Web Talk

If you have administrative privileges on the computer you are using (it also means that you are an administrator), you might want to prevent other users, your family members, friends etc. from accessing certain files and folders in Windows Vista because they contain sensitive information and you don’t want anybody to modify  and read them. Whatever the reason, you can turn whatever you wish to private files and restrict the access of certain areas of your computer’s hard disk to whoever you want or even nobody. Here is the easy trick to follow.

1. Right click on the file or folder you want to make private.
2. Select Properties.
3. Click the Security tab and click the Edit button.
4. Now click on the Add button to open the “Select Users or Group” window.
5. In the text box, enter the username of the account you wish to restrict the access of.
6. You should see the username in the Security Permissions window, click on it.
7. Tick all of the Deny check boxes for the user.
8. A message should appear telling you that Deny entries always override the allow permissions.
9. Click OK.

If you don’t want to leave any fingerprint while browsing in the Internet and you want to be invisible to the Big Brother, then this browser is for you. In fact with xB  you can surf anonymously thanks to its technology which takes advantage of the free anonymous network called Tor or through its distributor XeroBank’s networks (which comes with a price). Furthermore, once you close it, an automated feature will clear surfing history and  cookies so that you won’t leave any trace to the people after you. xB is not a new software at all, but it is just a modified version of Firefox, so you can stay assured that you will be able to surf websites with the latest html technology available. xB can be installed on a PC or an USB dongle, it is open-source and it doesn’t require any technical knowledge to set it up. Just install it and start surfing right away.  To download it or know more about it, click here.

If you are a webmaster you know only too well how dangerous to put your email address on your website is. In fact, if you don’t use any protection to trick spam bots, in a matter of  a few hours or even less, your inbox could be pestered with hundreds of emails having the most different and dreadful topics. So, what solution do we have to prevent all this? A nice trick is to create an image of your email address so that malevolent bots won’t be able to read it. Another solution is to protect your email by converting it into an encrypted JavaScript code in order to hide it from spam bots, but at the same time make it  fully readable to human beings. The Enkoder Form does exactly this: hide your email address to email harvester aka spam. Once you have typed your email address in its form you will get a code which you will have to copy-and-past directly on your website without other worries such as: understand how it works, modify it etc. It doesn’t matter how tricky the code is, just put it wherever you want and you are done. Guaranteed!

If you to want export and save all of your Firefox passwords here is a nice free add-on quite easy to use. Its name is Password Exporter and does exactly what it says. As a matter of fact, it exports (or import) all the passwords available in Firefox. You can export by using either XML or CSV format. In this way, next time your computer crashes, you will have all of your passwords with you! If instead you want to use something more complete meaning that you want to save your entire Firefox profile including passwords, cookies, bookmarks then MozBackup is the right add-on. In fact, it lets you backup or restore your profiles in a couple of steps. Reading from the website: “It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc. It’s an easy way to do Firefox backup, Thunderbird backup …” If you want to download it for free or you want to know more, click here.

There are lots of ways to protect your computer from viruses, malware and malicious people trying to trick and scam you. Antivirus, antispyware, online scanner, specialised websites and a lot of software can protect you in a lot of ways. But how can you extricate yourself from this thick jungle and find out what you really need for you and your beloved computer? Here are the best guides I managed to find while surfing in the Internet. I have read all of them and I have to confess you that I was surprised to learn that there are, apart from expensive software, a lot of free programs that manage to shield you against the most common threads you can meet while surfing. Apart from this we can not underestimate the power of a few, little, important tips reported in some of these articles which can save us from hours of pain or worse! So, let’s read together what these writers and experts have to say and teach in order to be smarter than viruses!

• Techsupportalert.com | A very interesting website full of resources, guides, articles and lists of software to be always shielded against viruses and all kinds of threats. I use this website a lot because it contains a very exhaustive list of software covering every kind of security field as far as computer and Internet are concerned. I highly advice this website because if you can not find what you are looking for here, chances are that it does not exist!
• Webuser.co.uk | This interesting guide starts speaking about spywares and what they are, how you can get them and how to be protected from them. But just when you think to have learnt everything here it comes a list of other guides right at the end of the page concerning: Viruses, Premium Rate Diallers, Keylogging, Phishing and Identity Theft. I advice these guides to those people who are just getting seriously interested in the security subject.
• How to Protect Your Computer from Viruses | A very interesting 3-steps guide talking about the most elementary but effective ways to protect your computer from viruses. This guide focuses on the following free software which are considered by a lot of people the most trusting ones: AVG, AVAST! and COMODO.
• Don’t Be A Computer Virus Victim | A 11-steps guide talking about the most important things to do and not to do in order to make your computer virus-proof. I highly recommend this guide to beginners who want to know how to be safer while surfing.
• 10 things you should do to protect yourself on a public computer | Don’t underestimate the malevolent side of surfing on a public computer! Here is a very interesting guide about what you should do and know before and after you surf on a computer which is used by hundreds of people a day!

