Ways to protect personal data from online fraud

In this digital age, it’s becoming increasingly hard not to share your personal data, such as passwords, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, etc online because even if you prefer Paper and Phone when performing transactions, most companies prefer doing everything online for financial reasons. Unfortunately, some companies do not put in place the necessary stringent policies and procedures needed for your personal data to be secure.

Moreover, for those of us who prefer not to make an online transactions, find it increasingly irresistible to avoid the convenience and lucrative deals that the whole online world has to offer to us.

Following are a few ways to protect personal data from online fraud which you can look out for while undertaking the online deals in future and feel secure...

Disclaimer: While these tips are intended to make the online transactions secure they offer no guarantee that following them will make them 100% secure.
1. Keep your personal and sensitive data off your computer - What can a virus or spyware program possible to with your personal data if you don’t store it on your computer? It’s simple and very effective. Try your best to keep bank account numbers, passwords, etc off your computer. If you want to keep it in electronic format for easy access, that’s fine, simply buy a flash drive and store all the sensitive files there. Keep it in a safe place and if you need to refer to the documents, then just plug in your drive. Lots of people tend to leave their computers on for long periods of time and it can be compromised at any time, so if there is no data to steal, then you’ve already done a lot to prevent data theft! If you REALLY want it on your computer, then at least make sure you encrypt it.

2. Avoid saving credit card info, etc on shopping sites - Many web sites today, such as eBay, give you the option to save your credit card info so that you don’t have to type in all the information each time you want to buy something. That’s great for them, easy money and more sales, but what about you? What if someone eventually does hack into their database (and don’t worry many people are trying everyday) and downloads thousands of credit card numbers, bank account numbers, etc? It might take an extra minute, but it’s better to not save your info on any shopping site.

3. Do not use the same password for every last thing on the Internet - Yes we all hate passwords, but hackers love people who don’t use passwords or who use passwords like “john” or “joe”. You don’t have to keep a different password for EVERY site, that would be crazy, but definitely not just one. These days just about everyone has numerous online accounts and so if a hacker figures out one password, they’ll go ahead and try to see if it works on any other site. Make sure passwords are different a more complicated. Just throwing in a number or symbol at the end will make it hundreds of times hard for a person to crack your password!

4. Always think before providing information when solicited - If you ever get an email that has a link in it that requires ANY personal information, make sure you go to the web site yourself manually by typing in the address. Half the time links in emails point to fake addresses with very close names. Also, at times you will be bombarded by scams from Nigeria, etc that sound way too good to be true (like someone would actually pay more for your item than what you listed it at)!!! And just because a web site exists does not mean it it legitimate! If you’ve never heard of the site before, just type it into Google once and see if anything like “XXX IS A SCAM” pops up!

5. Clear your browser’s cache after an online transaction - Sometimes your browser will save certain information you typed into forms, etc when you are online, so it’s always good to clear that after you’re done. Also, if you get that message sometimes from your browser asking you whether you want it to automatically save your passwords, etc, click NO. It’s another small pain, but it might help you one day!

6. Turn your computer off or on standby when you’re not using it - This might sound low-tech and it is, but it’s really effective. This is kind of like the first tip, if your computer is not on, then what can a hacker, virus, or anything else possibly do? Nothing! So if you have a desktop at home, make sure you turn it off or put your laptop into sleep mode when you’re not there. Why open it to attack if you’re not even using the computer?

7. Make sure the URL has an HTTPS instead of HTTP - The S makes all the difference! You’ll notice that when you buy something from Amazon or another big site, once you being to checkout, the URL always starts with a HTTPS. This means that the communication between your computer and their server is secure and encrypted. If someone tries to read the data as it travels across the Internet, they won’t be able to understand or decipher it. If you’re buying something from a smaller site and they don’t have HTTPS, just call them and buy it. Not worth risking data passing unencrypted over the net.

