Advice on Online Safety Issues

Safer Internet Day – Family safe online tips and resources.

Family Safe Online Summary in Numbers:

family safety online

How to Keep Your Family Safe Online?

• 70% of parents talk to their children about online safety at least 2-3 times a year; 45% talk to their children least once a month.
• 74% of parents are connected to their children’s profiles on social networking sites.
• 71% of parents have taken at least one action to manage their children’s use of the Internet or cell phones. Parents are checking to see where children are searching online, setting time limits, setting parental controls on video sites, and using filters to limit where their children go on the Web.

Kudos to dads:
• 71% of dads (compared to 63% of moms) say they are taking at least one action to help manage their children’s online behavior, including having conversations about respecting the privacy of others and checking their children’s privacy settings.
• Fathers more often check to see what personal information can be easily found about their children by searching their names online.
• 53% of dads surveyed told us they plug their children’s names into a search engine at least 2-3 times per year (compared to 38% of moms), and 33% of dads told us they search at least once a month.

Parents at Google (Eric Schmidt, Vic Gundotra, Jacquelline Fuller, Alan Eustace and Jeff Huber) from Mountain View, California talking about their approach to helping keep their children safe online:

Video tips from Google parents

Watch videos of some of our parents at Google talking about how they manage their children’s safety online and read safety tips from Google.

General suggestions for how to help keep your family safe online (from Google.org).

  1. Keep computers in a central place. This will make it easier to keep an eye on your children’s activities.
  2. Know where your children go online. If you have young children, you might use the Internet with them. For older children you could talk about what kinds of sites they like to visit and what isn’t appropriate for your family. You can also check where your kids have been by looking at the history in your browser menu. Another option is to use filtering tools like Google SafeSearch.
  3. Teach Internet safety.It’s impossible to monitor your child’s online activity all the time. As they get older, they need to know how to use the Internet safely and responsibly when they’re on their own.
    • Use privacy settings and sharing controls. Many sites that feature user-generated content, including YouTube, Blogger and social networking sites, have sharing controls that put users in charge of who sees personal blogs, photos, videos, and profiles. Using sharing controls is particularly important when you or your children share personal information such as names, addresses, or phone numbers, on public sites. Teach your children to respect the privacy of friends and family by not identifying people by name in public profiles and pictures.

Read more here: Watch videos from Google parents

Steps to help protect your children’s privacy and safety when they’re using the computer.

Help protect kids onlineDecide where your child can and can’t go on the Internet

It’s a good idea to visit some sites for kids. Pay particular attention when sites collect personal information.

Read the privacy statement and, if you don’t agree with it, search a little, to find a similar site that doesn’t request personal information.

Block inappropriate content

One of the best defenses against inappropriate content is to block it before you see it. With Microsoft software there are a few different ways you can do this.

Windows Live Family Safety. This software helps you filter information based on each child’s age. You can also limit searches, block or allow certain websites, and monitor what your kids do online.

Xbox parental controls. Xbox includes parental controls that help you restrict your child’s ability to play inappropriate games and watch inappropriate DVD movies.

Increase your security and privacy

In addition to blocking inappropriate content, it’s a good idea to block sites and downloads that might be a risk to your security and privacy.

Steering Clear of Cyber Tricks:

Set limits on downloads. Free games, free music, animated toolbars, and other downloads can expose your computer to spyware or other unwanted software. Depending on the ages of your children, you can teach them not to download software from unknown sources on the Internet or ask your permission before they download anything. This can help to keep unwanted software off of your computer.

A child might accidentally infect your computer with spyware or other unwanted software. Some popular sites for kids might try to download programs without permission. To avoid this, monitor where your kids go online. For more information, see Step 3.
Use antivirus and antispyware software like Microsoft Security Essentials. Microsoft Security Essentials helps you detect, disable, or remove viruses, spyware and other potentially unwanted software.

Create different user accounts. Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP allow you to create multiple user accounts for your computer. Each user logs on with a unique profile and his or her own Desktop and My Documents folder. You can give yourself an Administrator account and give your children Limited User accounts. Administrator accounts have full control over the computer. Limited Users cannot change system settings or install new hardware or software, including most games, media players, and chat programs.

Adjust web browser security settings. You can help protect your child through your web browser. Internet Explorer helps you control your security and privacy preferences by allowing you to assign security levels to websites.

