"It appears that it's an Apple issue"

Does this make any sense to you at all?

No?  Well, you are not alone.  Perhaps a comforting thought as Halloween approaches.  But this is what an eavesdropper might be able to catch your iMac/iPad/iPhone/iTouch sending, in clear text - that is without any encryption.

Now that I've got your attention, let me tell you when and how this can happen.  It occurs whenever you have your Apple Contacts list synchronized with another program, such as Facebook, GMail, HotMail, etc.  and that other program doesn't have a contact that the Apple Contacts program has.  This might not seem like you'd ever be a victim of data loss, you don't sync your contacts, right?  Well, according to +Dan Goodin 's excellent article in Ars Technica (here)  a whole lot of addresses have been obtained by experts such as the NSA, by being aware of vulnerabilities like this one.

I am not going to fault the NSA or any other government service for combing the net and teasing out information legally available to them.  But remember - you (and I) are not alone out here on the internets, and if the NSA can grab this information, others will try.

Comcast (that's right - COMCAST) Keeping Your PC Free

OK, it's a teaser headline, but only sort of.  Comcast's self-interests are really helpful sometimes, and I am shocked - shocked! that more people don't know this and help themselves out.

Enter: Comcast ConstantGuard

This program is offered to all Comcast Internet Subscribers (is that you?) and is a platform for Comcast to offer you services such as cloud backup, a snazzy toolbar, and the kind of identity protection formerly offered by many credit card services - in other words, stuff you either don't want or already have.  But there are still two good reasons to download the ConstantGuard:

1. ConstantGuard Mobile - an app for managing passwords securely on your Android or iPhone.
2. Norton Security Suite from Symantec can be installed through ConstantGuard completely free to the user, for as long as the account is active with Comcast.

The Norton Suite is especially important - you can install it on all of your computers, and you are prompted when your system needs some fixin.'  How do you fix?  You click the button marked 'fix' and that's that.

Lest you think this is not such a big deal, consider a recent attack by the ZeroAccess botnet, which Symantec discovered early on and defended against.   Over a half-million PCs targeted by this attack were defended successfully against the attack by the Security Suite updates.  The best part?  Those PC users didn't have to do anything, once the Security Suite was installed.

Got Comcast?  Get ConstantGuard.