8. Use a secure Internet browser when you are online - Firefox is considered more secure than IE and that’s what a number of sites also have tested. Personally, I use Firefox and you should consider it if you’re using IE 7. IE 7 has more security features than ever before, but it still has lots of holes also. Using a more secure browser can help protect against browser hijacking, etc. Anyway, most viruses are written for IE since it’s more common, so it’s more likely to be hacked.

9. Lock your computer at home and at the office - This is another one of those tips that most people don’t think about, especially at your office. If you leave for lunch and your computer is just on without a password-protected screen saver, what will stop a snoopy co-worker to get onto your computer and look through your My Documents, etc? It may not seem likely, but it can very well happen and it’s better to press CNTRL-ALT-DELTE and press Lock Computer or put a password on your screen saver than have some co-worker copy your tax returns from last year!

10. Be careful who you give your computer to when it needs fixing - Unfortunately, if you’re not a tech person, you probably have to hand over your computer to someone else when something goes wrong. I’ve done a lot of computer fixing and one thing I’ve noticed is how ridiculously easy it would be for me to download ALL of their personal information to my external hard drive or flash drive. People simply trust technical support people too much. If someone is going to fix your computer, have then come over to your house and just watch as they do it. When you’re off in another room while they fix your computer, they can also be copying your entire hard drive for themselves.

11. Use advanced techniques like encryption, anonymous browsing, virtualization software, etc - Lastly, if you really want to do more than just the usual, you can encrypt your data, browse the Internet anonymously, or run IE or Firefox in a virtual environment. The advantage of the latter is that you can actually catch a virus or spyware program in the virtual environment and it won’t affect your operating system at all. You can read more by searching “virtualization software” in Google.

BugMeNot.com - Bypass Compulsory Registration

BugMeNot.com is an internet service that provides usernames and passwords to let Internet users bypass mandatory free registration on websites.

It aims to allow Internet users to access websites that have registration walls (for instance, that of The New York Times) without the requirement of compulsory registration. This came in response to the increasing number of websites that request such registration. Many Internet users find this to be an annoyance at best and a potential source of spam e-mail at worst.

Office Ergonomics - Risks of working at a desktop workstation and how to avoid them

I just came across a really cool presentation for people who work at dekstop workstations that explains the common ergonomic mistakes people make, allows you to assess your own posture and office ergonomics, and provides guidelines on the best ways to setup your own workstation at the office in order to reduce strain, back pain, etc.

The presentation, from Kearney-Abrams, is broken up into three main parts:

1. Selft Assesement Tools - Talks about how your wrists are positioned, what’s touching your chair, where are your feet, etc.

2. Pain and Strain Risks - Goes through the major risk factors that cause pain and strain when using a workstation, awkard postures, contact stress, and visual fatigue.

3. Ergo-Smart Workstations - Walks you through visually and tells you how to setup your workstation in the best possible way!

Watch presentation here

Use GMail as an online data base - most amazing mail service ever

Google Toolbar and GMail come together to create a wonderful way to store anything from the web, view it anywhere, and find it quickly! In order to do this, there are a couple of more advanced features that you have to first setup in GMail: labels and filters.

Labels in GMail basically allow you to create “sub” email addresses for your GMail account. For example, let’s say I create a label called “Microsoft”, so what that means is that I know have an email address as the following: username+Microsoft@gmail.com, where user name is your GMail account name. This is a really great way to create email addresses that you can use to sign up for sites that you may end up getting spam from! Let’s say you need to sign up at a site because your company wants you to view a presentation or your friends want you to sign up on some new social networking site, well using labels you can create labels like “Work” or “MySpace” and then sign up to those sites with username+Work@gmail.com! Now it you want to view all messages from MySpace, simply click on the labels and all of those messages will appear.

This kinda sounds like folders almost, right? But what makes labels better than folder is that you can apply multiple labels to one email! So if you were using folders and you had a “Work” folder and a “Funny” folder, then what you would do if you got an email from a work buddy that was a joke! Well with labels you can apply funny and work to one email and it’ll show up on either of those when you click on the label!

