In a few of my other blog posts I have already used the example of Gmail and https to improve security. But I feel with the recent improvements Google introduced that it is time to emphasize security and email again.
A while ago when their new Ghosts came out I downloaded their Ghost I for free and enjoyed it. It’s in my playlist in Itunes. And today I heard the songs playing again and I was like, damn .. this is good. So I decided to go ahead and get the full shebang.
In an earlier blog entry I kind of promised to come back to explaining how I try to be more secure about how I browse using FireFox. So here it is. First of all there are two different ways I do this, one is on my Powerbook (laptop) which I bring with me and therefor has a higher risk being used by others (unauthorized) or worst case scenario: it can get stolen. And my Mac Pro in my computer room which doesn’t get used much by others, and when so, only by those who I trust. Regardless, in both situation, unknown people might try to hack into the system from the outside or steal traffic via sniffing and such. Preventing abuse is impossible, making it harder to do so is possible.
Over the last few years I have taken ‘being online’ a lot more serious, especially the security aspect. Trojans, rootkits, viruses, naughty cookies, xss exploits in sites and advertisements, and all that nasty stuff is now a day to day matter. Not to mention fraud, scams, spam and id-theft.
Particularly with being ‘on’ 24/7/365 because of high speed broadband internet. Participating in online communities, social networks, online loans, online banking, online dating and e-commerce, etc. brings risks with it.
My Mac Pro has a bunch of hard drives right now, and I have been adding, swapping, and removing drives the last few months. It was time for me to get a bit more organized and I think that’s a great tip for everybody. It gives you a much better understanding of what is on your computer system.
You might think “What is so hard about finding stuff on your hard drive”, well .. let me give you a simple example: Your browser might store downloaded files on your Desktop, while you have an OS ‘Downloads/’ folder, or perhaps your torrent client stores it in ‘programs/client/downloads/’, making it a bit annoying having to browse around while a single link on your desktop to your ‘Downloads/’ folder might make it a lot easier for you.
