Donna's
Data
By Donna Gorrell
Everything's coming up Roses . . . At least for me. If
you were at the March main meeting you know -if you weren't, well, you
just had to be there! My deepest Thanks to one and all!
We have some new officers who will breathe new life into our club while
enough of the old board members remain to insure continuity. This issue
of the Explorer reflects the changes that are being made within the
club due to the election results. Please take the time to read page
2 and acquaint yourself with the new information listed there. Along
with a new President, who really isn 't that new to the job since he'd
held that position several years ago, we also have a new SIG on the
horizon. What else can Spring possible bring to us? Maybe some new members!
Some time ago I reviewed Cookie Crusher, a software program designed
to keep cookies off your hard drive. I still use it and it works great.
I do allow some cookies that I want to be on my machine. The big words
here are "I" and "MY". It was my money that purchased
the machine and the software licenses and I feel that I should have
the right to use MY computer as I see fit. That means allowing onto
it what I want and keeping off the things that I do not want. Too bad
we have to use third party software to accomplish this. If the operating
system were adequate it would do the job. Since it isn't we have to
search out assistance and use such programs as Cookie Crusher.
Sure, I've kept off those maddening cookies but guess what? They are
out to load up MY computer with more junk! I 've been merrily plodding
along in search of genealogical facts or recipes to add to my ever growing,
never ending, cookbook and downloading files along the way. I save cute
graphics in case we want to use them on website or in the newsletter,
I download updates to my software periodically, and in short, I do the
countless mundane things that everyone else does.
I recently downloaded and installed Adaware www.lsfileserv.com/,
a small program that scans your registry and drives. It then lists the
tracker programs on your computer. Being the smart computer user that
I am, I smugly ran the program expecting it to come up with nothing
to report. Well, did I get a wake up. There were 25 files on MY computer
that were tracking programs put on by who knows what web page or downloaded
program. These sneaky things have no right to report anything about
me and MY computer and yet they do. Firewalls help as does being aware
that some programs do list these tracking programs in the EULA agreement
that we all read before we click on OK. We have a firewall and at times
I do read the EULA. So how come I have all these files? Web sites have
"webbugs" that are planted in the code and you aren't even
aware there are there. So my advice is to download and install Ad-aware
and see what lurks on YOUR computer.
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