WED, commemorated each year on 5 June, is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action.

The Mission of the United Nations Environment Programme is to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.

Lesley Stahl reports on computer viruses that propagate on the Internet and infect PCs, which enable their creators – often called “cyber gangs” – to learn the information they need to electronically rob bank accounts.

Solution? – Contain Conficker

Microsoft has issued an Internet Explorer advisory for users to institute immediately until a workaround is created for a new weakness just discovered in IE.

Set Internet and Local intranet security zone settings to “High” to prompt before running ActiveX Controls and Active Scripting in these zones:

1. On the Internet Explorer Tools menu, click Internet Options.
2. In the Internet Options dialog box, click the Security tab, and then click the Internet icon.
3. Under Security level for this zone, move the slider to High. This sets the security level for all Web sites you visit to High.  If no slider is visible, click Default Level, and then move the slider to High.

While that number includes only PCs connected to the internet, do the math – is your PC one of the 1.91% that isn’t hosting some insecure software? Probably not!

Even though this data comes from Secunia in an effort to promote their own Secunia PSI scanning software (personally, I use FileHippo’s Update Checker), no matter how you do it, you need something in place to check for the latest patches and updates from software authors.

For those that don’t understand why, these software updates fix any bugs (errors) found after the initial release and often add new features to the software on your machine – and that’s a good thing.

You’ve been warned; now go secure those PCs!

An important AT&T warning on phone scams going on right now:

You may have received a call from the 809 area code. The woman said ‘Hey, this is Karen. Sorry I missed you–get back to us quickly. I have something important to tell you.’ Then she repeated a phone number beginning with 809. We didn’t respond.

They get you to call by telling you that it is information about a family member who has been ill or to tell you someone has-been arrested, died, or to let you know you have won a wonderful prize, etc. In each case, you are told to call the 809 number right away. Since there are so many new area codes these days, people unknowingly return these calls.

The Agent.btz worm is spreading like a California wildfire across thumbdrives and other removable data storage devices – so much so that DOD is suspending their use across all agency electronic devices.

“The USB ban should be effective in stopping the worm,” says Ryan Olson, director of rapid response for the iDefense computer security firm. G\L guys!

Until 6am PST tomorrow morning, the Zone Labs folks are giving the Pro version of their firewall product away for free.

To be honest, I haven’t used ZA for a few years now, having switched to Comodo’s free firewall product about a year ago. It had tons of options to tweak, and in the end, I became disenfranchised with the notion of setting them each time I restored my Windows box (every few months).

In the end, I switched back to the default firewall that comes with Windows, and since I never have any problems anyway, I feel it’s good enough for my SOHO box. That being said, I’m never one to pass up on a good deal, especially when it’s free ‘as in air’.