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The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods. Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.
To read more on this, please check out Google’s site, as well as these excellent articles and sites.
Tags: laws, piracy, Security, SOPA
On Tuesday, December the 13th, I will be speaking at the Charleston WordPress User Group meeting. This is part one of a two part session entitled, “Securing WordPress”.
Since WordPress enjoys the position of being one of the most widely used web platforms, it is also one of the most attacked. From installation to operation there are fairly easy, and must-do steps to make sure your site is as secure as possible.
In this two part session, I will cover everything from file permissions and user accounts to script injection and backup procedures to protect your blog from hacking or downtime. The first part of the session will be delivered at this user group meetup, and the second part will be delivered at the February meeting.
For more information, please check out the website of the Charleston WordPress User Group.
The slides from the presentations are posted on SlideShare.
Tags: Charleston, installation, Security, user group, usergroup, WordPress
I got another message today from someone who has lost files due to hardware malfunction. That makes the sixth person in the last two weeks. Seems that as fast as I can get people using proper backup, other people’s machines are failing.
To that end, let’s review the 3-2-1 backup strategy. This, at least, should be followed for all of your important files and documents. And by important I mean anything you care at all about losing.
3 – Your important files should exist in three different places. This could be your computer, your spouses computer, an external drive, a burned DVD, a remote backup, a friend’s house, whatever. Just three distinct copies of the files.
2 – Those files should be on at least two different types of media. Media can be hard drive, DVD, memory card or stick, or even original paper or film.
1 – At least one of those copies should be maintained off-site. That is away from the site of the original. Preferably in a different city or state. Think about common natural disasters. Off-site should be out of reach of those natural disasters.
An external hard drive is excellent for one of your backups. Time Machine on the Mac makes this a no-brainer, and there are some good software packages for Windows, such as Acronis True Image
. Drive space has come way down in price, and an external drive is easy to pickup and take with you in case of emergency. An external drive such as the Western Digital Elements 1 Terabyte drive is a great choice. Western Digital drives are solid and dependable and they have a good company backing them up. Now is not the time to try to find the cheapest thing you can – unless you want to regret that decision later when there is a failure.
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Tags: backup, disaster, recover
Congratulations, you got a new PC for Christmas. Or maybe you bought a new one for your business before the end of the year tax season runs out. Either way, do you know what the first thing you should do is? I mean after taking it out of the box, admiring its awesome shine and plugging it in. That’s right, you should make sure the anti-virus software is in place and up-to-date.
If your machine didn’t come with any protective software, or if you don’t like what it came with, there are some great alternatives available for free download. Note that most of these have both free and paid versions. Even if you would like the extra features available from the paid version, I would recommend trying out the free editions first. You may find out that the software doesn’t suit your exact needs or that the free version would do everything you want.
AVG Antivirus – “No-frills protection to meet your basic security needs.” This is the AV software I recommend most often and the one I use on my own machines.
ClamWin – ClamWin is a Free Antivirus program for Microsoft Windows 7 / Vista / XP / Me / 2000 / 98 and Windows Server 2008 and 2003. ClamWin is open source, so you can even get the code behind the product. An excellent product that is constantly updated and monitored by the open source community. There is even a similar product available for the Mac.
Microsoft Security Essentials – “Microsoft Security Essentials provides real-time protection for your home PC that guards against viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.” Microsoft finally started producing security software for Windows, and it is actually quite good. Also, of course, coming from Microsoft it integrates quite well into the Windows environment.
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Tags: anti-virus, Security, spyware, virus
I really hate sales calls, campaign calls, and solicitation calls. Getting them on my regular home phone is bad enough, but getting them on my cell phone really drives me nuts. Out of the box, you can’t block annoying callers on an un-jailbroken iPhone, but you can make them less of a pain. I will show you my method first, and then tell you about a few alternatives.
1. Create a contact named “Blacklist”. We don’t care about all the details of the contact, just that it has a recognizable name and is a place to store number. I make this a company contact with the name of the contact as just “Blacklist”.
2. Give the contact you created the following picture, or any other ugly picture you desire. 
3. Next we want to assign that contact a custom ringtone, but first we have to get that ringtone to your phone. The ringtone I use is one called “silence“. Click to open it with iTunes or download it and put it in iTunes.
4. Now that you have the contact created and the ringtone in iTunes, sync your iPhone.
5. Almost there, just go into your Blacklist contact and set its custom ringtone to be the one you just uploaded.
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Tags: att, blacklist, blocked callers, iphone, spam
Parents who install a leading brand of software to monitor their kids’ online activities may be unwittingly allowing the company to read their children’s chat messages, and sell the marketing data gathered.
Software sold under the Sentry and FamilySafe brands can read private chats conducted through Yahoo, MSN, AOL and other services, and send back data on what kids are saying about such things as movies, music or video games.
The information is then offered to businesses seeking ways to tailor their marketing messages to kids. “This scares me more than anything I have seen using monitoring technology,” said Parry Aftab, a child-safety advocate. “You don’t put children’s personal information at risk.”
The company that sells the software insists it is not putting kids’ information at risk, since the program does not record children’s names or addresses. But the software knows how old the kids are because parents customize its features to be more or less permissive, depending on age.
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Tags: children, privacy, Security
The Internet is not as dangerous a place for children and teens as we previously thought, according to a recent law enforcement task force report. Real threats remain, however, and parents need to educate themselves and their children about online safety and privacy.
Be aware of Internet safety.
