{"id":8235,"date":"2015-03-17T01:43:44","date_gmt":"2015-03-17T05:43:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dougbittinger.com\/thoughts\/?p=8235"},"modified":"2025-04-21T01:56:39","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T05:56:39","slug":"dodging-a-bullet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/dodging-a-bullet\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodging a Bullet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Guardian<\/a>Yes, I admit it:\u00a0 I am sometimes gullible (aka: stupid).\u00a0 Maybe \u201cover-trusting\u201d but I should know better by now.<\/p>\n

An acquaintance of mine on Twitter posted an article explaining a utility he uses called FreeMind.\u00a0 It\u2019s an organizer, database, note-taker thing that seems really impressive and useful.\u00a0 His computer runs on Linux exclusively.\u00a0 I wondered if FreeMind had a windows version.\u00a0 I did a search and found it on a number of software sites I did not recognize, so I avoided those.\u00a0 I found FreeMind.com: (I think: or something similar) thought that should be the safest.\u00a0 Downloaded the installer.\u00a0 Ran the installer.<\/p>\n

Icons started popping up all over my desktop and task bar.<\/p>\n

WHAT THE HEY!?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

I took an axe to the data pipe (pressed the WiFi key to shut off the interface) to stop its access to the Internet and hopefully shut down the program.\u00a0 That worked: it stopped.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent the past couple of days rooting around and uninstalling things that were installed on that day.\u00a0 But something attached itself to Firefox and MSIE (not that I use MSIE, but this thing modifies the icon in the tray, so it\u2019s obvious) that, upon start-up, displays a launch screen with icons for all my most often used internet services: Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, my blogs, etc.\u00a0 Similar to what Firefox itself does on that special start tab.\u00a0 That was OK, but it reserves most of the screen for targeted advertising powered by something called Safesear.ch.\u00a0 It gave a company name and USA address and an explanation (if I dug around hard enough) that this utility uses my browsing history to determine what ads are most relevant to me and displays them as a convenience to me.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m not a fan of advertising in the first place, but something that insists on trying to get me to buy women\u2019s dresses every time I start up my browser is especially annoying.\u00a0 I do NOT shop for women\u2019s dresses.\u00a0 Really!<\/p>\n

I looked for add-ons or plug-ins that I could remove: no dice.\u00a0 I looked for a program I could uninstall: saw nothing obvious.\u00a0 So my last ditch effort was to uninstall Firefox and reinstall from a copy I\u2019d saved in my DOWNLOADS folder.\u00a0 That is a couple of years old, but should auto-update eventually.\u00a0 What really made me cry was that I\u2019d loose all my bookmarks.\u00a0 I had just built up a great collection of magazines and eZines that pay for stories.\u00a0 Gone – Phffft.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the bullet-dodging part.<\/p>\n

After I uninstalled Firefox I noticed a folder on my desktop labeled Old Firefox Data.\u00a0 That wasn\u2019t there before, FireFox must have written it there as it exited.\u00a0 Hmmm … maybe I can import my bookmarks from that once FF is reinstalled.\u00a0 Hope loomed.<\/p>\n

I re-installed.<\/p>\n

I opened FireFox and found that all my bookmarks were already back in the program.\u00a0 Whoo-ahh!\u00a0 That’s why I like FireFox.\u00a0 And, there is no start-up screen saying \u201cWouldn\u2019t you love to have this dress for spring?\u201d<\/p>\n

Once in a while, I just get lucky.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, I admit it:  I am sometimes gullible (aka: stupid).  Maybe “over-trusting” but I should know better by now. An acquaintance of mine on Twitter posted an article explaining a utility he uses called FreeMind.  It’s an organizer, database, note-taker thing that seems really impressive and useful.  His computer runs on Linux exclusively.  I wondered … Continue reading “Dodging a Bullet”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-8235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-adventures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8235"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19952,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8235\/revisions\/19952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pineymountainfoster.org\/thoughts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}