How to Remove Those Embarrassing Facebook Photos

Still haunted by that picture your Aunt Clara posted of you on Facebook? Many of us have pictures we wish never seen the light of day. With the new privacy updates that Facebook has issued, you now have the option to make that happen.

This new feature can untag multiple photos at once and quickly request the removal of posts from friends' profiles. 

Ready to make those bad pics finally disappear? Here's how.

• Click the Activity Log button found on your profile page.
• Click Photos from the menu on the left side of the page.
• Once you click Photos the option Photos of You will appear. Select that.
• Select the photos you want removed by clicking the check box to the left of each photo.
• Once you have selected the photos, you will see a Report/Remove Tags button at the top of the page.
• Once you click that, you will be presented with the following 2 options

Untagging the photos will remove them from your timeline immediately. To be untagged and taken down, Fabebook will send a notification to the person who posted the photo with a request to remove it. They will have the option to remove it or send you a response.

Facebook still advises you to contact people directly about removing embarrassing photos. With either option, hopefully you will finally make that photo disappear for good!

All product and company names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.

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Don't Get Love Sick on Valentine's Day

With Valentine's Day approaching, many will be struck with the love bug. As romantic as that sounds, it's actually a bad thing. The "love bug" is a computer virus.

SophosLabs is warning users about a widespread worm posing as a Valentine's Day greeting that is spreading quickly. 

Sophos reports the W32/Dref-AB worm started spreading via e-mail in many subject variations. Some of the ones spotted include: "A Valentine Love Song," "Be My Valentine," "Fly Away Valentine," "Happy Valentine's Day" and "The Valentine Love Bug." The worm is hidden in files that are attached to the e-mail. They're often called postcard.exe, greeting postcard.exe, greeting card.exe, or postcard.exe.

The worm is designed to download a Trojan that will set up on the infected computer and leave it open to remote control. Hackers often do this to create zombie armies or botnets, which are then used to send out spam or even launch denial-of-service attacks. 

The new Valentine attack is spreading hard and fast across the net. Be cautious and don't open any attachments in suspicious emails such as these. This is the one time you will not want to get love sick on Valentine's Day!

All product and company names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.

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How Does My Search Engine Know Me So Well?

How is it that Google knows where you live when you do a search for "pizza"? Or knows you just can't seem to get enough PajamaJeans? Or why do those ads seem to be things I've searched for before? Well, it's time to expose the 'wizard behind the curtain' and explain how your search engine knows you so well.

Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing all strive to create a personalized user-experience when searching. Just like any other business, they want to please their customers. The way that they collect your personal data is broken down into 3 categories.


Location
Type “pizza” into Google; what does your results look like? Most likely the first results Google pulled are pizza places near your town. National brands like Dominos and Papa John’s will usually appear at the top of the search. But how does Google know where you live? Easy, it uses the IP address from computer to determine your location. If using a smart phone, your GPS location is used. Google knows that when most people search for things like “pizza” or “dry cleaner” they are looking for local results, even if they didn’t search using localized keywords.

Search History
As referenced in my earlier article, Spyware and Lawn Gnomes, what you do on the Internet is tracked for marketing purposes. They know where you’ve been, how you search, and what you look at online. It may sound a lot like 'Big Brother', but knowing your search history means that Google, Yahoo, and Bing can deliver results that you are more likely to find useful and interesting.

Social Media Information
In 2011, Bing and Facebook teamed up to enhance Bing’s search results. The Bing-Facebook integration allowed users, who were signed into Facebook, to see what websites their social connections had Liked and Shared in Facebook. Some pages would actually rank better when a user was logged in to Facebook than they would normally, just because that person’s social network had 'Liked' it. 

Google has created their version of the Like button with the +1 for Google+. When a user is logged into their Google account, they can publicly +1 a webpage they like. The +1 will show up in their Google profile, and their profile image will be placed next to the +1 button.

Facebook has now decided to take on Google with their new search engine, Facebook Graph Search. With Facebook Graph Search, the objects we search for aren’t Web pages, but instead virtual representations of real world objects: people, places and things. The connections are primarily Facebook Likes. Did such-and-such a person like a particular photo? A particular doctor? A particular restaurant? Those likes are the ties that bind the information in Facebook together. Although still in beta, it has taken social trend data to a whole new level. 

How to Get Your Privacy Back
Perhaps you don't want your search history tracked. There are options. CNET has a great article on opting-out from Google tracking.

How to Prevent Google From Tracking You  

Reputation.com also has a great article on online privacy.

Blocking Internet Ad Tracking and Maintaining Your Online Privacy 
 

Some might debate this technology is taking the "fun" out of searching online because it narrows the search results drastically. In many ways choosing what you do and do not see. Others say personalized search results provide more valuable information to users. It reduces the clutter and focuses on what the user really wants. Either way, it's all about YOU now. What you want, need, or will need. Now it's time for me to continue my search for PajamaJeans for men!

All product and company names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and are the property of, and may be trademarks of, their respective owners.

Have a computer topic you would like see covered? Leave a comment below or send me an email.

 

The Art of Creating Secure Passwords That You Can Remember

“Treat your password like your toothbrush. Don’t let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months” – Clifford Stoll

Back in 2004, at the RSA Security Conference, Bill Gates proclaimed the password is dead. His statement may have been premature but his assessment is accurate. He told his audience that the password can't meet the challenge of keeping sensitive information protected, saying "People use the same password on different systems, they write them down and they just don't meet the challenge for anything you really want to secure."

The art of creating secure passwords can be quite easy.  Any sysadmin will tell you, the challenge comes in getting people to use secure passwords. Even the most protected networks can be thwarted by someone using simplistic credentials. Put into proper perspective, the only barrier between you and your data, is your password. Isn't it worth the time to make sure it's secure?

Here are a few simple steps to make sure you're protected.

1. Don't Use Personal Information -  Any novice can easily figure out your full name, names of your spouse or children, your pet cat "Mr. Whiskers", or your favorite sports teams. Never use a password that has anything associated to you.
2. No Dictionary Words - In addition to not using personal information, it's important not to use any words found in the dictionary. Passwords like that can be easily cracked by password software.
3. Mixed Characters - Passwords are usually case-sensitive, so mix both upper and lower case letters to make it more difficult. Just capitalizing the first letter is not sufficient. For example, use "paSswoRd" to make it more complex. Better yet, throw in some numbers and special characters to substitute for letters, and do "p@Ssw0Rd".
4. Don't Use the Same Password for Everything - It's common for most people to use the same password for all accounts. It does make it easier to remember. But what if your password was compromised? Then ALL of your accounts would be vulnerable.
5. Use a Passphrase - Take your favorite line from a movie, song, or something memorable to you and convert it to a passphrase. "PinkFluffyBunny" is a pretty cool passphrase but consider this better example: ##1PinkFluffyBUNNY##
   The above example has the following:
   • It meets common password strength criteria  to include upper and lowercase letters, a number and a symbol
   • It combines multiple words, numbers and symbols to create a unique phrase
   • It is memorable for the user
6. Use a Password Management Tool - Use a password management tool to store complex passwords. This enables you to use stronger passwords for various web sites, accounts, and applications without having to remember them all. Windows has included a Credential Manager utility since Windows XP that lets users save passwords and provides a single sign-on solution. Logging in to Windows unlocks the vault and automatically applies the credentials from the vault as needed to access sites and applications.

The Time is Now

The sheer volume of attacks proliferating the Internet and business headlines should be a wake-up call to anyone using a weak password. Now is the time to practice vigilance, both professionally and personally, to secure your accounts.

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