Check out some good common sense blog security tips

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Image: Hacker Inside LogoI couldn’t have said it much better myself, so I decided to link to this article rather than write my own version of it. Although, I might write a follow up that gets a little more in depth or something. However, that’s for another day, for now check out this post on the site “Spice Up Your Blog” where the author goes over “5 Ways Your Blog’s Design Is Making You Susceptible To A Hacker”.

Now this isn’t just for server operators, it focuses on things that also make a difference to those that run their own blog too. This is because a “Hacker”, or maybe a visitor with malicious intent, can wreak havoc on your blog even without touching the rest of the server. If they can get access to your database for example, you can kiss all of your posts, pages and pretty much everything else goodbye if they are feeling especially destructive. Even if they don’t destroy your data, they can post things on your blog that you don’t want, like advertisements; porn; we own you messages; what have you. Even worse, is when your site gets compromised and no one knows it. In these cases the hackers can do all sorts of fun things. One especially nasty trick I have seen is when they plant a virus alongside your sites files and then append a small bit of code to your pages so that your visitors get infected, talk about your reputation plummeting faster than a stone tossed out a window.

With all this in mind, take a look at the following page and see if any of the things they talk about there sound like they might be up your alley. It pays to be careful, I hope this helps!

5 Ways Your Blog’s Design Is Making You Susceptible To A Hacker

 

Cool Tools: Networx – Track Your Network Bandwidth Usage

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NetworxI wanted to let everyone know about a new tool that I found that has, coincidentally, been added to our Cool Tools list. It’s called Networx and it is a supremo wonderful tool for monitoring your bandwidth. Now, this tool has more features than I can list here so I will list some of my favorites and link to the site for this piece of software, and I urge you to go check it out. If for no other reason, check it out because it’s a FREE tool that looks and operates like it ought to cost a lot of money.

OK, first of all you can install it or just extract and run, how cool is that this thing is so tight and so well written that you can just run it without installing it, using it’s own SQLite database. You can use this to grab all of your network usage in order to get the total picture of total bandwidth consumption, but here is some of the cool stuff, you can break off your network buy things like an interface or a network subnet and/or IP address and monitor those pieces of your network as well if you want to track bandwidth usage separately.  In one instance, I know of someone who set this up to monitor the bandwidth of each roommate on the same cable subnet in order to make sure that whoever was using the bandwidth, paid for the bandwidth. No more pointing fingers and saying it’s all those streaming videos you watch and there really being no way to know. Now you can, and it’s really easy to setup. The reports it generates are way cool, the data can be exported to Excel and other standard output formats for even more tinkering, this thing has it all. And did I mention that it is totally FREE???

What are you freaking waiting for, go check it out, download it and use it, it’s awesome!!! While you are there, check out some of their other products (most of them are FREE!!).

*Note: Please remember that this is not any kind of paid advertisement or review. I am posting this because of exactly what I said in the article, I found this tool and found it to be useful and wanted to share it with my readers. I just want to make sure that you know that I in no way am getting paid for this article, nor do I get paid if you buy anything from the software vendor, etc. This is a 100% honest review from a happy user!

Cool Tools: Hard Disk Sentinel

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hds_std_230Recently I found a tool for Windows and Linux PCs that provides a long overdue service, and that is hard disk monitoring. Now, I don’t mean monitoring like some tools where it just looks at free space or temperature and that’s it, this tool set looks at everything you can think of. Yes it checks free space and temperature, but also reads, monitors and reports on S.M.A.R.T. data, errors, log information, performance and more. Check out a full list of features here.

One thing that this tool does that I really like is hard disk surface testing and data relocation. I don’t mean simple “can I read this” sector testing like most tools do, HDS does intensive surface testing making sure that the entire disk can be read from and written to properly. It can detect weak sectors, that would be sectors that still work and thus would pass a simple “read only” test, but are weak meaning they are not “good as new” and could be near failure. When it finds these areas, it can then relocate that data to known good areas and attempt to re-initialize those weak sectors. If that fails, they can be marked bad and not used, making sure that no data is placed anywhere that might be at risk of data loss. You can also setup rules to backup data to another place when these weak areas are found, this tool is highly customizable. There is another tool that does this kind of testing amazingly well, and it’s called Spinrite, from Gibson Research. The major disadvantage of using Spinrite though, is that you must book from a disk and run Spinrite from a DOS console. This allows exclusive and total access to the disks, and means that the testing is even more thorough, but your system is not usable while the tests are running. The trade-off of getting to have these tests performed while my system is up and running means a lot to me.

