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It's Holiday time again - Don't be a target for Identity theft.
It's that time of year again when millions of us start preparing for our summer holidays -- confirming travel and hotel reservations, dusting off suitcases and looking for games to occupy the kids on long journey's. Just make sure that when your brain goes into holiday mode, you don't ignore the usual precautions you would take in everyday life to protect your personal information.
Here are a few safeguards to consider:
Thin out wallet. Don't carry too much information -- or cash -- in your wallet when traveling. Take two credit or debit cards, in case one inadvertently gets damaged or deactivated by the card issuer because of suspected fraud, but leave the rest at home. If you are traveling abroad, take a travel money card (choose one you can top-up online) instead of your credit/debit cards.
Carry your travel documents, health information and any insurance papers with you and keep copies of these along with copies of the contents of your wallet (and passport, if traveling abroad) and keep them in a secure, locked location, such as a hotel safe; also have copies stored on a secure online web service that you can access from anywhere in the event your wallet or documents are lost or stolen.
Card precautions. The only consistent advice from all financial institutions seems to be that customers should make sure that they have registered up-to-date mobile phone contact details, so contact can be made immediately should a problem be flagged. Banks, building societies and credit card firms do usually try to ring a customer when they become suspicious about a transaction, so if they have your correct details it can smooth everything out straight away. It helps too to make a note of your bank’s 24-hour contact numbers to get in touch immediately that any difficulties arise. I also program these phone numbers into my mobile phone for quick access.
Beware of card skimming, where dishonest restaurant or store employees use a portable card reader to copy information from your credit or debit card's magnetic strip. Also avoid using unusual looking ATMs because they could have an altered card slot and hidden cameras that can be used to steal your account information and password.
Internet precautions. Whenever logging onto the Internet on your laptop, tablet or smartphone at a Wi-Fi hotspot, hotel business center or other public facility, be extra cautious before doing any online banking or updating of other password-protected services such as Facebook, twitter etc. (See this post)
Ideally once you have connected to the WiFi Hotspot, switch on your device's VPN before you visit any websites to ensure that nobody is able to harvest your usernames and passwords, read the emails you send back home to family and friends or see the updates you make to social networks.
Your device's VPN is also ideal for gaining access to blocked services such as Skype, Facebook, catchup TV, and other services in countries where they are banned (Egypt, Middle East, China, Turkey and many more) and also on public WiFi hotspots which might restrict access to these services. You can signup to the TravelVPN service from TheVPNStore.com here.
Finally...
Keep your itinery private. A few years ago, police warned against sharing too much information about your holiday plans, for fear burglers would target empty homes. Nowadays, many people think nothing of sharing their holiday plans on social networking sites or in outgoing phone or email messages. You might only be sharing your plans with a few friends, but how do you know they won't inadvertently pass that information to someone you don't know? Plus, no matter how carefully you shield your plans, your kids might have no such reservations with their online friends. Consider making a family rule that no holiday plans or photos get posted online until you're safely home again.
You excitedly unpack your new Wireless N WiFi router and set about setting it up. After spending an hour or so setting up wireless security etc. you get online, send a few emails, do some online banking, log into your Facebook and Gmail accounts thinking you are protected by your new secure all-singing-all-dancing wireless router, only to find that Google have just driven past your house and while taking some photo's, they also grab copies of your emails and passwords!
Of course Google was only able do this because we let them. By not encrypting our Internet traffic, everything we do through our routers is sent in plain text and can be read by anyone.
However, if we had been using a VPN Service like HeroVPN, then they wouldn't have been able to read any of the data. Maybe it's time to have the HeroVPN service running on your computers just like you have Anti-Virus software to protect from Viruses and Trojans.
The UK is to open a fresh inquiry into Google's Wi-Fi data harvesting after the company admitted its Street View cars captured complete e-mails and passwords. Read more about this story here.
Try out HeroVPN free for Two Weeks. Visit our Website to find out more.
You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Ooouch!
A German security researcher claims to have cracked WPA-PSK WiFi passwords in just six minutes.
