Securing Your Laptop Data: A Modern Day Guide
Scouring through several online guides on how to secure our laptop data, most were to advice laptop users to use password protection and encryption for their documents and files in order to lock down the contents of their laptop hardrive. While this is an effective scheme in the past, modern times have made these methods rather obsolete. Password protection and encryption can be easily overriden by various tools that can be easily obtained from the Internet. Even hardrive passwords can be unlocked with relative ease nowadays.
Due to a recent report by Dell and Ponemon Institute that up to 12,000 laptops are lost in US Airports weekly, securing the content of our laptops is a must if we don’t want our confidential and sensitive documents falling into the wrong hands if ever our laptops gets lost or stolen. Never mind the laptop, mind your data.
So, what’s the modern way to secure your laptop data? A very simple and straightforward solution is by having no data stored in your laptop. Yes, you heard it right. In simple terms, do not save your sensitive documents in your hardrive, not even in a thumbdrive, since that also gets lost very easily.
Theory:
In this age of Wifi and Broadband Internet connectivity, you can always have access to your documents online, anytime, anywhere.
How to Do It:
First of all, you can always leverage the power of Google docs to save your documents online and never on your laptop.
For Microsoft Office corporate users, you can leave your documents stored in your office computers then connect via VPN to edit them, saving confidential documents in their original location. If your laptop is your main office gear then open your document remotely but save the document in your corporate server instead.
Also, never tick any password checkbox to save your passwords, even on a private computer. This might be a little inconvenient but that’s the way to be secured nowadays. Do not save your password for your email account, instant messaging and social networking accounts as these can be easily exploited once they fell into the wrong hands.
Conclusion:
I’m sure with these simple steps, you can save yourself some trouble in the unfortunate event that you lose your laptop. But don’t wait until it’s too late. Backup remotely, and backup often.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Removing the W32.Sonahad.B worm (Yahoo Instant Messenger worm)
After reading through various forums on the Internet, I have found out that many have been infected by the W32.Sonahad.B worm. This particular worm spreads by automatically sending http links to all the contacts in your Yahoo Messenger, and if your buddy clicks on it, they get infected as well.
If your computer is infected by this worm, you wouldn’t be able to run the Registry Editor and Task Manager. It would also change the Internet Explorer (IE) home page and also modifies registry such that you cannot change the homepage address. Read more
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Viruses versus worms
Well, this may sound elementary to others, but a lot of people have a misconception about what makes a virus different from a worm and vice-versa. Or are they really different? What makes a virus different from a worm?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
How to instantly backup a file into your email account
I have come across this free nifty tool that allows you send files to your email account in just two clicks.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
How To Make Internet Explorer7 Look Exactly Like IE6
Maybe you are one of the many people that dislike the way the toolbars or icons are arranged in Microsoft’s new browser, Internet Explorer7. Honestly speaking, I have been using Internet Explorer (IE7) for quite some time now and I find it hard to navigate the browser’s new layout.
Now, fret not. There is a solution to make your Internet Explorer7 (IE7) look just like IE6. Just follow these steps:
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
How to quickly unplug or eject USB devices
The USB port is no doubt the most widely used computer interface today, as devices such as memory card readers, MP3 players, cellular phones, personal digital assistants, and other countless USB devices have become part of our daily life.
Now, I have noticed that most people unplug a USB device via Read more
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
How to store more music into your MP3 player
Do you wish you squeeze more music into your MP3 player? But of course! Who doesn’t want to?
Now, don’t go out yet to buy a bigger capacity MP3 player. With you in mind, I want to share this tip.
Let’s get a bit technical here. We all know that in the MP3 format, music is compressed and the resulting filesize depends on the bitrate used to encode the music in the ripping process. Most music that is loaded into MP3 players has a bitrate of 128kbps.
Here’s a tip. MP3 music saved in 128kbps has no audible difference when saved in WMA format at 64kbps bitrate. You won’t hear a difference, plus, you save on storage space!
Let’s take a typical MP3 music for example. Shown below a is the same music file but encoded in different formats:
MP3 format @ 128kbps
Same music encoded at WMA @ 64kbps
See the difference in filesize? Wow! The same music at almost half the size!
Now, you may be wondering, what utility did you use to do the conversion. Right now, I won’t make any recommendations, but there are tons of utilities out there that can do MP3 to WMA conversion. You just have to find and use the one that will suit your preferrence and budget.
You may now be excited to try this on your MP3 player. But before you do so, make sure that your MP3 player supports the WMA format, otherwise, this wouldn’t work.
There you have it. Let me hear from you if this method works for you.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
How to Regain Control of a “Hacked” Yahoo Messenger Account
This incident happened to my friends’ Yahoo Messenger (YM) account. She logged-on to her Yahoo Messenger account in an Internet café, typing her username and password they way that she were to use it at home.
Now, she casually logged-on to Yahoo messenger, not noticing that the “Remember My ID and Password” field and “Sign-in Automatically” was checked. She went on with her Instant Messaging session, then payed her bill and off she goes.
Nothing unsual, you may think. Wrong! What happens next is that the next customer, upon logging on the computer that you have used, is now automatically logged-in to your Yahoo Messenger account (remember that the remember my ID and password field was selected).
Now, the “stranger” who has now complete control of my friends’ Yahoo Messenger account is bothering everyone on her contacts, and that includes me.
I immediately notified my friend thru SMS that “someone” is using her account and got confirmation that the account was indeed “hacked”.
Since she is on the road and have no immediate access to a computer, she asked for my assistance to regain control of her Yahoo messenger account.
I wasted no time and immediately clicked on “My account info” tab (see picture on the right) on my Yahoo messenger. Upon clicking this tab, you will be bought to a page shown below:
Upon seeing the page shown above, enter your friends’ Yahoo ID and Password (of course, your friend has to give you her credentials since she is asking for your help, right?).
Now, you may be wondering why not just you log-out of your Yahoo Messenger account then log-in using your friends’ account? That would give you control of your friends’ account. Well, there’s a bit of truth value in that since you cannot log-on with the same credentials on different computers. That scenario would “kick-out” one user. However, since my friends’ credentials was saved in the other computer, we would end up in a never-ending cycle of account “gain and re-gain”.
Now back to Yahoo’s credential page, by now, I assume that you have entered your friends’ username and password. Did so? Great!
You should be seeing the window as shown below:
Immediately change the password to a different one. Then save your settings. After doing this, log-out of of Yahoo Messenger account and log-in to your friends’ account using the new password.
After doing this, you are assured that you will “boot-out” the stranger out of your friends’ Yahoo Messenger account.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
FeedBurner RSS
Recent Comments
Carlos on Globe Telecoms Will Sell Iphone 3G For P48,899!!
juler on Create Your Tinyurl Link Now, Before Others Redirect Your Website
FortuneFavorstheBrave on How To Make Internet Explorer7 Look Exactly Like IE6
Dan'l on How To Make Internet Explorer7 Look Exactly Like IE6
Arthur on Securing Your Laptop Data: A Modern Day Guide
Online Backup on Securing Your Laptop Data: A Modern Day Guide
Code on Gmail Remote Sign Out Review
-
