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Do you take your laptop when you go for a holiday with your family? If yes, avoid this habit in your future as it is warned by psychologists that these new age wireless tools are spoiling holidays and can be a reason to ruin family relationships.

“People simply should not take laptops on holiday with them. They are taking their office with them and they just shouldn’t do it,” said Cary Cooper, professor at Lancaster University management school’s department of psychology and health.

Wireless tools are the demand of today’s tech world but the same thing should be used intelligently. These tools are becoming inseparable part of life and a large mass of people take their laptops and wireless internet connections on holidays with them. The psychologist considers the laptops as a hindrance in the holiday. People find it difficult to switch off their laptops and spend most of their hard-found leisure time in working on laptops; news daily quoted a psychologist as saying.

“The rise in mobile phone and Internet technology has already affected our weekends and now it is invading annual holidays. Sensible bosses and workers should insist that holidays are computer free,” he suggested.

Cooper warned the problem as “mushroomed with the spread of wireless hot spots”.

People used to monitor their e-mails during vacations and instead of spending time with family they feel insecure about their jobs and keep stick to their systems for a long time during free hours. All this is possible because of existence of wireless tools. Hence the later can be considered as a hindrance in a relaxing vacation of a family.

“People worry about a backlog and that things will be missed while they are away. They feel a need to be constantly online and checking their emails. This insecurity is endemic to the service-based industries,” said Cooper.

Survey reports also agree with us. According to a survey by IT security company Credant Technologies, almost two-thirds of brokers in London said they were contacting their offices through phone or emails while on vacation. A whopping 83 % admitted to taking their office mobile phone or Blackberry with them while they are away. The survey said that more than a quarter said they check emails daily and 14 % admitted to doing so more than once a day.

“I can understand why people take mobile phones, but they should only be used sparingly, as a ’security blanket’. They should be kept switched off most of the time,” he stated.

According to him, taking work on holidays could deprive people of “much needed rest and recuperation” from demanding jobs and it could also lead to family break-ups.

He also said those who show that they can work for their organization even on holidays are actually cheating themselves. It may lead to exploitation as they are showing that they are available for the organization 24*7.

People should understand the needs of their family and should remember that a vacation is not just a resting time but to attach more closely with the family and your kids. Work should be done honestly but do not make it over to avoid your family.

Tags: backlog, E-mail, Family, Future, Health, Holiday, Internet, Internet Technology, IT, IT Security, Laptop, Mobile Phone, Office, People, Systems, Technology, Wireless Technology

Beware of any email invitation to the Beijing Olympics. The malicious mails are supposed to be as an invitation to the Olympics but actually these are E-mail virus which once opened affects MS word, MS PowerPoint and MS excel applications on your system. The virus could allow the remote attackers to take complete control of an affected system, or cause the application to crash.

Experts at Trend Micro’s TrendLabs have confirmed that these mails are malicious. Country Manager – India & SAARC, Trend Micro, Niraj Kaushik said, “When exploited, the unspecified remote code-execution vulnerability could allow remote attackers to take complete control of an affected system, or cause the application to crash.”

“Among others, if you receive any email that has an attachment file named attachment .doc, appeal_letter_of_fttj.doc, attend_the_opening_ceremony_of_the_29th_olympic_games_in_beijing.doc, five_resolutions.doc, or lingotto_con_fiat.doc, be warned that opening it may make your computer vulnerable to attack,” added Kaushik.

Experts said that the malicious .doc files are spreading in the wild which are taking benefit of the ongoing Beijing Olympics in China, the popular event of the time. This makes the receiver to click on the mail and open the files. The samples that TrendLabs has come across are detected as TROJ_MDROPPER.ZT.

Kaushik added, “The Olympics event having such a big fan-following, the potential of people unknowingly getting lured into opening such Trojanized files is huge. With 10, 708 athletes competing in 28 sports for 302 gold medals, the Olympics is the most prestigious affair of its kind, and as such command a worldwide audience. It is thus expected that it will be included in malicious users’ arsenal of social engineering techniques.”

These files are zero-day exploits under vulnerability summary CVE-2008-2244 under the Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures (CVE) List of the National Cyber Security Division of the US Department of Homeland Security.

Besides TrendLabs has also reported Trojan samples of .XLS and .PPT circulating, all drawing correlation to the ongoing Olympics and the Tibet conflict. Trend Micro detects the malicious Excel file as TROJ_MDROPPER.ZY, and the PowerPoint file as TROJ_PPDROP.M. Unlike the Word file malware, these Excel and PowerPoint files are not confirmed to have zero-day vulnerabilities as yet.

If you are also getting these kinds of mails, do not take as an invitation. It is malicious mails which can damage your system. Avoid opening them and delete them at once.

Tags: Beijing Olympic, E-mail, Excel, MS Word, Olympic, Powerpoint, Trend Micro’s, Virus