Posted by Luke | Posted on 13-05-2010
Category : Internet/Tech, Security
Tags: Facebook, Policy, Privacy, Security
Facebook have been tinkering with their privacy settings on their wildly popular social network within the last couple of weeks, and out of these changes it got me thinking a little about how much has changed on this site since its early days.
After a curious look at my privacy settings page under my account today, I made the decision that it looked way to hard and time consuming to even think about starting to understand all of that! Oh and by the way you need to do yourself a favour and check it out just to see what I am talking about. Now I consider myself pretty good when it comes to understanding things like that but geez Facebook, that page has more options than a prestige car, you guys really need to simplify that for us mere mortals a little bit. I hate to think just how many people out there are uploading personal information day to day and filling their profiles with data without realising just how many third parties have access to this stuff.
If you are interested in finding out a little more about just how much Facebooks privacy has changed since it began you might like to wander on over to a blog by Matt McKeon, the post called ‘The Evolution of Privacy on Facebook‘. There is an excellent graphical representation of just how things have changed as you can see a little bit of in the image below.
And if you are into the real nitty gritty details of the changes you may like to mosey on over to the Facebook Privacy Policy blog. Where they have all the juicy details about just what they have changed.
Posted by Luke | Posted on 11-11-2009
Category : Internet/Tech
Tags: Home User, internet, network, OpenDNS, Security
To start off with here I will explain a little about what a DNS is and will later describe a service to help increase your security on the web and speed up your browsing experience.
DNS stands for Domain Name System, and what does this mean? Well the main purpose of a domain name service is to turn domain names (the address or URL of a website) into something meaningful to humans. Essentially the internet is a massive number of computers which all connect to one another and every computer that has access to the internet has a number the usual format is something like 111.222.3.44. The way you access websites is by telling your computer to go and get information off another computer using a given number. Due to the fact that the internet would be largely unusable to us if we had to remember these numbers each time we wanted to visit a site, we have domain names. each domain name is an easy way of presenting the string of numbers the computers use to talk to each other.
Normally when you type in an internet address you’re computer speaks with your internet service provider who then gets the page your looking for. However services such as OpenDNS allow you to direct your internet traffic through their data centres rather than through that of your own internet service provider. This is achieved by either re-directing at each of the computers on your network or you can tell your router to control this allowing easy set up for all computers on your network.
If for nothing else the benefit of using a service like this enables a good speed boost to your web browsing experience. On some of my tests I noticed that sites were loading around 2 seconds quicker than they previously were through my ISP’s service.
I feel that all households should make use of a service like this in large for the security features that they offer. If you have children it may be of interest to know that you have the ability to specifically blacklist websites that you want to restrict access to. This is often more effective than the built in parental controls on the computer itself becuase it is being controlled by a third party service externally, therefore it is not possible for them to work around this. There are presets provided by OpenDNS which allow you to quickly and very easily filter your web access the presets include:
- None: no restriction to your browsing, you may select this if you’re not using the service for security
- Minimal: protects you against phishing websites and attacks
- Low: protects you against limited adult material & phishing attacks
- Moderate: protects against all adult material & illegal material & previously mentioned items
- High: restricts all adult material, illegal activity, social networking, video sharing, general time wasters plus previously mentioned items.
If you run a business you may find the high level of protection suitable to protect you and your employees from accessing unwanted websites and material. To further add to the offering, if you are so inclined down the big-brother kind of path you can enable stats. This logs all websites that are visited and makes them available for you to view, this can of course be turned on or off.
One of my favourite uses of this service is mainly because I’m lazy, and this is the shortcuts feature. Once you have set this up within the dashboard on your OpenDNS login you simply add a website to the list and give it a shortcut. For example I have it set so that when I type ‘fb’ into my address bar, it will automatically direct me to facebook.com. Pretty handy if you can remember your shortcuts. There is always bookmarks in your browser of course. To add to this is the auto correct feature, this means that if I type facebook.cmo by mistake it recognises this and redirects me to facebook.com instead of giving me a 404 page not found error.
One of the last things that I will mention here for personal users is the ability for the service to redirect when you come accross a site that either no longer exists or you have entered incorrectly and isn’t able to be auto corrected. What happens is that if I am to try and go to fabebook.com, this is obviously spelt wrong but instead of my browser giving me the very annoying 404 page not found error, OpenDNS spits up a page which politely says why you weren’t taken to the page and gives you a list of alternatives or you can do what looks to be a google search.
These are some of the reasons why I feel that this is a service that all homes should be using, and the best part is that for the basic account which gives you all of the things I have mentioned here it is all free! No theres no catches all free. If you’re a business and want some of the more advanced features that this kind of service can provide you do pay a fee. So even if for nothing else but a bit of a speed boost to your browsing head over to OpenDNS.com
Posted by Luke | Posted on 30-09-2009
Category : Security
Tags: Anti-Virus, Computer, Microsoft, Removal, Security, Windows
If you are a windows user – then please read on – this is something that you need to be aware of! The Malicious Software Removal tool (MRT) is a little piece of software heaven for windows users that is not talked about very much. We are all aware that Windows computers are the most vulnerable systems to attack from viruses and malware. Now while everyone does their best to avoid these pesky bits of software that are out there this doesn’t mean that you still won’t fall victim to one every now and then.
I’m sure that by now you have all had the moment where you’re anti virus program spits out at you that you have a virus or some sort of infection on you’re system, now letting the anti-virus deal with it is all well and good, but adding this malicious software removal tool could save you a lot of pain.
My suggestion would be to let you’re anti-virus do it’s job and attempt to delete the infection, but after this is done add in another step. Due to the fact that virus authors are becoming more and more switched on to ways to exploit your system it makes it harder and harder to actually get a virus off your system.
The next step that I’m speaking of is to run the Malicious Software Removal Tool. Now for all Windows users this is actually something that is sitting right there on your computer, in fact Microsoft updates this on the 2nd Tuesday of every month (the same way it does with software updates). To find this program, go to your start menu. There is a ‘run’ selection, press on this. In the window that pops up search for ‘MRT’. This will launch a program, one this has loaded it will prompt you with a few selections – these are ‘quick scan’, ‘full scan’ and ‘custom scan’. For the purpose of locating and removing malicious software you will want to do a full scan. Note that this may take several hours depending on the size and speed of you’re computer.
This will locate and hopefully remove any malicious software that is on you’re computer, and may in fact save you from the need to do a complete system re-store. Now what if you can’t find this on you’re system, well the MRT is available from Microsoft’s website for download, follow the few quick prompts. This is a fairly small download and is under 9Mb in size so there really isn’t any excuse for not using it.
Well I hope that this helps out in determining if you’re anti-virus really is doing its job, while giving you a little extra piece of mind in knowing that you’re system is safe!
