Feb
16
Social networking apps may be accessing your smart phone’s address book and contacts without your consent.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17051910
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Feb
08
It seems Verizon itself may have been breached. This may enable hackers to poison DNS so as to translate domain names into the numeric address for malicious sites.
Internet security: Once more unto the breach (via The Economist).
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Jan
28
This article from Sophos illustrates another reason why you should be very careful about what you post on social networking sites. More and more, employers are checking such sites to vet potential employees.
Social media, the ultimate career-squasher (Sophos Security)
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Jan
17
In this ACLU blog post, it seems that Facebook is aggregating user data and exploiting it, presumably for its own financial gain.
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Jan
05
Thank you for helping make my book Complete Guide to Internet Privacy, Anonymity and Security the #1 bestseller in the ‘Computer & Internet Privacy’ category on Amazon.co.uk.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/14212401/
Thank you!
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Dec
28
“Mobile security is a hot issue because hackers are paying unprecedented attention to the devices as smartphone sales have outpaced sales of PCs.”
GSM phones vulnerable to hijack scams -researcher (Reuters).
Dec
19
ZDNet analyzes the roll-out of Facebook’s timeline feature and the privacy concerns associated with it.
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Dec
19
Internet Explorer: Microsoft plans ‘silent’ updates (via BBC News).
The main story is about Microsoft phasing out old versions (like IE6) and introducing automatic updates for its Internet Explorer web browser, but it is interesting WHY they are doing so. Old web browsers are often targeted by hackers and susceptible to malware attacks.
More reasons to keep all of your critical software, not just your web browser, up to date.
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Dec
18
If you use a proxy or VPN service, you may wish to monitor your active ‘ports’ to ensure that your Internet traffic is actually being routed through the proxy or VPN.
For doing so, my book recommends the free port monitoring utility, CurrPorts (short for current ports) – http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/cports.html.
Port monitoring utilities such as this allow you to monitor the connections made from and to your computer. This is also how a firewall works in the background. Port monitoring utilities let you see which process has opened which port, shows each connection’s local and remote IP address, and may even let you terminate a process. Such a utility lets you check that the programs supported by your proxy or VPN service (browser, torrent client or chat program) are in fact connecting through that service’s IP address. If you see the proxy’s or VPN’s IP address in the ‘Remote Address’ column of CurrPort’s display, you can be confident that you are making connections through the proxy or VPN.
Ensuring your traffic is being properly routed through any proxy or VPN service you use is more important than ever. The website YouHaveDownloaded.com has created quite a stir by keeping records by IP address of torrent downloads.
If you are using a proxy or VPN service, the sort of tracking illustrated by the YouHaveDownloaded.com website should be less of a risk.
My book
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Dec
15
In a recent newsletter, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC.org) reviewed the ‘Complete Guide to Internet Privacy, Anonymity & Security’. To read it, please see item #7 in EPIC’s Alert 18.23 of 1 December 2011.
I believe that it is a thoughtful and frank review. While it cannot be described as a ‘glowing’ review I’ll happily take it as the book is described as “strangely satisfying” and that it “certainly contains good, practical information, presented in a clear, visually pleasing, and logical way“. The reviewer’s concluding remarks include that, “… the book and attendant web site are remarkably helpful in understanding and remediating the myriad issues related to online security and privacy.”
EPIC.org was also kind enough to highlight my book on its home page (see the screenshot below) and include a link in the newsletter to the Amazon page selling my book.
As an author, I must say that I am tempted to defend the more critical elements of the review (e.g., Usenet is very much alive and well), but I think that the reviewer has done a good job and I can only thank her for taking the time to read the book and publish a review for such an authoritative and well-respected organization as the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
If you have any comments about the review, please feel free to post a comment. Thanks.
