Friendly Web Tools Blog

Here’s a secret: I don’t always feel as friendly, knowledgeable and responsive as I sound when it comes to tech support e-mails. I just have a little tool that helps me out: Microsoft Office 2007 Quick Parts.

It’s a small tool that’s part of Outlook 2007 that saves phrases or images that you might frequently include in outgoing e-mail messages. You can select that snippet from your personal library to insert into messages whenever you want.

I use it for signoffs (“If you need to contact me, my info is below”) tech support hints (“If you need a reminder of your password, click the link that says Forgot Your Password”) or any other little things I frequently repeat.

It’s no ordinary occasion that Microsoft, Sun and Cisco engage in a project together. But this is no ordinary occasion. Hackers have discovered a potentially very dangerous ways to take people to different websites even when they think they’ve typed in the right address. For instance, you may type www.cnn.com into your webpage, but you may be redirected to a fake site that can steal your identity or money in a technique called spoofing. The BBC reported the story; an excerpt:

The flaw, discovered by accident, would allow criminals to redirect users to fake webpages, even if they typed the correct address into a browser.

Internet giants such as Microsoft are now distributing the security patch.

Security expert Dan Kaminsky said that the case was unprecedented, but added: “People should be concerned but they should not be panicking.”

Here’s a bulletin from Microsoft that details the patch and security threat. Not a bad idea to install that one.