Category: Internet

A Vast Category

Facebook, Privacy, and Staying Safe Online

Published by Will Chatham on 3/27/2018

Care about your privacy in the wake of all the Facebook news?

Switch to Mozilla Firefox as your main browser. It is now faster than Chrome or Internet Explorer, it uses less memory, and it goes a lot further to care for your privacy online and keep you safe. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

Use Facebook in a restricted container to prevent it from tracking you when you are not on Facebook: https://blog.mozilla.org/fire…/facebook-container-extension/

Install the uBlock Origin add-on for Firefox to prevent trackers, ads (which are in and of themselves trackers), malware, and other nasties from harming you online. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-…/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Install EFF’s Privacy Badger add-on for Firefox to prevent even more tracking that uBlock doesn’t necessarily cover. https://addons.mozilla.org/…/firef…/addon/privacy-badger17/…

This setup will not only help you keep Facebook at arm’s length, it will help you in general to avoid malicious advertisements, malware, ransomware, and various types of web browser hijacking while surfing the Internet. Of course, you can always choose to leave Facebook altogether with these alternatives.

Remember too that you will be safer and enjoy more privacy online if you make a point of using a hardwired internet connection, rather than wi-fi. Although wi-fi can be useful in many ways, hardwired is the way to go if you care about your personal safety, online and offline.

Enjoy, and stay safe!

How Do I Get Hold Of Cryptocurrency?

Published by Will Chatham on 3/13/2018

Now that everything seems to be transitioning from the physical world to online, you may be considering trying out some cryptocurrency for yourself and joining the millions of people who trade online using this form of payment.

Currencies such as Bitcoin are taking over the online world and are now totally accepted as legal tender in online forums. Because so many people are now invested in this currency, a single bitcoin can be worth thousands of dollars, which is why getting hold of one for yourself could be a lucrative way to make some extra cash. But how do you go about investing in such as mysterious currency? Where does it even come from?

Even though a cryptocurrency is called a currency, it actually resembles a stock more closely. The reason for this is that when you buy a coin online, you are essentially investing our money into the system which creates these coins. As more people invest their money into cryptocurrency the value increase, which is why you will see the rate for a bitcoin change every single day along with the market. The trick is to time your investment correctly and buy a bitcoin when prices are low, then sell it on for a profit when prices rise. Simple, right? If you are looking to buy bitcoins as well as earn, Xcoins.com is perfect for you.

Cryptocurrency Exchanges

The exchanges are not only a place where we can all trade our stocks, it is the place where we can trade our crypto currencies. These online platforms are used in the same way as other currencies and stocks and will give you the chance to buy and sell a coin when the time is right for you. Coinbase is the most popular and one of the most reliable of the platforms you can use, and it will give you a beginner friendly experience to use for your trading. It will give you an insight into the world of trading cryptocurrency without all of the confusing jargon to rifle through.

Cryptocurrency Wallets

When you start trading on a platform you will need to open up a wallet to store your coins in as you go along. Finding the best cryptocurrency wallet is essential is you want to keep your coins safe and allow yourself to trade successfully. It is something which will likely cost you money but it will mean that no hacker can steal your coins once you have bought them. This removes the risk you have for losing your investment and makes sure that you can get the best deals.

If you want to start trading in cryptocurrency you will want to make sure you keep your eye on the trends and also make sure that you save up a decent fund to invest in the currency. If you cannot afford a full coin you can buy a portion of one which will be just as useful to you and which you will still be able to trade online for products. It’s all about taking your time to learn the ropes and only jumping in when you are absolutely ready to invest.

Microsoft Windows has Free Virtual Machines

Published by Will Chatham on 6/17/2017

Wish I had know about these earlier. Microsoft offers free Windows virtual machines for VirtualBox, VMWare, and others. You can choose from Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 (a few different flavors of each). They last 90 days before expiring, but you can snapshot them right after you install them to make it easy to reset that 90 days by rolling back to the snapshot.

Officially, these are for testing out the Edge browser, but you can also use them for whatever else 😉

Check them out here:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/

Just In Time, the Brave Browser Becomes My Default

Published by Will Chatham on 3/23/2017

Last night I saw a respected security professional I follow on Twitter mention the Brave web browser, and how good he thought the mobile version is. Brave was started by the Mozilla Project co-founder Brandon Eich, and is based on Chromium, the open-source base that Google Chrome is constructed upon.

Today, I caught wind that Chrome is soon going to prevent you from doing things such as disabling its DRM management feature called Widevine. The problem with this is summarized here:

…a single browser may now require two different DRM plugins to play all DRM content. These plugins have their own security issues, but unlike with the Flash vulnerabilities, security researchers are banned from looking for them, due to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). That means malicious hackers, who already engage in other criminal activities, may freely take advantage of all the vulnerabilities they find in these DRM plugins before companies discover them on their own.

In short, because of the closed nature of the DMCA, we end users are at risk unnecessarily, and we will soon have no ability to disable this plugin should we wish to do so. I started to look around for better options regarding browser privacy, just to see what the latest developments were.

