October is National Cyber-Security Awareness Month. So now would be a great time to get off your butt and implement some of the security tips that I’ve recommended over the years! If you think you’re in pretty good shape, then maybe this would be a good time to help your loved ones get secure. Here
A recent study found that most people aren’t taking the time to properly wipe data off their hard drives before they resell them. The researchers bought 200 used hard drives and found that a whopping 59% of the drives still had data that was accessible, including “employment and payroll records, family and holiday photos (along
[This article is part of a Beginners Week blog series from my publisher, Apress.] While humans have had several millennia to adapt to the dangers of the natural world and many decades to react to the advancements of the modern age, the virtual world of the internet is relatively new. The risks of the physical
What happens to your digital life when you die? The laws haven’t kept up with the times and there aren’t clear rules for who has legal rights to your online accounts or the files you’ve stored in the cloud. Let’s talk about how to prepare for your inevitable Digital Afterlife. Getting Your Digital Effects in
Rather than write a new article every year, I’ve decided to update my original article on Data Privacy Day. This article tells you how to vastly improve your privacy and guard your data from prying eyes right now. Data Privacy Day 2019 also just happens to exactly coincide with the airing of the 100th episode
With 2018 in the rear view mirror, it’s time to look ahead to 2019! And that means it’s time to make your New Year’s Resolutions! Sure, you’re going to join that gym and lose weight and quit smoking … yada, yada, yada. But what about your cyber goals for 2019? You do have them, right??
It’s National Cybersecurity Awareness Month! One of the key themes this year is working together to improve our overall security. To that end, I’d like to focus on how you can close some common security holes in your life. Security types call this “reducing your attack surface”. One of the best ways to protect yourself
Last Friday, Facebook notified users about a data breach that may have exposed up to 90 million Facebook users’ data. Facebook has certainly had their share of screw-ups and shady practices revealed in the last year or so, prompting me to finally just delete my Facebook account. Here’s what you need to know about the
[Last updated: Aug 2020] As hurricane season approaches, I thought I’d share my personal checklist for preparing for the power outage that often accompanies a big storm. This isn’t just for hurricanes, though. It can apply to snow or ice storms, too. These are storms where you have at least a few days to prepare
If you have a combination printer/fax machine, your network is probably vulnerable to a single, malicious fax. A security research company named Check Point released a report last week that detailed how HP printers with built-in fax capability could be hacked by sending it a specially formatted fax. While the study focused on HP printers,
