Twitter Adds 2-Step Verification For Android App

Twitter has released an update for their mobile android app that increases the security of the app by using its 2 step verification. This is how twitter is trying to protect their users from being hacked and to crack down on hacked accounts. This new update is going to be very similar to the update that Facebook implemented some time ago which was a huge success as far as added security, and there are millions of people that are using the additional feature which had increased their accounts security greatly. As for the twitter variation you should see something like Google where they text you the code or you will use the Google Authenticator. Adding this feature will make your account more secure and nearly in hackable.Some people will try to argue that they don't want to waste the time by typing in a code everytime and therefore they refuse to add the extra layer of security. Well they have done something really smart and this they have the ability to recognize devices that you have logged in on and then corn require that code again. If it is something like Google then on your computer it will require a new code only when you wipe the cookies because that is how they track the device. So even if your computer changes its IP address then all that the site has to do is look at the cookies, and it will recognize the new IP address. So then the logical choice is for you to add this feature and reduce the chance of your twitter account being hacked.

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How To Protect Your Facebook Account

When it comes to your social media sites you want to keep your data secure from any scammers and spammers while still allowing your friends to find you. This can be easily done with a few changes to your Facebook privacy and security settings. Our goal is to be able to limit what others can see but allow your friends to still find you, we also want to prevent outside sources such as cookies from tracking certain information on your facebook account. This is a fairly easy task, and afterwards you will have a very secure Facebook account.

Security Settings

Password: You are required to have a Facebook password whenever you sign up for the service, but a lot of people seem to push it off and give themselves easy passwords for the sake of remembering. Well while that is great you need a more secure password and at the bare minimum your password should include 1 Capital letter, letters (any amount), numbers (any amount), and at least 1 special character. This will give the largest array of passwords to guess form. You also need to make sure that it is something that you can remember and the more characters you use the more secure your account is.

Login Notifications: You need to have login notifications turned on and it is recommended to have both email and sms reports on this will alert you at a faster rate and can allow you to monitor if someone is able to get into your account without your permission. Now if you are logging in from a new phone then you will also get a warning but you will know that it is you based on the location that it gives you.

Login Approvals: This is probably the best tool at stopping unauthorized access to your accounts,and this allows Facebook to send you a random code whenever you login from a new device, so if your password fails you the hacker wont be able to get in without the login code.

Code Generator: This is another way that you can protect your account, and this one will be linked to your Google authenticator app and it will require a code from that when you try to log into Facebook from an unknown location.

App Passwords: You can use an app password for certain Facebook apps which I have yet to find a use for, but you use this feature when you are creating an account on another website through Facebook. Since those websites wont be able to receive that Facebook login code then you will have to use these app passwords.

Safe Browsing: Facebook allows you to control whether or not you are using an SSL. Facebook will continue to use the SSL when this feature is turned on and this can prevent snooping from cookies because it is constantly encrypting your connections. You wont be able to use this on certain pages such as apps, but most of the time you will be able to.

Privacy Settings

Who can see my stuff?

Facebook has made it really clear that they are trying to keep everyone's posts between them and the friends that they have so we want to keep our information away from people that we can't trust or don't know. No keep in mind we still want to keep our information shown to possible friends, but we are going to limit it until we approve that friends request with them.

Who Can See Future Posts: You will want to keep this feature set to friends, and the reason is the largest crowd is friends of friends, but there is a good chance that you might not know the people who are reading your posts and therefore you will want only your friends to see them.

Limit The Audience Of Old Posts: So if you did ever share your posts with friends of friends then you can easily fix this by using this feature it will change all of your old posts to friends only, so friends of friends will be blocked entirely.

Who Can Send Me Friend Requests: This is a call that is best left up to doing friends of friends is the most secure, but all can block people that you want to add you. So it might be best for you to leave it to everyone unless you are not planning on adding anymore friends to your account.

What Messages Do I Want Filtered Into My Inbox: You will want this set to strict filtering this will send all messages from none friends into the other box and all of your friends will still be able to contact you. This will prevent unknown people from spamming your inbox, and it still allows you to receive those important messages. 

Who Can Look Me Up: Set it to were only your friends can search for by your email or phone, this will prevent spammers from getting a match if they ever manage to get your phone number or email address. 

Do You Want Search Engines To Link To Your Posts: Turn this feature off and this will prevent your Facebook Posts from becoming public to anyone on the web.

Summary: After all of this configuring your account will be protected from spammers and will be secure from hackers now keep in mind these configurations are very simple to do and will probably take 5 minutes to do, but in the log run it will keep your account more secure from unknown people trying to find you. If you have any questions about how to edit these then please feel free to ask in the comments below.

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360 Internet Security 2013 Review

360 Internet Security is an antivirus program that is published by Qihoo, and it is the most widely used antivirus in the world with over 400 million users. Qihoo is a chinese company and has one of the best antivirus products on the market. The english version which is what we have here, uses the same technology and database, but still needs to add features. But don't think for a second that this is a weak product because that is simply not true.