Tips for parents and children on how to stay safe online:

Monitor where your kids go online

It might not be possible to be present whenever your children are online. But it is possible to check later to see where your children have spent their time online.
By reviewing the History list in Internet Explorer, you can see all the places your children visited online. To view your Internet History, click the History button on the browser toolbar.
Remind kids not to talk to strangers online
Real-time chats, social networking, and instant messaging can be a great way for children to discuss their interests and build friendships. But the anonymity of the Internet can also put children at risk of falling victim to imposters and predators. To help minimize your children’s vulnerability, teach them to take precautions such as:

Use only a first name or nickname to identify themselves.
Never disclose a phone number or address.
Never send photographs of themselves.
Never agree to meet someone they met online without supervision.

To help protect your children from being contacted by strangers while instant messaging, configure your software to allow only approved contacts.

Resources:

http://www.techsavvymama.com/2010/06/internet-safety-resources-for-parents.html

http://www.google.com/familysafety/advice.html

ttp://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/smart-ways-to-keep-your-family-safe-online-1961738.html

What is SOPA? What is PROTECT IP? How SOPA and PIPA might affect you?

What is SOPA?

How SOPA would affect you?

SOPA and PIPA would censor the Web

SOPA and PIPA wouldn’t stop piracy

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.

Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement.

Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

What is PIPA?

How PROTECT IP Act would affect you?

The PROTECT IP Act (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 or PIPA), also known as Senate Bill 968 or S. 968, is a proposed law with the stated goal of giving the US government and copyright holders additional tools to curb access to “rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods”, especially those registered outside the U.S.

The bill was introduced on May 12, 2011, by Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and 11 bipartisan co-sponsors.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that implementation of the bill would cost the federal government $47 million through 2016, to cover enforcement costs and the hiring and training of 22 new special agents and 26 support staff.

The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill, but Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) placed a hold on it.

…. for more details visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROTECT_IP_Act

How PIPA would affect you?

Protect IP Act Breaks the Internet

Protect IP Act Breaks the Internet

The bill defines infringement as distribution of illegal copies, counterfeit goods, or anti-digital rights management technology. Infringement exists if “facts or circumstances suggest [the site] is used, primarily as a means for engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the activities described.”
The bill says that it does not alter existing substantive trademark or copyright law.

The bill provides for “enhancing enforcement against rogue websites operated and registered overseas” and authorizes the United States Department of Justice to seek a court order in rem against websites dedicated to infringing activities, if through due diligence, an individual owner or operator cannot be located.

The bill requires the Attorney General to serve notice to the defendant.

Once the court issues an order, it could be served on financial transaction providers, Internet advertising services, Internet service providers, and information location tools to require them to stop financial transactions with the rogue site and remove links to it.

The term “information location tool” is borrowed from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and is understood to refer to search engines but could cover other sites that link to content.

The Protect IP Act says that an “information location tool shall take technically feasible and reasonable measures, as expeditiously as possible, to remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the order”. In addition, it must delete all hyperlinks to the offending “Internet site”.Source:PROTECT IP Act of 2011, S. 968, 112th Cong. § 3(d)(2)(D); “Text of S. 968,” Govtrack.us. May 26, 2011. Retrieved June 23, 2011. Bill Text – Protect IP Act

Nonauthoritative domain name servers would be ordered to take technically feasible and reasonable steps to prevent the domain name from resolving to the IP address of a website that had been found by the court to be “dedicated to infringing activities.”The website could still be reached by its IP address, but links or users that used the website’s domain name would not reach it. Search engines—such as Google—would be ordered to “(i) remove or disable access to the Internet site associated with the domain name set forth in the [court] order; or (ii) not serve a hypertext link to such Internet site.”

What people are saying about about SOPA and PIPA?

Members of Congress are trying to do the right thing by going after pirates and counterfeiters but SOPA and PIPA are the wrong way to do it.

1. SOPA and PIPA would censor the Web

The U.S. http://youtu.be/Qcbg29Q0DhAgovernment could order the blocking of sites using methods similar to those employed by China. Among other things, search engines could be forced to delete entire websites from their search results. That’s why 41 human rights organizations and 110 prominent law professors have expressed grave concerns about the bills.

2. SOPA and PIPA would be job-killers because they would create a new era of uncertainty for American business

Law-abiding U.S. internet companies would have to monitor everything users link to or upload or face the risk of time-consuming litigation. That’s why AOL, EBay, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Twitter, Yahoo and Zynga wrote a letter to Congress saying these bills “pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation.” It’s also why 55 of America’s most successful venture capitalists expressed concern that PIPA “would stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness”. More than 204 entrepreneurs told Congress that PIPA and SOPA would “hurt economic growth and chill innovation”.

