facebook – Anti-virus Software, Spyware Protection & Firewall

Jon September 30, 2010

Your Facebook Status Can Come Back to Bite You.

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, your blog… these and countless other websites and social networking hubs share one thing in common, and that is each one of them lets it’s users write and promote their current status. That status is usually something relatively innocuous: What a person is having for lunch, what they did the night before, or maybe even some LOLcat links.

These kind of status updates aren’t a problem, but as we become more used to posting the details of our daily lives there’s an inherent danger in over-exposing ourselves, our family, or our jobs to the public. From something as simple TMI to talkin’ trash, there are many degrees of “you shouldn’t post that online”. Here are a few standouts:

Zip your lip about work.
Nothing online gets you fired faster or in hot water easier than leaking sensitive company information, trash talkin’ about your boss, or revealing co-worker secrets. Leave work stuff at work, and keep personal stuff personal.
Keep kids out of sight!
Keep any info about your kids as much out of the public view as possible. Don’t use Foursquare from their school (do you really want the mayorship of a school, anyhow?!), don’t use their last names in blog posts, and make sure that pictures of them don’t have identifiable info in the background like street addresses and things of that nature.
Travel first, tweet later.
Going on a vacation? Great! Just be sure to blog, tweet, or leave a comment online about it after the fact. Online criminals are looking for empty houses from the comfort of their homes instead of casing neighborhoods, so don’t blog yourself into an empty house. Do a post-trip post if you must, so that you’re not dangling fresh bait in front of the bad guys.
Who’s looking at your stuff?
You constantly hear about how some online service is having troubles with their privacy settings, or is changing how things work. Make it a point to re-check your viewing permissions and be sure to set them so that only people who you want to see your profile can see you.

Bottom line? Be careful what you post. What your write as your Facebook (Twitter, blog, etc.) status can come back to bite you in a big way.

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/rishibando/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

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Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: blogs, facebook, Internet Safety, Internet Security, social networks, twitter

Jon July 16, 2010

Exposed – Geolocation Dangers and You

On the Internet nobody knows you’re a dog.

You’ve heard that saying before, right? Well, nobody may know you’re a dog on the Internet, but through the magic of GPS-enabled gadgets, they may know where you’re located.

With today’s advances in technology and all of the swanky new things we can do with our gadgets, the dangers of geolocation are something many people don’t realize. Slowly but surely, more creeps and criminals are using technology to find victims, and GPS-enabled devices are helping them out in a big way.

Here are a few prime places where geolocation information can creep up, and why you don’t want it to show itself:

Your Cell Phone or Digital Camera:
If possible, turn off any location-aware abilities, especially for pictures or any media that’s made publicly available. Exif information (which can include GPS data) can be included in pictures in some of the new/popular smartphones (iPhone and Android people, I’m talking to you), and that’s a prime example of geolocation danger waiting to happen.

It’s not a big deal to geocode (e.g. add the GPS data) a picture you take in a store, or a restaurant, but if you’re hanging around the house or taking a picture of your kids at school, the last thing you want is to let strangers have the GPS location of those places.
Your Social Networks:
Just say no to showing where you are. If you want to let people know how much fun you’re having someplace, do it after the fact. For example, if you’re going on vacation, don’t announce it on Facebook or Twitter before you go; wait until you’re back. The plus side is that you’ll be able to show off your pictures and videos, too.

For the same reason you don’t want your geolocation revealed publicly to strangers through your pictures, you don’t want to do it on your social networks. Keep personally identifiable information safe from prying eyes.

By the way, the EFF has a great article and PDF download on living with, but not being hampered by, geolocation services and tools.

