by Seth Novogrodsky, LSCR Faculty Team Project Manager
July 15, 2008—The Letters & Science Computing Resources (LSCR) Faculty Support Team provides support to the majority of College departments. This article is the fourth in a series that provides updates in our computing support programs and other topics of interest.
If you are not currently using LSCR's faculty support services and are interested in more information, please feel free to contact us, and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have.
The best way to reach us is to send email to fac_support@LS.Berkeley.EDU. When making a request, please include the following information:
Because we use an automated ticket tracking system, the following is also helpful to us:
Many computers designed for home use come with security software, but typically this software "expires" after a certain amount of time (often one year). At that point, the software is no longer able to update itself and protect your computer from viruses, spyware, and other threats unless the user purchases an annual subscription. We urge all faculty to verify that the security software on their home machines is up-to-date and functioning properly.
When we set up machines for home use, we remove the bundled security software and instead install the security software that the campus has licensed. All faculty (and staff and students) can download the software at no charge by following the links on IST's Security Software page, or may obtain a copy of the software on a CD for $5.00 from The Scholar's Workstation.
We are, of course, available to help install this software and answer any questions, although we are unable to visit faculty members' home.
Most new PCs are now shipping with Windows Vista and all new Macs are now shipping with Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard." We generally recommend that users hold off on upgrading existing computers running Windows XP or Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" to these operating systems unless there are specific features of these new operating systems that you wish to take advantage of. We can help you decide on whether to upgrade, and we can help with the upgrade itself.
There a number of different versions of Windows Vista. We generally recommend Vista Ultimate because it has all the features that most users are likely to want, although Vista Business is appropriate for many users. We do not recommend Vista Home Basic or Home Premium, although Home Premium may be acceptable for home use; neither of the Home versions of Vista are appropriate for use on campus.
Recently there have been a rash of "spear phishing" scams specifically targeting campus users. The term "phishing" refers to attempts to acquire personal information such as passwords and user names, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, etc., through official-looking email messages and websites. No legitimate email should ever ask you to send a password via email. The latest versions of Internet Explorer (version 7) and Firefox (version 3) have features to help identify phishing websites. If you are not running either of these web browsers, we can help you upgrade. For more information about phishing scams generaly, please see Scams, deceptive spam, and electronic identity theft. For more information about a recent scam targeting CalMail users, see our June 27, 2008 article.