Unfortunately, this is not a free tool, although they do have a free trial you can use to test it out, and the pricing is very reasonable. All in all, I highly recommend this tool for any users PC. Now, aside from installing directly onto your PC, the license allows this tool to be installed onto a memory stick or thumb drive instead, allowing the tests to be run on many computers. This is when it is a golden tool for a PC technician’s kit. So, check it out and see what you think. I am very happy with it, and I hope you get some benefit from it too. Don’t forget to check out the rest of the Cool Tools over in the Cool Tools section!

*Note: Please remember that this is not any kind of paid advertisement or review. I am posting this because of exactly what I said in the article, I found this tool and found it to be useful and wanted to share it with my readers. I just want to make sure that you know that I in no way am getting paid for this article, nor do I get paid if you buy the software, etc. This is a 100% honest review from a happy user!

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Sharing too much online can be bad!

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I found a great article that goes over some of the dangers of social networks and users who share too much of their personal data with the public.  Here: “Online oversharing can be downright unsafe, as an app making headlines for being creepy and undermining the privacy of women shows.  A geo-location based app called Girls Around Me shows users a radar overlaid on top of a Google Map, “out of which throbs numerous holographic women posing like pole dancers in a perpetual state of undress,” Cult of Mac reports.” 

Check out the article yourself.

A funny thing happened on the way to the insurance office …

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Progressive Insurance DudeI am sure that everyone has seen the Progressive insurance commercials that feature the sort of grungy looking dude with a mustache and almost unkempt hair. He is the one that is always out there throwing money at people or buying gas and paying tolls or what not. It is supposedly from all of the money he has saved with GEICO err, I mean Progressive, and he is giving back. OK, you are thinking, yeah I have seen him, but what the heck does that have to do on a blog that provides technical information? Good question, let us get to that. Have you all noticed the way cool GTO from the mid to late ’60s that he is driving around? I know I have, I am a huge fan of old GTO’s but there is another reason. There is a commercial out there touting the Progressive Snap-In service, where you plug the little device you get from Progressing into your data port on your car in order for it to record statistics about your driving habits. Supposedly this is so they can lower your insurance rates. The point is that here is Mr. Progressive insurance dude, standing there with the little Snap-In device, talking about how good the service is, right next to his GTO. I am not an auto mechanic any more, but I really don’t think that GTO has a data port in it, so I want to know where the heck he plugs that thing in at?? Then again, maybe I don’t want to know! LOL

Who’s Been Viewing My Facebook Page?

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Facebook UnfriendI thought I would put up a quick post on this topic because I keep seeing it make the rounds on Question/Answer sites like Askeville, Yahoo and the like. It’s interesting to see the answers that some people provide, from it cannot be done to it can just do this or buy my special software tool and see everything! I am not sure why people are all that tied up about who is looking at their Facebook page, but, it seems to be important to a lot of folk. Here is what I have been able to find out.

According to Facebook technical folks, the truth is, no one can see who’s been on your Facebook page. There are no features buried in the Facebook settings with that data, and there are no apps that can unearth that information for you. Facebook says that this is one of the most common scam tactics that is used to defraud users of the site. Don’t fall for it; you cannot see who is or has been looking at your profile, and no one can see if you have been looking at theirs.

LOLCat UnfriendIn other news, there are apps and tools to see who’s un-friended you. Facebook tries to minimize these apps, but they can be found. There is one that you download to your computer called UnFriend Finder and another for Android called Friends Checker. Sign in, and they store a list of your friends.  Then, every time you check back, it tells you who’s no longer on the list.  UnFriend Finder also reminds you of friend requests you’ve made that haven’t been answered. For Twitter, Qwitter does the same thing, telling you who’s un-followed you each week. Naturally, the earlier you employ these tools, the more effective they will be.

Please note that mentioning any tools in this post is not an endorsement of those tools, no one here at Solarum has seen or used them in any way and therefore are not recommending them. They are listed for informational purposes only. Hope that helps!!