But you may ask, how does that make any difference if it’s all coming to my Inbox anyway!? Well, that’s where filters come in! Filters bascially allow you to specify a condition whereby your email can be associated with a label, archived, etc. One of those conditions can be if it’s coming from an email address with your label attached to it. So if a mail is coming in from username+Myspace@gmail.com, you can have those emails automatically tagged with your label “MySpace”. And if you decide you hate MySpace, all you have to do is create a filter that tell GMail to delete any emails coming to that address!

Now getting back to how to use GMail as a database! What we want to do is create a GMail label that corresponds to how we want to store web pages. Maybe you want to create labels called “News”, “WorkStuff”, “Fun”, “Interesting”, etc. To create our label, log into your GMail account from the web browser so that you’re on the main Inbox page.

One the bottom, along side the left menu bar, you’ll see a box called “Labels“, which should have nothing in it if you’re haven’t done this already. Click on Edit Labels to get started creating a label.

On the right side, you’ll see the Settings options with the Labels tab opened. It’s pretty simple to create a label as you might be able to tell. Simply type in the name of label and click Create. You’ll now see your label in the list above:

Now in order to setup our filter to catch the emails with that label and Archive them, we’ll need to create a filter. We want to archive the emails so that they don’t show up in our Inbox and clutter everything up. Click on Filters, which is right next to Labels.

On the Filters tab, click Create a New Filter at the bottom of the orange box:

In the Filter options box, you want to type into the TO address field the following: username+label@gmail.com. For example, I created a Programming label, so I’ll type in Aseem1234+Programming@gmail.com (it’s not case sensitive) and click Next.

Now we can choose the filter action that we want performed. Check the “Skip the Inbox (Archive it)” option and select “Apply the label” and choose the label we just created:

Click Create Filter and we’re done with the first part! Once you get the hang of it, it’ll only take a few minutes to create a new filter if you need it! Now we need to send our pages to Google for storage! So how do we do that? We use the new Google Toolbar! Make sure you have the latest edition of the toolbar otherwise you may not have all of the options.

Once installed, you’ll see at the far right an option called “Send to”:

Click on that and choose “GMail”. An IE window will automatically open that will take either all of the content from the page or whatever content you manually selected and attach it to an email that you can now send to your new address, which is for me was Aseem1234+programming@gmail.com

Click Send and your GMail account will recogize it with the label and will automatically archive it for future searching! And that’s it, you can now use GMail to store all your web pages! And it really stores everything on a web page if you don’t manually select anything, so it can take up a good amount of space eventually! But right now Google is giving 7GB+ space and increasing, which should last almost forever.

Now if you want to search all that vast data that you’ve stored, simply log into your GMail account, and in the search box at the top, type in the word “label” followed by a colon and the name of your label. For example, “label:programming” and then after that type in a keyword(s) that you want to search on. So if I’m looking for something on Foxpro in my programming label, I would type “label:programming Foxpro”:


Article credit: Steve Rubel from MicroPersuasion

Fax feature on Windows XP

For those who have to run down to the STD booth to send a fax every now and then or for those planning to buy a fax machine for home or small business use; stop for a moment and think about the faxing feature on windows XP, it’s easy to setup and maintain and you don’t need to spend on extra hardware equipment because most of computer already come with a modem integrated in it for faxing. In what you will need to invest is on a scanner if you want to be able to fax hard paper copies through your computer.

Windows faxing does not come installed by default on Windows XP, is an optional feature you need to install manually, to do that go to start>settings>control panel>add or remove programs>Add/Remove Windows Components when the windows component wizard comes up check the fax services and hit next, you will need to insert your windows XP installation CD to complete the fax services installation.

At this time you should make sure the telephone line is plugged into the modem port on your computer, this should be the same port as the one you use for dial-up, so if you are using dial-up you should be all set, I guess you won’t be able to get onto the Internet while sending faxes though.

