backup and Sync needs to quit.” http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2017/03/the-latest-of-clumsy-error-messages.html 

7:30 p.m. EST 16Mar2017


The latest of the all-too-frequent clumsy error messages folks get on their computers from Microsoft, Google, Adobe, et al, is one that reads: “Sorry, Backup and Sync needs to quit.” 7:30 p.m. EST 16Mar2017

LOL – What the What. Curious, I did search on “Sorry, Backup and Sync needs to quit,” and tech writer, Corbin Davenport, writing for the website, Android Police,” seems to have just unraveled the mystery, minutes ago… http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/03/16/google-drive-windows-self-updating-backup-sync-breaking-process/

“Did you think Google's intentional downgrade OTA for the Nexus 6 from yesterday was bad? Google appears to be on a mission to break as many products as possible, and next up is the Google Drive client for Windows.

“If you've ever used Google Drive (or similar cloud services), you'll know that there is a Windows client that syncs all your Drive files locally to your computer. It hasn't received much attention over the years, and is rather buggy. As for the good news - Google seems to be working on an updated version. The bad news is that an unfinished and broken build is being pushed live.”

I will add, that to say that it is “rather buggy,” is an understatement.

Anyway, read much more here. Mr. Davenport explains it well. Thank you.

*****

Thursday, March 03, 2016

Jon Kelvey Carroll County Times: EMS technology extends careers


Carroll County Times: EMS technology extends careers at the Westminster Md Vol Fire Co

EMS technology extends careers at the Westminster Md Vol Fire Co http://kevindayhoffwestgov-net.blogspot.com/2016/03/carroll-county-times-ems-technology.html


Retrieved Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Volunteers at our local fire companies sometimes put their lives on the line battling blazes, but a majority of the calls these departments receive are to respond to medical emergencies. While — for the volunteer responders at least — they aren't facing a life or death situation for these calls, they are often putting wear and tear on their bodies, which shortens careers.

So we were happy to see the Westminster Volunteer Fire Department demonstrate last week the latest technology to be deployed by the department, Stryker Power Load System stretcher, which allows patients to be loaded and easily put into ambulances, saving the stress on volunteers' limbs and spines.

Fire Department Lt. Brett Pearce told us that about half of the department's line-of-duty retirements for emergency medical service workers each year are due to back injuries, which occur when lifting and carrying people out of their homes on a stretcher.


[…]

Yet, that's exactly the situation volunteers at some of these companies are facing. Westminster Volunteer Fire Department alone responded to 5,743 EMS calls last year, making it one of the busiest volunteer agencies in the state, according to the department's Public Information Officer Kevin Dayhoff. For almost every EMS call, a paramedic is lifting a stretcher four times — in and out at the scene and again at the hospital. While we'd like to think they follow proper form every time, we know that isn't realistic, especially when time is of the essence for the patient.



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Baltimore Sun Carroll Eagle: 
Tumblr: Kevin Dayhoff Banana Stems www.kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/
Kevin Dayhoff is an artist - and a columnist for:
Smurfs: http://babylonfluckjudd.blogspot.com/
Google profile: https://profiles.google.com/kevindayhoff/

E-mail: kevindayhoff(at)gmail.com

My http://www.explorecarroll.com/ columns appear in the copy of the Baltimore Sunday Sun that is distributed in Carroll County: https://subscribe.baltsun.com/Circulation/


See also - Kevin Earl Dayhoff Art www.kevindayhoff.com: Travel, art, artists, authors, books, newspapers, media, writers and writing, journalists and journalism, reporters and reporting, music, culture, opera... Ad maiorem Dei gloriam inque hominum salutem. “Deadline U.S.A.” 1952. Ed Hutcheson: “That's the press, baby. The press! And there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing!” - See more at: http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/#sthash.4HNLwtfd.dpuf
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Wednesday, January 27, 2016

People keep going to this home looking for their lost phones — and nobody knows why

People keep going to this home looking for their lost phones — and nobody knows why People keep going to this home looking for their lost phones — and nobody knows why http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2016/01/people-keep-going-to-this-home-looking.html
If your lost cellphone says it’s at this house, it isn’t


Christina Lee and Michael Saba live in an Atlanta house where several strangers come accusing them of having stolen their phones. Strangely, the phones are never there, and it's because missing-phone apps are mysteriously routing to this home. (Jhaan Elker/The Washington Post)

For months now, angry strangers have been showing up at Christina Lee and Michael Saba's front door with a curious demand: "Give me back my stolen phone!"