There are six major areas parents need to be concerned about:
- Amount of overall Internet/computer use
- Inappropriate websites—violence, pornography, hate groups
- Internet predators, perhaps posing as children or teens
- Online abuse and bullying
- Divulging confidential family information or ID numbers
- Downloading/installing malicious software
Create a family policy.
Your Internet policy will depend on how old your kids are and what level of individual responsibility you’re willing to grant them. The point is to have a policy.
- Use parental controls (see below) to enforce the level of safety you’re comfortable with.
- Ask the child to suggest a reasonable amount of daily computer usage. Reach agreement on this and then hold the child accountable. Renegotiate if necessary—again, the point is to have an agreed standard, not to expect that the limit will never be exceeded.
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Tags: children, internet, pornography, privacy, Security
As you are probably aware, Microsoft releases security updates on the second Tuesday of each month. However, this week there is a dangerous security hole in Internet Explorer that they’ve haven’t patched yet. This vulnerability is so severe that users are advised to immediately apply a workaround fix.
This particular flaw lets attackers infect the victim’s computers (running Windows XP or Windows Server 2003) after they’ve clicked on a video link in Internet Explorer. The vulnerability allows attacker to run arbitrary code under the same user rights of the local user. The worst part of it is the fact that this is not some theoretical hole; Microsoft clearly states that they’re already aware of malicious hackers exploiting this vulnerability.
If you’re running Internet Explorer under Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, you should go apply the emergency fix, which can be found at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/972890#FixItForMe, right away. The real patch will likely come in seven days, with Microsoft’s regular security update bundle.
Note that this flaw does not exist on Windows Vista or Windows 7. Additionally, this does not apply to users of the Firefox browser on Windows XP. If you haven’t yet tried out Firefox as an alternative to Internet Explorer, you really should.
Tags: internet explorer, Microsoft, Windows
We all know we should be backing up our computers. We also all know we should exercise more, eat more leafy green vegetables, and spend more quality time with our families. Well, I can’t help you with the lifestyle choices, but I can give you a way to make doing your backups as painless as possible.
What is my secret painless backup method? One word, Mozy. Mozy is a remote backup service that works on Windows or Mac. Basically it backs up your data to the cloud. Yes, the famous Internet cloud we all keep hearing about. The software is a quick download and is simple to install and setup. And here is a real cool thing – it is free for up to two gigs of data. Yup, if you are just going to backup a subset of your files, it is free! And if you want to backup more or even all of you data, it is only about $5 per month for as much space as you need.
There are both pro and home versions of the Mozy software, so if you are looking at backing up an office environment they have you covered. And, heaven forbid, if you ever need to do a restore you can do it over the Internet to the same machine or to a different machine. If you have backed up a huge amount of data they can even just send you a physical copy of the data instead of having to download it all.
I’ll tell you the truth. I use Mozy because it works and it is kind of just a “set it and forget it” solution. I don’t have to swap tapes. I don’t have to worry about taking something off-site, and I don’t have to fear that the backup media or disks might get stolen and compromised. Everything is stored securely far away from here so I just let it run.
Again, there is a totally free version for up to 2 gig of storage, meaning there is no reason not to try it. So please, backup your files. If you don’t use this, use something. There is absolutely nothing worse than losing your work, your taxes, your financial records, or your prized family photos and knowing that you could have prevented the loss.
Oh, and if you want help with all those other lifestyle issues… check out ZenHabits.
Tags: backup, cloud, easy, mozy, Security
One of the key elements in making sure your computer remains a productive tool is making sure that it is running smoothly. While software patches and routine maintenance take care of some of this, there are other threats that need to be addressed in a more active manner. Of course I am referring here to viruses, spyware, and other malicious software that all fall under the generic term “malware”.
Doing things such as ensuring that you use secure passwords and are not clicking on unknown attachments in your email will help reduce the risk of attacks from malware. But, there still a real need to run third-party security software. Not only will that software help to protect your machine and its data, but it will also aid in preventing your machine from becoming a carrier and infecting other machines.
The first form of protection you need is an anti-virus program. Good AV programs, as they are called, will scan you email, your disks, and even the websites you visit. One very good AV program, with a free starter version, is AVG by Grisoft. You can easily download it from their website and have it scanning within a matter of minutes. I have used AVG for a number of years and it will often catch threats that the big boys won’t. Additionally, since you can try it out for free, it is basically a no lose proposition. If you don’t like the way it performs, you can always turn to the programs from TrendMicro or McAfee.
The second type of protection you will need is something to protect you from spyware. Spyware is slightly different from a virus in that it usually doesn’t do your machine harm, but it can compromise your security, record passwords, and steal information. Windows Defender is built into Windows Vista and is a free add-on for Windows XP. While it is a good start, it is not nearly as powerful as either SpyBot Search & Destroy or Ad-Aware by Lavasoft. Either of those two programs can, again, be downloaded for free from the Internet. Although it is not a good idea to keep more than one anti-virus or anti-spyware program running at the same time, you can switch between them from time to time to make sure you catch everything.
There is a lot of debate on whether or not Macintosh owners need to run anti-virus software. Due to the nature of the Mac OS X operating system and the complete lack of viruses out for it at present, I do not recommend running anti-virus software. I do however recommend making sure that some filtering is done on email, either locally or by your provider, to make sure that viruses are not simply passed on to other users. This is especially important for people who exchange files with Windows users on a regular basis. If you insist on using one, give the freeware ClamXav a try. Of course this situation may change in the future.
Next time we will talk a little about the reverse side of security – making sure that users, be they young or old, don’t use your computer to access Internet sites or other resources that may be inappropriate.
Tags: anti-virus, avg, malware, Security, trendmicro, virus
