Author Archives: CMM

Yes! Your Passwords suck! Hints on creating solid passwords

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Every time that you cleverly come up with a seemingly complicated combination of letters, symbols and numbers for a password, you are not only up against creepy individual hackers, you are up against a myriad of easily obtainable super-computers! Your password has to be strong enough to hold up against these computer programs that can use infinite numbers of dictionaries from multiple languages, Wikipedia and everything in the World Fact Book to run encrypted passwords in a matter of MINUTES. Passwords like yours are probably too short, too personal or just too simple or predictable.

This article will help you to see that you need to change your password as soon as possible and  it will also give you hints on how to create ‘bulletproof’ passwords and protect yourself against the highly technologically advanced, increasingly adaptable hacker world.

Cracking weak passwords is easy! Steve Ragan, Tech Herald journalist, proved this when he used free downloadable software and a $300 off-the-shelf computer to crack over 80,000 encrypted passwords in only 5 hours.

It is very important to remember that once ONE of your passwords has been compromised, (just like 24+ million Zappos.com shoppers earlier this month), it isn’t just bad news for that one account on that one Zappos website. The hackers can have a ‘hacking party’ with access to your Facebook, Twitter, or email accounts IF you have used the same login for these other services as well. Information can be extracted from one of your accounts and used against you to access another. Continue reading →

Facebook Scam: Chuck Norris dies at age of 71! Not a Joke.

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Firstly, the man who brought us Walker Texas Ranger, Chuck Norris is alive. A link to a video that claiming to shed light on the supposed death of the action movie and series star at 71 years old has hit Facebook users hard with an epidemic-like survey scam.

 ”Chuck Norris isn’t dead, and the messages point to an all-too-familiar survey scam.” commented Senior technology consultant at Sophos, Graham Culley. (Sophos is an international developer and vendor of security software and hardware including anti-spyware, anti-virus & anti-spam)

The text of the wall post is as follows:
[video] Chuck Norris dies at age 71! Not a Joke. – www.worldnews77551.com – See the video to find out how he died. News today of Chuck Norris death at age 71 has been met with confusion and humour, but sadly it is true.

Here’s how the wall-post looks like:

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Facebook now forces their timeline on everyone

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Whether you like it or not, very soon Facebook Timeline will be mandatory for all.

“Over the next few weeks, everyone will get timeline. When you get timeline, you’ll have 7 days to preview what’s there now. This gives you a chance to add or hide whatever you want before anyone else sees it.”

The above statement was given by Facebook Engineer Paul McDonald on January 24, 2012 in an update on facebook.com’s home blog.

Facebook announced that all profiles will be moved over into the new Timeline mode over the next few weeks. Since the birth of the Timeline in September 2011, users have had the chance to choose whether or not they would opt into Timeline, but now in a few weeks – the ‘older’ profile style will no longer be available.

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Be informed, Be protected – 6 Critical Features for Facebook Security

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Ignorance is the real enemy of many that complain about security on online social networks. Knowledge is key to knowing and understanding how facebook security features can protect you and the steps you can take to make sure that you have these features turned ON..

1. HTTPS browsing at all times

On most sites displaying or requiring valuable information (e.g. the payment page for online shopping) you might have noticed have noticed that the url of the webpage address starts with an “https://”

The additional “s” assures you that a secure code is being used for communication and no one can get hold of your valuable information.It is now possible to activate this HTTPS browsing for your facebook to run on secure codes at all times.

  1. Click the Account menu in the top right corner and select Account Settings.
  2. Next to the Account Security heading click the Change link.
  3. Check the “Browse Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible” checkbox under the Secure Browsing (https) heading.
  4. Click the Save button.

The only potentially annoying thing is that once this setting is turned on, you have to be prepared for it to be turned off in certain situations. For instance the secure setting is not available in Facebook apps. Every time you enter one of the non secure areas you’ll be prompted that you are leaving the secure connection and you will have to respond ti this prompt each time.
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