Sometimes, families will show up; other times, it's groups of friends or a random person with a police officer in tow, according to Fusion. Despite using different service providers, everyone who bangs on their door has been led to the suburban Atlanta home by a phone-tracking app.

The problem — as the couple desperately tries to explain visitors — is that the missing phones aren't at the house and never have been.

They are not, in fact, thieves. Saba is an engineer; Lee is a journalist.

The pair doesn't understand why exactly, but both Android and iPhone users on various networks are being directed to their house by phone-tracking apps.
Once the awkward situation is explained, most lost-phone-seekers are understanding. But the couple told Fusion that a smaller number of people who place absolute faith in their tracking technology are convinced that the couple is lying, provoking potentially volatile conflicts.

[…]

On several occasions, Fusion reports, the problem has led to serious misunderstandings, such as an incident in which the couple briefly became suspects in a missing persons case:

In June, the police came looking for a teenage girl whose parents reported her missing. The police made Lee and Saba sit outside for more than an hour while the police decided whether they should get a warrant to search the house for the girl’s phone, and presumably, the girl. When Saba asked if he could go back inside to use the bathroom, the police wouldn’t let him.

“Your house is a crime scene and you two are persons of interest,” the officer said, according to Saba.

[…]


*****

Monday, January 11, 2016

iDNS Criminal Domain Slamming


iDNS Criminal Domain Slamming

Domain Name Expiration Notice

Jan. 11, 2016


We recently received a notice from an outfit called iDNS - Internet Domain Name Services which encouraged us to renew our domain name….

It certainly appears to be a cleverly worded letter designed for the purpose of criminally tricking you into paying an exorbitant rate for your domain registration renewal – and in the process you will have moved your domain registration to iDNS which will then charge you excessive yearly maintenance fees….

There are also reports that you can – may lose control of your domain registration, an identity theft of sorts which will result in hours upon hours of frustrating time and money lost.

If you try to remedy your mistake, it has been reported that iDNS will not release your domain name – or charge you an exorbitant rate to release it.

In addition, several sites note that “it may be a phishing scam for credit card numbers…”, i.e., for stealing your credit card…

Shred it and pass the word. And encourage your state’s attorney’s office and state legislatures to aggressively pursue these attempts at fraud and criminal enterprise.


Meanwhile, be sure to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U5mqy5YC38 “Internet Domain Name Services Scam!” 

*****

Saturday, December 05, 2015

The awesome Theresa and Tom Bethune take a minute to answer a few questions about Freedom Broadband


The awesome Theresa and Tom Bethune take a minute
to answer a few questions about Freedom Broadband
at the 62nd St John ‪#Christmas Bazaar
43 Monroe St Westminster 8am-4pm Dec. 5, 2015

Freedom Broadband Overview and History

Freedom Broadband began as Freedom Wireless Broadband in January of 2007 to provide cost effective Internet service to under-served areas in Carroll County.  The company started with a location in Eldersburg, MD and a communications tower in Hampstead, MD, and grew by leveraging grain elevators, silos and homes to reach locations not served by wired providers available at that time.

From 2007 until February of 2015, the company expanded service to Manchester, Mt. Airy, Gamber, Woodbine, and Hampstead, adding (4) major communications towers, (4) municipal water towers, and numerous grain elevators, silos and roof mounted access points  serving approximately 185 customers, including 48 farms and commercial businesses.

