here's some computer tips I've written up for friends or family Networkingsecure your internetconnecting your computer to the internet can cause major problems like identity theft, illegal downloads, etc. for under $100 and a few hours you can drastically improve your security routers typically have firewalls built into them, they also make firewall appliances, I don't know why routers were marketed as "routers" not "firewalls" because the word router means nothing to your average shopper, anyhow... determine if your router is compatible with dd-wrt firmware which will add many useful features http://www.dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database be sure to follow the instructions to change your default password and create a strong password for the administration interface and for the wireless passphrase if you are setting up wireless filteringif you have kids I recommend filtering the internet with http://www.opendns.com/, this allows you to filter categories or individual sites you can combine opendns with dnsomatic and dd-wrt to make it very hard to bypass this filtering http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/OpenDNS http://www.dnsomatic.com/wiki/dd-wrt be sure filter proxy tunnelling and p2p, have your internet provider run the internet line into a closet
that locks, otherwise you might want to get a lockbox to put your router
and internet modem in to prevent this system from being physically bypassed Backupshard drives and memory chips fail, backup anything that's important to you there's probably nothing more annoying about computers than losing your data, family photos, documentation, etc. know the difference between a backup and an archive, you might have a backup drive and accidentally delete a file from it, now what? archive here's some quick and easy ways to backup data online, this is good because it's offsite so if your entire house burns down your data is safe somewhere else online google picassa is probably the fastest photo backup software, install it and choose folders
to sync so you don't have to pick through each file google music for your mp3's and other audio files general storage: jungledisk.com, dropbox.com, crashplan.com are other easy cloud storage apps for a local backup, an internal raid card with sata drives is fairly cheap to setup, you install that inside a desktop computer, external drives like mybooks or network attached storage drives with redundancy are a good option too backup software rsync for linux microsoft synctoy allway sync Passwordsmaster password you should generate a complex master password(s) which is used to log into your password management software or as a passphrase for decrypting, etc. the easiest way to make a strong master password is to use a mnemonic, be sure to include a number, symbol and capital letter here's an example using a memorable phrase: to be or not to be that is the question becomes 2Bon2btit? easy to remember, has numbers, upper case, symbol, etc. password hashing, consider using your master password to generate a hashed password for another layer of securitymore optionsthere are other password generators or programs that automate this process, this is probably the best being 2-factor where you have a password and carry a password generator app on your phone or keyfob: http://www.cryptocard.com/ an old school favorite: http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html physically storing passwords, account numbers, etc. setup an encrypted file on flash drives with http://www.truecrypt.org/, one offsite and one onsite, store your master passwords here, important documents, pictures of birth certs, etc. two factorthis is the best password security, check out cryptocard or google authenticator Operating Systemslinux based operating systems are open and less likely to get a virus so I recommend them where possible if you're running windows like most people do get the newest version you can and install security essentials run combofix if you are ever suspicious you got a virus or the computer behaves oddly MobileI recommend Android phones and tablets because they are open here are some apps I recommend: swype google apps: authenticator, docs, voice, music, plus, shopper, etc. cryptnos msecure lastpass todo.txt cisco anyconnect citrix logmein k-9 mail with apg noom dropbox evernote more to come... |