Managing and protecting your personal data on your computer is an uphill task in the modern era. There is no dearth of hackers and spammers who work day and night to intrude into your computer and gain access to all your sensitive data and information. LockCrypt is a freeware application which aims to avoid such a situation by storing your confidential data in a secure and encrypted form.
It is an easy-to-use utility which works on Java and has a nice user interface. It can store data like your credit card and bank account details, passwords of your online accounts, serial keys of various software on your PC and various other data which you consider to be important and private.
Reinstalling an operating system is probably one of the most vexatious procedures one can do on their computer. Firstly, it’s a lengthy process which require you to be in front of the computer but do nothing at the same time. Secondly, a lot of the time, users overlook many things that needed to be backed up before beginning. Hence, some data gets lost along the way and is usually unrecoverable.
We all know how difficult it can be to keep your online accounts safe and how hackers are always trying to break into accounts with dictionary attacks. This is why you should never use short simple passwords that you can find in a dictionary such as your name, the name of your partner, child, dog, whatever. You might think that having PASSWORD as your password is hilarious but it isn’t hilarious when you’re locked out of your online banking account.
I love Firefox and I love extensions!
There I said it. I am an extension junkie!
I did a clean install today on a new laptop and I decided to document some of my favorite Firefox extensions. But before we get into the list …
I wanted to warn you that each additional extension you install uses more memory and can slow down your Firefox or computer. So try out as many as you want, keep what you need and disable/uninstall the ones you don’t to keep your fox running nice and quick.
With the unexpected news that Google was dropping its Browser Sync Firefox addon, attention is now turning to Mozilla Labs’ “Weave” project.
Weave is also a Firefox add-on and its purpose is to allow you to backup your Firefox settings such as your bookmarks, history, passwords, customizations and preferences and then sync them with the Mozilla servers so that you can access them from anywhere that allows you to access the internet. Obviously this data is encrypted so that it’s securely stored.
People like nosing around. People like to go through other people’s stuff. Whether they are your family, friends, colleagues, or some anonymous guys in a basement in Japan, it’s something you want to avoid.
Whether it’s because you like your privacy or you think you have a reason to ‘erase your tracks’; in the end it’s all the same.
Luckily for you and I there are apps that can help you protect your privacy and your files, i.e. erase your tracks and put a nice big lock on all of your stuff.
I took a little trip to my sister’s house a few weeks ago and I needed to get some work done. I whipped out my HP 2510P Tablet and proceeded to connect to their wireless network named ever so cleverly… “TheInternet”.
So when I saw the custom name on their router’s SSID, I figured someone configured it and could give me the WEP key. I asked and I was met with a dead stare.
“What’s a WEP? Is that like a USB?”
“It’s the password you set when you set up the router”
“What’s a router?”
About two years ago I gave up trying to memorize all of my online accounts. I used a “three tier” password system for a while - with a low security, medium security, and high security password for the majority of my accounts. However, this still did not leave me at ease - knowing that if on one of these accounts my password was compromized, it potentially left the others open to attack.
After looking around for different password managers, I came across KeePass. The main features that drew me to this program:
Are you an administrator on the Windows operating system with multiple user accounts? Have you forgotten the password to one of those accounts and you are locked out? Then, provided you are the administrator, you can reset the password from the command line.
To open the Windows command line, just go to your start menu then choose “run” (or press your Windows key and then press R). Then in the box that pops up, type cmd and press enter.
In the black box that comes up, type net user then enter. This will give you a list of all your Windows accounts on that computer.
Every day I find new Firefox tips and tricks that I didn’t know about and then I find out that other people didn’t know about them either. So here’s what I discovered recently to make you more of a Firefox power-user. Some of them are useful keyboard shortcuts to keep your hand away from that mouse, and others are just regular tips to optimize and improve your use of Firefox.
KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS
CTRL and K - moves your cursor up to the search engine plug-in box. Once you’re there, CTRL and the up / down arrows on your keyboard will jump from search engine to search engine.
There is a feature in Microsoft Word which allows you to add password to your word documents. This is especially useful if the document is sensitive (such as a password list, bank details or a business proposal). If your computer is accessed by an unauthorised user, having passwords protecting your secret documents may just be what you need to maintain your privacy.
Just open Word, go to the Tools menu, select Options and then select the Security sub-tab. You will then see this box :
The idea of this post is to go through a bunch of tools that add to your browsing experience. Nothing extra ordinary but a handful of simple useful apps that solve common web problems: slow website loads, 404 errors, tab overloads, never ending signups, phishing, etc. Enjoy!
(1) OpenDNS - A quick way to add to your web speed. In simple terms, OpenDNS allows you to speed-up domain detection process which is normally handled by your ISP. There is nothing to download or install, but a couple of changes to your connection settings. Among other things, also includes domain typo correction, phishing protection, and domain blocking. Demo video.
The web has revolutionized the world - but it has also made us lazy. Instead of typing ten letters on a keyboard, we want to type five instead. We want things to magically download all on their own and for our applications to self-update. We long for the type of computer seen in Star Trek where we can talk to it, instead of moving a mouse and hoping for the best.
In that spirit of laziness, lots of bookmarklets have been developed by internet users to help cut down on the amount of work we do on the keyboard and live life as a slacker to the full. Since that describes me perfectly, here’s five of my favourites -
According to eBay, Paypal and Gmail (amongst others), I have about five hack attempts a week made on my accounts. Last year it was around ten a week. I know this because after a certain number of failed password attempts, the website locks down the account and informs the account holder by email that there have been unsuccessful attempts to access the account. I’ve lost track of the number of times I have had to unfreeze my account and reset my password.
