Did you know that the new desktop or laptop you just bought is heavily loaded with softwares that take up storage space, make machines run slower and are seldom of any use to you? And it is not just about system performance. In fact it could include malware, especially keyloggers that could seriously compromise your security. Even worse, as an owner, you cannot easily remove it till you void the product warranty.

Also, many of these programs pop up as trial versions, egging you to purchase paid software and providing you with links to places to purchase paid version from. Many gullible users actually end up purchasing complete versions of the trial software. And all they get is bad outdated games, and ordinary search engines that claim to pull out information that normal search engines can’t.

You would ask why on earth somebody would do that and to what purpose? Well it is all about money wherein software manufacturers pay the PC/laptop manufacturers to pre-install the stuff. After all it is not just product promotion but a lot of it is about collecting the data goldmine on you and selling it profitably to advertisers.

In fact, so rampant is the problem that recently Microsoft conducted a research that revealed malwares in PCs are capable of remotely turning on an infected computer’s microphone and video camera! You can uninstall bloatwares from the usual Uninstall Programs pane in the Windows Control Panel. In order to know what programs exactly are bloatwares you can perform some simple Google searches for a guide or list of common bloatwares and their functions. Based on this information you can manually uninstall them. There are also free programs on the net that are known to clean PCs of bloatwares. One example is PC Decaprifier that enjoys good reputation among users. Another rather strong option is to go for a clean install, wiping the hard drive and carrying out a fresh install of Windows. This will enable you to reclaim drive space, be secure and free up computing power.

You may ask is this another paranoid take in view of the cyber security issues that afflict all of us? No, definitely not. Did you know that Microsoft actually makes money selling “Microsoft signature” which are laptops free of bloatware with an extra price of $99. And Microsoft has proven statistics of   how much faster a signature PC is than a non-signature PC. You can access the figures here in the Microsoft archives.

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A research commissioned by New Relic, a web application performance company, revealed that 1.3 million Android devices are activated every day. This means four times as many new smartphones and tablets are set up than babies (300,000 a day) are born. And once the devices are activated, on an average a user checks it 150 times a day — once every 6.5 minutes. The use of the device is focused on apps at some 127 minutes a day and surfing the web via a browser accounts for just over an hour.

The Company revealed information of present data connected life using analytics from a number of apps monitoring companies. Gaming has become the single most popular activity over the past 12 months, accounting for 43 percent of usage, followed by social networking (26%). At the other end of the scale, productivity (2%) and health and fitness (1%) appear to be the least popular ways to use a mobile device.

And these patterns and trends are set to continue. By the end of 2013 it is estimated that there will be 1.82 billion active smartphones in use globally and that within the next two years, more than 89 billion apps will have been downloaded.

We live in an age of fast technological progress. The operating systems, handsets, data connections, touch screen technology, apps and so much more are getting better and faster. This will all affect our behaviour, interaction, consumption, and most important, our online security. So it is of utmost importance to remain updated and keep a finger on the pulse of what is happening.

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NetGenie has been coming up with regular updates and advisories on how to handle social media and your online profile. Of late privacy issues related to Facebook crop up with increasing frequency. It adds to your worries as your kids are invariably present on Facebook. Thus a tip or two is always handy for parents to not only secure kids but also in having a common point of discussion with your Internet savvy kids.  The kids may be perpetually present on FB but when it comes to setting privacy controls, they pay little attention in making good use of it. So, pay attention to your kids if they ever complain about a nosy friend getting too close for comfort or statuses that aren’t really welcome on one’s FB page. It may emerge that they don’t want the person’s presence on FB but do not want to be too direct by unfriending them straight away. There are ways to restrict unwanted friends on FB without actually unfriending them to their knowledge.

You can add your nosey loud friend to Acquaintances list. This stops those friends from showing up in your news feed. May be, once in while, you will get an intimation of them getting married or graduating but definitely not the flood of statuses right from their sick  cat to their new car tyres. Also, when posting a status you can click on ‘Friends except Acquaintances’ option to make the post invisible to your unwanted friends. And the good part is that there will be no notification issued.

