Secret phone calls and security snafus

Sibling rivalry meets the home network.

Secret phone calls and security snafus: Sibling rivalry meets the home network.All this talk about spyware and phishers bringing you down? Learn what to do when security, misapplied, kills your computer and inexpensive ways to play spymaster with encrypted voice calls.

Marie from Atlanta: Our older daughter wants to keep her little sister from listening to her phone conversations. Does VoIP provide encryption to keep conversations secret?

Coach: VoIP providers like Vonage and AT&T CallVantage don't, no. But remember, conversations have to connect to traditional telephone lines to reach people who aren't using VoIP, so any encryption would have to be decoded at the VoIP-landline connection point, anyway. Besides, providers eventually will fall under the federal wiretap access laws, making encryption a no-no.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Secret phone calls and security snafus: Sibling rivalry meets the home network.All this talk about spyware and phishers bringing you down? Learn what to do when security, misapplied, kills your computer and inexpensive ways to play spymaster with encrypted voice calls.

Marie from Atlanta: Our older daughter wants to keep her little sister from listening to her phone conversations. Does VoIP provide encryption to keep conversations secret?

Coach: VoIP providers like Vonage and AT&T CallVantage don't, no. But remember, conversations have to connect to traditional telephone lines to reach people who aren't using VoIP, so any encryption would have to be decoded at the VoIP-landline connection point, anyway. Besides, providers eventually will fall under the federal wiretap access laws, making encryption a no-no.

But Skype Technologies, which lets you make free voice calls between PCs, encrypts voice connections. Your older daughter and up to 50 of her paranoid co-conspirators will need a headset to connect to their PCs, but once they download the Skype client software, they can talk over 256-bit encrypted connections.

Phil from outside Chicago: I recommended my neighbors sign up for VoIP, but now they're mad because none of their extensions work.

Coach: The easiest way to regain the convenience of extensions is to buy new cordless phones that are "expandable" and support multiple handsets from vendors such as Motorola, Panasonic, General Electric, AT&T, Uniden and others.

Some support up to eight handsets. Office warehouse stores and online retailers have models you can buy with two handsets for about $100. Extension handsets tend to be in the $40 to $50 range each.

Readers in the Northeast have another option - Optimum Voice . Owned by Cablevision, Optimum Voice installs the broadband phone router at the telephone company demarcation point. This runs the broadband phone connection over the installed home phone wiring by plugging the start of the house phone wiring into the VoIP router or telephone adapter, so your extensions work.

If you can get it, Optimum Voice charges a premium over other VoIP providers ($40 vs. $20 to $25), and installation requires a truck roll and technician time.

If you can get to your demarcation point - usually a gray box on the side of the garage where the phone line connects - you can do the same thing by following the instructions on the Vonage Web site wiring help pages. But beware: If you keep a traditional landline, doing this will disable it.

Connor from San Diego: My son set the BIOS password on our family desktop to keep his sister from using it. He doesn't remember the password, or he mistyped it initially. Now we're locked out of the computer. Help!

Coach: Another overzealous security sibling? Just be glad he didn't do this to your laptop. Security chips in many laptops make recovery from a lost BIOS password difficult and expensive.

Most desktop computer motherboards have a jumper labeled something like Clear CMOS, Clear Password, PASSWD or CLRPWD. Look along the edges of the motherboard near the CMOS battery (the quarter-sized disk on the motherboard). Change the setting by removing the black jumper covering two pins, or moving the jumper from pins 1-2 to pins 2-3. Then restart the computer, reset your password and change the jumper setting back to the original setting. If that doesn't work, take the CMOS battery out for 10 minutes, and that should reset your password. This also will reset everything else configured in your motherboard, all of which will have to be supplied by you or re-discovered by the system upon reboot.

Another option is to try the backdoor passwords that BIOS vendors program into their chips. Call support for help, and be careful. Some BIOS routines will lock you out after three wrong password attempts. (On a business computer, you can pull the hard drive and put it into another system to read the data, because the BIOS password doesn't involve the drives.)

For a list of generic passwords, head here .

If you do have this problem with a laptop, check out Password Crackers and buy a replacement security chip for your laptop.

Send stumpers to connectioncoach@nww.com.

Read more about home entertainment in Network World's Home Entertainment section.