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

As Hurricane Florence 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 and may lose power

It’s been over two years since I published the 2nd edition of Firewalls – and this update is a whopper! The third edition is 400 pages long and has 152 tips in it (compared to 326 pages and 131 tips for the previous version). It’s the most comprehensive version yet, updated for the latest Mac,

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,

This should comes as no surprise to my readers, but your “smart” TV is literally watching what you watch. It’s not watching you, it’s watching the screen. That is, it’s examining the images on your display in order to identify what you’re viewing. Why do they do this? Because they can. Smart TV Tracking Features

According to the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), you can’t charge sick people more for their health insurance and you can’t deny people coverage due to pre-existing conditions. But given the current administration’s penchant for gutting regulations and their vehement dislike of the ACA, those protections may not be around much longer. If so, in

If you haven’t figured out yet that Google goes through all your stuff to find out all about you, then you haven’t been paying attention. So it should be no surprise that they scan your emails looking for interesting things that could be used to market products to you. (Along with your calendar, contacts, searches,

If you have a really old web browser, you really need to upgrade for many reasons, including security and privacy. This week you have one more compelling reason: retaining the ability to shop online. A Brief History of TLS When your web browser talks to a website like Amazon.com, the conversation is encrypted – so

Last week, Vermont become the first state in the US to implement real regulations on the data collection industry. Data brokers will have to register with the state and alert users when there’s been a data breach. They also must observe standard security practices to protest your data. Facebook has been in the news a