One of the biggest annoying features in Windows Vista is, without any doubt, its notification icon and its security notification pop-ups which, when your computer is not safe anymore, appear on the screen reminding you of downloading, scanning, reading, clicking etc. Apart from the fact that when these pop-ups appear it doesn’t necessarily means that your computer is at risk, I don’t like the idea of having something which can bother me whenever it wants and regardless of what I am doing. If you think and feel like me, let’s see together how to disable this hunting feature with a simple trick:

1. Double click on the Security icon in the system tray of your desktop.
2. This action will take you to the Security Center window.
3. On the left side of this window you should see a list of options. Choose the last one named: Change the way Security center alters me.
4. Now a window should appear asking you to pick one of the three options available.
5. Click Don’t notify me and don’t display the icon.

There are a lot of ways to become vulnerable while you are surfing in the Internet. You can get a virus, a spyware, a trojan, you can be so silly to be deceived by some phishing email convincing you to send your bank account to somebody you don’t know etc. There is anyway another stupid, really stupid way to put your security in jeopardy: using well-known passwords. Wondering if yours is one of them? Here is the list:

1. password
2. 123456
3. qwerty
4. abc123
5. letmein
6. monkey
7. myspace1
8. password1
9. blink182

As usual, in order not to use any silly password for your most important accounts, keep in your mind these simple rules:

• Use long passwords (at least 7-8 characters)
• Don’t use regular, easy-to-guess, simple passwords such as: colorado, newyork, dogandcat, mycomputer, johndoe, ondacivic etc. That’s because there are special software that in order to find out what passwords you are using, scan the whole english vocabulary, also mixing and combine its words.
• Don’t use any of your sensitive data in your passwords such as: Jenny09/10/1978 or marknewyork1454a, bettymegan212-267-1033
• Use special characters, numbers and capital letters in your passwords. A password like this: MyC@mP&t#r89 is more difficult to guess than 123456john…of course.

Bonus

• Don’t give you passwords to anybody.
• Change your passwords often.
• Don’t write your passwords in your cellphone, don’t put your passwords in your wallet, don’t write your passwords in a file on your computer.
• Don’t write your passwords on a piece of paper and stick it under the keyboard.
• Don’t write your passwords on a piece of paper and stick it on your computer’s display. (I saw this dumb thing on some computers of a military base…incredible, isn’t it?)

In order to improve security in your Wordpress blog, the new version of this wonderful Content Management System has seen the birth of a new way of tightening your security by creating a unique and hard to find number when calculating hash value to encrypt password, especially on cookie authentication. This trick highly prevents hackers who use specific software to brute force your admin account. But, where can you find and use this new feature called “the secret key”? Simple, first of all open the Wordpress zipped file or, alternatively, gain access to your blog by using a FTP software. Look for wp-config-sample.php (if you just installed Wordpress) or wp-config.php (if you have a running blog), open it and look for the following piece of code:

// Change SECRET_KEY to a unique phrase. You won’t have to remember it later,
// so make it long and complicated. You can visit https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm
// to get a phrase generated for you, or just make something up.
define(’SECRET_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’); // Change this to a unique phrase.

Now, just change “define(’SECRET_KEY’, ‘put your unique phrase here’)” by writing a long and hard to guess password. I would like you to remember that the longer and “mixed” it is the better your will be protected against malevolt people. But what do I mean when I say “mixed”? When creating a new password you should keep in your mind what specific software used by hackers are and do. They are huge databases trying to fill in your admin form with all kind of words to gain full access to your blog. They also try to combine words, use capital letters and special characters and such. It is evident that the more messed-up a password is, the better. To give you an example you SHOULD NOT USE a password like this: johnthebest198606. You SHOULD USE instead a password such: RiGhTPaSs$56*8@2Ok. This lessen the chance that some program may, even by change, guess your password. In case you are not creative enough, you can use this simple Web Tool, directly provided by Wordpress that makes the hard job for you, namely find out a very hard-to-guess password. Here is the link.