Enter The Brave

Brave offers a browser that works on all platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux) and on mobile. It blocks ads by default, blocks malware, and is lean and fast. Putting user privacy and security at the forefront, along with speed, this thing is a powerhouse as it forces https on websites and prevents malware-serving advertisement networks from invading your workspace.

But the difference is the paradigm shift in supporting advertisers, as opposed to simply blocking them out completely:

Brave intends to keep 15% of ad revenue for itself, pay content publishers 55%, ad partners 15% and also give 15% to the browser users, who can in turn donate to bloggers and other providers of web content through micropayments.

I have yet to figure out how or if that will work, exactly, and it doesn’t seem to be fully impemented in the browser yet, but it seems like a great way to solve the elephant-in-the-room problem the Internet faces today: how to earn money and keep users safe at the same time, so that they don’t need to run ad blockers and anti-tracking plugins?

Stay tuned for more info as I learn it, and as I figure out Brave.

Let’s Revisit: Sending Mass Emails The Right Way

Published by Will Chatham on 11/15/2016

envelopes photo The concept of sending an email to multiple people the right way seems to have eluded the populace as a whole lately. I’m looking at you, schoolteachers, soccer coaches, and party invitation senders. I write to you today because, in recent months, it seems I’ve been included on more and more emails where I’m one of 50 people whose email address is awkwardly stuffed into the CC: field of the email you sent, right there with all the others for everyone in the list to see. I even got an email from the manager of the local Sears store I had recently purchased an appliance from, that got sent to all the people who had bought something there recently, and everyone’s name and address were easily viewable in the CC field.

The problem here is that you are being inconsiderate towards peoples’ privacy, and you are sending around a large list of real email addresses to possibly be harvested by spammers.

There is a way to do this that protects peoples’ privacy, doesn’t annoy the nerds and geeks in your email list, and makes you look like you know what you are doing. What trifecta could be better than that?

The easiest way to do this is by using the BCC: field instead of the CC: field. BCC stands for “Blind carbon copy,” which means that any email address entered in it will not show up to the recipients of the email. The CC: field does show them, so don’t use it.

The trick is that you should enter your own email address in the To: field of the email, then enter the long list of room parents or party invitees in the BCC field. That’s it! Now you too can look cool.

There are some detailed instructions, with pictures, available here, in case you need more info.

The Best Ways to Boost Your Blog Revenue

Published by Will Chatham on 7/5/2016

Blogging really has become huge in the past few years, with thousands of new ones being set up every single day. People blog to share their knowledge on a topic, to keep as an online journal, to connect with others, even businesses have got on board with the benefits blogging can bring. If you own a blog, chances are you started it as a hobby. But these days there’s the chance to earn excellent money from blogging, and why wouldn’t you? Making money doing something you love is pretty much the dream. Here are some simple ways you can start earning money (or boost the revenue) of your blog.

Make Yourself More Attractive To Sponsors

The web is saturated with blogs, when it comes to advertising sponsors are spoiled for choice. So your best bet to encourage them to work with you instead of the next blogger is make your site as attractive as possible. You can do this by publishing regular, high-quality content with beautiful image. Have a clean, professional blog template installed with an eye-catching header to make it personal and unique. Drop the ‘.wordpress.com.’ or ‘.blogger.com.’ at the end of your domain by purchasing your own custom domain. Use a domain registration tool to find out what’s available and then go ahead and purchase. Setting it up to work with your blog is relatively straightforward, and you then have a far more professional looking blog. Some sponsors will only work with bloggers with their own domain, so this is something you can’t afford to miss out on. Another major thing sponsors will be looking at is domain authority. This is influenced by how long you have had your domain, and how many backlinks you have to your site. You can improve your number of backlinks by collaborating with bloggers, asking them to publish a guest post from you. Simply include a link back to your blog at the end as an author bio, and it’s win- win. They get good quality content, and you get a backlink. Use social media to connect with other bloggers, join in with Twitter chats and make friends. Not only can you support each other with links and comments but you might make some genuine friends too.

Sign Up To Sponsored Post Websites

The thing about sponsored posts is you often have to wait for advertisers to contact you. This can be frustrating as a blogger as you can go weeks without hearing anything and there’s not much you can do to be proactive. However many advertisers work with sponsored post companies, so it’s worth finding some of these and signing up. Usually, you can ‘bid’ on jobs, and the client will accept or reject you if you’re a good fit with relevance and have the number of social followers they’re looking for. It’s a good way to actively seek out work, even if you’re not getting accepted for everything it can help you to land jobs you may have otherwise not got.

Explore Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of marketing, and while as a blogger this is unlikely to be your main source of income it can be a good backup. Google Adsense is always worth signing up for, every time someone clicks on your ad or even if you get an impression on the page you earn a small amount of money. Over time this can definitely add up. There are tonnes of other affiliate marketing companies out there so find one you like that pays well. You usually just insert an ad, link or piece of code onto your site (or in a blog post) and the clicks and purchases from it are tracked. If you link to something that your followers love and they actually buy the product you can get a decent percentage from it.