Avoiding Holiday Shopping Scams and Fraud

Hi All,

Its that time of year for holiday shopping.  As of the day of this writing Christmas is 12 days away and Hanukah is....tonight.  Start the wrapping and the getting the gift bags out!!!

But with the holiday season comes fraud and scams and other holiday shopping problems.  How to avoid these unfortunate events you ask?  Read on.   We'll have a baker's dozen plus one links to help you navigate through the holiday season with no problems - hopefully at least!

How to Avoid Holiday Shopping Scams and Fraud - AARP

Online Holiday Shopping Scams to Watch Out For - CNNTech

6 Holiday Shopping Scams and How to Avoid them - NBC 

Fake Amazon Gift Cards...and other Cyber Scams Tempt Holiday Shoppers - Detroit Free Press

Holiday Shopping Scams to Avoid - Experian  

14 Dangerous Holiday Shopping Scams - Inc. 

4 Scams To Avoid While You Do Your Holiday Shopping - Motley Fool

How to Spot Fake Fingerlings and Other Holiday Shopping Scams - Forbes 

Don't Fall For These Holiday Shopping Scams - Lifehacker 

Holiday Shopping Scams: How to Identify Fake Sites - WFLA.com 

Holiday Shopping Scams - Tis the Season For Data Protection - TrendMicro

6 Tips For Avoiding Phishing, Malware...and Hacks While Holiday Shopping Online - TechRepublic 

How to Avoid Online Holiday Shopping Scams - Consumer Reports 

Hope the links won't be needed - but if they are you can at least be a little prepared.

Happy holidays!
Regards,
Stu

Is This Website Safe?

Hi All,

Symantec is a very, very large computer security company that provides computer security individuals and corporations.  Its a large, large company which bought another company called Norton several years ago.

Norton provides computer security to regular folks and their computers. They use a product called Safe Web - of which you can read about more by clicking here. 

The interesting thing about Norton Safe Web is that users can look up a site and get Norton's rating of the site with respect to security and safety of the site.  Click here to use Norton Safe Web.  Nothing is downloaded or installed onto your computer. 

Information about the site users type in includes: website location, Norton Rating, Summary and Total Threats from the site. 

Norton uses icons to let the viewer know whether or not the site is 'safe' to use.  A green box with an ok in it is the top rating.  An orange box with an exclamation point is the next rating.  A red box with an 'x' is the lowest rating.

Users can also tap into Norton Safe Search community rating by viewing the table for community ratings on the right side of the screen.  Users can also review sites with a brief narrative.  Date of the review is also included.

Finally, click on this link for Norton's Community Buzz page.  Viewers can see sites like Google, Facebook,  YouTube and many others and there Norton Safe Search scores.  Interesting!

To some extent the site is an free advertisement for Norton's Safe Web software - which they (Norton) are trying to sell to customers...Buyer/web viewer beware. 

But its still a somewhat interesting and useful website!  Enjoy the site and the reviews!

Regards,
Stu

Password Managers For All Your Devices

Hi All,

A quick summary of an article entitled 'Review: The Best Password Managers for PCs, Macs, and Mobile Devices' from InfoWorld back in June of 2015.  '10 local and cloud-based contenders make passwords stronger and online life easier for Windows, OS X, iOS, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone users.'

Password managers are good ways to securing your online identity.  They also help you increase the strength of your passwords that protect your online accounts by remembering the passwords for you.

Seriously - what are the odds of you remembering a random string of numbers, digits and characters for one account - let alone multiple accounts?  You won't - its that simple.

But wait, there's more...read this article titled, '10 Surprising Cyber Security Facts That May Affect Your Online Safety'.

Read on for the 6 best password managers to help protect you against id theft, online account security and privacy.

You might also want to read this article from NetIQ title, '84 Fascinating & Scary IT Security Statistics'.

In any event, the password managers that are covered in the initial article from InfoWorld include: 
1Password - Agile Bits
Dashlane
KeePass
LastPass
PasswordBox
SplashID Safe

The above links go to each vendors' website - in many cases there are free versions which don't offer the same level of security as the pay version....

Good luck protecting your passwords and staying secure online!

Regards,
Stu

Ten Things...from TechRepublic

Hi All,

TechRepublic is an information technology news aggregator for computer and technology users.  TechRepublic features blogs, community forums, webcasts, research and more for information technology enthusiasts, professionals and others to utilize.

Okay..with all that jargon out of the way, TechRepublic covers cloud computing, big data, computer and network security and much, much more for computer users and professionals.

For the purpose of this blog entry though, I want to focus on an entry called '10 Things'.  Basically these are key facts on a wide range of technologies, techniques, strategies, and skills in the form of a  concise, easy-to-read, lists.   Read on for more examples!

10 Cost-effective ways to quickly beef up your company security.
10 tips for spotting a phishing email
10 legal areas that IT managers should know about 
10 ways Microsoft Office 2016 could improve your productivity
10 of the best pieces of IT advice I ever heard
10 things you should never do on your resume
10 ways to get the most bang for your buck with an Android device
10 easy ways to punch up your presentations
10 web-based tools to maximize productivity
10 free Android apps that are worth checking out 

Enjoy the links!

Regards,
Stu