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NEWSLETTER
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2013
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Click any underline and go the suggested website
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Hiding from the NSA
Yes, everything we do on our phones, our tablets and our computers is being
collected and sifted by the NSA. Of course there's not enough computer power at present for the NSA to sift through anything but "metadata". Metadata is more about the how, when and why of the information then the information itself. Metadata might be the phone number you dial, the location of the cell tower you're using or the website you visit.
Most of us are not of interest to NSA. The problem is that there are numerous unscrupulous people who by virtue of their security clearance have access to the data and who might profit from knowledge about you.The number of people estimated to have the security clearance to access this type of data and who are not government employees is in excess of 250,000. It makes sense to take what precautions you can to limit the information you expose to everybody and anybody.
Here are some tips
(And Good Luck with that!)
1. Avoid using the popular search engines. That would include Google, Bing , Ask, etc. Try DuckDuckGo instead. The search engine promises anonymity. Also, dump Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo mail. All of these public and free email accounts are an easy target for the NSA's encryption killing software. No more Mapquest nor Google Maps. Be prepared to give up Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and even Firefox. You will need to switch to Tor a slow but anonymous browser.
2. You best give up your smart phone too. After all, its got a built in GPS that you can't turn off. Blackberry has already admitted that it has turned over data not only to NSA but to foreign governments as well. The CIA has admitted to paying AT&T for international phone records.
3. Encrypt your email. Here is a great how to on email encryption.
4. No more Hotspots. Not Optimum free wifi, nor Starbucks, no free wifi anywhere. All of these free wifi hotspots are easy to crack. It's not rocket science, the software to do it is readily available on the internet and will run off any everyday laptop.
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en-crypt [en-kript] verb - to encipher or encode
encryption adjective - Any procedure used in cryptography to convert plaintext into ciphertext (encrypted message) in order to prevent any but the intended recipient from reading that data.
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 Encryption isn't only about the NSA. It's about keeping data that's meant to be private, private. Our computers contain an abundant amount of information about us, about our finances, our health and our personal lives. We constantly send information over the internet in the form of emails and correspondences that we need to keep private. Additionally, no matter how secure we think our machines are, they are always subject to loss and theft. Here's some encryption steps for those everyday things we do.
Microsoft's Word and Excel both include integrated encryption. As most of what we pen are documents, this built in encryption is handy and very easy to use. The encryption protocol is referred to as "AES 128", the industry standard for general security. The most important thing to remember in encrypting a document or a spreadsheet is that you are the key to the security of the document. You create the "password" or "key" that is at the heart of the encryption formula. So pick a strong key of at least 10 characters and mix them up, lower case, upper case, numbers etc. An AES128 password of mixed lower and upper case letters and numbers (7aur3nG3rst37) would take 1700 years to crack by brute force, presuming the cracker was not using a super computer. If you add special characters to your password (7@ust37) the crack time jumps to 99,000 years.
If you're looking to encrypt an Office 2007 or 2010 document or spreadsheet, use this Link to see how. Here's the Link for Office 2003.
If you're backing up to the cloud, there are a variety of encryption products that will encrypt a Dropbox folder. (Dropbox is my favorite cloud backup) Truecrypt is free and works great!
Want the best of both worlds? Get a large enough flash drive to hold either all the documents you wish to secure or at least those documents you wish to work with on a given day. The flash drive would have encrypted documents and be itself an encrypted device. Encrypted flash drives are available in a variety of sizes and at a variety of prices.
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How About An Encryption Virus
There's a new virus out there! It Encrypts your files and presumes to ransom them back to you for in excess of $300. Cryptolocker Ransomware invades your computer via an email attachment. Cryptolocker will encrypt a users files using what is known as assymetric encryption, which requires both a public and private key. It targets documents, pictures, spreadsheets and any files it perceives to be of a personal nature. Once you've been "infected" or "encrypted" there is no way to decrypt these files, even after the virus is purged from the system.There's no guarantee that paying the ransom will get you the key you need to unlock the files, nor that these people wont have left something behind to kidnap your data again, even without a re-infection. Your best bet is a solid backup of all your important data. Unplug that external drive and remove that flash drive or it too would become encrypted.
