Archive for July, 2011
Posted by TechGeek on July 29, 2011
By default, Facebook uses HTTP protocol for communications. HTTP is unsecured protocol and is subject to man-in-the-middle and eavesdropping attacks. The information sent over HTTP is in plain text so attacker can capture the data in the middle of the request. Attackers can then gain access to website accounts and sensitive information about you.
HTTPS is designed to withstand such attacks and is considered secure against man-in-the-middle and eavesdropping attacks. You can able to see which websites uses HTTPS over HTTP by seeing in the address bar of the browser. If the website address starts with “https://” then the websites uses secure connection for communication with server. HTTPS connections are often used for payment transactions by all banks to secure your data sent over the network. HTTPS use port 443 as opposed to port 80 by HTTP while communicating over the network.
The Facebook sends information in plain text when you use HTTP. This means someone can capture and view your information in the middle. This can become security and privacy issue to you. If you want to use secure communication and don’t want someone to view your information sent over the network, use Facebook’s Secure Browsing which uses HTTPS protocol and control your browsing and login security.
To enable “Secure Browsing”,
1) Go to “Account Settings” from the account menu.
2) Look for “Account Security” under settings tab and click on “change” link besides it.
3) Select the box located under the “Secure Browsing (https)”. This will enable your Facebook secure connection whenever possible.
4) Click on the Save button to save the settings.
5) Now, all your Facebook communication will be sent over the secure connection over the network.
Posted in Facebook, How-To, Security | Tagged: Facebook, How-To, Secure Connection, Security, Settings | Leave a Comment »
Posted by TechGeek on July 27, 2011
You can able to see your most recent account activity on the Facebook. This will help you to verify, if your account is compromised or someone else is having access to your Facebook account. If you are using your Facebook account from only your own preferred locations such as home, or work networks, you will have your own IP addresses. The Facebook will display the IP address and location of the last and most recent account activity to you.
To check the most recent activity, go to “Account Settings” from your Facebook account located at the top right corner of the page. Under “Settings” tab locate “Account Security” and click on “change” link besides.
You can now look your account access activity under “Most Recent Activity”. The Facebook will give you 3 types of information,
1) Date and Time the last accessed
2) Location of access, State and Country
3) Device Type: Browser and Operating System
If you see different country, state or IP address, you will need to careful. You will have to immediately change your Facebook account password for security purpose. To know the IP address of last access, just move your mouse over the location and Facebook will display the IP address.
Multiple Activities:
If your account is compromised or someone else knows your credentials, Facebook will display multiple active connections like,
If you see such multiple connections and notice an unfamiliar location or device, click on “end activity” link besides account activity to end those sessions. You can then quickly change your Facebook password.
This is a great feature to identify compromised accounts. Keep yourself safe on Facebook.
Posted in Facebook, How-To, Information, Internet, Security | Tagged: Account Activity, Facebook, How-To, IP, Settings | Leave a Comment »
Posted by TechGeek on July 27, 2011
If you are browsing the Internet from cyber cafe or using someone else’s computer for surfing, you may want clear your browsing history for security and privacy purpose. You may also wants to clear your visited websites, search data or individual cookies from the browser so that nobody can steal your personal data. This is really important security and privacy option provided by all browsers.
Every browser stores history of websites you visited, the data you entered into website forms or cookies for individual websites. This means most of the data like search strings, usernames, personal information details are stored in the browser and someone can identify personal information about you if the computer is public. Every browser has different settings to privacy options. This article will talk on Firefox browser from Mozilla.
If you are using Firefox, go to the “Options” from “Tools” menu. Click on the “Privacy” tab from the options menu.
After you finish your browsing, go to the above settings and click on the “clear your recent history” link. Select the only time range that you were browsing the Internet to avoid deleting others settings or preferences. Firefox allows you to delete any data from last few hours to everything from the browser. Firefox allows you to download following data from the browser,
1) Browsing & Downloading history
2) Form & Search History
3) Cookies
4) Cache
5) Active Logins
6) Site Preferences
Select everything from the above list and click on “Clear Now” button to clear the history. Firefox will automatically delete your browsed sites and data you entered from the browser. This way you can keep your browsing secret from others.
This will also delete your login cookies for all websites which store your login session open in case you forgot to get logged out. We recommend clearing your browsing history every time you use the computer. Firefox also has “remember” or “never remember history” settings to apply.
Posted in Firefox, Information, Security | Tagged: Browsing History, Firefox, How-To, Settings | Leave a Comment »
Posted by TechGeek on July 25, 2011
Facebook is very popular social networking sites with millions of users. Facebook allows you to connect any of your known friends and family on the network where you can share anything from messages to video with them. Facebook is very keen to block unknown requests if you really don’t know that person. Today, I just come across small bug related to programming on their network. Here is what the bug looks,
![request1 Facebook displays [object Object] for a friend request](http://www.techfeedlab.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/request1.jpg "request")
Look at the image above, Facebook displays a message box for your friend request. Look at the start of the message before the line “Are you sure you know this person?” It looks like Facebook fails to display proper string and display the string as [object Object].
This may be a small bug but it looks weird when you have it on a popular website. Do you agree?
Posted in Facebook, Miscellaneous | Tagged: Bug, Facebook, Funny, Programming, Social Network | Leave a Comment »
Posted by TechGeek on July 25, 2011
In earlier blog, we learned about how to turn on Google Safe Search for your online safety. The settings can be changed by others using the same computer to not to filter any contents being showed in the results. This means, someone can still see adult or explicit contents even if you set Safe Search settings to strict mode. If you are worried about others changing the strict SafeSearch setting without your knowledge, Google search engine provides you the way to protect it with a password. This way you can set your filter settings the way you want.
To enable SafeSearch lock, click on “Search settings” from the top right corner of your Google page. Select strict filtering and click on “Lock SafeSearch” link located below the SafeSearch Filtering settings. To enable it, you need a Google account to login. Login with your credentials, 
Click on the “Lock SafeSearch” button from the above page. This may takes some time as strict filtering is being applied to all Google domains. Once done, the confirmation page will be displayed like,
If you look at the above image, you can see 2 things are being applied to your search page,
1) ‘SafeSearch is locked’ is displayed below the search box.
2) The colored balls appear on the right.
The Google results page is designed to look different from the normal so that you can immediately tell whether the SafeSearch lock is on or off. And if you don’t see above 2 things, you can then verify it and re-lock SafeSearch. This way web pages containing explicit sexual content will be blocked by SafeSearch filtering.
Posted in Best, Google | Tagged: Google, How-To, Online Safety, Password, Safe Search, Search engine, Settings | Leave a Comment »
