Category Archives: Security
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Does a VPN Really Protect My Privacy?
Posted on August 19, 2018 by pcwrt in Security, Technology.The above picture is often used to illustrate how VPNs can protect your privacy. Because the VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between you and the Internet, your privacy is protected. However, the picture is missing a very important piece: the VPN service provider. As you can see, the encrypted tunnel ends at the VPN service […]
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Another simple check to avoid router being hacked
Posted on August 16, 2018 by pcwrt in Router, Security.Recently, two unsecured databases were discovered on the Internet. Exactis, a Florida marketing data aggregator, exposed 340 Million Consumer Records to the world. Another company, Telemedicine, exposed detailed health care information on more than 2.3 million patients in Mexico, by making a MongoDB database accessible to anyone without a password. In both cases, the researchers […]
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How to get rid of ads that follow you around the Internet
Posted on August 12, 2018 by pcwrt in How To, Security.You’ve had the experience. You looked at something on a shopping site, then that thing follows you all around the Internet. It feels creepy. Trust me, those companies take privacy very seriously – their privacy. You see, you looked at the pair of shoes you later bought. The shopping site knew that you looked at […]
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Block third party tracking cookies, does it work?
Posted on August 12, 2018 by pcwrt in How To, Security, Technology.People don’t like to be tracked around everywhere they go on the web. So all major browsers give you the option to “block third party cookies”. And there’s a DNT header that your browser sends on your behalf to nicely tell the tracking parties that you don’t want to be tracked. However, the big question […]
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Are you building a surveillance network around your house?
Posted on August 9, 2018 by pcwrt in Security, Technology.And letting others spy on you? Smart TVs, security cameras, smart thermostats, smart plugs, smart doorbells, Alexa Echo, Google Home. All of these are capable of collecting data from your home (network traffic, connected devices, shared files, image, voice, video, etc.), and capable of sending data out to anywhere over the Internet, uninhibited. Earlier this […]
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How to use your router to block smart TV snooping
Posted on August 2, 2018 by pcwrt in How To, Router, Security.Today’s smart TVs collect a lot of information about you beyond your knowledge, sometimes without your consent. Last year, Vizio was fined $2.2 million for collecting user data wihout properly informing consumers. From FTC official statement: VIZIO smart TVs … capture second-by-second information about video displayed on the smart TV, including video from consumer cable, […]
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Spam email from legitimate business email servers
Posted on July 7, 2018 by pcwrt in Security, Technology.There’s a new trick to send spam: using legitimate business email services. Just a few days ago, I received an email from Honeywell. It was spam. I checked the sender address and the sending domain. It seemed to be sent from Honeywell indeed. So I wondered why Honeywell would spam me with something that’s completely […]
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Beyond Three Dumb Routers
Posted on June 20, 2018 by pcwrt in Router, Security, Technology.To mitigate the risks of IoT devices on your home network, Steve Gibson, the creator of ShieldsUP!, proposed a “Three Dumb Router” configuration to isolate the insecure IoT devices from your normal LAN, where the more valuable and more secure devices such as PCs and NAS storage reside. Since the devices stay in their own […]
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How to get rid of VPNFilter malware (even though you don’t know if your router is infected)
Posted on June 6, 2018 by pcwrt in Router, Security, Technology.Ars Technica reported today that the VPNFilter malware targets a much larger number of devices than previously thought (200,000 additional routers were added to the initial estimate of 500,000). And it is more powerful than revealed in original analysis. VPNFilter’s elaborate design involves three stages. Stage 1 acts as a backdoor that uses a sophisticated […]
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Can Alexa be used to spy?
Posted on June 5, 2018 by pcwrt in Security, Technology.On May 24, 2018, Portland, Oregon local TV station Kiro 7 reported that an Amazon Alexa device recorded a private conversation, then sent it out to a random contact. Amazon confirmed the incident, and attributed it to an “unlikely” string of events that caused Alexa to mistakingly interpret background sounds as commands. In other words, […]
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