Like I said, last night's post was a freebie, but this one will be short.
One of the easiest things you can do for your own personal security is to google yourself. Google your name with quotes around it and see what you find. Maybe google some of your usernames. Look for your personal information being exposed. While you are at it, look at the results in the perspective of what an employer would look at (I google any applicant before I hire them).
Use different search engines...Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, Yahoo.
A couple years ago, I found that a group my son was a part of had accidentally left all their registration records exposed, so when I looked up my name, I saw records that included my name, address, phone, email, and kid names. In working with the group, I was able to close the exposure for all the kids involved.
You may find forum posts you made when you were more young and stupid that you may want to have deleted or marked as private.
Take a look at your social media profiles as someone who isn't logged in. Is that political rant against Donald Trump public? Are those updates to LinkedIn when you are dissatisfied with your job being broadcast to your boss? Tweak your security and privacy settings so you are only sharing what you want to share.
Saturday, February 11, 2017
Friday, February 10, 2017
Tech Support Call
Earlier this week, I had a call from "Tech Support" informing me that my computer was infected and they wanted to help me fix it. Don't believe them.
I messed with them and followed their instructions to access a screenshare tool. When they gave me the access code I used it to report them.
If you think about it, how would anyone be able to connect your computer communication with your phone number? And especially, how would they know to connect it with your cell phone? Even worse, these people called my work number.
If you think they might be valid, go to google and type "What's my IP" then ask the support person what your IP address is (do this before you connect to their remote support tool). I promise it won't match.
This lady pressed on after I told her I reported her saying "I'm with the government and you just reported the government to the government." When I asked what my IP address was, she confidently made one up, but it was way wrong.
Wednesday, February 1, 2017
Crashplan Backup
This is my first attempt at a blog. I'm going to start by providing tips for folks to keep themselves safe, whether it be online or otherwise.
My first tip will be to back up your data. There has been a rash of ransomware going around lately that encrypts all your data. They ask for a ransom in order to get the password to decrypt it.
I use Crashplan. It's about $5 a month for one computer to back unlimited data up to the cloud. Our phones are backed up to Google and all other devices feed into my main computer, so this works for me.
They have 3 methods of backup:
1) Backup to external hard drive or network share. This is free.
2) Backup to a friend. If you have a lot of data, you can backup using step one, then give the external drive to your friend, have them install the software and keep your stuff backed up offsite for free.
3) Backup to the cloud. This is the only thing you have to pay for, but data is unlimited. I have 5 TB up there now (it took 4 months to get it up there).
The only downside is if you have over a TB, you'll need to make sure you have a large amount of RAM installed and do a memory tweak. Since it runs on Java, it can be a memory hog.
Many folks speak very highly of backblaze as well. It does not offer the option of backing up to a friend.
As for me, since I have so much data and it is very slow to upload, I back everything up to a external hard drive and began backing critical data to the cloud. Once that completed, I began the 4 month task of letting everything upload to the cloud.
From a security perspective, you don't want anyone snooping in your data, thus Crashplan also allows the option of encrypting your data with a separate personal key. DO THIS!!!! Then save the key to a separate cloud service. If you lose it, you lose your data. The benefit of this is I no longer really care about the security of the crashplan service. So long as they use standard algorithms (they do) the only way someone can see my data is to get a hold of my key.
My first tip will be to back up your data. There has been a rash of ransomware going around lately that encrypts all your data. They ask for a ransom in order to get the password to decrypt it.
I use Crashplan. It's about $5 a month for one computer to back unlimited data up to the cloud. Our phones are backed up to Google and all other devices feed into my main computer, so this works for me.
They have 3 methods of backup:
1) Backup to external hard drive or network share. This is free.
2) Backup to a friend. If you have a lot of data, you can backup using step one, then give the external drive to your friend, have them install the software and keep your stuff backed up offsite for free.
3) Backup to the cloud. This is the only thing you have to pay for, but data is unlimited. I have 5 TB up there now (it took 4 months to get it up there).
The only downside is if you have over a TB, you'll need to make sure you have a large amount of RAM installed and do a memory tweak. Since it runs on Java, it can be a memory hog.
Many folks speak very highly of backblaze as well. It does not offer the option of backing up to a friend.
As for me, since I have so much data and it is very slow to upload, I back everything up to a external hard drive and began backing critical data to the cloud. Once that completed, I began the 4 month task of letting everything upload to the cloud.
From a security perspective, you don't want anyone snooping in your data, thus Crashplan also allows the option of encrypting your data with a separate personal key. DO THIS!!!! Then save the key to a separate cloud service. If you lose it, you lose your data. The benefit of this is I no longer really care about the security of the crashplan service. So long as they use standard algorithms (they do) the only way someone can see my data is to get a hold of my key.
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