5 tips for keeping your smartphone secure.

Posted on January 20, 2011 by gtg

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1. Set a password.

Setting a strong password on your phone will keep thieves, borrowers, and anyone not approved to use your phone from accessing your personal information. A good default time for allowing the screen to auto-lock is around 5 minutes of inactivity.

2. Download updates for your phone.

You’re probably used to seeing the occasional update message. Updating your phone when prompted will keep security flaws patched and keep your system as current as possible.

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Digital Age, Digital Identity: All there for companies to share

Posted on December 30, 2010 by gtg

Photo Credit - http://www.newmediamusings.com/2006/08/online_privacy_.html

We all know about Facebook and their public struggles about sharing your private information. Unfortunately, they aren’t the only company under the spotlight. Popular sites like Pandora, Yelp, Netflix, and every Angry Birds are dealing with the same issues.

If you are the proud owner of a DROID or iPhone, odds are you are installing a number of apps on your phone. Have you ever stopped to think about the messages on the installer pop ups? If you stop to read it before installing, you’ll see that many apps require access to personal information such as age and sex or location. These apps routinely send the information to marketing companies that use it to compile profiles on phone users, which in turn, results in you receiving service (music, information or entertainment) for free.

This concern relates to the last few blogs we’ve posted regarding passwords. I know that managing all of your passwords is tough and can be a huge pain. My method to keep things as simple as possible goes a little something like this:

Give social sites and online resources their own password.
Financial sites get a separate password, generally one that is more than 15 characters (a short phrase).
Finally, personal email accounts and company accounts should be designated their own password.

This seems like a lot right? Well look at this way, if your Facebook were to be hacked, would you feel comfortable if they were potentially able access to your back account as well, just because you use the same password for all of your online accounts? For instance, you remember that Gawker.com was recently hacked. They produce a number of other sites such as LifeHacker.com. You can link your Facebook account to this site for ease of login. Now, because of poor security, hackers now they have the Facebook information for all of Lifehacker’s users. By grouping my sites with coordinated passwords, I only have to update a few sites in the case of an insecurity rather than changing all of my accounts.

Remember folks, all the convenience of the digital age is great but if you aren’t careful your iLife can become very difficult when things go wrong!

Tis’ the Season….

Posted on December 23, 2010 by gtg

If you are anything like me, you waited until the last minute to do your Christmas shopping. What does a person get for their non-tech savvy friends, or in my case, my parents. Luckily, there are a number of FREE tools out there to reduce your tech support calls from mom. For me, the biggest problem is location. My parents live in Chicago while I rest my head in Denver, leaving me to handle all tech inquiries remotely. For those in a similar situation, have no fear – there’s TeamViewer. TeamViewer connects to any computer, be it Linux, Mac, Windows orthe iPhone. You can use it to remote control a computer or transfer files. It’s browser based and is 256bit encrypted. Oh and it’s FREE for noncommercial use.

What’s next in this holiday stocking stuffer? Ah yes, a backup solution! You can’t always rely on your parents to do the right thing when malware hits (and you know you can count on them to not have a backup)! There two great options out there; DropBox or Mozy. I personally prefer DropBox because if the need arises, I can log in with their accountinformation and share any files needed. For my parents, 2GBs of free space is plenty!

Last but not least, they will need some sort of security for their passwords. Most non-technical users seem to struggle in this area. It seems with the number of passwords needed in the online realm, they want something easy to remember and quick to type, even though it’s not the most secure solution.

To help meet them on middle ground, we like to promote LastPass, which you may remember from this article. LastPass allows you to create one Master Password, allows automatic form filling, one click login, password encryption as well as the ability to upload them to LastPass for backup and shared use across browsers. You can also securely share passwords as well as have LastPass generate them for you, storing them securely don’t have to remember it for every login.

Where there you go folks, 3 apps that will make anyone appreciate the time you take to secure their data.

Happy Holidays from all of us at Greystone!

Lifehacker.com: a 1.3Million User Database Hacked

Posted on December 21, 2010 by gtg

Last weekend someone compromised the database for the Gawker Media family of websites. While they did encrypt the information stored in the database, they unfortunately didn’t do it right. Most encryption methods require something called a salt. Now a salt is like a master key that’s used to encrypt data so that it’s hard for someone to decrypt given the chance. And, of course, that’s what they forgot to do in this situation. If you had an account on Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, or Deadspin, you may want to check and see if you’re account was on this list. Luckily, someone made it much easier to check on your account here. So if you’re on the list and you’ve used the same password for other websites, make sure to change that password on your account and any other site with the same characters.

I’ve found that the more passwords I require for my personal use, the more I have to keep resetting them for some reason or another. If you’re looking for an easier alternative, check out LastPass which stores all your passwords in a browser toolbar or even just through their website. One great feature is it allows you to have LastPass pick a secure random password for each website so even if one website is compromised, it doesn’t affect your other accounts. With their paid product Last Pass Premium, you get more advanced features like password storage on your iPhone, Android, and Blackberry. Luckily, the paid version isn’t required for some of the great features they offer.

*Photo source.

Happy Holidays from all of us at Greystone!