Features:
This product includes all of the protection of a regular antivirus suite but there are little extra features. You gain extra forms of protection that you would not quiet expect, but there are minimal features compared ot other antivirus products. Now since this product is new to English market we can expect future iterations to include added features such as those found in other suites.

Scan: You are able to do a quick scan, a full scan, and a custom scan. All of these are very similar to those of other antivirus products. The custom scan allows you to scan the entire drive opposed to being very limited by the other scan types, because you can rescan certain items such as the desktop.

Real Time Protection: This antivirus suite is able to monitor your computer with up to three antivirus engines for maximum protection. The program is even able to protect its self from malware so that your one form of protection is not ruined. The program is also able to monitor programs that have access to your webcam and prevent them from taking control of it to monitor what is going on.

USB Protection: This feature allows the program to monitor any files being transmitted through a USB drive. This is very similar to the USB immunization feature that you get with Bitdefender Total Security.

Do Not Disturb Mode: This feature prevents annoying pop-ups when your computer enters a game or a full screen application. So if the program updates it wont give you a notification if you are in a game, and the best thing is that that it automatically switches to this mode when it detects a full screen application.

Pros: This program has a very powerful protection score getting a 5.5/6 on the last AV-Test, and it monitors many different changes rather than just file changes. This program is able to monitor changes to a registry key, start-up items, files, and other items on the computer including the webcam. This program has a ton of security features that you can modify to get the correct level of protection that you need.

Cons: This program can be difficult to set-up for novice and beginner users, so getting the best protection can be difficult. If you want help configuring the settings for this program go to the bottom of this post, and you will see a video tutorial that I have prepared. This program also lacks features, while many will argue it has a ton fo security features it misses items like file shredder, anti keylogging, and other features that a security program should have.

This video review also contains step by step instructions to properly configuring the software for maximum security settings.

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360 Mobile Security Review

360 Mobile Security is an Android antivirus app that is published by Qihoo which is the same company that makes the desktop security suite 360 Internet Security 2013. This app uses 2 scanning engines which is a new idea for mobile devices and those engines are the 360 cloud Engine (Their Engine) and the QVM 2 engine. These 2 engines are able to detect a large bulk of malware, and they can do it without slowing down the device. This app comes with a unique approach to your phones security and has a few other tools that you would be interested in especially if you want to keep your Android device fast and secure.



Types Of Scans 

The image to the right show you what happens after you do a quick or full scan as you can see my device was found clean of malware. The app does not come with auto scanning features however it does alert you upon entering the app if you have not scanned your phone in a long time. The app only comes with 2 scans and those are the Quick Scan (apps) and the Full Scan (apps and files) we should be expecting a custom scan in the future but as of now we are not sure what we will see in the future. The app is still very new and has about 50,000 downloads off of the Google play store. However,the app does have a 4.8/5 Rating which is very good even for a new App.

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RAM Clean Up

This app comes with a built in task manager that can close apps that are not currently in use, but keeps them in the memory so that you may return to the spot that you left off at. Let me explain most task managers when you close an app will close it entirely so that you will have to restart it. Well 360 Mobile Security wont close the app completely but leave it in the memory so that you can return to the spot that you left off at. If you really wanted to close the app you can use one of those more powerful task managers, but they have been known to have negative effects on the performance of the system. That is because when you use an app the system can remember information and leave it in a cache like system to make it faster the next time around. If it is closed completely the system needs to find that information again.

Privacy Cleaner

360 Mobile Security can clean your privacy so that your runnings apps are closed and your search history from certain apps is erased. It also will allow you to close certain apps as opposed to it closing all of them for you. This way is better if you don't want to close the system based apps so that way you wont experience like in some task managers the reset of your system UI which can be annoying. It does a good job at erasing the search history however it is rendered useless if you keep your search history across your Google account like me. Now there is no cache cleaner which is why I use AVG Cleaner to do that for me. There should be an update where they will add this feature, but the company is trying to get this app and their desktop version updated and they need to translate the app as well which can take a while.

Related Videos:


If you wish to download the app please go to the Google play store here. 

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Bing Child Abuse Pop-Up Warning

Bing has added a new filter for its UK users about illegal images that they are searching for. This has been seen with images that show child abuse. This change has occurred after the UK has asked for search engines to start filter out content which is include child abuse, exploitation, and other keywords to be filtered. When this pop-up is shown the reader will not be able to continue to their content and are asked to visit the Stopitnow.org so that they can receive help.



Microsoft is in the process of trying to filter out as much of this offensive content that they can however will it work?

The issue with this plan is that they cant filter out or stop users that are using a VPN or proxy service which would hide their IP. They could make it appear that they are in another country thus rendering this defense system useless now the advantage to this is that most people don't know what a VPN/Proxy service is. Therefore,they can crackdown on a decent amount of  people who are looking for this content.

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How Does Microsoft Know What Terms To Block?

