Cybersecurity & Privacy
Some Twitter accounts hacked. Time to change your password!
It seems some Twitter accounts may have been hacked. A quick search on Twitter reveals an interesting number of people complaining about issues with their account or tweets being sent from their account without their knowledge. No official statement has been made by Twitter but it may be a good time to change your password and revoke Twitter access from unused third party apps. If you don’t know how, read my article here.
Counterfeit USB chargers on eBay may be dangerous
In the age of electronic everything, most of us need a couple of chargers to get through the day (one in the car, one at home and one at work). Do you really need to spend $20 for an Apple charger or will a $5 look-a-like device from eBay perform just as well? Ken Sheriff has written an interesting review about USB chargers and provides a clear scientific explanation as to why those cheaper ones may not be such a good deal afterall.
Anonymous is targeting Zynga because of "unfair layoff" practices
Anonymous has now targeted the game-maker Zynga after its latest round of layoffs. The group called the layoffs “an insult to the population” and an “end of the U.S. game market.” Anonymous wants Zynga to reverse course or they will release documents showing Zynga plans to move jobs to other countries and they threatened to release a bunch of Zynga games for free. The company has been given until November 5, which is also Guy Fawkes Day. Although Anonymous is a powerful enemy, some organizations have been able to take a stand against them and have thrived.
25 Worst passwords of 2012
A recent Splashdata news released shared the 25 worst passwords to use in 2012 (these are the most commonly used passwords exposed by hackers this year). The words “password”, “123456” and “12345678” are popular this year and were popular last year too. New entrants (in the 2012 list) include “welcome”, “jesus”,”ninja”, ”mustang” and “password1”. password (Unchanged) 123456 (Unchanged) 12345678 (Unchanged) abc123 (Up 1) qwerty (Down 1) monkey (Unchanged) letmein (Up 1) dragon (Up 2) 111111 (Up 3) baseball (Up 1) iloveyou (Up 2) trustno1 (Down 3) 1234567 (Down 6) sunshine (Up 1) master (Down 1) 123123 (Up 4) welcome (New) shadow (Up 1) ashley (Down 3) football (Up 5) jesus (New) michael (Up 2) ninja (New) mustang (New) password1 (New) If you use any of these, change it now.
AccountKiller - How to delete your account from different sites
AccountKiller is an interesting website that provides instructions on how to delete your account from most major online sites (e.g. Skype, Facebook, Live.com, Yahoo, Google, Twitter, etc.) What do you do when you no longer use an online site? Most users unfortunately just stop visiting the site but never go through the process of deleting their accounts. When you ask them why, they say it is "too complicated" or that "they couldn't figure it out". AccountKiller provide instructions for most major online sites making the delete process as easy as possible.
More than half of Brits are victims of cybercrime
Results from a recent getsafeonline.org survey show that 56% of adults in the United Kingdom have been targeted through online attacks. Interestingly, 65% of those attacked haven’t changed their computing behavior. The top 5 attacks where: Viruses Email attacks Social media attacks Fraud driven sales Online credit card fraud 29% of respondents didn’t realize that they were increasing their risks of becoming victims. Interestingly 17% of respondents admitted that they were embarrassed to admit having fallen victim to online attack.
SilentCircle protects you from espionage or government monitoring
I not only work in Information Security, I love it. In the era of “everything digital”, nothing else is as important. Well imagine my excitement when I learned of a newly formed company, called SilentCircle, which was promising a very secure yet easy to use communication product. The company The company says that it was started by 2 former Nacy Seals and the world-renown creator of PGP, Phil Zimmermann. It wanted to create a military grade encryption product for securing phone calls (VOIP), text messages, emails and video.
You are Facebook's product, not its customer
Anytime Facebook makes a site change or updates one of its mobile products, users get angry and rant about how “Facebook isn’t listening to the needs of its customers” or “How Facebook is out of touch with what its customers want”. I’m going to make a bold statement you probably won’t like but You are not Facebook’s customer, you are one of their products. Facebook’s only goal is to monetize the social graph of its users. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself how Facebook keeps the lights on.
Counterfeit electronics being sold on eBay
My most recent articles have been product reviews and a question I received from 2 readers was related to buying some of these items from online auction sites (eBay being the 800 lb. gorilla). The readers wanted to know : Is it was “safe” to buy higher end electronics on eBay Having spent some time in Asia, I have seen firsthand similar looking replicas made available in the open market. Sure you can find fake sportswear, sunglasses and DVDs but you can also find very convincing Mophie branded battery packs, headphones and even electronics (smartphones, music players, etc).
Site refuses to delete my account
All of my accounts (username/password) are stored in LastPass and every quarter, I browse the and identify the accounts I no longer find useful. Using the built in account management features of most sites, I can delete my account myself and in some rare cases, I have to send a customer service email asking for the deletion. DVOR.com was one such site which had originally interested me but that I found "less interesting" after a while and wanted to delete my account.