In order to block all of a friend’s incessant or irritating updates from appearing in your news feed, bring the cursor to the friend’s name on their timeline. Soon their profile picture will appear. Bring the cursor on the Friends button, click Settings, then uncheck “Show in News Feed”. Do away with the chatter and enjoy your clutter free FB page.

You can also banish unwanted friends to restricted list to ban their links, pictures and statuses from appearing in your news feed. Most importantly they too will no longer be able to see your Facebook activities.   Read and subscribe to NetGenie Blogs to understand latest issues, trends and developments affecting children’s online safety and security.

All aspects of life are governed by some cardinal principles. Applying those principles helps to gain success and peace of mind to a greater degree. If you have a PC and are connected online, this blog will enlighten you on the basic and easy routine to stay safe online.

The first rule is that if there are recurring errors and malware problems in your system, formatting is the answer. Downloading files over the internet, using unsecured USB drives or connecting to a public network are all causes of malware entry. They can lead to corrupted data and make the system function erratically. The system efficiency nosedives because, they take a lot of work from the CPU, and as a result other applications important to you stop functioning or slow down. Fixing an error can sometimes take much more time while formatting could just be a matter of an hour.

Then comes the task of having a security in place and you can begin by installing basic security like an antivirus which is easy to use and install. The third rule is to lock or log out of your device when not using it as it becomes vulnerable to being abused by unauthorized users. Uninstalling unnecessary programs or softwares from your computer and frequent backups of your data constitute the fourth rule. It will go a long way in keeping your data safe.

Downloading unfamiliar software off the Internet is an open invitation to trouble. There are so many open source programs like KaZaA, , Gator, HotBar, which may be useful but most of them also have inbuilt spying functionality which can damage your operating system, steal your information and compromise your privacy. If you must download, check software thoroughly, using reputable virus detection software.

Then comes the principle of staying updated on your digital profile. You have been visiting sites, posting comments, blogging, uploading family pics, putting your email address in a carpool website, or giving quotes in a newspaper article. All these lead to a footprint on the Internet and is called digital profile. The simplest thing that you can do is a Google search on yourself with inputs like name, address, email id, images etc and look for what comes up. This will give an idea of what private information about you is out in the open and what discretion should you adopt when posting online.

And of course there is the all important Facebook account through which the potential dangers of losing data and privacy, is immense. The joke goes like – Google knows what you do online but Facebook knows who you are. Hence, you should grant visibility of contact address or photos to friends only, disallowing people to view your game or application activity and adding only those friends that you know in the real world and not strangers over Internet.

Turn SSL on Facebook which basically encrypts your session making it difficult to be viewed by anyone else. And just like with Facebook, you can also enable SSL in Gmail Settings, under the General tab, by enabling ‘Always use https’.

Last but not the least, remove personal and unwanted information from Google. Thereafter, protect your online identity by creating a public profile totally separate from your other online activities. There are ways to recall online content with Google’s support, steps to which are available through simple Google search.

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You have been surfing the Internet and suddenly a message pops up saying “Internet Explorer has blocked this site from using an ActiveX control in an unsafe manner.” You wonder what it is and whether it can cause harm to your PC? To begin with, it is good to get around an issue that catches your attention and raises concerns in you, especially if it concerns your safety.

Basically, ActiveX controls are technologies by Microsoft that enable different software applications to share information and functionality. Through your browser you can view a video, install updates and access sites that depend upon ActiveX controls for you to view them and interact with them. This interaction or enhanced functionality is possible as ActiveX control access all files and folders just as a currently logged in user. Thus it increases the potential of damage in case of an attack. In fact, an ActiveX once downloaded integrates with the operating system. This interactivity and ease of functionality becomes a weak spot in the security functionality that extends trust to unknown elements.

Therefore it becomes easier for hackers and attackers to exploit ActiveX controls and push malware into your PC. ActiveX controls easily execute in the background and infect your PC through drive-by download attack leading you to a malicious site that exploits a security hole.  In fact a sizeable number of spyware and adware find their way to PCs through ActiveX controls. Microsoft has beefed up the security but issues with ActiveX controls remain. In fact ActiveX is comparable to Java plug-in. Sometime back, NetGenie carried an article explaining security issues and precautions related to Java plug-in. Therefore it is important to understand that the more ActiveX controls are installed, more routes are open to harm your PC/connected device.

