As you should hopefully know by now, you should always be extremely careful with data you access over an unsecure wireless network. You may have seen recent tech press being given to a Firefox add-on called Firesheep which allows people to hijack valid login sessions: The extension uses a packet sniffer to intercept unencrypted cookies from certain websites...

You may have heard about the latest Facebook privacy gaffe where popular applications (i.e. Farmville and Mafia Wars) were collecting and selling user information -including info marked private- to advertising networks. The purpose of this post is not to pile on Facebook as, realistically, this should not really be a surprise to anyone, rather point out the...

Are you guilty of using the same user name and password on all sites where you have an account? If so then you should really not be doing this. Consider the following scenario: You create a new account at SiteXYZ.com using your typical user name and password. SiteXYZ.com has implemented its user and password storage in the database to save this data as plain...

The “latest” (of course this is a relative term) browser exploit to be aware of is a phishing attack called ‘tabnapping’ where a site changes itself to imitate another site in an attempt to steal your credentials. If this sounds confusing, this blog post from Aza Raskin (the creative lead of Firefox) explains it: How The Attack WorksA...

If you use a popular web platform as WordPress, phpBB, etc, while these systems are updated frequently, their popularity makes them an ideal target for attacks. While keeping your site updated and as locked down as possible is your best bet to protect yourself, exploiters are seemingly always one step ahead of developers when it comes to security. That said, if...

You may have seen a recent news blurp that President Obama’s Twitter account was recently hacked. This was accomplished by the “hacker” guessing the forgot password questions. If you think about it, these questions are usually “what is your favorite food?”, “what street did you grow up on?”, “what was your high...

First off, I don’t like using the word hacker as a negative term since technically it is not, but since it is the media term for a “bad computer person” I will make an exception in this case. There is a really good article which everyone should read titled “How I’d Hack Your Weak Passwords” which goes into some detail about ways...

One of the big no-no’s in online security is using the same user name and password for different sites. The reason is simple: if one site gets compromised, your login information for other sites is now “floating around”. While having separate passwords is great in theory, practicing it is another story. To help with this, check out the Firefox...

As you are probably well aware, phishing scams are everywhere. I believe these are by far the most dangerous “computer” threat out there as their sole purpose is to steal important info (i.e. bank logins). While security programs attempt to detect these, I am extremely skeptical about relying on these programs (as you may know, I don’t believe...

Whenever you do browsing to sites you are not familiar with, you always run some risk of the site not being “on the level”. If you do not go the route of script blockers, it is a good idea to have something watching your back. Web of Trust (WOT) is a tool that can fit this bill. WOT is a free Internet security addon for your browser. It will keep you...

(Just about) every time you go to do anything on the Internet, be it check your email, visit a website or whatever, your network has to submit a DNS request to find out the target machine(s) to communicate with. So a lot of your Internet performance and security is effected by the DNS servers you use. By default, most everyone uses their ISP’s servers, but...

If you ever have the need to hide text from web crawling bots such as email gathering spam bots or search engine spiders, then putting your text in an image and posting the image is an effective method. Of course, this can be cumbersome for obvious reasons. Instead of doing this manually, check out Hide Text. Hidetext.net lets you convert text to an image. This...

If you like to take total control over your browsing session which means controlling individual cookies, then a Firefox add-on you need is CookieSafe. This extension will allow you to easily control cookie permissions. It will appear on your statusbar. Just click on the icon to allow, block, or temporarily allow the site to set cookies. You can also view or...

On the heels of my post yesterday regarding scammers using fake websites to steal information from job applicants, I thought I would post a few pointers to help determine if a website is indeed legit.Does the site look professional? If the site looks very thrown together and has little to no content with typos everywhere, stay away. Is there any contact...

In the news recently, there was mention of a City in Montana requiring not only information on your social media accounts, but your user name and passwords as well. It goes without saying, this is huge concern to applicants’ privacy. On a related note, phishers and scammers are taking advantage of job applicants as well by setting up phony companies to...

Clickjacking is one of newer online threats. If you are not familiar with it, here is an excerpt on what it is: Clickjacking is a malicious technique of tricking web users into revealing confidential information or taking control of their computer while clicking on seemingly innocuous web pages. A vulnerability across a variety of browsers and platforms, a...

Many people do not like to use the NoScript add-on for Firefox because it is pretty restrictive out of the box and requires time to tune it to where you do not notice it running. While I can certainly understand this point of view, one thing you may not know is that even if allow global scripts to run (which removes the restrictions people find annoying),...

As you probably are aware, websites can serve as hosts for malicious scripts. If you are not adequately protected, they can damage your system. One tool to help protect from these infected sites is LinkScanner. LinkScanner Lite inspects each search result as it is returned to your browser. One of four color-coded icons will appear next to each...

One thing which is good to do periodically is to audit your PC against online threats. Doing so is very easy and locking down the most obvious entry points is one of the simplest ways to stay safe. This process is made easy by using some of the free tools available from Audit My PC. This site offers tools which can test your firewall, help prevent spam, scan...

When it is seemingly important enough, I like to run tips regarding high priority security notices. Users of Internet Explorer (any version) will want to take note of this Microsoft Security Advisory notice. The details on the problem state: The vulnerability exists as an invalid pointer reference in the data binding function of Internet Explorer. When data...