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Wipe the drive before disposing of that old PC
 One of the things I do, in my practice, is to come by and assemble a new computer for you and to transfer the data from your old to your new workstation. If you're dumping the old machine and frequently you are, I will offer to take the old machine away and to destroy the hard drive. I do this to make the data on your drive irretrievable. Deleting data from your computer doesn't really delete it and with very little sophistication the next owner can recover your browsing history, your credit card info and any account information you might have linked into during the life of the machine.
If you are going to pass the old computer onto another someone, a someone that you trust, you might want to make the data unreadable. Try Eraser. Eraser integrates seamlessly with Windows Explorer and will erase a file and even an entire folder by overwriting the space previously occupied by that data. All you do is right click on that file or folder, select eraser and the application does the rest. While the erasure won't fool the Department of Justice or the NSA, it's just right for that computer hand-off. Eraser will even let you mark a file for erasure that is currently in use and which Windows is preventing you from deleting and will erase the occupied space on the next boot up. Eraser is free.
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Cookies? Just the Beginning!
 It seems the NSA is the least of your worries and stop bothering to clear those cookies.
Those innocuous cell phone apps are beginning to contain small bits of code that let marketing groups aggregate information about you and your buying habits. This, without the use of cookies.
Drawbridge one of many new start-ups in this field has figured out how to follow people, not only without cookies, but to determine that a cell phone, a computer at home, another at work and a tablet all belong to the same person. Drawbridge has successfully married 1.5 BILLION devices in this fashion.
Check an on-line site or information system with an app on your phone in the morning, go the same site from a home laptop later in the day, go to work and look again, then return in the evening to that site on a tablet and your done for. If you shopped for gym equipment on the cell, you might be approached with a sale on recumbent bicycles on the tablet.
Get a new PC and that device is automatically connected to you without any further browsing. This type of target marketing has become so sophisticated that it can discern which user in your home is on the computer or tablet and know to target advertise that person (read makeup for Mom and after shave for Dad).
Another start-up has embedded their code (software) into 350,000
different apps and in doing so is privy to browsing preferences on 1.2 BILLION devices to date.
Finally, think about how much your wireless carrier knows about you, tenfold more including all your demographics and your zip code.
George Orwell had not a clue.
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Extra personal safety provided for free, from your cell phone. BSafe tracks your location and can summon help by the push of a button. Bsafe also can be programmed to send an alert if you've not checked in with someone timely and will generate a fake ring at a designated time, should that date not be working out the way you expected. Android and IOS.
Leave me Alone Lite blocks unwanted texts and calls without alerting the sending party of the block. Should that aforementioned date become an unwanted stalker. IOS.
Super Swiss Army Knife turns your Phone not into a real knife but more into a very nice bag of tricks. You get a flashlight, ruler, protractor, compass, plumb, level and a utility to measure the distance between you and another object and even the height of that object. It's free for Android. 99¢ for IOS but you get a lot more functionality for that small amount of change.
Auto Rotate Switch (what a great idea). This app Lets you turn the screen rotation on and off by the touch of an Icon. My phone and my tablet, have a tendency to turn from landscape to portrait by some inner scheme that I have yet to figure out. At which point I find myself rotating the device to get it to display in the rotation I want it to. If you've had the same experience you will appreciate this free app. Android.
SnapPea aids in transferring videos, music and photos (anything!) between your desktop and your phone. You can even control your phone from your desktop in either a browser windows or with a PC App. Free for Android.
Finally there's Car Locator. My first GPS (I paid $500 for that Garmin) had a feature that allowed me to just lift the GPS out of my car in a parking lot (for instance), upon my return, with the push of a button have the GPS "arrow" me back to my car. It's was a great tool when visiting places like the Garden State Plaza, with its many parking lots. Today GPS, with a hiking mode can do the same thing but you need to do more work each time to make it happen. Car Locator does the same thing for you and even lets you know how long you've been parked, which just might help you avoid an that expired meter summons. Cost $3.99 and only for Android.
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Goodbye Office 2003
From the horse's mouth: Important notice for users of Office 2003: To continue receiving security updates for Office, make sure that you're running Office 2003 Service Pack 3 (SP3). The support for Office 2003 ends April 8, 2014. If you're running Office 2003 after support ends, to ensure that you will receive all important security updates for Office you need to upgrade to a later version such as Office 365 or Office 2013. For more information, see Support is ending for Office 2003.
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I make DVD, BluRay, Chromecast and Roku connections for that Netflix account or to watch web content on your TV.
I also connect your Homelink and your garage door.
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