Harden your LinkedIn Settings : A Necessity Now

Most of us are part of various Social Engineering Sites and keep updating ourselves via status updates, pictures and tweeting small life updates. Related Privacy and Security issues in respect of these social engineering sites available is already a serious concern among users. Additionally for these all social engineering sites/applications whether accessible on a desktop or a mobile, we all are not so serious responding and interacting but that’s the difference when we see viz-a-viz LinkedIn. When it is LinkedIn…we are mostly serious…no jokes, no clips, no tagging, no personal comments, no WOWs…it’s all professional. And when most of us take it seriously, we also feed serious inputs on it. But do we take necessary precautions too?...I have mostly seen a negated curve amongst my friend circle….hardly anyone has spared time to configure LinkedIn Privacy and Security settings. In this post I bring you out basic and necessary configuration steps involved to harden your LinkedIn interface to the world.

Harden your LinkedIn Settings : A Necessity Now from anupriti

DATA CENTER's : THE INDIAN SCENE

1.   The phenomenal growth of data in India is rapidly evolving but where is all that data being stored?.....not a big deal to find out that all your FB profiles,your friends list, Google hangout circle of friends and all the enumerable social networking sites on the web stores your data across the globe but not in India....yes that's the truth...every bit of data that your profile holds is actually residing off shores ...what India might be holding is just logs of transaction via various monitoring eyes like CMS as discussed in last post!!!

2.   But actually what debar's any big company with a global presence to set up a data center in apna India...recently there have a explosion of many posts across the web o sphere citing the query of why is it so?...the reasons cited culminate on one reason and that's known as SECURITY....the non existence of "DATA PRIVACY LAWs" in India.....more over the fact that there is presently no existence of GIS routing of laid OFCs and cables maps though there are always plans and proposals for the future. The problem of underground OFC in and around NCR is such that companies are afraid to commit 100% availability of up time because your OFC can get damaged any time owing to so many under construction sites in NCR with dozers digging out OFC like Hollywood monsters.And these diggings are ever to continue coz still there are no laid down GIS mappings that can accurately predict the route and depth of laid out OFCs....and the most important I feel is the promise of state ELECTRIC POWER supply which is surely unreliable during any season....it is indeed surprising that power is still an issue in NCR towns!!!

3.   The future will always remains bright because we always have plans to remove all these problem areas but how and when remains a futuristic answer.GIS routing of cables is an imminent need and so are the data protection laws.By default as on date most of the data centres are coming up in Singapore.

"Singapore offers an ideal combination of reliable infrastructure, a skilled workforce and a commitment to transparent and business-friendly regulations" is how Google explains its choice of the city. Oracle cites "excellent telecommunications infrastructure and efficient, well-qualified manpower".

Much like India set up software technology parks to nurture its IT services and BPO industry, Singapore is setting up a 13-hectare Data Center Park and inviting companies from across the world. It already has some 20 data centre hubs and offers tax and other incentives.

Source here

FACEBOOK : The New Playground @ Dangerous

1.    It does not date back long in the past time corridors when I as a kid used to go to play grounds in the evening to play with my friends...meet them....fight with them...abuse them...get abused and then get back home for studies and prepare for next days school work and the cycle repeated every day...week and months.But what happens today with a typical metro kid....a school child in the bracket age of 10+ goes to Facebook to play with friends...he meets them.....abuses them at times...gets abused on the wall or vide posts.So more or less....things stand at the same place ,only the grounds have changed.First it was the actual play grounds and now it is all getting virtual.....blame it on lack of infrastructure with concrete eating much of space in metro's or lack of parental monitoring owing to their ultra busy lives.....for the new era generation...social networking sites like Facebook is the new PLAYGROUND.....the virtual one for a change!!!!

2.    So the rules remain the same....ie we have our social circle like we used to have in past...we meet vide post and comments...we like each other for something and dislike each other for some thing...here we cannot shake hands and hug each other but yess we can take grudges out of each other via so many means like hacking....cyber bullying...post hatred... cyber stalk...mobbing...sexting,internet trolling etc...the list is actually endless and the related terminology is on a phenomenal increase.So a typical new gen kid for whom Facebook kind social networking sites are the new playground to play....the proneness to the bad elements in the society remains actually higher then in past....for here it is just a matter of few compromised screenshots...hacked passwords and the kid is on way to become a victim...

3.   The recent case of Amanda Todd is indeed beginning of such sad but many in line expected incidents waiting to happen....today we may allow our kids to have a Facebook account or some social networking website account but without effectively monitoring the kid remains as prone as Amanda Todd.For this to happen the parent have to have basic IT IQ quotient to monitor to avoid any such incident.Like past when a child could be left at home assuming safe..it does not remain the same today....he has access to smartphones....he has access to tablets...internet via so many means.Even basic forensic knowledge possessed by the parents is bound to fail if the same is happening in Cloud rather then on the machine at home...

