Category: Securing

What I have learned from Person of Interest Show!

Paul

Person on Interest!

When I first started watching this show, I thought it was unique but then last year we had the revelation of the Snowden contraversy and how the government was collecting all sorts of information.  Then this became so relevant to the government and how they are collecting my information.   You will see in this show so much talk about how they are collecting it.   It is scary and I am sure the Government has put this out to help have a plausible deniability factor to it.   I know I am going to have conspiracy theories tell me all sorts of stories, and frankly I am not interested.  This is my take on the show and here it is!

Bluetooth Force Pairing

To some this is impossible, and to some like me it is possible but highly unlikely.   I however tend to be more paranoid than most and think this is probably happening more than most would care to admit.   People have shown how to pair without confirmation in many situations and thus that I why I believe this is happening in today’s society without your knowledge.   Again this go back to the Plausibility factor, so who really knows this is after all I good reason to keep your cellphone secure as you can by turning off Bluetooth when not in use!

There will Always be a FINCH!

This is self evident in the series, he can hack and do all sorts of things that makes your head spin.   We have hackers and crackers who do this sort of stuff all the time but in much less detail and much less exposure.   I am sure they do not do all this stuff but they do some of it without your knowledge and without much publicity.   They probably have gotten into people’s Facebook accounts without your knowledge also!

Only the Paranoid Survive!

This is a quote from FINCH also, the geek humor of it is what struck me as funny.  Those who are paranoid have good reasons to worry and be cautious of what everything we do online.   It is good to be asking questions about what is going on and trying to keep our personal information safe.  It is sometimes hard to fight for your rights.   That was one reason I tell people to use a VPN service like VPN4ALL and that way you can keep your bank information and your identity from those who could do the most damage! 

As you can see I have been watching this show for the past few weeks going back and starting from Season 1 of Person of Interest and it is quite interesting and somewhat scarey what they do on the show.   It keeps me wondering just how much of this is true and how much of it is made up.   Only time can tell what really is true but you have to wonder and ask questions.   Could this be true?

The NSA and You, what they probably know about you!

Paul

A Spy's Spy

NSA has Secrets!

VPN4ALL TurbostreamIn a recent report by USA Today, we see just how much the NSA is keeping behind closed doors! I have been seeing this come over the years and quite frankly have expected this to happen.   Nothing has changed in my mind, but I am sure everyone is either quite uncomfortable or in denial of the whole thing.  They have everything they need including your identity, although they already had that if your a US citizen.

Cell Phone Data!

With Prism program being exposed you can bet they are wire taping all the data from Cell Phones, your IMEI, GPS location, and even who you sent or received text messages from.  That is however where you should worry.   

Most phones are using data to place phone calls now a days.   We have went from analog to digital on over the air televisions and they did the same thing to digitial voice calls.   So when you dial your cell phone and talk to your friend or family member.   You can bet the NSA is listening in.   

Emails and You!

Just like Google will look for keywords in your emails to serve up relevant ads in your Gmail account. That was to unexpected they have to make money somewhere.   It can be very dangerous though to email someone with really bad words and I mean those words you don’t want to flag you as a potential terrorist.  Emails are being sent to other servers without encryption and this is a good example on how the NSA is also getting your private emails to friends and family.

All Data is be collected!

I am almost certain that all data you have is being collected at some form or another.   You can really expect it to change over night but you can at least keep what privacy you have safe and secure.   You need something like VPN4ALL Enhanced VPN Security Military Grade Encryption Hide your Identity from Hackers and Government ALIKE.   I won’t say this is the only thing you need but it will help you protect your privacy online.   I like them because they have mobile VPN that you can use with your mobile phones and tablets and keep your safe and secure.

 

PRISM and Edward Snowden scandal!

Paul

Prism Reflections 1877

Prism Scandal?

Some of you would wonder if the Surveillance scandal of 2013 will be remember in 2050?  I really can’t say for sure in the past few hours the US Government has issued an arrest for Edward Snowden.  It really looks quite suspicious that the government uses this tactic.   It seems almost like they want to blame someone who wanted to let the world and the his fellow US citzen the right to know what they are doing.   This is getting quite scary as some of you would like.   With Obama on his last term as president, we have to wonder what will happen for the next 3 years.   Will he make our privacy just as bad as China?

Tech Giants are the ROOT to this!

Most Tech giants are afraid of the government and what will happen to their reputation if they were to be truthful.   I really doubt the government would do anything but slap them for saying no.  They afford so much of this blame that seems to be going around and around in circles.   One company blames another company and it is an endless blame.   Just like the US government is blaming Snowden for leaking this information, you wonder why all the fuss about leak.   He didn’t leak any personal information such as people and social security numbers.