3. SOPA and PIPA wouldn’t stop piracy

…
read more: https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/sopa-pipa/

Protect IP Act Breaks the Internet

When I found out Fight for the Future needed help with their campaign against a new bill called PROTECT-IP, I had to take a little time away from Everything is a Remix Part 4 and produce the video above. PROTECT-IP is the latest piece of legislation aiming to chip away at your online rights in the name of protecting the entertainment industry’s business model. It’s legislation that won’t work, will give us yet more lawsuits, and will make the net worse.

Whether you lean right and hate business regulation, lean left and hate censorship, or lean neither way but hate useless legislation, PROTECT-IP is a bill everyone should oppose. I encourage you to head over to Fight For the Future and contact congress.

More here: http://fightforthefuture.org/pipa

So, it is up to you to decide support it or not.

Call your Senators today.

The Internet is a thriving ecosystem that powers our economy and our society. PIPA and SOPA threaten the web.

Join Our Censorship Protest!

Guide to Protecting Online Identity. How to Create Strong Passwords?

Ultimate Guide for Creating Strong Passwords

Tips to Protect Online Identity by using Strong password.

Big company spent millions of dollars to keep customer date secure
At a same time we as customers or/and users sometimes ignore warnings and suggestions just to make passwords easy to remember.

What makes a password strong (or weak)?

Tips to Protect Online Identity by using Strong password

We sometimes keep same password all over the social media, or online banking accounts for the same reason.  Then some of us wander how it possible that someone break and still personal data that quick and from so many accounts.

The goal is to get users to choose better passwords. The problem is that as creative as humans are, we are way too predictable.  Try to make a list of totally random words, inevitably some sort of pattern will emerge in your list.  That is the easiest and exactly what hackers use sometimes to break the password in the first place. Selecting good passwords requires education.

Passwords provide the first line of defense against unauthorized access to your computer. The stronger your password, the more protected your computer will be from hackers and malicious software.

What is the password?

A password is a secret word or string of characters that is used for authentication, to prove identity or gain access to a resource (example: an access code is a type of password).

Despite the name, there is no need for passwords to be actual words; indeed passwords which are not actual words may be harder to guess, a desirable property. Some passwords are formed from multiple words and may more accurately be called a passphrase. The term passcode is sometimes used when the secret information is purely numeric, such as the personal identification number (PIN) commonly used for ATM access. Passwords are generally short enough to be easily memorized and typed. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password)

Let’s see what some of the biggest company in the market recommend protecting your personal data.

Protecting Online Identity. How to Create Strong Passwords?

Protecting Online Identity. How to Create Strong Passwords?

How to create strong passwords?

A strong password is an important protection to help you have safer online transactions.

Ways to create a long, complex password:

  • Length. Make your passwords long with eight or more characters.
  • Complexity. Include letters, punctuation, symbols, and numbers. Use the entire keyboard, not just the letters and characters you use or see most often. The greater the variety of characters in your password, the better. However, password hacking software automatically checks for common letter-to-symbol conversions, such as changing “and” to “&” or “to” to “2.”
  • Variation. To keep strong passwords effective, change them often. Set an automatic reminder for yourself to change your passwords on your email, banking, and credit card websites about every three months.
  • Variety. Don’t use the same password for everything. Cybercriminals steal passwords on websites that have very little security, and then they use that same password and user name in more secure environments, such as banking websites.

Some or all above might help protect your online transactions.

Suggestions that might help you remember it easily:

What to do Example
Start with a sentence or two. Complex passwords are safer.
Remove the spaces between the words in the sentence. Complexpasswordsaresafer.
Turn words into shorthand or intentionally misspell a word. ComplekspasswordsRsafer.
Add length with numbers. Put numbers that are meaningful to you after the sentence. ComplekspasswordsRsafer2011.

Avoid common password pitfalls

Cyber criminals use sophisticated tools that can rapidly decipher passwords.

Avoid creating passwords that use:

  • Dictionary words in any language.
  • Words spelled backwards, common misspellings, and abbreviations.
  • Sequences or repeated characters. Examples: 12345678, 222222, abcdefg, or adjacent letters on your keyboard (qwerty).
  • Personal information. Your name, birthday, driver’s license, passport number, or similar information.

