Hi, My Name is Bernie

  Hot on the the heels of the string of controversies hounding Twitter after the Musk Takeover, this happens.  So what happens next?  I did an immediate change of password and enabled multi-factor authentication. So if you are on Twitter, please change your password immediately even if you haven't receive any similar notice and do yourself a favor, please enable multi-factor authentication too.  This is for your own good :D

In a world ravaged by COVID-19, the reliance on the internet has been magnified. Majority of the workforce who can perform their mundane office tasks remotely are now allowed to work from home. Schools are virtually ghost towns as most of them opt to conduct classes online. Banking and other financial transactions are also mostly done from home. This unexpected "digital transformation" is well and good as it encouraged work from home and distance learning.  However, this also opens up home computers and home networks to more threats than ever.  One sad fact that needs to be addressed is that most home computer users (those who work or study from home) have not taken steps to secure their home computers, home network and their network-connected devices.  Securing all these will take a lot of time and a whole lot more time "researching".  As a public service, I will be writing a series of posts that should address this. What are the particular threats that faces peopl...

During this difficult time of "enhanced community quarantine", one of the things I do is muck around my gadgets to play games, research. and yes, blog.  During one of those gaming sessions on my phone, I noticed a simple and unobtrusive ad for a VPN.  The ad was about Tachyon VPN .  My initial reaction is that of indifference because ads for VPN service is a dime a dozen, especially when playing games on either iOS or Android.  A lot of them doesn't even work at all. However, I was strangely compelled to click on the ad and I was redirected to the App store amd since I was already there, I threw caution to the wind and clicked on install, ready to immediately delete the app once my device flags it as suspicious or malicious. I was pleasantly surprised when I was greeted by a rather clean interface and since no alarm bells rang, I decided to try it out and connect.  Upon connection, I was checked if the VPN was working.  I did this by going to https://www.wh...

In my previous post, I discussed Online Anonymity, its importance and how it is different from Online Privacy. Now that the importance of Online Anonymity has been highlighted, the question my five readers have in mind now is "how do we maintain our Online Anonymity?" First things first: in order to use the internet with Online Privacy in mind will require a paradigm shift -- in order to surf the net anonymously, we must try to relearn some of the things we are used to doing when accessing the internet in the convectional way.  Here are some things that we are all used to doing but should not practice if we want to access the internet Anonymously: use an anonymizing browser such as TOR Brower . when searching for information or anything else, do not use Google, Bing or Yahoo.  These search engines keeps a record of all searches, including which users did the search. never log in to any of your usual social media sites.  Once logged in, these social media sites wi...

This will be the first of a series of posts I will call "IMOW" or In My Own Words.  The objective of this is to explain tech stuff such that it will be, hopefully, understandable to not-to-technically-inclined users.  Feel free to comment/criticize if you find me going too technical/geeky so I can adjust accordingly. I came across this news item this morning and it is sort of alarming considering that I used to work for a large local bank and it may affect thousands of clients if it reaches our shores.  The news reports of a new malware that infects a computer when a user opens video that is supposed to be about the "Corona Virus".  This video is hosted on a compromised internet server which in turn infects everyone who attempts to open the Corona Virus video.  Security researchers named this malware " Grandoreiro ". Now, it the infected computer happens to be using Google Chrome and visits an internet banking site, the malware will generate an ...

If you have been reading my Personal Technology Security Series posts, you now know that online fraud and cybercrime are mostly done with minimal or even no hacking involved.  A lot of victims' accounts were compromised through social engineering -- the victims were somehow tricked into disclosing enough information so that allowed fraudsters to perform transactions in their name.  I know of a lot of cases where the victims themselves disclosed their passwords through phishing/SMISHING/VISHING and their savings go missing in front of their eyes.  Credit/debit card holders unwittingly disclosing their card numbers and watch as their debts rack up. But social engineering is not the only way cybercriminals and fraudsters gather information that they can use to do their nefarious jobs.  One way they get useful information is through carelessy trashed account statements from banks and credit card companies.  This document contains everything that a cybercri...

I recently saw a compelling article on a new webmail service that promises to solve the usual problems we all encounter with email. Onmail promises to solve the problem brought about by spam, junk mail and other email nonsense. If you are interested in having a more secure email address, just follow this link to get your invitation:  https://www.onmail.com/redeem?type=onmail&code=7EptADguqg

A few days ago, a former colleague messaged me asking for a recommendation for Antivirus for his presumably new Windows 10 installation. If this question came my way 5 years ago, I would have recommended a veritable laundry list of reputable anti-virus for him . However, technology moved on and I personally believe that 3rd party anti-virus is no longer necessary for personal PCs.  Let me explain myself.  Nowadays, threats from convetional computer viruses is no longer as dangerous as it was years ago.  Most malicious behaviour of conventional computer virus are automagically detected by most modern Operating Systems, including Windows 10 (as long as it is updated).  Real threats nowadays are not as obvious as computer viruses.  These new threats include Phishing, Ransomware ,  Drive-by Downloads , Malvertising , etc. and most of these are not necessarily detected and "fixed" by antiviruses. So that we have established that conversional antiviruses ar...

In my previous post, I mentioned the dangers posed by "malware".  What is "malware" and do we really need to worry about it? Malware is a portmanteau of "Malicious" and "Software".  it is a piece of computer code that is written specifically to perform malicious actions.  Computer virus , trojan horses , ransomware , keyloggers , etc. are all considered Malware. With that in mind, are we all in danger from Malware?  The short answer is a resounding YES.  Can we do anything to protect ourselves from Malware?  Another short answer to this is another resounding YES. Given this, how do we protect ourselves from the dangers posed by Malware? Preventing damage done by Malware infection can either be simple or complex.  Here are some simple steps from protect ourselves from Malware: Keep your devices updated as much as possible, as soon as possible.  Malware easily penetrate devices (computers, laptops, tablets and cellphones).  Do n...