Sony: WTF
The recent breach in Sony Play Station network has really given Sony a black eye. Whenever you have millions of Names, Email Addresses and Credit Card Numbers hacked it tends to cause quite a stir.
But, this isn’t about Sony, its about security and protecting your wallet. For the purpose of this article we will use the following definition for; Security.
Security: The action of minimizing your exposure or risk.
Zero Risk- If you use the Internet and are looking for Zero Risk, then not only is this article not for you, but you should really consider not using the Internet at all.
The Rest of Us – If you plan on using the Internet to buy products or sign up subscriptions, then this may be of help.
For any of us who has ever had financial difficulties, then you will know that you get bombarded with offers for prepaid debit cards that allow you to re-charge and the credit limit is set at the balance on the card. This may be the perfect solution to providing a measure of minimized risk when using the Internet.
My System – I have set up an account with one of many of these companies. The trick to finding the right one for you may be based on the monthly service fee, which they all seem to have unless you maintain a large balance. This of course defeats the purpose of this plan.
This is the card I use when setting up accounts like iTunes, Amazon, etc. I have arranged through my bank to automatically add a certain amount of cash each month. This is of course based on the monthly fees I foresee needing. This way if someone gets my info, then they are only going to rip me off for what is available on the card, and not my credit limit on my actual line of credit.
Downside – This doesn’t stop you from being nabbed because the people you do business with haven’t secured their servers. But, it will help you minimize your exposure, and in the event that something bad happens, its a relative simple matter of canceling your prepaid card and opening up a new account.
In Conclusion: There are tons of articles about these types of cards from the really bad to the OK. The following article is a good place to start: http://www.creditcards.org/prepaid?lp=1
Good Luck
Categories: All, Security, Tips & Tricks Tags: credit card numbers, OK, prepaid card, prepaid debit cards, Security, Sony Play Station, Zero Risk
Domain Proxies–Scammer Paradise
I’m Rich…. I just won 5.5 million dollars – NOT! Of course this is just one of many scams on the Internet today.
My wife was notified in an email and phone call yesterday that she had won all this money for some reason. She told the caller that she wanted to see a copy of the money order before going any further. They sent us the image below.
We checked out the bank and sent them a copy of the check, never anticipating a reply. But the real story here is about GoDaddy and a company called DomainsByProxy. I decided to do a WhoIs search on the domain that the email came from. The domain was purchased through GoDaddy by a company called DomainsByProxy.
DomainsByProxy will register a domain for you, thereby keeping your contact information private. What more could a scammer ask for. Now I understand that there are legitimate reasons, in fact the company states on their site:
The law requires that the personal information you provide with every
domain you register be made public in the "WHOIS" database. Your
identity becomes instantly available – and vulnerable – to spammers,
scammers, prying eyes and worse.
But now there’s a solution: Domains By Proxy®!
There is a very good reason that domain ownership is designed to be public, now this company in its attempt to protect people have made it a safe haven for the bad guys.
Sometimes the best of intents go bad!
Categories: All, Security, WWW Tags: company states, domains by proxy, domainsbyproxy, godaddy, solution domains, WHOIS
Security Companies or Hackers
Security Companies or Hackers. Gawker has open the flood gates with its check book journalism.
Categories: All, Security Tags: AT, company b, contact company, Security, Security Companies, security company, security firms
Bad JuJu From The RIAA/MPAA
The office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (a new post under the Obama administration) asked for comments as it puts together its “Joint Strategic Plan” for intellectual property enforcement. Public comments are also welcome.
Gizmodo has summarized the main comments from the RIAA and MPA and are as follows: (Read Full Article)
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Stop Forgetting Passwords
Let me ask a question; Do you ever forget a password to a site, or use a password that is so easy it’s hardly worth the effort? If you are like most of us then the answer is YES to both.
Let me introduce you to LastPass. LastPass is the answer to your problem, even if you didn’t know you had one. With the growing popularity of social sites and putting up tons of personal information on the Internet, Security is no joke. Not to mention that just about any site you go to these days wants you to register for whatever reason. So what is LastPass? In short LastPass is one of the most well regarded services when it comes to protecting your usernames and passwords and giving you access to them anytime you are connected to the Net.
Categories: All, Security, Tips & Tricks, Windows Tags: Explorer, Firefox, firefox extension, Freeware, Internet Explorer, login credentials, mobile platforms, Security, usernames and passwords, web passwords, YES
reCaptcha and Google
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As you may of heard, Google has purchased reCaptcha. So what is it anyway?
A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. You’ve probably seen them — colorful images with distorted text at the bottom of Web registration forms. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from “bots,” or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.
So why and how is Google using this technology? This is all part of Google’s Book project, to scan and make all of the worlds written knowledge searchable. Quite a lofty goal to say the least. If you haven’t visited ‘Google Books’ you should give it a try. I was quite impressed when I saw that they had scanned all 1900 issues of Life Magazine. Quite a time capsule.
So how does this help with the Google Books project? It Google words this is how it works:
To archive human knowledge and to make information more accessible to the world, multiple projects are currently digitizing physical books that were written before the computer age. The book pages are being photographically scanned, and then transformed into text using “Optical Character Recognition” (OCR). The transformation into text is useful because scanning a book produces images, which are difficult to store on small devices, expensive to download, and cannot be searched. The problem is that OCR is not perfect.
reCAPTCHA improves the process of digitizing books by sending words that cannot be read by computers to the Web in the form of CAPTCHAs for humans to decipher. More specifically, each word that cannot be read correctly by OCR is placed on an image and used as a CAPTCHA. This is possible because most OCR programs alert you when a word cannot be read correctly.
Categories: All, Security, Tips & Tricks Tags: Book Project, colorful images, ga2, google, Google Books, OCR, ocr programs, optical character recognition, physical books, Software
