25 May 2010
OpenDNS is one of the more innovative solutions that I’ve seen for Internet security. It is a solution that fits home Internet use. OpenDNS provides your family with an extra layer of Internet security.
Some of OpenDNS benefits are:
- Parental Controls
- Faster, more reliable Internet
- Phishing protection and security
- Flexible customization to fit your needs
OpenDNS works by replacing the DNS servers provided by your Internet Providers. With Parent Controls in place OpenDNS redirects your computers away from blocked sites. The folks at OpenDNS diligently monitors the threats on the Internet and do their best to block them as well.
OpenDNS Basic is available for free. The options are:
- Reliable DNS Infrastructure
- Web Content Filtering
- Phishing Protection
- Basic Customization
- Typo Correction
OpenDNS Deluxe costs $9.95/year for households
- All Basic Features
- No Advertisements
- Advanced Customization
- Whitelist-Only Mode
There’s a short video explaining OpenDNS Basic — OpenDNS > Support > Video Tutorials.
22 May 2010
I don’t have much time for Facebook for myself but a lot of folks ask me about the social networking site. Most of the questions are about privacy. The news in the media seems to create more questions than answers. To be honest the official bullshit about privacy confuses me.
Folks who friended me on Facebook probably wonder if there’s anyone there. That’s how little I use my Facebook account.
ReclaimPrivacy.org has an easy to use tool to simplify your Facebook privacy. It is a BookMarklet that you drag to your shortcut bar. Then you go to your Facebook privacy page and click the BookMarklet. ReclaimPrivacy.org has the instructions. You get a list of color coded privacy categories with links to fix issues. There’s red and yellow for categories that need attention and green for good. This is something that Facebook should offer themselves.
The first time I ran the ReclaimPrivacy.org bookmarklet in Firefox. It flagged a couple of categories as red. When I fixed the issues I scanned again until everything was green. An article on Macworld said they got different results in Firefox and Safari. I used Google Chrome since Safari wasn’t installed. Sure enough, running the bookmarklet in Chrome flagged a couple more categories with yellow. There is a note on the ReclaimPrivacy.org front page that I missed. They recommend Chrome, Safari and IE. They’re working on the Firefox issue.
21 May 2010
The last couple days I’m seeing the ‘Loading…’ message a lot more in Gmail. Sometimes Gmail simply hangs while paging through messages or switching from a message back to the Inbox.
The problems aren’t with just one PC, or a single browser or ISP. The problems have occurred on the Mac too as well as all the browsers. They occur at home and at work. There were similar problems with the latest version of Firefox last week which lead me to downgrade.
Some quick Google-Fu lead to this interesting tip — using the ‘?nocheckbrowser’ parameter with Gmail (https://mail.google.com/gmail_?nocheckbrowser_). Evidently it tells Gmail not to try detect what browser — or something like that. Anyway, it made a dramatic improvement!
6 More Tips to Fix Gmail Slow Load Issues.
20 May 2010
You changed the administrative password for your WiFi router, right?
Everyone knows the factory default password so it doesn’t take a hacker to get it and lock you out of your own router. This is the most important security setting. It is one of the first things to do when setting up. Google your router manufacturer and model for the steps to change the default password.
InfoWorld.com is among the sites with articles about Google’s alleged tracking of open WiFi connections around the world. Germany is currently suing Google to see what data the Street View vans collected. Google is not alone is providing registries of WiFi hotspots. JiWire.com keeps a registry of free and paid hotspots around the world. Do you want your WiFi listed also?
WEP is easily hacked. Filtering by MAC addresses is effective but it’s a pain to keep up.
WPA2 is secure and easy to keep up. Here’s a couple of links to set up WPA2.
If your WiFi isn’t covered, check the manual or the manufacturer’s website.
http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/does-google-have-wi-fi-data-your-company-655
20 May 2010
One of the guys at work was trying to contact a mid-west company he’d done business with in the past. There was no response by phone, fax or email so he tried the web. He came and got me when virus warnings popped up in Firefox. When I got there it was prompting to download bogus antivirus software.
Quick ways to close the web browser without risking infection is
- alt-F4
- or bring up Task Manager and do End Task on the browser
To be safe we ran scans with antivirus and anti-spyware software.
Here’s details
Entering the site name (www.classicgears.com) directly in the address bar appears to open the website normally. I could browse around the website without problem.
Searching for “classic gears and sprockets” in Google, Yahoo and Bing and then clicking on the www.classicgears.com search link causes the browser to redirect to another site. The destination site claims the computer is infected and offers to download antivirus software. This occurs in Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer.
The redirect doesn’t happen when using a Mac though. The redirect only happened when using Windows. The website was clearly waiting for Windows’ users that referred by one of the search engines (Google, Yahoo or Bing).
Pinging the website seems to show that it hosted on megawebservers.com. I sent them a heads up.
Pinging www.classicgears.com [69.49.101.57] with 32 bytes of data
DNS record for 69.49.101.57: hostedc11.megawebservers.com
The destination site is www2.smoothsouthernsoulandblues.com <== DO NOT VISIT THIS URL UNLESS YOU WANT TO GET ZAPPED!