In February of 2015, local resident Theresa Bethune purchased Freedom Wireless Broadband and renamed the company “Freedom Broadband.”  As a customer in an underserved part of Carroll County (ironically just 6 miles from Westminster, Hampstead and Manchester), Theresa realized how many areas of Carroll and the surrounding areas were left with few, if any viable broadband choices.  

As a mother to a 13 year old boy and wife of an Information technology professional, she also knew that life without broadband was not viable for most families.  The purchase enabled the business to fund major network upgrades, as well as to drive expansion into more areas throughout Carroll County and surrounding counties.

Since February, 2015, Freedom Broadband has doubled our available bandwidth and our customers send and receive more than 1 Terabyte (TB) of data per day (equal to  1,000 gigabytes-GB, or 1,000,000 megabytes-MB) to/from the Internet each day.  We have expanded capacity 400% at the Manchester Water Tower and Lippy Brothers towers, and added new locations to serve parts of Mayberry and the Jasontown/Uniontown Road areas.  We  have planned tower climbs to grow our service areas in Taneytown and Mt. Airy/Woodbine. 

Together with our sister company, InfoPathways, Freedom Broadband established a broadband connection to River Valley Ranch, and deployed wireless infrastructure to improve their communications both on and off the Ranch.  

We are proud to support 4H and the Community Media Center, and provided both wireless infrastructure and bandwidth to enable live streaming of 4H events.

Why do we do it?  Because we love Carroll County.  We enjoy the rolling countryside and beautiful farm lands.  We want to connect people to each other and the world at large, without forcing them to sacrifice their wooded retreats and family homesteads.  Every time we connect someone new, we feel an amazing sense of accomplishment.

Our customers are our neighbors and friends – people we see at our local Farmer’s markets, at school or on the athletic fields, at our local restaurants, businesses and events that make our community a great place to live and work.  

The awesome Theresa and Tom Bethune take a minute  to answer a few questions about Freedom Broadband




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Baltimore Sun Carroll Eagle: 
Tumblr: Kevin Dayhoff Banana Stems www.kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/
Kevin Dayhoff is an artist - and a columnist for:
Smurfs: http://babylonfluckjudd.blogspot.com/
Google profile: https://profiles.google.com/kevindayhoff/

E-mail: kevindayhoff(at)gmail.com

My http://www.explorecarroll.com/ columns appear in the copy of the Baltimore Sunday Sun that is distributed in Carroll County: https://subscribe.baltsun.com/Circulation/


See also - Kevin Earl Dayhoff Art www.kevindayhoff.com: Travel, art, artists, authors, books, newspapers, media, writers and writing, journalists and journalism, reporters and reporting, music, culture, opera... Ad maiorem Dei gloriam inque hominum salutem. “Deadline U.S.A.” 1952. Ed Hutcheson: “That's the press, baby. The press! And there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing!” - See more at: http://kevindayhoffart.blogspot.com/#sthash.4HNLwtfd.dpuf
+++++++++++++++

The awesome Theresa and Tom Bethune take a minute to answer a few questions about Freedom Broadband at the 62nd St John #Christmas Bazaar 43 Monroe St Westminster 8am-4pm.


The awesome Theresa and Tom Bethune take a minute to answer a few questions about Freedom Broadband at the 62nd St John #Christmas Bazaar 43 Monroe St Westminster 8am-4pm.

People Bethune Theresa Tom, Technology, Technology broadband, Technology Freedom Broadband, Religion St John Catholic Ch, 

Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Just SMH - Microsoft Office 2013 made file-sharing in the real-world work office horrifically clumsy & complex if not impossible

Just SMH - Microsoft Office 2013 made file-sharing in the real-world work office horrifically clumsy & complex if not impossible

Get started with Office 2016's streamlined sharing options

Where Office 2013 made file-sharing complex, Office 2016 makes it easy as pie.


