It's a good time to be a Mac User

Many of us have received fraudulent emails saying that our eBay account or Paypal account or (fill in the blank) account needs to be updated and giving a link to click on so that we can hand over our account data and passwords to tricksters. These attacks are called "Phishing".

The latest version of this activity takes control of people's computers and directs them to fake web sites to steal their credit card data, etc.

So far, I haven't heard of this happening to Mac Users but from the sounds of it, the PC world is under siege. This link leads to an article about it:
http://www.internetweek.com/

If your friends ever ask why you use a Mac, you might want to pass on this article:

"OS X is world's most secure operating system, report concludes"
http://macuser.pcpro.co.uk/

Seems to me that PC users have been bombarded by viruses, spyware, and other nasties for so long, they think that is just the way life is. Some of them, however, are starting to wonder if there is an alternative and discovering that , so far, the Mac world is virus and spyware free. The number of Mac users is on the rise.

Hooray for Macs!

Because backing up is hard to do...

Backing up our data is an easily forgotten task, but unfortunately
every hard drive will fail sooner or later. And that isn't the only
source of data loss. I once had a file get corrupted so that only
half of my checks showed up in Quicken. The rest disappeared into the
ether.

Macworld has published two free excerpts from a book on backing up
your Macintosh computer. I recommend them as valuable reading for all Mac users.
(Actually the data is equally applicable to PC's except for some of the software mentioned.)
http://www.macworld.com/2005/02/features/takecontrolexcerpt1/
http://www.macworld.com/2005/02/features/takecontrolexcerpt2/

The book itself is $10 and is available for download at
http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/backup-macosx.html

No, I don't get a commission. But I do like to save people from pain...
which is what you will feel if you don't have a good back up when
your hard drive fails.