I’m back!  OK, things aren’t normal yet, and they may very well not quite return to my definition of normal for a while, BUT I have Internet and here’s my first blog post from Hamilton, Ohio!

Actually, I’m going to point you to a pretty dire concern that Becky Worley on Yahoo! News writes about, and that is “Why (and How) to Turn Off Socialcam on Facebook”.  Her opening sentence sums it up quite nicely: “Friends — I beg of you — TURN OFF SHARING for the Socialcam app on Facebook.”

The concern isn’t just the content of the videos themselves but the fact that you are watching them is being shared to everyone on Facebook, sometimes without you even knowing it!  Even with public sharing turned off, Worley found that just using it sometimes turned the settings back on!

The type of marketing being used in Socialcam, IMO, should be of enough of a concern to tell people to just plain avoid it.  If you want to watch videos of a man supposedly being eaten by a snake, then there are other less embarrassing ways to do it (especially when it turns out to be all hype).

It’s sort of odd that a story like “Californian woman has home ransacked after renting it out through Airbnb website” would make The Telegraph, as it is just a reflection of the reality that there are bad people in the world and some of them are … online (gasp!).

My mom, when she was alive, would be very skeptical of some of those commercials on TV.  However, it was really difficult to try to convince her that Bill Gates not only would not but could not track who you forwarded emails to, and he was certainly not about to give away a thousand copies of Microsoft Windows.  As I have learned, though, she isn’t the only one that would believe something just because it was in an email while being normally a bit more questioning in other areas of life.

Sophos’ Naked Security blog recently ran an article about how "Valentine’s Day scams spread virally on Facebook".  It seems that people stubbornly persist on clicking on any FB app that comes their way, thus giving out their personal information to whomever may find a use for it.

I understand that many in the younger set don’t consider this a big deal, but identity theft rose 22% in 2008.  While better security at banks and other institutions has led to a decrease in recent years, the average out-of-pocket expense rose 63 percent in 2010.  In this economic environment, that can spell disaster for someone.

These statistics don’t show the time spent fighting fraudulent activity, either.  It often requires time off work to clear your name as well as being an extra expense.  Even on a salaried job, you may end up spending your vacation time in lawyer’s and banker’s offices rather than somewhere relaxing.