Category Archives: Security and Safety

USA Today reports that Zappos, a popular Amazon online shoe & clothing retailer, has been hacked.  While passwords were apparently safely encrypted by Zappos, other data, such as usernames that could be used by enterprising hackers to attack other online … Continue reading →

If you are among the growing body of Android smartphone users, you may be dismayed to learn that the addition of computer power to a phone can come at a price, not only of the financial variety.  Running a computer … Continue reading →

Our friend, the How-To Geek, has just kicked off an excellent series on online safety.  This is shaping up to be one of the better guides to this subject we have seen, and we highly recommend it.  Stay safe!

Last night, Terry Gross, on her Fresh Air show from National Public Radio, interviewed the author of Worm:  The First Digital World War.   You may recall the book’s main subject, the Conficker worm that came upon the scene about three … Continue reading →

Padding and chunking are techniques that could help you create a secure password that is still easy for you to remember, going beyond mere “strong passwords” and increasing your chances of resisting a “brute force” password attack. ZDNet’s SmartPlanet blog … Continue reading →

Security firm Sophos’ Naked Security blog reports that a bogus Firefox update that comes packaged with a password-stealing trojan is circulating via spam email.  This means that you should only update your Firefox browser by (1) downloading directly from the … Continue reading →

The Wall Street Journal tells us: “Taking 15 minutes now to jot down your online passwords could save your family hours of frustration after you are gone.” Read the entire article here.

The How-To Geek shows us how you can be tricked into doing bad things by clicking on seemingly-innocuous search results. The take-away: Only download open source applications from their official websites.

You’ve heard us preaching and seen our messages and posts over the past few years about “phishing” dangers.  Phishing is the practice by unscrupulous spammers who attempt to trick you into giving away the farm by getting you to click … Continue reading →