Internet tips

Commenting rules: Stay on topic, lay off the ads, watch for spam

Anybody who writes about technology on the Web owes a debt of gratitude to the knowledgeable readers who comment on our posts. Sometimes the comments are more informative than the original post, and they often lead to topics for future posts.

You might think I would object to the negative comments, but I learn more from the critiques than I do from the praises, so please keep the complaints coming. Many CNET readers are serious gearheads, and some of them will always know more about the topic of a particular post than I do. I sincerely appreciate these readers sharing … Read more

A safer PC in three steps

In a perfect world, you wouldn't be concerned about safety when you use your computer. Short of that, you just want to feel confident your PC is virus-free, protected from the prospect of future infections, and easy to recover if something goes wrong. Three things that will help ease your mind are a manual malware scan, an easy-to-restore copy of your hard drive, and a sandbox for your browser to run in.

Run your system through a second-opinion virus scanner Even the best real-time antivirus scanners miss a small percentage of malware. A second scan with a different virus … Read more

Remove embarrassing YouTube videos, untag Facebook photos

As the saying goes, "online is forever."

Once material has been uploaded to a Web server, it begins to propagate to other servers and to the PCs of Web browsers. Removing all traces of an image, video, post, or other information on a Web site becomes more difficult the longer the data resides on a public server.

Even if you sign up for a service such as Reputation.com that promises to excise inaccurate, unflattering, or other private data from public sites, there's a chance the material will resurface somewhere. (I described Reputation.com's privacy-protection services … Read more

Taking the human factor out of phishing prevention

Phishing attacks are on the rise: the Anti-Phishing Work Group's April 2011 Global Phishing Survey (pdf) reports 67,677 phishing attempts in the second half of 2010, up from 48,244 in the first half of 2010, but down significantly from the 126,697 attacks recorded in the year-earlier period due to the Avalanche botnet.

Phishing attempts lasted an average of 73 hours in the last six months of 2010, up from 58 hours on average in the first half of the year, and from just under 32 hours in the second half of 2009.

When it comes to … Read more

Use your mobile phone for secure Web sign-ins

In the battle to protect our data, passwords are the first line of defense. Unfortunately, passwords are a pain to manage.

We're told not to use the same passwords over and over, and we're discouraged from using ones that are easy to guess, but the complicated passwords Web sites and IT managers prefer--and often require--are difficult to remember. Many people continue to use passwords that are too simple: Help Net Security's analysis of 32 million breached passwords found that nearly half were trivially easy to guess.

Related links • Are passwords our best security option? • Keep your data safe by following the Password Commandments … Read more

Privacy-centric alternatives to Google, Gmail, and Facebook

The concern about Google, Facebook, and other popular Web services tracking their customers may have you wondering whether there are more-private alternatives. The Ixquick.com metasearcher, PrivacyHarbor.com and Hushmail e-mail services, and FolkDirect social network promise to stay out of your affairs.

Metasearch minus tracking and history Google lets you erase all or part of your Web history with five clicks: after you sign into your account, click the down arrow in the top-right menu, choose Account Settings, select Web History under "My products" (you may need to sign in again), click Clear entire Web History, and … Read more

Fixing the Web's trust issues

Every time you turn around another company is reporting a serious data breach. Last week it was the LastPass online password management service that lost some e-mail addresses and master passwords, as CNET's Seth Rosenblatt reported in The Download Blog.

A couple of weeks before that, hackers broke into the servers of German software maker Ashampoo and made off with many of its customers' e-mail addresses; Elinor Mills provides details of the attack in her InSecurity Complex blog.

But these losses pale in comparison to the data breaches reported last month by e-mail service provider Epsilon and the ongoing … Read more

How to avoid sharing personal info online

Honesty is the best policy--unless you're dealing with someone you can't trust.

The sad fact is, you can't trust anyone on the Web. Just ask the millions of people who signed up for Sony's PlayStation Network and who now must protect against possible hack attacks on their bank accounts and other private data lost due the recent data breach. CNET News reporter Erica Ogg explains the company's response to its customers in her Circuit Breaker blog.

Sony claims the credit card information was encrypted and did not include the cards' security codes; the company also … Read more

Cloud Connect toolbar syncs Office files with Google Docs

With all the talk lately about working in the cloud, you might think desktop applications were about to go the way of the dot-matrix printer. In fact, running our everyday apps off the desktop remains the norm, especially in organizations. And considering the slow pace of technology change at most companies, the norm isn't likely to change anytime soon.

Still, there's no denying the long-term trend toward Web-hosted applications and storage. Facilitating the transition from local to remote apps is Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office, a toolbar that adds a Sync button to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint … Read more