Arkiv for december 2011

Never a company to shy away from privacy controversy, Facebook’s new timeline feature has got people up-in-arms over both chronic over-share and potential security holes. In the spirit of sharing, here’s our tips for a painless transaction to the Timeline.

Why is This Important?

It’s important to remember why taking an interest in your privacy is important, and the basic reason is: safety.

For example, Facebook is a great platform to share your location with your friends, but if that data was public, someone could build up their own profile on you and establish when your home will be empty.

There’s a digital threat, too. If your e-mail is publicly available on your profile, it’s more-than-likely that you use the same address for other online services. And what if your secret question for those other accounts is your cat’s name, and you’ve mentioned his name in a status update? You’ve just given someone all the information they need to access your account.

These examples are a bit obvious, but with increasingly sophisticated hackers, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Don’t Worry About Your Messages

There was a rumour in Norway that the new Facebook Timeline, which replaces the wall to show posts, pictures and places in date order, also published old private messages! Well, relax: we can dispel that rumour.

Facebook’s security detectives investigated the issue and discovered that these “leaked messages” were actually old wall posts that the users had forgotten about. To those users: you should probably read the rest of our privacy tips.

Limit Your Past Posts

If you’ve invested a lot of time on Facebook over the years, you won’t want to scroll through the entire timeline to hide posts that you no longer want to share.

Luckily, Facebook has given users the option to mark all of their old posts as unseen, unless someone else is tagged in it (in which case they can see it too).

Simply head to your privacy settings (click the little arrow in the top right) and choose “Limit the Audience for Past Posts”. To undo this action, you’ll have to go through each post manually – so think very carefully about it!

How Do You Connect?

To control how future content is shared, you’ll also want to edit you “How Do You Connect?” settings in the privacy menu.

This section lets you change who can see your timeline, who can friend-request you, who can send you messages, who can post on your timeline and who can see other bits of content.

It’s essentially a one-stop shop for controlling your privacy – and much easier than it was in the past. Thanks for listening, Facebook!

Step Into Someone Else’s Shoes

To get a hands-on experience of how your profile appears to outsiders, head to your timeline page and click the cog graphic to the right of your name and select “View As”.

Now simply enter a name and you can see your timeline in the same way they would. Too much information? Go and tweak your privacy settings.

Lucky Number Seven

Remember: if you’re unsure about the new feature, you’ve got seven days to look it over privately before it goes live for everyone else.

You asked, we delivered!

In some of my previous blog posts I’ve been talking about strong passwords. Many of our blog readers have approached me, asking for a guide to create strong passwords. I’m introducing you three methods for creating passwords – and as always, you’re welcome to share your own tips with other readers by commenting the blog post!

A strong password is like a strong lock – you can sleep easier knowing it’s there. And while there’s time and cost involved in hiring a locksmith, changing your password is as simple as using method one, two or three.

Method 1: The Three R’s

The Three R ’s – reading, writing and arithmetic – is the most common method for choosing a strong password.

The key is to not use any words that you can read. By using “normal” words as a password, your account is susceptible to dictionary hacking. Dictionary hackers use an automated system to match your username against every word in the dictionary. It’s much better to use a memorable, made-up word instead.

You should also remember to write the password in a mixture of capital and lowercase letters. By using capitals in the middle of words, you can double the security of each letter from 26 possible variations to 52.

Finally, remember that there is safety in numbers. Adding a random string of numbers (think of it like a pin code) to your password makes it immune from dictionary-hacks.

Method 2: Add Four Words Together

The previous method may make passwords hard to hack, but it also makes them hard to remember.

To aid memory, we suggest creating a password by adding four words together, such as terrible table punch eagle. You can then transform the four words into a story – “the terrible table punched the eagle” and easily remember it.

This method keeps you safe because the password is so long – this one has 18 letters. Hackers who use computers to run through every possible letter/number combination (brute-force hackers) will thus be put off by the long time it takes to crack the password – usually a few years.

Method 3: Make a Secret Code

Do you remember making secret codes when you were young? Well, those same skills can come in useful for password-making. By making a secret code, you can avoid the problems we pointed out in our password recycling article.

To create a simple secret code, assign a symbol for each vowel. A can become %, E = ^, I = !, O = * and U = ?. Then use the web address of the website you’re logging into – such as norman.com – and replace the vowels with your symbols: n*rm%n.c*m. Now each website you login to will have a unique password.

To make your password even more secure, just add more parts to the code. Turn Ts into Ms, Bs into 3s – whatever you feel. Just remember your secret code and all your passwords will be both unique and hard to crack. P^rf^ct.

Which method do you use? Or do you have another way of keeping your password secure online?