Actually click HERE

Over on lifehacker.com there is a great post about how to turn off the Google personal search results feature.

The instructions for doing so are simply to click on the settings cog at the top of the Google page, then select “Search Settings”.

Next find “Personal results” and select “Do not use personal results”.

This makes the “Hide personal results” the default for your searching pleasure.

Thank you to Melanie Pinola for posting that as I have already had a few people inquire about it!

Today a client mentioned that videos are playing automatically on their computer and it annoys them.

Hey, it annoys me too! Why oh why do websites insist on force-feeding you content you might not actually want to hear? Please, web developers, give us the option to actually play your video if we want to. In fact, there is a particular web publication that I read frequently that does this on just about every page.. Yuck!

Anyway, the aforementioned person was using Firefox, and here’s how you disable this annoying feature on Firefox:

Select PREFERENCES, select APPLICATIONS, locate video formats and select ACTION for each item, such as QuickTime or Flash, and then select “always ask”.

For Internet Explorer (IE9 – if you are using something older… Uhmmm Time to upgrade!)

TOOLS / SETTINGS (Gear Icon) , Safety, Select “ActiveX Filtering”…   Now when you visit a website (such as www.YouTube.com), Flash should NOT play. You will get a warning saying you need to upgrade your Adobe Flash Player.  If you should want to view the Flash content, find the blue circle with a line through it to the right of the URL bar and you can enable for that site

For Chrome users, you can download extensions like “Stop Autoplay”. If you need assistance, I can type that up for you too =-)

Happy surfing…

The other day I posted about the BEAST that can circumvent SSL encryption used with websites and how a proof of concept would be demonstrated soon and actual exploits in the wild even sooner.

No sooner had I posted about that than Google’s Chrome development team had posted that they have an update already prepared for the Chrome browser that in theory should protect from the man-in-the-middle BEAST attack.

More information can be found over on The Register …

When the update comes….  Install it =)

A couple weeks ago I was watching a conversation about the popularity of certain devices for browsing and thought I would pull out some recent information about our own website, http://www.HomelandSecureIT.com…

Here’s a look at our site for July 1st until August 1st broken down by browser and platform:

Homeland Secure IT Browser Stats

Other than the super-high bounce rate, we see some important information…

Internet Explorer running Microsoft Windows is just darn popular! Followed by Firefox and then Chrome, also on Windows…   In fact, they account for about 80 percent of all traffic…

Up next is Safari & Firefox on the Mac…  And then down a bit is Chrome on the Mac.  Mac is the apparent source of 9.38% of traffic to our site (And less than 5% of our business).

The iPad viewers and the Android viewers accounted for 2% and 1.2% respectively… So a number of people were sitting on the toilet while surfing our site.

Here’s a further break down of mobile user specs:

Homeland Secure IT mobile browser info

iPad, iPhone & iPod dominates this category for sure, with Android 2nd, and Blackberry 3rd…   Windows made a horrible showing… And what’s up with Palm? Someone is using that? hehe

I compared these stats to July 2010 and found Android usage has come up considerably, but iPad maintained a steady lead even then.

Looking at the percentage of Windows versus other platforms, Windows has lost only a two percentage points in a year, and those were taken up by mobile devices.

It will be interesting to see what this looks like in another year. I’m guessing mobile device usage will continue to grow, maybe even at an accelerated rate due to the large numbers of new tablets being introduced, and smartphones replacing older cell phones…

What are your experiences with your own website/s?

Found an interesting article titled “Google Is Serious: You Can Kill Chrome’s URL Bar” which gives a glimpse of what may be around the corner; The ability to hide the URL bar by default.

What is the purpose? Smaller desktops, such as those found on netbooks could benefit from gaining a few pixels of real estate on the screen. However, as we browse more visually these days, it is not difficult to imagine that different ways to navigate the web may also be coming. I still enter a large percentage of all sites that I visit in manually, but I can foresee the day when that may not be the case.

Those who use tablets to browse find every way they can to avoid manually putting in the URL already.

Those of you who are using a notebook computer or mobile device such as an iPad, iPhone, Android or Android tablet and connecting to those public free wifi access hotspots may want to just ditch the WiFi after what I heard about today…

In spite of what I said about safe browsing from public wi-fi hotspots using a VPN a while back, it sounds like a “proof of concept” is about to be published which states that the mere action of connecting to a public WiFi hotspot, then establishing the VPN can potentially give away the VPN credentials. This could potentially happen whether it is an open (unsecured) access point, or a rogue (man-in-the-middle) AP.

If this is true, which we should know in a few weeks, then it sounds to me like ditching WiFi all together is not a bad idea if your data is valuable. 3g and 4g connectivity through your wireless provider may well be the best bet.

Obviously, this is not platform specific (Mac would be just as vulnerable as a Windows PC), and it is not a bug in the operating systems or VPN software.

I will be posting more information should it be proven to be a legitimate threat. Until then, stay safe….

Homeland Secure IT Alert

Homeland Secure IT Alert for Saturday, October 30, 2010

 

FireSheep add-on for Firefox browser is proof-of-concept why you should NOT use public / unencrypted Wi-Fi to access without extreme caution.

Last week, a tool was released that makes it possible for anyone to easily hijack your web sessions from within a browser view. When I say anyone, that means anyone. It has always been possible to do this, but this tool is so easy to use, a child could do it, or is that a caveman could do it?  Either way, once the browser extension is installed, the hacker can see a list of everyone using the public unencrypted Wi-Fi network he/she is on and what sites they are on.

The person can see in a browser sidebar WHO is logged into Facebook, Google, Twiter, Dropbox, WordPress, Evernote, Amazon, Flickr, etc, and then they simply click on your session to be logged in as you. Yes, they become YOU…  It works because it hijacks your cookie which is sent in the clear.

So think twice before you log into some site via public enencrypted Wi-Fi!!!

What can you do about this?  Good quesiton.

Option 1: Avoid public unencrypted Wi-Fi, defeating the purpose of having easy access, but offering you the highest level of protection.

Option 2: Only use sites that offer SSL/Secure logons – Actually this is sketchy because to sign into the “secure” section of most sites, the session info is still sent in the clear, so be careful.

Option 3: Use a VPN back to a gateway at your office. This insures all your traffic is encrypted.

Option 4: Try information that is available here: Force TLS

It doesn’t matter whether you are using Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, Linux, etc, this is not a *bug*, it is the nature of the beast.

Be careful out there….    If you have any questions or need assistance, please call us at 864.990.4748 or email info@homelandsecureit.com.

Homeland Secure IT Alert

@RussellTripp posted this to Twitter and I had to save it, thus it got posted to the blog so I don’t forget about it myself…

Thanks Russell… I didn’t even know about the Code Search until today. I can promise you I will be using this

10 Google Services That Don’t Get the Limelight They Deserve  posted on MakeUseOf.com

The little Apple iPad could come complete with a big security hole

The awesome little iPad tablet computer from apple is still vulnerable to the hacks that were reported earlier. According to this article, ‘Once implemented, the hack can reportedly allow hackers to steal someone else’s email identity, reflash network devices with firmware, or trick Safari into doing “pretty much anything on any TCP port and not have any current IDS/IPS in existence be any wiser for it.”‘

The Safari browser has been patched on other platforms, but remains vulnerable on the iPad. User beware…

Homeland Secure IT is committed to helping our clients stay safe by informing them of potential security issues. If we can help you or your business with network security or network support, please email info@homelandsecureit.com or call us today at 864-990-4748.