How-To

How to Secure Your Home Network

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 …

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shortened URLs

How to Reveal Shortened URLs

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, …

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Why You Need to Plant Your Flag

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 …

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New Year’s Resolutions for 2023

It’s that time of year again! Time to put the past behind us and look forward to a brand new year, full of possibilities and hope! I mean, it can’t get much worse, right? Okay, I take that back… no reason to tempt fate. Here are some privacy and cybersecurity tips you should seriously consider …

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How to Avoid Holiday Scams

In my last article, I shared my list of the Best & Worst Gifts for 2022. I even included some helpful coupons you can download to give the gift of security and privacy. (I’ll be adding more coupons soon, by the way – keep an eye on this article for updates.) Sadly, this time of …

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Give the Gift of Security & Privacy

[UPDATED 12/7/2022: I’ve added more coupons!] Every year, I publish an annual guide to the best and worst gifts, based on two and only two criteria: privacy and security. But I decided that I wanted to actually create a gift that people could give to others that would help them protect their devices and data. …

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QR Code Scams, Revisited

[Updated: Nov 17, 2022] Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote an article about why QR codes aren’t inherently dangerous. That’s still true. However, there’s a tricky new scam that will basically hold any QR codes you generate on their site for ransom. QR Codes: Let’s Review As I explained in the previous article, a …

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Deleting Your Way to Better Security

All software has bugs. Therefore, the less software you have, the fewer bugs you have. In other words, the fewer applications and plugins you have installed, the fewer the opportunities there are for your computer or smartphone to be hacked. It’s a mathematical certainty. In the cybersecurity realm, we call this “reducing your attack surface”. …

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cryptomator

Secure Your Files with Cryptomator

Cloud file synchronization is extremely convenient and today it’s nearly ubiquitous. You might not even be aware that you’re using it right now. These services allow you to synchronize the contents of a special file folder across multiple devices through the internet. When you add a file to this folder, or make a change to …

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Amulet of Entropy

For the past 9 months or so, I’ve been working on a secret project. To maximize the big reveal, my partner and I have kept this under wraps… until now! It’s hard to describe what this is succinctly, unless you happen to be part of the DEF CON #badgelife subculture. While DEF CON itself has …

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