Geek Speak

You may use your computer every day, but do you reallycomprehend the lingo? Aol.com has done a survey and foundthat few computer users really understand “Geek Speak.” Whatdo “phishing” and “spyware” mean? What’s a blog? And whatdoes it mean when a friend signs his email “LOL?”

“LOL” means “laugh out loud” and denotes a joke. Adding LOLto a message means it’s not supposed to be taken seriously!If you reply to certain spam emails?ones that usually havethe subject heading “Urgent!” and warn against the verything they contain (viruses)?then you may unwittingly load”spyware” on your computer, that “reads” your email andtailors the spam that’s sent to you especially to yourinterests. One of our readers recently received a spammessage suggesting she engage in group sex?from a dearfriend who had recently died in an auto accident! She’d beendiscussing the friend’s death with other people by email,and somehow got spyware on her computer.

“Blogs” are website diaries. Some of these are beingproduced by major celebrities, although some of these may be”ghostwritten,” just like these people’s books usually are.The trouble with blogs is that they often resemble thoseodious Christmas letters people used to send around everyyear, bragging about their triumphs and their children’saccomplishments.

A Trojan is a nasty piece of software that rides into yourcomputer on an attachment and installs itself without yourknowledge. It hides in the background and can send out hugeamounts of spam (unsolicited advertising) and spyware toeveryone in your address book, pretending it came from you.Much of this is embarrassingly sexual stuff that you don’twant dear old Aunt Martha to read!

Art credit: http://www.freeimages.co.uk

Preston Dennett was originally drawn into the UFO field, notby blogs or rumors, but by the totally unforgettable UFOsiege that friends fromTopangaCanyon began to share with him in 1986. This is one of thegreatest UFO stories ever told?by a truly expertinvestigator and writer. In oursubscribersection, Preston Dennett talks about this and his many othercases.

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