Microsoft is using a list of keywords that is given to them by The Child Protection And Exploitation Centre. They are in charge of monitoring the keywords that could lead to child abuse pages and images they do update the list so that Microsoft can receive all of the updates to keep their protection system up to date. This list is meant to block words and their number off sets. Such as people can generally outsmart an engine or filter by changing a letter such as O and will use a 0 to bypass the block and still find the content that they were looking for.

Will This Move To The US?
As of now there is no requirement on Microsoft's side to block such content in the United States however if the government ever asked there is a good chance that  they would comply. Now the UK is the only country that is blocking this type of content however Microsoft might start to branch this blocking to other European nations since they might all agree on this issue. As it stands Microsoft has not stated that they will make this for every country.

What About Google and Yahoo?
Google has been working on this issue for a long time now and has complied with the British Government to put forth more effort to stop the viewing of child abuse, child exploitation. Yahoo is also going to step up its game when it comes to blocking this content but of these 3 companies it looks like Microsoft is actually placing forth the most effort to block the viewing of the content by forcing them to go else where. The disadvantage is that you can get past it really easy. Google and Yahoo block the source of the content to prevent it in their results. Only time will show who is doing the better job, but we will find out soon.

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1.8 Million Linux Forum Passwords Stolen

Many users are at risk of their passwords being stolen after hackers managed to gain up to 1.8 million of them from the Ubuntu forums. Ubuntu is warning all of its users to change their passwords and any other passwords that are similar to their forum login. These hackers would be able to use the logins to gain information about other sites that you use and try to hack into those as well. This is why using extra security features such as 2 step verification. You should also be using a random password generator and a password manager to maximise your security. Unfortunately,these will not be able to protect against an attack like this.



What To Do?
If you are a Ubuntu forum user then you should immediately change your password and any other passwords similar to it. The reason is that most people wont have different passwords for their logins. The issue with this is that they can easily gain access to your other information and accounts. Think about it if you have an Ubuntu passwords of  forumpassword1 and then you go to facebook and have a password of facebookpassword1 we can easily guess your trend and then access other accounts using that same system.

What If I Was Not Effected?
If you are not hacked or don't believe so it is still recommended that you change your password, and the reason is that the general reports can be wrong, and there could be more hacked passwords then originally thought. Even if the number was not true then there is a chance that they could do the attack again using a similar exploit and get your information. So as you can see no matter what when a company has a hack attack then you need to change your information to stay secure.

How Did This Happen?
As of now we are not sure or alerted by the foundation however the most common ways that a hacker gets information is through an exploit in the login system. The might have done something similar to the facebook hack that is going around or they could have done something as complex as forcing their way into the server to mine the information. The question is why would they hack the passwords in the first place these passwords are not that valuable and generally Linux users know to have different passwords across different websites so it will be interesting if we can get a motive from the hackers or at least know how they did it.

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Browser Comparison 2

This test was to determine many of the basic parameters of browsers display, and security vulnerabilities. The above image shows a test by NSS labs and shows the malware blocked by the most common browsers. The above images do not show the vulnerabilities of the browsers.

Internet Explorer Version 10.0.9200.16599

HTML 5 Test: 320
Acid 3 Test: pass*
CSS 3 Test: 54%
Speed Test: 30 ms
Security Test: 14/17
Ram Usage: 49 Mb
File Size:

Google Chrome Version 28.0.1500.71 

HTML 5 Test: 463
Acid 3 Test: pass
CSS 3 Test: 65%
Speed Test: 30ms*
Security Test: 16/17
Ram Usage: 45.7
File Size: 364.26 Mb

Firefox Version 22

HTML 5 Test: 410
Acid 3 Test: pass
CSS 3 Test: 63%
Speed Test: 31
Security Test: 13/17
Ram Usage: 83.2 Mb
File Size: 46.39 Mb

Chrome Canary Version 30.0.1557.0 canary

HTML 5 Test: 463
Acid 3 Test: pass
CSS 3 Test: 66
Speed Test: 30
Security Test: 16/17
Ram Usage: 65 Mb
File Size: 375.99 Mb

Opera Version 15.0.1147.130

HTML 5 Test: 423
Acid 3 Test: pass
CSS 3 Test: 65%
Speed Test: 30
Security Test: 15/17
Ram Usage: 70 Mb
File Size: 93 Mb

Maxthon Cloud Version 4.0.6.2000

HTML 5 Test: 476 ??
Acid 3 Test: fail
CSS 3 Test: 62%
Speed Test: 31ms
Security Test: 14/17
Ram Usage: 51 Mb
File Size: 87.73

Safari 5.1.7

HTML 5: 278

Acid 3: Test fail

CSS 3: 51%

Speed Test: 41ms

Security Test: 14/17

The question marks next to the Maxthon browsers html test question the companies past history of bribing the test givers. Maxthon has been known to bribe their testers to give them a higher score which is why they get a lower score.

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