Sebbie on the Webbie

Posts Tagged ‘internet’

If you are a parent, you might be interested to know, if you don’t already, that there are web browsers specially made for kids. (Web browser is the thing you watch web pages with, like Internet Explorer.) There are several, and as a childless by choice person I haven’t tried them, but you should! These browsers are designed to filter out inappropriate content to make the web a safer environment for your kid.

From a content producers point of view, I find it sometimes tiring having to watch my words so that kids won’t get bad influences. It’s good to know, that these products exist, and that it’s really up to the parent to utilise them and not just complain about the smut around the web. (I do enjoy my smut as in content not suitable for kids, so I like to have that option open. I also sometimes send out inappropriate content, like swearing, and whilst it might not be a lady like thing to do, I still consider it my right – and your right is to filter it out if you like.)

In addition to web browsers, there are filters that can filter the content on normal browsers. However, if I was a parent, I would get the browser, as many are brightly coloured fun looking things, that will probably be the preferred option for a kid if he or she has one available, so even if you forgot to turn your filter on after a long night at the computer… The kid would still choose to go with his own special browser.

So there’s the tip, see what’s available.

As for you who are producing adult content on your websites, have a look at this website, which will help you to self label your site to be suitable for adult audience only. Amongst other things, the filters and kids browsers look for these tags, and having one on your site will make their task easier.

Don't let the evil crim use your innocent face as his cover

Most of us have  a Facebook account, and the more popular Facebook gets, the more attractive it is for hackers, who want to use your squeaky clean profile as their cover when doing something you would never do. Hacking these days is not too difficult. I’ve tried it once, (with a test account) and without any experience got through CAPTCHA image verification using nothing but an automated program, which some people still think is impossible for a computer to do. It’s not – it will take a computer more time and more attempts than it does for a human, but it can do it through it on trial and error basis. Back to Facebook then.

Picking a strong password

Facebook hacking is done simply by finding out someone’s login (your email) and then testing out a series of letter combinations, actual words  to start with, then continuing randomly, until the correct one is found. If your password is a clear English word, it’ll be amongst the first ones to be cracked. What you want to do is pick a word you can remember, then add some numbers (in the middle) and capitalisations to it. Something like “R4nD0M612″. Pick numbers that are special to you, but not special enough for anyone to pick, such as (not) your birth date so you can remember it, then type it up a few times so you will remember it with your fingers as well, so you won’t have to keep copying because you can’t remember it.

Hide your email address like it was your passport

For sites that are very popular, and the most likely to get hacked, such as Facebook, use a separate email address that you will not be using for any other purpose than this. If you are a domain owner, this should be an easy task for you as you can just add an email address that will forward stuff to your real account if needed, but if not, try something like http://sneakemail.com/to create an additional email addresses for this use. This way it will be harder for a hacker to find out your email address you used to sign up, and makes it that much harder for him to get to your profile – and with so many easier options out there will probably leave your account alone – unless he takes it as a challenge, which I doubt, with so many more tempting targets out there…

When you change an email address to your profile, remember to remove the email address you previously had in use, as all emails stored with your account can be  used as logins. Facebook will nag to you about adding an additional email, so do the same with another email – have two complete oddity emails (such as 82ldh03@yourdomain.com.) Also, then remember to hide it from others, including your friends, because you don’t want to get email to that account anyway. You might be tempted to add another “spam account” type of email to show to your friends, but don’t, since this will function as a login to your account and you don’t want a spam-account as your login email if you want to keep your profile safe.

Then you simply have to remember which email you used to sign up and log in. You can make your computer to remember your login information, unless you use a public computer, in which case you definitely should not.

Why would anyone want to hack my Facebook account?