Ian Paul | @ianpaul Contributor, PCWorld

Sep 30, 2015 7:00 AM

When Microsoft rolled out Office 2013 it included a sharing screen that let you share a document in all kinds of ways. You could share a link over email, get a sharing link, or post the document directly to a social network or blog.

It offered a lot of functionality, but it was a little on the complex side, especially since there were effectively two options to share via email. Plus, you always had to jump back and forth between your document and the Sharing page in Office’s backstage view—the screen you see when you click File. Ugh. 

*****

Thursday, July 30, 2015

In the end, the Windows 10 upgrade failed. No surprise here.


 It very well may not be a Windows 10 upgrade failure... I suspect that I am dealing with a drive failure... I'm now trying to upgrade one of my back-up systems... We shall see. The desktop was an upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10. The backup system is going t go from Win 8.1 to 10... Hoping for a different result.

One Win 10 upgrade fail. One success. Fail probably due to a drive failure... On a different computer, the success is working great.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE smartphone

My Windows 10 download is taking forever. I'm pretty discouraged

 

One Win 10 upgrade fail. One success. Fail probably due to a drive failure... On a different computer, the success is working great.

 *****

Thursday, April 09, 2015

Et tu, Microsoft? Company's default setting will now let third parties take your data.

Et tu, Microsoft? Company's default setting will now let third parties take your data.:

By Dave Smith 

 http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2015/04/03/et_tu_microsoft_company_s_default_setting_will_now_let_third_parties_take.html?wpsrc=slatest_newsletter&sid=5388f43add52b8e41100cd7e 

This post originally appeared on Business Insider.
Microsoft on Friday updated its approach to “Do Not Track” for all future versions of its Web browsers, saying it “will no longer enable it as the default state.”
“Do Not Track” is all about protecting your online privacy. It’s a simple mechanism on most Web browsers that lets you opt out of tracking from third parties, including websites you don’t visit. 
As the standards around “Do Not Track” keep evolving, so do the public policies. TheWorld Wide Web Consortium (W3C) just offered up a new draft that sheds light on the new standard (Microsoft bolded the final line for added emphasis):
'via Blog this'

Friday, March 06, 2015

Samsung's Galaxy S6: 3 things it gets right, and 3 things it gets wrong | PCWorld

Samsung's Galaxy S6: 3 things it gets right, and 3 things it gets wrong | PCWorld: "By Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News Service Mar 1, 2015 3:20 PM

The Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 edge are two great smartphones, with more power and better screens. But when users get their hands on them starting April 10, they’ll find that the vendor got some things right, and some things wrong." ...  http://www.pcworld.com/article/2890892/samsung-galaxy-s6-gets-3-things-right-and-3-things-wrong.html#tk.nl_pcwbest

'via Blog this'
*****

Why digital natives prefer reading in print. Yes, you read that right. - The Washington Post

Why digital natives prefer reading in print. Yes, you read that right. - The Washington Post: By Michael S. Rosenwald February 22, 2015  http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/why-digital-natives-prefer-reading-in-print-yes-you-read-that-right/2015/02/22/8596ca86-b871-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

"Frank Schembari loves books — printed books. He loves how they smell. He loves scribbling in the margins, underlining interesting sentences, folding a page corner to mark his place.

Schembari is not a retiree who sips tea at Politics and Prose or some other bookstore.

He is 20, a junior at American University, and paging through a thick history of Israel between classes, he is evidence of a peculiar irony of the Internet age: Digital natives prefer reading in print.

 “I like the feeling of it,” Schembari said, reading under natural light in a campus atrium, his smartphone next to him. “I like holding it. It’s not going off. It’s not making sounds.”

