For many years, the internet was populated by just a handful of “top level domains”, or TLD’s: .com, .net, .org, .gov, .mil and .edu. You might also realize that we use dotted suffixes to denote computer file types, like .txt, .doc or .pdf. It would make sense to try to avoid ambiguity there, right? Unfortunately, …
When I first read about passkeys, I got super excited. Finally it seemed that we might truly have a “password killer” technology. Passkeys promised to be easier to use and more secure than passwords. It’s a rare thing in security when you can improve convenience and security simultaneously. However, as this cool new technology actually …
Have you been getting a lot of annoying pop-ups lately asking you to “Sign in with Google”? Google used to actually wait for you to click the “Login” button before offering this option, but in recent months they’ve gotten a lot more pushy. This annoying message is now showing up every time you visit a …
You’re in the airport, facing a long day of travel… and you forgot to charge your phone last night. You’re looking at the dreaded red battery symbol. And you just realized your wall charger is in your checked baggage. There, just up ahead, you see a public charging station, with several open USB ports. Is …
As if responding to my previous blog article on web fingerprinting, Mullvad (a very respectably VPN company) has just released a new web browser specifically designed to hide your identity – partly by attempting to defeat fingerprinting. As you might expect, there are pros and cons. Here’s my first-blush review. What is the Mullvad Browser? …
Advertisers desperately want to track you as you traverse the web. They want to know as much about you as possible so that they can target you with ads. Knowing which sites you visit, when you visit them, how long you stay there, what you do while you’re there, and even how you move from …
The National Security Agency (NSA) just released a very helpful information sheet on how to secure your home network (along with some great general cybersecurity tips). In the not-so-distant past, the internet was something we connected to briefly to check email and do a little web surfing, and then disconnected so we could free up …
When I was in high school, I took a wonderful career planning course. Instead of being a mind-numbing survey of possible occupations and career paths, it instead focused on understanding yourself. What are you good at doing? What do you actually enjoy doing? What are your values and aspirations? And finally, given all of that, …
I generally advise people not to create accounts if they can avoid it and to close most accounts that they no longer use. However, there are a handful of odd accounts that you should absolutely claim if you haven’t done so already – before bad guys do it for you. Like the intrepid Duck Dodgers …
After nearly 6 months of hard work, the fifth edition of my book, Firewalls Don’t Stop Dragons, has finally been released! Is this blog article a shameless plug? Maybe a little bit. But this book serves as the cornerstone of my mission to help as many people as I can to secure their devices and …
