Category: Security

5 Ways to protect yourself on Kik Messenger!

Paul

Understanding the Kik Messenger!

The Kik Messenger is just a little app that allows people to chat without the need to share you phone number.   It has several things that help make people want to use Kik, and I am going to share some of them with you and hope that it helps you protect yourself from scammers.  With any messaging app, you will always have bots and scammers who only purpose in life is to steal your money or your identity.   It seems that I found a few that times when I wondered how they figure out my username.   it really wasn’t hard to find me on Kik, I seem to keep Something the same and you could find me to if your really wanted to.  

  • Don’t give out your Phone Number — It seems it is the easiest thing to do but if you give out your phone number to a complete stranger, you are just asking for trouble from people who are going to stalk you or harass you.  
  • Don’t give out specifics — until you really start to be friends it is something that should be in your head at all times.   Don’t tell them your personal stuff like where you actually work, or the exact model of your car.   If you have to answer them, just generalize it to the point that it would make it really hard for them to find you after that.   I wouldn’t say Lie to them but don’t speak the whole truth, until you are sure they are trustworthy.
  • Quick Repliers — If you find yourself getting almost instant replies from the sender, you can bet that it isn’t truely a person because even I can’t type that fast.   It does not mean people who reply with yes or no answer are bots because most people are quick with those.  if it is long text in under a minute, you can bet it is a bot!
  • Don’t share Pictures or Videos —  If you don’t want your friends to see the picture or video, you really shouldn’t share it to some unknown bot or person on the messenger app.   You really do not know who or What they will do with that stuff.   It could cause your embarrassment in the future.
  • Don’t click links — Unsolicited links are just going to probably get your infected and thus you shouldn’t click on any links or go to sites that that the person says unless you know about that site personally.   Just be careful what you do online and you are far better off!

If you use these tips, you are better off than before.   Just remember that you do not really know the person unless you meet them in person.   HOpe this helps!

Several online retailers have weak password security!

Paul

Retailers makes it easy for hackers!

Dashlane releases their top 100 online Retailers and “The Illusion of Personal Data Security in E-Commerce” this makes it easier for the hackers to know the common passwords for sites.   Some of the retailers that are mentioned are:
  • Cafepress (affiliate link) — Although I have been a huge supporter for those really cool shirts and other personable merchandise.   They only require a 3 character password.  If your using a 3 character password, then you are just yelling to the hackers come get my credit card information and personal information!
  • Scholastic Inc — This one seem likes they allow this for kids, I just hope they don’t give out all that valuable information.   They two also only require a 3 character password for an account!
  • 1-800-flowers (1800flowers.com) — Only requrie a 1 character password, which means that you could use Q for your password and you’d be all set for someone to take your credit card information really quickly.

Those are only the few that I found that were really interesting.   I am calling out these retailers to make changes to their password lengths.  You can see the complete list of the 100 retailers with passwords length and various other data.   This link is thanks to Steve Gibson to see all the important stuff!

Password Length

I’ve talked about Lastpass in the past so I will not talk about it anymore.  I do recommend people use the maximum length you can have on sites that are really important to you.   This will prevent hackers from guessing real simple passwords.   Although you should have Higher, Lower, Numbers, and Special characters in your password to make password guessing even harder.  It is up to you to prevent your account from getting hacked or taken over.   No one can help you but yourself!

 

Those really BAD passwords you shouldn’t use! The list is out for 2013!

Paul

Who uses these?

It isn’t everyday that I come across some really interesting passwords.   Among the list of the 25 that Spashdata has released!  The Ones that really stand out for me are: “trustno1” (Gives a new meaning to TNO), Adobe123 and my favorite “photoshop” are on the list of those the top 25 passwords you should NEVER USE.  I don’t know if people are just trying to come up with something no one would think of or if they really want there Facebook Account to be hacked in the first place!

Randomness is everything!

I keep telling people to go check out Lastpass to be safe but it some people will never learn.   I believe in Lastpass so much I pay for the mobile version for a year.   Only 12$ a year but it is for a good cause, and I am really happy with their service!  Lastpass is truely the Last password you will ever have to remember.  

I don’t know about you but I think it is time to go change some passwords! 

What I have learned from Person of Interest Show!

Paul

Person on Interest!

