Washington Post Gripes

The Post is a newspaper best know for political coverage

You don't read PC Magazine for political news and you shouldn't read the the Washington Post for computer advice (although in fairness, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal are just as bad, if not worse).

No Clue

A Digital Doctor Treats Computer Contamination By Glenn Paterson August 15, 2004; Page F01.
When faced with a Windows 98 computer infected with Spyware, the author handled the situation poorly and then bragged about it in the newspaper. If you spend 10.5 hours over the course of multiple on-site visits just to deal with a Spyware infected computer, you have no clue what you're doing. There is a right way to clean out a Spyware infected computer, but there is no test to insure a computer nerd knows the right approach to take. Reading this was truly painful.

The level of technical expertise at the paper is hinted to in the article written by the reporter whose computer was infected. She had asked about installing a firewall but was told that for dial-up users it was not needed. Hint. Hint. This same article says that after the author of the above article (the "digital doctor") spent much time fighting to get one firewall program installed, another techie suggested using a different firewall. The second firewall program worked fine. Doesn't say much about the choices made by the "digital doctor". The digital doctor also told the victim how the malware got on her computer. There are a mind boggling number of ways that malware gets installed. To assume it came from attack venue 1 as opposed to attack venue 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 (etc.) is yet another bad decision.

FYI: See my take on ridding an infected Windows computer of Spyware

Computer Users Need a Good Backup Plan By Brian Krebs August 15, 2004; Page F08

The article says that computer users of any skill level can handle backing up CDs and DVDs. The fact is there are many different types of CDs and DVDs and each type needs different software and comes with different rules. Also, CD burning software can be confusing to use and there many different products available. I've seen too many confusing UIs to burning software to say that anyone can deal with burning CDs.
The article says "Whether you use a DVD or CD burner, check to see if your burning software supports file compression. This will allow you to store more data on your backup discs." The priority in making backups is NOT how much data fits on a round shiny disc, but rather the ability to recover on the widest range of possible computers. File compression complicates recovery and restricts the environment that recovery can occur in. Bad idea.
The article suggests using the backup program in Windows XP. This is the worst possible backup program you could use (I teach a class on backing up your computer). Windows Explorer is a better choice. It doesn't even come pre-installed on Windows XP Home Edition. Don't get me started.
The article recommends installing a second internal hard drive. I have a one word comment: laptop computer. There is a place for this of course, but it's quite limited. Most people are much better served by an external hard drive or a LAN connected hard drive.
The author recommends BackupMyPC in part because it lets you keep the same rewriteable CD in your computer and back up the same files and directories at scheduled intervals. There is free software that does this too.
Anyone who recommends GoBack as a "reliable alternative for data backup and recovery" really has no clue. The GoBack User Guide even says you need a normal backup program to use in conjunction with GoBack. I would go so far as to say anyone recommending GoBack at all for a non-technical audience is bordering on malpractice. GoBack needs a lot of care and feeding.
Regarding the System Restore feature in Windows XP, the article says "If you decide to use this option, remember that any data created since the date of your restore point will be lost when you roll back your PC." NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
And by the way, System Restore is in Windows Me also and is a major disk space hog. A warning would have been nice.

Take Care to Guard Your Windows - Free Firewalls, Patches, Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware Software Enhance Security By Brian Krebs August 15, 2004; Page F06

The article says "Windows 2000 and Windows NT systems have built-in firewalls..." NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are the only flavors of Windows that include a firewall.
When faced with a firewall decision regarding a program you don't know, the article suggests using a search engine for the file's name to make sure it's legitimate and not a virus (or other malware). The fact is, file name alone does not indicate whether a file is a virus or not. For example
C:\Windows\System32\cdplayer.exe is a legit program in Windows 2000. However
C:\Windows\cdplayer.exe would be a virus. This is a very common trick among the bad guys.

When to Leave What Closed By David McGuire August 15, 2004; Page F08
The article says "When in doubt, don't open e-mail from people or organizations you don't know." The fact is that you are always in doubt, because the from address of an email message is extremely easy to forge. You should never make decisions with the assumption that the From address is really where an email message originated. For a better article on dealing with malicious email messages, see my Bad Emails page.

Web Site Problems

October 8, 2004. The gripes below are from when I could not log on to the web site of the Washington Post using Firefox. I did some more research into this and found that I could not log in using another web browser too. Then I went back to IE, where I am logged in and can read articles thanks to a cookie. To make sure I had the password correct, I went to update my web site profile using IE. My password was rejected.

Like many web sites they offer to email you another password, which I opted for next only to be told that the email address I provided was not in their database. This is not true. First, when I use the site in IE, it says "Hello userid" and the userid it displays is one where I am sure what the domain was. To further verify this, I looked at the cookie they put on my computer and it contained the full email address I had just provided and that had been rejected as not being in their system.

They lost track of me in their database.

I emailed the paper a question about this. A couple days later I got an email welcoming me to the Washington Post web site. They had re-registered my email address. The problem though was that I had no idea what password they used to re-create my account. Again, I asked the web site to email me the password. This time it worked and the web site sent me an email message with a new randomly generated password.

August 16, 2004: The web site of the newspaper does not work well with Firefox. When I got to a page that required my userid and password, I entered them and got this error message. The same userid/password worked fine a second later from Internet Explorer.

The "contact us" link on the home page was also broken. The URL it invokes is

javascript:openWin('http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/admin/help/popup/frame_page.html?nav=globebot')

In Firefox 0.92, clicking the link did nothing. In IE6 it resulted in an error on the IE status bar: "Error on page".

On this page there is a link for Newsroom Contacts at the paper. Clicking the link in IE6 resulted in four error messages.

The first was "Revocation information for the security certificate for this site is not available. Do you want to proceed?".
After saying Yes, there is a Security Alert that says "...there is a problem with the site's security certificate. The security certificate was issued by a company you have not chosen to trust. View the certificate to determine whether you want to trust the certifying authority".
When I viewed the certificate it said "This certificate cannot be verified up to a trusted certification authority".
The last error was "This page contains both secure and non-secure items. Do you want to display the nonsecure items?".

I then clicked on the link in Firefox 0.92. The single resulting error was "Unable to verify the identity of www.washpost.com as a trusted site".

Contacting the paper to tell them of the web site problems was much harder than it should have been. I did three emails and a web page form. One email address bounced back as no longer being in use. A response from a person ignored the mistakes in the articles and said my comments would be forwarded to the web site guys. One email generated a response of "Please contact the washingtonpost.com folks at 703.469.3100".

Page created: August 16, 2004	Page last updated: October 22, 2004
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Griping by: Michael Horowitz

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