Most households now have WiFi routers, so if this report is true, then it will be possible for someone to access your network in just 6 minutes. This reduces your home WiFi network back to the security level of a Public WiFi Hotspot, none!
In theory this means that most WiFi sessions must now be considered insecure unless they use a VPN, so although we can't protect against our networks being hacked, we CAN secure all the Internet traffic that goes through then with the HeroVPN Service.
TalkTalk, a UK Broadband ISP, appears to have launched a trial of its controversial new internet "Network Security" technology ('Virus Alerts Service'). The system is designed to automatically protect customers from bad websites but has also caused a storm of controversy with privacy campaigners because it tracks every URL you visit and these may contain private information.
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Following customers around
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A URL can contain sensitive personal data, such as names and addresses,and TalkTalk's service could still record these. In addition, while TalkTalk's security service gives customers the option of opting out, it's URL tracking appears to be mandatory.
Under the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), "interception of a communication" (i.e. such as URL addresses) is prohibited, a rule that is currently in the process of being tightened even further to match EU law. So it is possible that TalkTalk are in breach of this rule.
You can protect yourself from TalkTalk intrusion into your private habits by using a VPN service to encrypt your internet traffic before it gets to TalkTalk's servers, so all their service would record is your connection to the VPN server and everything else would be hidden from them. You can read more about this story here.
Protect yourself now, visit our website for more information.
You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook.
Firesheep, is a new extension for the Firefox browser, that lets users eavesdrop on unencrypted traffic over unsecured wifi networks (most Public WiFi Hotspots), exposing among other things your Facebook and Twitter passwords.
This extension for the Firefox web browser makes it easier than ever for anyone so inclined to steal account information from other users logging on to websites via unsecured wifi networks.The Firesheep extension collects the “cookies” that websites such as Facebook and Twitter use to allow access, and then allows the user to “sidejack” other people's accounts.
Firesheep collects user information and shows it in a Firefox window, it then lets each account be taken over simply by clicking on it.
Cookies from Amazon.com, Basecamp, bit.ly, Cisco, CNET, Dropbox, Enom, Evernote, Facebook, Flickr, Github, Google, HackerNews, Harvest, Windows Live, NY Times, Pivotal Tracker, Slicehost, tumblr, Twitter, WordPress, Yahoo and Yelp are all collected automatically, but other sites can be added if you know a little about programming.
Most websites protect your password by encrypting the initial login, but the majority do not encrypt anything else leaving you open to exploits like Firesheep.
If you want a more secure web, then take a look at our HeroVPN service which would protect you against the Firesheep exploit and much more.
You can read the full story on the Telegraph website here.
Visit our website for more information. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook..
Reading the news today I noticed that Controversial new rules affecting the running of the internet are expected to be approved by US regulators today.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote on a principle known as net neutrality; a tenet that ensures all web traffic is treated equally. You can read the full story here.
But this comes at a time when consumers are increasingly accessing the web on smart phones, tablets, netbooks and other iDevices that use Mobile networks and turning to the internet to watch TV shows, and the new rules would allow mobile firms to block access to sites or applications that specifically compete with a carrier's voice or video services. So using Skype or other VoIP applications could be blocked by the mobile network provider.
In our blog we plan to talk about “Privacy” and “Security” on the Internet and the use of VPN’s. A VPN, for those of you who don't know, is a “Virtual Private Network” which some of you may already have come across at work.
What a VPN allows you to do is to connect to the Internet Securely and without worrying about anyone (ISP’s, Employers, Governments, Hackers/identity thieves etc) being able to open your traffic and see what you are doing.
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor and founding father of the worldwide web, said a person's data and web history are private property.
'It's mine - you can't have it,' he added. 'If you want to use it for something, then you have to negotiate with me. I have to agree, I have to understand what I'm getting in return.'
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It's that time of year again when millions of us start preparing for our summer holidays -- confirming travel and hotel reservations, dusting off suitcases and looking for games to occupy the kids on long journey's. Just make sure that when your brain goes into holiday mode, you don't ignore the usual precautions you would take in everyday life to protect your personal information.