Tempora program and The British Secret Service!

While we are on the subject of PRISM, we have to at least show that it has been going on in other governments around the world and good old James Bond likes his Tempora Program “Shaken, Not stirred”.  We’ve see that the US isn’t the only one doing the serviceable of their people.   Quite scarey isn’t it?   The Tempora program is a co-operation between the NSA and Britain exchanging information about what people do.

What can I do?

If you wondering about cloud backup, you can try Malwarebytes Secure Backup Pro and that will at least encrypt all your data before it is stored in the cloud.   I won’t say that is the only thing you can do.   You can also use a VPN Service such as VPN4ALL The Best Protection Online AES-256 RSA 2096bit (Military Grade) Encryption for all your internet traffic. Unlimited and Metered VPN Plans starting 9.95 / month which is what I am using now so It will help keep your privacy a little more safe. There are no guarantees that government has keys but at least it is one more step to privacy that shows them that you want to be “Do Not Tracked”.   One last way to help keep your information a little more private is Secured Texted on the Android phones.   Looks nice and it is opened source so you have little worry about who has access to your text messages.   In the last 30 days, this app has been getting popular.  

 

The Cheating Husband Syndrome!

Paul

When wives suspect!

Nothing in the world is the hardest to uncover.   At least that is my opinion on this because the Husband will do almost anything to hide an affair.   So what is the wife going to do.   I don’t know about the everyone else but I had an interesting experience the other day and I want to discuss this in detail about what happened. 

Once a Cheater always a Cheater!

This is something of a personal belief but back to the story, I found a profile on a few of the dating sites and I thought it was strange.   I knew she was married and everything.  So I wanted to contact her and try to find out for sure.  I posted about it on my blog as a way to hopefully draw out the impersonator and try to determine just what the intent was.   It never really happened because the person involved didn’t feel the need to Google their name.   Probably because that was somewhat of a fake last name.  So that didn’t pan out like I had hoped.  So I found her at a local community gathering.   I help direct the technical stuff for a local church.   So I just waited to bump into her.   That day came and I told her about her profiles on the few dating sites.   She was confused and a little worried someone might of had her credit cards and her personal information.  I started to do my research and she does her research.

Wasn’t a Stranger doing the impersonating!

So she gets back with me and tells me what she found out.   It was her Sister who has a hubby who has cheated on her in the past.   Seems she wanted to use those accounts to spy on her hubby and see if she could find him on any dating sites.   So she tells her sister to remove those accounts but wasn’t really happy with her about not asking her.  That ends the story but it is never really over.

Even though it was a family member, most people would still worry about how the pictures and information got out.   I already thought of that, she used her Facebook information even though the security part of it wouldn’t of helped.   It was a friend or family and thus the photo’s would of still been viewable and download able to the persons computer.

Things you can do to prevent this!

Some of the common problems people don’t do are stuff that if you did this it wouldn’t of happened.   So I am going to lay out some things you can do to fight people from stealing your identity and impersonating you.  

 

  • Setup Email Alerts — This is something simple but set up a Email alert with your Name and if anything happens to appear you should be notified once a day.   This will help keep your identity from being stolen on the internet.
  • Check your Facebook Settings — This is something I recommend to all my friends and family.   Keep track of who sees what and what information is given out on your social networks.   Make sure only the important information is given out to the people who need that, not to strangers.
  • Remove the Exif Tags from Photos — if you plan to upload photos to any social site it is best practice to make sure people can’t track or know where you’ve been.   It can also be a security issue for some.   So removing it will help reduce your risk of identity theft.

 

There are more than these three but this will at least point you in the right direction to start preventing people from taking your identity and using it for their own means.   If you know other ways to fight identity theft then please feel free to leave a comment.   I’d love to hear what you have to say on the subject.

Paul Sylvester

 

 

Reason why You Should Remove your Default Admin in WordPress

Paul

I was checking my Logs today and I thought some people would like see it:

Fail-loginattempts

I can only guess why people still use there Admin user for WordPress.  As you can see, my log is bigger than this, they tried to log in with the default username.  The Ip of 213.155.4.184  goes to the orginazation of Morpheus, [intlink id=”3743″ type=”post”]is it the same one that came scanning a few months ago[/intlink]?

This is just a quick not that if you haven’t listened to my suggestion of  [intlink id=”4122″ type=”post”]Deleting the Default Username for WordPress[/intlink] this only proves that you should.

You should also consider creating a hard to guess password, and I suggest using [intlink id=”2646″ type=”post”]Roboform[/intlink] to do that.    It is also a great Password manager for those password you could hardly remember.