An update to a previous post.

A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about Phishing and how to avoid falling for it. One of the things that I suggested was to look at the address bar and make sure that the domain (website) name is what it should be and not something else. Google Chrome has highlighted the domain since... well, since the first version was released as a beta in September 2008, but their first stable release (1.0) was in December 2008. Chrome does it slightly different than the rest, it also highlights the subdomain (the itnerd510 part). Internet Explorer has done it since the release of IE8 in March 2009. Opera has done it since the release of Opera 11.00 in December 2010. And now Firefox 6.0 does it with its release just a few hours ago. So at this point, 4 out of the 5 major web browsers highlight the domain in the address bar (the 5th being Safari).

So what does this change and why did they do it? It doesn't change much, it's just mainly there so you can easily see what website you're on.

Fake Antiviruses and Fake Security Software

I made a small mention of this in my last blog post, but with MacDefender getting a lot of attention lately, I thought I'd write up a bit about this stuff.

Protecting your computer and yourself, with common sense.

In my last post, I explained how to update Windows and Mac OS X, and other programs, to install security updates. I also mentioned some free antivirus and antispyware software that do the job quite well. But even after that, there's still one thing that software can't necessarily protect you from...

Keeping your system patched up and protected

Computers aren't perfect. In fact, they're really stupid and will do exactly what you tell them. If you tell them to make a pizza, they'd do it if they had arms and legs. But, if you tell them to wipe a hard drive, they'll do it. If you tell it to turn off, it'll do it. If you give it some really complicated instructions where you confuse the computer so bad that you've made it through its security checks and can now run whatever code you want, that's an exploit. That's why you need to update your system with the latest security updates and keep it protected against viruses when necessary.

My Firefox Add-ons

Firefox and Chrome are pretty awesome internet browsers. They're both pretty snappy, and they're very good at supporting web standards. But what really increases their functionality is the add-ons that are available for them. Here are the add-ons that I use with Firefox.

Protecting your privacy online - Facebook Edition

I was looking through my Facebook settings, and there's lots of privacy settings in there. And every couple of months, they add new ones, and they're almost always set to public by default. So I figured I'll write a bit about changing the Facebook settings so that your info isn't public.