All tagged Internet Security
Thanks to Google’s big Google+ push a few years ago, many YouTube accounts are connected with the real name of their owner. Punch your name into Google, and one of the first results could be your YouTube account, complete with a feed containing all the videos you’ve viewed and channels you’ve subscribed to over the past few years.
Thankfully, you can still control what the rest of the world sees by correctly configuring the level of your privacy inside your YouTube account settings.
With the NSA peering into everyone’s pockets without permission, and nosy siblings snooping through your message history while you’re away, there has never been a better time to start encrypting your text messages than there is today.
As we’ll explain in this article, encrypted texting isn’t always necessary, but it can still be a welcome safeguard for whenever you, your family, or business partners need to communicate sensitive information from one side of the globe to the other.
Even 30 years after they were first introduced, the routers we know and love today are still struggling to find their footing. There is still hope, however, in the form of new devices called “network attached peripherals.”
Not only that, but as companies learn how to better communicate between themselves and their customers, the learning curve of creating a safe net of personal security is becoming more moderate every month.
The easiest way to describe a zero-day is to break it down into its component parts. We start out with “zero,” which is the number of “days” that a vulnerability in a popular piece of software or hardware has been known and has gone un-patched by the developers of the device or program that’s been exploited. A zero-day is a previously unknown threat, so there’s no patch to combat it.
Zero-days continue to represent one of the biggest thorns in the side of Internet security. Thorns that, while difficult to defend against directly, can still be avoided with a proper set of tools and techniques ready at your side.
Last week, I gave you your first taste of the wild world of home router security.
In the report, I delved into a few of the reasons why, even after three decades in business, router manufacturers continue to struggle to maintain pace with hackers in keeping the personal, professional, and financial information of their customers safe from harm.
Now as promised, I’m back this week with act two. I’ll dive headfirst into why even after so much time on the market, our home networking equipment still lags woefully behind the bell curve when it comes to protecting the data you hold most dear.
A few weeks back, I was a bit excited about a new product that would be hitting the security scene in the next couple of months. Small, white, and unassuming, the BitDefender Box was on my top five list of most anticipated releases this year, and represented (in my eyes at least) a possible revolution in the world of personal Internet security.
In that gush-fest, I listed several ways in which traditional antivirus solutions had failed to keep pace with the constantly evolving landscape of Internet security, and with great exuberance began to usher in the era of hardware-assisted protection as the next great hope for personal privacy on the internet.
With every fresh wave of new routers and networking equipment that hits the shelves comes the promise of a new age of functionality, usability, and security. Whether it’s the newest Nighthawk from Netgear or just another in a long line from Linskys, I’m always surprised at the bells-and-whistles companies can come up with.
But, despite continued innovation in the market, it’s becoming apparent that a change in how we protect home networks should be at the top of everyone’s to-do list. Router makers need to step up their game if the wireless hardware of today is to protect us from whatever threats might show up tomorrow.
still remember the day my dad installed the first antivirus program I’d ever seen on my old Pentium II. Adorned in its signature colors of black and gold, I quickly came to learn all the ins and outs of my Norton Antivirus suite, from queuing up its scanning schedule to understanding what settings I needed to fix to ensure my favorite games of the time (Diablo and Starcraft), wouldn’t be flagged when I played with friends.
Over the years I would form a special kind of love-hate relationship with the many security products that would grace my machines, from McAfee to Kaspersky, AVG and Avast. Their incessant notifications would rarely fail to stress that my subscription was about to run out, and served as a constant reminder of how I was paying good money for the privilege of staying safe.
Over the past few weeks in Decrypt This, we’ve covered everything from which OS offers the best level of security to the top three VPN providers on the market. Now, it’s time to tackle the main gateway that most malware makers use to get from their botnets to your desktop: the web browser.
Though there are clear winners when it comes to which can reasonably call itself “most secure,” each browser in this roundup offers its own unique solution to the problem of how to keep users safe. All four bring different answers to the party, and feature a range of customizable options and apps which reward patience with privacy.
A VPN (short for virtual private network) is a unique method of protecting privacy that works by linking you up to a single, external IP address which prevents the outside world from sourcing where the original connection started. An average provider of this service will usually have a dozen or more hotspots located in different countries, each designed to trick websites and outside servers into thinking you’re somewhere you’re not.
Tor.
This is a word that’s been tied to Edward Snowden, The Silk Road, and Bitcoin. Even the NSA made the front page with its very own PowerPoint presentation on the many challenges it faced while trying (and failing) to crack its elaborate code. What is Tor, where did it come from, and why can’t people stop talking about it?
Time to pack up your booze and party hats. I’ve got one more roundup which is sure to make you think twice before downloading that latest New Years music mix online.
Whether it was a cash register down at Home Depot, SCADA systems installed at nuclear power plant facilities, or even just the webcam perched at the crest of your laptop, if there’s any lesson we learned in 2014, it’s that nothing is safe from the ever-present threat of malware and the hackers that create it.
In this final infection inflection I’ll cover the biggest stories that popped up and even give you a glimpse of what you can expect on the wires in 2015.
2014 has been a tumultuous year for personal security. Through the continuing revelations of NSA leaks, North Koreans shutting down Sony, and the big bad bug that made everyone’s Heart Bleed, the past twelve months have shown that the hairiest of hacks are almost always in the last place you’d think to look.
On one muggy morning in June of 2013, a journalist for the news organization The Guardian rolled out of her bed, and opened her laptop. On it was an email from an address she didn’t recognize, with a message from a man she’d never met
