From Slashdot:

Do you own a Hewlett Packard laptop? If you do, it's time to seriously consider uninstalling the "HP Info Center" software. There are some security problems with the HP Info Center software that are exacerbated by some ActiveX controls that allow scripting. Anybody that knows how to call those ActiveX controls can write scripts to make them do bad, bad things to your computer--specifically, they can take complete control over it.

So what's an HP owner to do? You can...

It may sound a little tinfoil-hatty, but I flatly refuse to buy or use a wireless keyboard. Wireless mice, sure. But I have always been nervous about the idea that someone could (either inadvertently or intentionally) pluck my keystrokes out of the air.

If you're like me, when you visit your family over the holidays you're also doing a housecall for the family computer. I never visit family without a fully loaded USB stick or CD-R full of utilities in tow. When you go home for the holidays this year, why not give your family the gift of a cleaned up computer? Here are the tools I take with me when I head over the river and through the woods:

A few large capacity hard drives made by Maxtor have been found to come pre-installed with malware that phones home to two websites in China. From the article:

Around 1,800 of the portable Maxtor hard discs, produced in Thailand, carried two Trojan horse viruses: autorun.inf and ghost.pif, the bureau under the Ministry of Justice said.

As of November 1st, all American consumers have the power to place freezes on their credit report. Depending on your circumstances and where you live, it may even be free! Before you start drafting letters and making phone calls, however, read the article on The Red Tape Chronicles. You may find that unless you're an identity theft victim, credit freezes are more expense and hassle than they're worth. From the article:

From the USPS fraud awareness website:

On October 26th, we said that no California wildfire charity scams had been seen yet. The bottom feeders didn't let us down. Below is the full text of a news release from the Internal Revenue Service:

IRS Warns of E-mail Scam Soliciting Donations to California Wildfire Victims

IR-2007-183, Nov. 2, 2007

Would you mind if I took a look at your teeth?

I check The Consumerist pretty much every day. I like the blog and they give me a lot of ideas for stories for Be SeKUre. I popped over there this morning and noticed that they had linked to a Lifehacker article entitled "Free Malware Phone Tech Support Today Only." I'm thinking "sweet! I'll post that to the Be SeKUre blog. I'm sure readers would appreciate a little help securing their computer."

KUJH came out and filmed our Lunch & Learn session today. Check it out!