Present day and updated version of IE do offer features like ‘ActiveX Filtering’ and ‘Protected Mode’ which can be enabled in the browser. Thus when you go to site that needs ActiveX, you will have to enable it if you trust the site. In other words security is left to your discretion and judgement which can be very difficult to take even for a tech savvy person. In a nutshell, ActiveX controls are basically designed in ways that doesn’t leave much scope for security.

So the first measure is to uninstall several unused ActiveX controls on your PC to reduce the attack surface. In fact many users are advised to switch from IE to other browsers such as Firefox opera and Netscape. However, browsers are a matter of convenience and choice. So if you are comfortable with IE, improve your ActiveX security. Go to ‘security options’ under ‘tools’ in the browser and disable ActiveX controls and plug-ins. However, if certain websites you want to access require ActiveX, then you can enable it for that particular site.

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Did you know that some of your friends on Facebook may not be real humans but bots programmed to steal your private data and influence your buying decisions? Yes, your social network may be infiltrated with social bots. Traditionally botnets are not designed to pose a threat to social networks as users can easily tell the difference between artificial and real people. But the phenomenon of social bots emulates humans well enough to infiltrate social networks. They make use of chat software to catch human conversations that helps them appear more genuine. Social bots start by befriending each other after which they infiltrate actual human users, tunnelling their way through friends of friends. And ultimately they can harvest massive private data.

Researchers at University of British Columbia have brought out that there are a large number of social bots compromising security in Social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter etc. While privacy is definitely compromised, the full implications of such bots in the arena of economy and society as whole are yet to be understood. These social bots pretend to be genuine online users by posting real stuff just as a real human would. When controlled by a botmaster, they can steal information on a massive scale through hundreds or thousands of fake bot profiles that infiltrate large parts of the system.

The security implications of such social bots become evident in view of the fact that data sharing and backup functionality are well integrated with social media sites like Facebook. The authentication system that allow data sharing and backups are designed on the premise of  implicit trust of social networks. And this is precisely where social bots are programmed to break into. The researchers came up with a program that creates profiles and makes friends with actual users with almost 80% success rate. In fact, some of the bot profiles actually received friend requests and messages. As expected, female social bots received 20 to 30 times the number of friend requests vis-a-vis the male profiles.

One may ask how do bots bypass Captch Security, CAPTCHAs, as many of you would  be aware, are basically alphanumeric visual tests that only a human can pass and make it difficult for bots to operate online. The UBC proved their point of how easy it is to bypass Captcha security by taking the route that cyber criminals take. A total of 1,000 CAPTCHAs can be bought with automated service for as low as $1. In the cyber crime underbelly, basic infrastructure costs around $30 per bot. In fact the cyber crime economy today is so standardized that it is very easy to go to a bot service provider and get a bot account – almost as easy as getting an email account from email service provider!

So next time you say yes to a friend request, be doubly sure.

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Parents today are increasingly wary of their kids posting indiscriminately on Facebook in a culture that unabashedly encourages over-sharing. However, a refreshing break comes in the form of a recent study by Carnegie Mellon university of students that suggest that 71 percent of Facebook users think twice before posting on the site.

It is indeed good to know that privacy issues are finally being addressed through this welcome show of discretion. Some of the other facts revealed are:

• • Posts are censored more frequently than comments
• • Males censor more posts than females
• • Users with more opposite-sex friends will self-censor more
• • People who exercise more control over their audience censor are more content
• • Users with more politically and age-diverse friends censor less in general

According to researchers, posts directed at vague audiences (e.g., status updates) are censored more, and so are posts which are directed at specifically defined targets (e.g., group posts). The reason cited is that users doubt if the content would be relevant to vague users and random groups. The study was conducted using data pool of Facebook behavior of 3.9 million users. The survey measured how many entries of over five characters did people enter but did not post.

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Parents keep worrying over the texting habits of their children and it seems they have a point. A recent study from University of Winnipeg revealed that teens who text more are more likely to be shallow. It announced the startling fact after a carefully designed and long research spread across three consecutive years. The research clearly brought out that teens who text more than 100 times a day were less likely to adhere to  ethical or, principled life vis-a-vis those who texted only about 50 times a day.

