In today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, it's crucial to stay up-to-date with the latest security practices. However, there are some computer security tips that have become outdated over time. In this blog post, we'll take a trip down memory lane and explore some of these practices that no longer hold true. Let's dive in!
As a long-time Google fan, it pains me to say this, but I am starting to lose trust in some of Google's product decisions. I want to be clear - I still love Android, ChromeOS, Chrome, and many other Google offerings. Google takes user privacy and security very seriously. However, over the years, Google has developed a pattern of releasing several innovative products that showed a remarkable amount of potential, ultimately getting me hooked as a loyal user, and then eventually killing them off.
Privacy and security are paramount concerns in the digital sphere. In response, tech companies big and small vow to protect your data through enhanced encryption, anonymity tools, and strict privacy policies. However, you should approach these claims with skepticism. Often, privacy marketing aims to shift your trust from mainstream services to unproven alternatives, rather than truly safeguard your information.
If you have been reading the headlines over the past few days, you may have been lead to believe that Google’s email service was hacked. Earlier this week, The Business Insider released a horrible article that lightly plagiarized a Paywalled Wall Street Journal article stating that Google gives developers free reign to your inbox. They further introduced wording to allow some readers to formulate conspiracy theories to fill in the many gaps in their content – and it worked. They also gloss over the most important fact – users, not Google are who are giving services access to their email. Here is why it is all bullshit.
If you are a Chromebook owner who uses a VPN, you probably noticed that:
There are of course countless VPN Solutions on the Google Play Store however if you ever tried to use one of these, you will notice that the VPN appears to be functioning correctly however only traffic from other play store applications will flow through the VPN while the main ChromeOS traffic bypasses it – Potentially exposing sensitive data. I even wrote a long rant about this a few months ago. Fortunately there is a simple fix.
I am sure that everyone has heard that the popular dating website that specialized in marriage infidelity was hacked a few weeks ago. The brazen hackers have essentially open-sourced the entire AshleyMadison.com website and released several massive database dumps containing customer profiles, customer details (name, address, email address, phone number) and a limited amount of payment information including the last 4 digits of the credit card number. Several people I have spoken to in person do not see this as a threat as you would need the entire card number (and CVV2) before you can use the card for fraud. I have to disagree as it is fairly trivial to turn the last 4 digits of the credit card number into the entire credit card number using nothing more then a phone and a bit of charisma.
European countries often have a lot of great things going for it such as Universal Health Care and the Metric System however there is one policy that was recently been enacted that I cannot get behind, Europe’s “Right To Br Forgotten”.
We owe a lot to the widely used, yet under-appreciated encryption system known as the GNU Privacy Guard, also known as GnuPG. Although GnuPG has been around for a very long time, it recently made it into the news as one of the tools used by Edward Snowden to encrypt emails containing sensitive information. What is hard to believe is that the GnuPG software stack was built and maintained by one single person, Werner Koch who makes his living giving the software away for free. Werner has unfortunately come under some hard times as donations have dried up and he is looking for help.
I tend to get very attached to my Android devices although I do not like to part ways with my devices, I would rather have them being appreciated by others rather then collecting dust on my bookshelf. I have sold my fair share of Android Devices over the past few months and have put together a comprehensive guide to selling your old phones and tablets.
I spend a lot of time online reading technical and security websites and am often baffled on the amount of misinformation I keep seeing. Several of these websites seem to promote several different third party products and services that are not really necessary in most cases. This is a modern version of the old defunct argument for Android Task Killers. Instead of promoting any third party products, lets look at three practical Android Security Tips that will keep you safe.