Tips for creating a strong password from Microsoft.
(http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Tips-for-creating-a-strong-password)

You should make sure you have strong passwords for all accounts on your computer. If you’re using a corporate network, your network administrator might require you to use a strong password.

What makes a password strong (or weak)?

A strong password:

  • Is at least eight characters long.
  • Does not contain your user name, real name, or company name.
  • Does not contain a complete word.
  • Is significantly different from previous passwords.
  • Contains characters from each of the following four categories:

Character category

Examples
Uppercase letters A, B, C
Lowercase letters a, b, c
Numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Symbols found on the keyboard (all keyboard characters not defined as letters or numerals) and spaces ` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ – + = { } [ ] \ | : ; ” ‘ < > , . ? /

A password might meet all the criteria above and still be a weak password.

How to choose a strong password – simple tips for better security

Password best practices, created by NASA:

It should contain at least eight characters

It should contain a mix of four different types of characters – upper case letters, lower case letters, numbers, and special characters such as !@#$%^&*,;” If there is only one letter or special character, it should not be either the first or last character in the password.

It should not be a name, a slang word, or any word in the dictionary. It should not include any part of your name or your e-mail address.

Following that advice, of course, means you’ll create a password that will be impossible, unless you try a trick credited to security guru Bruce Schneir: Turn a sentence into a password.

For example, “Now I lay me down to sleep” might become nilmDOWN2s, a 10-character password that won’t be found in any dictionary.

Can’t remember that password?

Schneir says it’s OK to write it down and put it in your wallet, or better yet keep a hint in your wallet.

Just don’t also include a list of the sites and services that password works with.

Try to use a different password on every service, but if you can’t do that, at least develop a set of passwords that you use at different sites.

Password tips from Google.

(https://accounts.google.com/PasswordHelp)

Tips for creating a secure password:

  • Include punctuation marks and/or numbers.
  • Mix capital and lowercase letters.
  • Include similar looking substitutions, such as the number zero for the letter ‘O’ or ‘$’ for the letter ‘S’.
  • Create a unique acronym.
  • Include phonetic replacements, such as ‘Luv 2 Laf’ for ‘Love to Laugh’.

Things to avoid:

  • Don’t reuse passwords for multiple important accounts, such as Gmail and online banking.
  • Don’t use a password that is listed as an example of how to pick a good password.
  • Don’t use a password that contains personal information (name, birth date, etc.)
  • Don’t use words or acronyms that can be found in a dictionary.
  • Don’t use keyboard patterns (asdf) or sequential numbers (1234).
  • Don’t make your password all numbers, uppercase letters or lowercase letters.
  • Don’t use repeating characters (aa11).

Tips for keeping your password secure:

  • Never tell your password to anyone (this includes significant others, roommates, parrots, etc.).
  • Never write your password down.
  • Never send your password by email.
  • Periodically test your current password and change it to a new one.

As you see some of the rules and tips repeat and this make sense.  If it harder to guess it harder to break it.

Complex passwords combining letters and numbers, such as passw0rd (with the “o” replaced by a zero), abc123 or/and Hello2U! meets complexity rule but very easy to guess and therefore unsecure.  H3ll0 2 U! is a stronger alternative because it replaces some of the letters in the complete word with numbers and also includes spaces.

Professional-Networking Sites, Social-Media Sites and Social-Bookmarking Sites

Professional Networking Sites, Social Media Sites and Social Bookmarking Sites


“Worst Passwords” of 2011 Revealed 30 Most popular week passwords:

1. password

2. 123456

3.12345678

4. qwerty

5. abc123

6. monkey

7. 1234567

8. letmein

9. trustno1

10. dragon

11. baseball

12. 111111

13. iloveyou

14. master

15. sunshine

16. ashley

17. bailey

18. passw0rd

19. shadow

20. 123123

21. 654321

22. superman

23. qazwsx

24. michael

25. football

26. iloveyou

27. princess

28. rockyou

29. abc123

30. and of course all time favorite bad word and its variations ex: f***you (sorry but it is very common and not secure)

…

References and Related reading:

How do I recover my Joomla admin password? Reset Joomla Administrator Password

Suggested by Microsoft:  6 rules for safer financial transactions online.

How to test password?  Test the strength of your passwords

Password Analysis Military Password Analysis

American Express:  Strong Credit, Weak Passwords

How to protect your Identities: Top 5 Ways People Get Their Identities Stolen

What does password mean? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Password)

Ten Windows Password Myths