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Computer Security Weekly, July 5, 1999

© Robert Slade

You all know that analogue cell phones are insecure, right? I mean, even Prince Charles knows that by now. Well, apparently cell phone conversations in the Vancouver area are just a little bit less secure than most. Somebody, apparently in Vancouver, is intercepting cell phone conversations and broadcasting them over the Internet ...

Check it out here.

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And you probably all know the Sharpie pens made by Sanford. Soft tip, various colours, very useful for marking up overheads, doing fine lines on whiteboards, and marking up things that don't take pen too well. Such as CDs and CD-ROMs.

Turns out this is a bad idea. Radio stations have recently found that disks marked with Sharpie pens tend to oxidize, and therefore develop errors, in some cases becoming unusable. Attempting to clean the marker off is no use, according to Amodex, who make the cleaning products recommended by Sanford. Current theory is that the solvent penetrates the plastic substrate of the CD, which is very porous, allowing chemical reactions to proceed.

Heat and light seem to speed up the process, so if you have marked up CD-ROMs and don't have a backup of that data, keep them cool. This means keeping them out of the CD drive when you are not actually using them.

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