4.   Its time for the parents to equip themselves with the tools and knowledge required to monitor and watch the kids...also realizing that today's kids are more smarter in terms of grabbing the technology then ever....if you have reached reading till here...u must read the complete story here

Bitter Truth : If NOT on FB,u r INSANE!!!

1.   Read this article today vide a TOI post that says that if you are not on FB ur insane.Facebook revolution has become so important aspect in people's lives, that increasing number of employers, and psychologists, believe people who aren't on social networking sites, could be insane....does that bring a exclamation mark on ur face...it did to me.....the post is available here

2.   It is strange that such things come as a analysis/study reports from psychologists......it lets us know how psycho are these psychologists who r deeply gripped by the FB revol...

Linkedin Confirms being HACKED

1.    Most of us who surf web regularly do have our identities associated with popular social networking sites...like gmail...orkut...facebook and linkedin etc.So the latest news is that if u have a profile on LInkedin....please change ur password.....the news in brief goes like this....

2.     LinkedIn has confirmed on 6th Jun 12 that at least some passwords have been compromised in a major security breach correspond to LinkedIn accounts. First reported by Norweigan IT website Dagens IT the breach that about 6.5 million encrypted passwords were posted on a Russian hacker site.Thus those most of the users with compromised passwords noticed that their LinkedIn account password are no longer valid.The file uploaded only contains passwords hashed using the SHA-1 algorithm and does not include user names or any other data. However, the breach is so serious that security professionals advise people to change their LinkedIn passwords immediately. An SHA-1 hash is an algorithm that converts your password into a unique set of numbers and letters. If your password is “test_123,” for example, the SHA-1 hex output should always be “ab7a614854d2ef5ee9d9cc30e6f2bdcd19fe49ea.” As we can see that is problematic since if we know the password is hashed with SHA-1, we can quickly uncover some of the more basic passwords that people commonly use.

3.     The most common password used was “123456,” followed by “12345″ and “123456789.” All in all, more than half a million people chose passwords composed of only consecutive numbers. So, if a hacker tried to log in to all RockYou accounts with just one password attempt–123456–every hundred or so attempts would yield a compromised account. Dozens of attempts can be scripted every second, so Imperva estimates that using this technique would only take around 15 minutes to hack 1,000 accounts.

4.    Another site offers you to know if ur linkedin username was actually amongs the hacked lot or not.Not sure about how genuine it is...it is available at

http://venturebeat.com/2012/06/07/was-your-linkedin-password-hacked-heres-how-to-find-out/

5.    Thanks http://thehackernews.com/2012/06/linkedin-confirms-millions-of-account.html

AVOID OPENING MULTITABS IN BROWSERs

1.  Has it ever happened that you get a mail in one your various Email IDs from Facebook or some other site that you never linked up with....?I am sure if you are a regular browser on social networking sites,this must have happened once...and it must have kept you thinking...HOW ??

2.   This happens when you have that email id open in some other tab and your Facebook account open in other...typically in a multitab session wherein you have opened many sites under one browser in various tabs..... that's when info gathering sites get your email id and things related to their interest.....TAKE CARE

WEB 2.0 SUICIDE MACHINE

1. An unheard term till now....WEB SUICIDE...what does it connote?

2. We all r slowly becoming addicted to internet for some use or the other...~85% of internet surfing being used for social networking..can u believe that!!!a number of identities on various social networking sites..orkut..facebook..twitter ,myspace,linkedin and the list is getting endless....and most of us are getting into habit of remaining online 24 hours...checking e-mails every 10-15 minutes or even less..frequently scraping to all friends....uploading pics on sites....and some one has realized that by doing so we all are missing on real people....parents,kids,wife and neighbours etc etc...thus has originated the concept of WEB SUICIDE......simply register with this site and u will kill,remove traces of each and every footprint u ever had on these sites....the name of the site is http://www.suicidemachine.org/

3. Extract from site

"Liberate your newbie friends with a Web2.0 suicide! This machine lets you delete all your energy sucking social-networking profiles, kill your fake virtual friends, and completely do away with your Web2.0 alterego. The machine is just a metaphor for the website which moddr_ is hosting; the belly of the beast where the web2.0 suicide scripts are maintained. Our service currently runs with Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and LinkedIn! Commit NOW!"

4. Well to some extent the intent is correct that we r slowly loosing on realizing the importance of physical world,but removing urselg from web.....hmmm!!!!!i m still a long way...how abt you?