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/raggle/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: cyberstalking, facebook, geolocation, Internet Safety, twitter

Jon July 1, 2010

Internet Facts (Take Them with a Grain of Salt)

The best thing about the Internet is that anyone can write anything on any topic and be heard around the world at the click of a button. Of course, that’s arguably also the worst thing about the Internet. 🙂

The “Wild West” nature of the web can make it challenging to find unbiased information on a variety of subjects. Your friends on Twitter say one thing, Facebook friends maybe another. And that guy on that forum? He thinks they’re both wacky. Add a few Google searches on top of it and who knows what to think?! That’s the Internet, for better or for worse. But at least we’ve got options, right?

If you’re having problems navigating through your research online, try a few of these ideas. They just might help you uncover a treasure trove of information.

Use multiple sources:
Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket by only reading one website for information. Find 2, 3, maybe even 20 sources… whatever it takes to get as many angles as possible. From there you can make up your own mind based on everything you read.
Do offline research:
Newspapers, trade magazines, encyclopedias; sometimes in our digital world we forget that reference books and periodicals exist. (Or dare we say, the library!) They may seem like a a dying breed, but you can still find them all around your town, and they’ve got lots of information you can use. And most of the time they’ve been edited, unlike the Internet. (Haha)
Ask an expert:
Local colleges, professional organizations, and government offices usually have an information desk of some kind. If you’re looking for information on something in a particular field, see if you can find a human expert who will help you out, or at least point you in the right direction. It’s better than going it alone.

Image courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/stlbites/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: blogs, facebook, social networks, Tech Related, tips, twitter

Jon March 3, 2010

Making Facebook Safer for You and Yours.

With over 400 million active members at the time of this post’s release, half of which log in at least once per day, Facebook is at the top of the web site food chain. With numbers like that, chances are that if you’re reading this post you’re also a Facebook member, and if you are, there have been a lot of changes in the last few months with regard to Facebook account settings that you may not have updated recently.

You may have updated a few settings when you first set up your Facebook account, but it’s a good time to review what your current settings are and make any changes necessary. We’d like to show you 3 things you can change, update, or do to make your Facebook profile safer and help ensure that only the information you want people to see can be seen.

Account Settings:
It all starts with a good password. Since Facebook allows you to store a lot of personally-identifiable information, it’s even more important to ensure that the password you use to access Facebook is strong, unique, and known only by you. If you’re not sure how to create a strong password, check out our blog articles “12 Tips for Making a Good Password” and “Bionic Passwords: Better, Stronger, and Faster“.

To change your Facebook password, click on Account > Account Settings > Password. You should then be prompted to type in your old password (as a safety precaution) and your new password.
Privacy Settings:
The Facebook privacy settings page has 5 different sections that you can modify, each of which we’ll discuss separately below. For specific details on each section see the actual page itself.
- Profile Information:
  This section allows you to determine who can see information like your birthday, photos, posts, comments, and information of that nature.
- Contact Information:
  This section allows you to determine who can see information like your cell phone, home address, website URL, and IM screen names.
- Applications and Websites:
  If you allow Facebook applications to access your account (including games such as Mafia Wars and 3rd party tools like Twitter), this section allows you to determine what, if any, information those applications can access. You can also select what information your friends can share about you, too.
- Search:
  This section has 2 very important settings: who can see your search results, and whether or not your Facebook page can be accessed by search engines.
- Block List:
  Have a virtual stalker on Facebook, or just really tired of someone? You can add them to your Block List and not have to deal with them any more (for the most part).
Watch what information you publish:
Think twice before publishing anything that is personally identifiable to Facebook or any other web site. Phone numbers, addresses, work locations, and schools you or family members are attending are all examples of things that you might want to keep under wraps. And if you do publish them to your Facebook friends, be sure to double-check all of your Facebook settings (noted above) to make sure that only the people you want seeing them can have access to them.

Please be especially careful with releasing any information regarding your home address online. Making your home address public isn’t something a lot of people do, but new tools, games, and features on many new phones, web services, etc. allow you to post geolocation data like GPS coordinates, and those can be just as dangerous to make public as your address. Read our blog post “Stranger Danger: Geolocation Features and Internet Safety” for more information.