In addition to identity theft, which might actually be in the minority of reasons to hack someone’s account, there are other reasons for it, for example an annoyed or jealous ex… If you’re anything like me, you’ve got a couple of crazy ones in your past. School bullies use this sort of tactic a lot, and if you’re a parent, I wouldn’t rule out possible bullies using your account to torture your kid. (Imagine the horrible things they could make you say to your kid if they could use your account!) Some people enjoy simply creating a mayhem amongst people so having the login information of someone… ANYONE with a bunch of friends, could be a fantastic source of entertainment – at your expense.

Applications

Applications on Facebook are a security risk, as every time you add one, you grant an access to all your data. What is worse, a lot of the applications can access your data if your FRIEND has added an application and you haven’t told Facebook not to allow access to third party applications. I learned this the hard way: Someone of my friends added themselves to a mailing list of some product specials, and apparently gave access to my information as well. Now I get spammed continuously about products I don’t want in a country I don’t live in. (Hiding your email will also hide it from applications.)

To make sure you’re allowing your friends to give out as little information as possible, go to this address to tweak your third party application privacy settings on Facebook.

Last of all, keep the number of installed applications as low as possible, using only those that are of absolute importance to you, or applications you trust. Use applications from well known developers, and avoid things like gift apps and personality tests and all those dodgy things. While most of these are harmless, it only takes that one…

I hope you will find some peace of mind knowing you’ve done your best to close the doors on your Facebook account.

If you know some more good tips about keeping your account safe, please add into the comments!

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On Sebastyne.net, I’ve been blogging about this and that for the longest time. As I love the net (see the photo, hehe), the Internet has become a topic over and over, so I thought I probably should start a blog just about the net and leave My Dear Hard Drive for more philosophical stuff.

I used Sebastyne.com as my bridal design company blog for the last year, but since I decided I didn’t have the drive required to run a bridal company, I took the otherwise good domain for this use. Granted, it’s going to hurt my page ranks and stuff quite a lot since this new blog has nothing to do with bridal wear, but as always, I choose to do things the hard way…

So all 2 of you who have been following me for the bridal wear; it’s time to unfollow and unsubscribe – this is going to get geeky instead!

Most bloggers are hoping to receive comments to their posts. That is pretty much the reason they keep posting. If there isn’t any posts to their topics, they think nobody cares what they said and very likely stop. It’s still tolerable if you can tell nobody knows about your blog, but when you see in your stats that people read it but  nobody says anything, it can really drive you on the walls. I certainly don’t post as much as I would if there was comments on my posts, even though I have come to think the following:

The reasons I post a comment:

1) I read a blog post that is a fairly good one, but could be better. I have something to add or point out.

2) What the blogger said was so god damned idiotic, that I just have to tell them how things REALLY are.

Then there’s two reasons for not commenting:

1) The post was so pointless that it would be waste of my time to say anything.

2) The post was SO GOOD, that it would be pointless to say anything, because the only thing to add would be: “Hey, great post” and that reeks of someone after your Google Juice.

Now, the thing for you to do is to decide whether your posts are god damned pointless or simply amazing, and figure out which is the more likely reason for the lack of comments.

I have made a rather late discovery in the modern Internet world. RSS feeds. I have been using them for quite a while in feeding my own content back to my site from several sources, but I haven’t really subscribed to other people’s feeds. Nowadays more or less all blogs have them though, and I finally realised and it is pretty easy way to keep track of blogs! (It shouldn’t come as a surprise really.) Nowadays I subscribe easily if I’m for example surfing through EntreCard blogs and see something I like but am not exactly up to getting deeply into it, I simply subscribe and rest assured that I won’t forget to check back later on.

In some browsers you don’t even have to look for the subscription icon from obscure places on the blog website. If you are using Firefox, you can see the subscription icon Read the rest of this entry »

We have all heard, that you should check your code that it is properly generated. Your site should look the same on every browser and every computer. It should also look the same if a colour blind person looks at it. It shouldn’t contain images so that it’s easy to download with slow connection, and you shouldn’t use browser specific markup language.

Quite frankly, I personally think all of the above is more or less crap. Read the rest of this entry »