When I first started watching this show, I thought it was unique but then last year we had the revelation of the Snowden contraversy and how the government was collecting all sorts of information.  Then this became so relevant to the government and how they are collecting my information.   You will see in this show so much talk about how they are collecting it.   It is scary and I am sure the Government has put this out to help have a plausible deniability factor to it.   I know I am going to have conspiracy theories tell me all sorts of stories, and frankly I am not interested.  This is my take on the show and here it is!

Bluetooth Force Pairing

To some this is impossible, and to some like me it is possible but highly unlikely.   I however tend to be more paranoid than most and think this is probably happening more than most would care to admit.   People have shown how to pair without confirmation in many situations and thus that I why I believe this is happening in today’s society without your knowledge.   Again this go back to the Plausibility factor, so who really knows this is after all I good reason to keep your cellphone secure as you can by turning off Bluetooth when not in use!

There will Always be a FINCH!

This is self evident in the series, he can hack and do all sorts of things that makes your head spin.   We have hackers and crackers who do this sort of stuff all the time but in much less detail and much less exposure.   I am sure they do not do all this stuff but they do some of it without your knowledge and without much publicity.   They probably have gotten into people’s Facebook accounts without your knowledge also!

Only the Paranoid Survive!

This is a quote from FINCH also, the geek humor of it is what struck me as funny.  Those who are paranoid have good reasons to worry and be cautious of what everything we do online.   It is good to be asking questions about what is going on and trying to keep our personal information safe.  It is sometimes hard to fight for your rights.   That was one reason I tell people to use a VPN service like VPN4ALL and that way you can keep your bank information and your identity from those who could do the most damage! 

As you can see I have been watching this show for the past few weeks going back and starting from Season 1 of Person of Interest and it is quite interesting and somewhat scarey what they do on the show.   It keeps me wondering just how much of this is true and how much of it is made up.   Only time can tell what really is true but you have to wonder and ask questions.   Could this be true?

How Cryptolocker (Ransomware) gets installed and how to remove it!

Paul

Cryptolocker Virus!

I have been watching what has been going on in the past few days and thought it was high time I tell you about this nasty little worm or virus! It has been many months since I have talked about this and I wanted to help you understand how you might of been infected. If you have been infected and want to remove it, you can easily remove it by using Malwarebytes Pro, Which is a sponsor of my blog. The Malwarebytes Blog has some interesting stuff about what this bug really does to your files and what it encrypts!

Drive by download

Some would say it is coming from emails but I suspect it will get much worse before it gets better. If they are making money they will probably start advertising that you have a virus and when you click on the image you will be taken over to actually have the virus or worm as some would call it. It all started when scammers started infecting systems and doing the defederpageblock and others like that. They found they could actually make money by scaring people into paying. I even tried to help people by offering some great Antivirus And Antimalware tools to help fight off this types of infections.

So how are some ways to get infected? The basic ways are simple opening email links if you don’t know the sender. This is the most common approach by any scammer or spammer because you can’t really see where that link is going or even if they are trying to use a script.

Social Media is the next biggest way that you might get infected by clicking links in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and sites like that. You have to be careful but most of the time you can expand the URL by using a service like LongURL. I sometimes use this to find out where a shortened bitly link or twitter link is going to take me.

Googling or Searching is the next way an attacker would install this type of software on your system. They would just use scripts, known vulnerabilities, to force install or silent install this type of software in your system and if you were using something like NoScript you would be much safer than if you didn’t!

Installing untrusted software can lead to you getting infected by this virus and others if you think you have to have a piece of software for something then please do not use your Windows Admin account to install this on. You should try to see what others are saying about a particular software or application. It isn’t always going to be fool proof but it will at least slow it down.

Now these are a few ways you could get infected if you were trying to get infected with this nasty virus. Which case you would be paying 300 US dollars or 2 bitcoins which is how they want to keep getting paid. So if you don’t want to find your pictures, and important data encrypted, please put them on a recordable dvd and put them up! This would be one step to help fight this little problem.

I havent’ heard if it has infected any Apple, Android, or Linux Operating systems it looks to be primarily Windows Systems. I can assure you it will happen to these other OS in the coming months so don’t think you aren’t immune to this and other malwares or viruses. With Android having exploits in the wild you can bet they will targeted soon to encrypted your contact list and your pictures. This would be my next bet!