To open the fax console, go to, Start>All programs>Accessories>Communication>Fax>Fax Console and the first thing you will get when you run the fax console is to configure the Sender Information which should be easy if you have that information at hand.

After the sender information, you will be asked to select the modem you are using, and if you want to send and receive faxes, it also gives you the option to answer the fax calls automatically after the rings you specify. Clicking next it will ask you for the TSID, that should be your name or fax number, do the same for the CSID and click next.

Next you will be asked if you want to print the faxes or store a copy on a folder on your computer or a shared folder on the Network, by default all faxes are stored on the fax console inbox.

And from there you are basically done.

Please test the setup if it’s working by going to file on the fax console and try to send a fax to anyone you know to see if actually works.

How to Recover Accidentally Deleted Files

Oh crap! You deleted a file a few days ago that you just realized you still need! And on top of that you already emptied out your Recycle Bin, so there’s nothing there! Well basically, Windows has nothing built-in that will help you recover your deleted file. However, thanks to the way Windows works, when you delete a file or even empty it from your recycle bin, Windows does not actually DELETE the file off the hard drive, it simply deletes the reference to the file.

For example, when you go to a library to find a book, you usually go to the index catalog and find the aisle number for your book. If you delete the index that tells you which aisle that book is located at, the book is still there, but no one may ever find it again! That’s the same way deleting works in Windows, the index to that file is deleted, but not the file itself. But of course, this now means that Windows can use that space to write other files when the time arises! It counts that space as free space, so you have to hope that Windows has not already written over that section!



The program that can help you recover your deleted files is Recuva (to be pronounced as Recover). It’s from the same people who wrote CCleaner, which is a great program to delete temporary files and clean out your registry.
http://www.recuva.com/download/downloading

Set up a wireless connection through laptop without a WiFi router

This article will help you convert your Windows XP and Vista based laptop in a Wireless HotSpot. One you setup your laptop as HotSpot then you do not need a router, switch, hub, etc… to form a network, in fact other laptops or PC’s can connect or access the internet through this newly created HotSpot

What do I need to set a HotSpot?

1. Active Cable Internet
2. Laptop
3. WiFi on Laptop
4. Wired net connection

Once you have all the above things mentioned, you are all set to follow the steps:

How to setup HotSpot on Windows Vista:

1. Got to Control Panel
2. Click on “Network and Sharing Centre”
3. Under Tasks choose “Setup New Connection”
4. Wireless “Ad-hoc network”
5. Now type in a “Network Name”
6. Choose “WEP” password if you don’t want to share the connection with the entire world
7. Click “Internet connection sharing”
8. Done!

Now a WiFi enabled machine will be able to connect to the network you have just setup with the WEP password

Lets setup a HotSpot on a Windows XP machine:

1. Go into Control panel
2. Open “Network Connections”
3. Right click on "Wireless Connection" and click on "Properties"
4. Click on the "Wireless Networks" tab and select the check-box which says “Use Windows to configure my wireless network settings”
5. Under “Prefered networks” click “Add”
6. Type a name in “Network name” text box
7. Select “Shared” from the options under “Network Authentication”
8. Under Data encryption select “WEP” and type in your password in “Network Key” field and now click "OK"
9. Now the new HotSpot should show in the list of preferred networks.
10. Click on the “Advance” button and select “Computer-to-computer (ad hoc) networks only" and press close
11. Hit “OK”, we are done with the wireless connection properties

One more step, we have to change something in the wired connection setting so that it knows that it has to share connection with the computers accessing our HotSpot.

1. Go to local Area Connections, right click it and select properties
2. Go to the “Advanced” tab and under Internet Connection Sharing check the box which says “Allow other network users to connect through this computer’s internet connection” and make sure the box under that is NOT selected so that no one can disable the network remotely.
3. Hit “OK”

I hope this helps setting up a wireless connection without a WiFi router. Have FuN!