 Textbook makers, bookstore owners and college student surveys all say millennials still strongly prefer print for pleasure and learning, a bias that surprises reading experts given the same group’s proclivity to consume most other content digitally. A University of Washington pilot study of digital textbooks found that a quarter of students still bought print versions of e-textbooks that they were given for free." ... http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/why-digital-natives-prefer-reading-in-print-yes-you-read-that-right/2015/02/22/8596ca86-b871-11e4-9423-f3d0a1ec335c_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1

'via Blog this'
*****

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Windows 10 preview download is available now | PCWorld

Windows 10 preview download is available now | PCWorld: "Mark Hachman
@markhachman Jan 23, 2015"


http://www.pcworld.com/article/2874800/microsofts-windows-10-build-9926-with-cortana-is-live-now.html#tk.nl_pcwbest

A new build of Windows 10 preview is available for download, Microsoft announced Friday morning. Now the world (those who've signed up for the preview, that is) can sample what analysts and journalists previewed on Wednesday.
The build will download automatically for Windows Insiders overnight, or you can get it now by going to PC Settings > Update and recovery > Preview builds and clicking the Check Now button. If you need to start from the very beginning—in other words, you’ve never installed Windows 10 at all—check out our tutorial on how to install Windows 10 from scratch. You can also obtain the ISO for a clean install or virtual machine download here
In his blog post, Microsoft’s Gabriel Aul warned that not everything Microsoft talked about earlier this week would be available.
“Some of the new features that Joe demoed on Wednesday will be available for our Windows Insiders starting today with our newest build – 9926,” Aul wrote. “However, not everything you saw on Wednesday is included in this new build. Much is still in-progress and we’re getting it out to you as fast as we can – so you can try it out and give us feedback. Over the course of the next few builds, you will see us refine Windows 10 and continue to improve the experiences as well as quality and stability.”
What Microsoft showed off in Redmond was Build 9924, which we played with as part of our preview. In a nutshell, here’s what you should expect in the new 9926 build: read more here - http://www.pcworld.com/article/2874800/microsofts-windows-10-build-9926-with-cortana-is-live-now.html#tk.nl_pcwbest
*****

Sunday, January 04, 2015

NYT: How My Mom Got Hacked - NYTimes.com

NYT: How My Mom Got Hacked - NYTimes.com: "By ALINA SIMONEJAN. 2, 2015"

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/how-my-mom-got-hacked.html?emc=edit_th_20150104&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=45685287 

http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2015/01/nyt-how-my-mom-got-hacked-nytimescom.html

MY mother received the ransom note on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It popped up on her computer screen soon after she’d discovered that all of her files had been locked. “Your files are encrypted,” it announced. “To get the key to decrypt files you have to pay 500 USD.” If my mother failed to pay within a week, the price would go up to $1,000. After that, her decryption key would be destroyed and any chance of accessing the 5,726 files on her PC — all of her data — would be lost forever.

Sincerely, CryptoWall.

CryptoWall 2.0 is the latest immunoresistant strain of a larger body of viruses known as ransomware. [...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/how-my-mom-got-hacked.html?emc=edit_th_20150104&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=45685287 

Is there any other way to get rid of it besides paying the ransom? No — it appears to be technologically impossible for anyone to decrypt your files once CryptoWall 2.0 has locked them. (My mother had several I.T. professionals try.)

But should you really be handing money over to a bunch of criminals? According to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the F.B.I. and the National White Collar Crime Center, this answer is also no. “Ransomware messages are an attempt to extort money,” one public service announcement helpfully explains. “If you have received a ransomware message do not follow payment instructions and file a complaint.” Right. But that won’t get you your files back. Which is why the Sheriff’s Office of Dickson County, Tenn., recently paid a CryptoWall ransom to unlock 72,000 autopsy reports, witness statements, crime scene photographs and other documents... [...]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/how-my-mom-got-hacked.html?emc=edit_th_20150104&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=45685287 

'via Blog this'
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Kevin Dayhoff Art: http://www.kevindayhoff.com/
New Bedford Herald: http://kbetrue.livejournal.com/
Scribd Kevin Dayhoff: http://www.scribd.com/kdayhoff
Kevin Dayhoff's YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/kevindayhoff
Kevin Dayhoff Banana Stems: http://kevindayhoff.tumblr.com/