The research was conducted among a group of 2,300 introductory psychology students who underwent an hour long online survey. The survey comprised measures of texting frequency, traits, and life goals. The main goal of the study was to test the ‘shallowing hypothesis’ which was first described by Nicholas Carr in his book ‘The Shallows’. According to Carr, ultra-brief social media like texting and Twitter encourages rapid, relatively shallow thought and consequently very frequent daily use of such media should be associated with cognitive and moral superficiality.

The survey revealed that there are substantial annual declines in broad personality traits of ‘self-reported reflectiveness’ and ‘openness to experience’ since 2006 among first year students. Approximately 30 per cent of students reported texting 200 plus times a day. 12 per cent reported texting 300 plus times per day. Those who texted frequently also tended to be significantly less reflective than those who texted less often.

While the study also noted that there was little to worry over ‘moral shallowing’ but concluded the topic may warrant greater research attention.

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So many times you regret sending an email and wish you could go back in time and undo the act? Did you know you can actually do it? And did you know if somebody has been snooping on your mail there is a way to know it? Let us see, as a web mail user how we can adopt practices that make our email more secure and private.

For those of you who use Gmail, you can recall a mail by clicking on to “Undo Send’ feature under Gmail labs. Once you enable this feature, there will be a prominent yellow box that will flash every time you send a mail. Clicking on it will recall your mail. Of course those of you who use MS Outlook must be aware of the functionality of recalling mails sent by mistake within your organization. However, this functionality is limited to accounts on a Microsoft Exchange Server. All you need to do is go to the ‘Sent’ item on the ‘Message’ tab, navigate to ‘Move Group,’ then ‘Actions’ and finally click on ‘Recall’.

And of late, have you been spotting some unusual account activity in your mail? It could be an unread mail that appears to have been clicked open. Or is it that a mail that you have read appears to be unread? May be you have an uncanny feeling that certain mails seem to have vanished without you remembering to ever delete them. These are all tell-tale signs.

But don’t worry. There is a way to know if somebody else has been stealthily accessing your account. Many a times, if somebody has guessed your password then he or she can maintain access and can keep snooping in to your mailbox. To tackle this in Gmail you can see when your account was last accessed. If it doesn’t match with the time that you last accessed it, then there is a need to change your password and enhance your account security. For Gmail, you can easily click the Details tab next to the Last account activity at the bottom of the page. It also gives information on Access type. For example, if it shows any mobile access and you have not been using your mobile to access your account then it is straight giveaway that your account has been compromised. Under this feature information on the IP address too is available which can be of much help. If you usually sign in to Gmail using the same machine, your IP address should be the same, or start with the same two sets of numbers. Any strange IP address other than the regular ones on the list is an indication that your account has been accessed.

This feature is available for Yahoo mail also wherein you can navigate to Yahoo account information and click on View your recent sign-in activity with details on access type, IP addresses, location and date & time.

Similarly, two factor authentications in present times is provided by Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, Facebook, Drop box and more, wherein you align your  phone number with your password to add another layer of security. One must activate this feature to make the account more secure. It provides additional security in case your password is compromised as the attacker will need to also know a special one-time code to log in after you enable two-factor authentication on these services.

Keep yourself updated with security best practices, latest online security news and incidents through NetGenie blogs.

The popularity of Instagram, a photo sharing app, among teens is a raging phenomenon. However, recently when it announced beauty contest on its site, thousands of young impressionable girls – as young as 12 and 13 posted their photos for others to judge.

The horror just doesn’t stop here. It’s a free for all game in which approximate 100 million Instagram users can vote/comment on the girl’s photo! It goes even further than this – the anonymous pageant host can strike out a big red cross over the girl’s image or simply scratch it across with the word “OUT’ based on certain number of negative comments it receives!!! It’s not just about privacy but the nastiness that children are exposed to at a vulnerable and emotionally turbulent phase of their lives.

Yes parents are worried sick. But then the subject of online protection and privacy keeps throwing up such challenges and as parents you need to be aware of the phenomenon and then work towards the solution.  To begin with, know well that there is nothing private on Instagram as any user can follow an Instagram profile. The key therefore is to control your visibility to bring in an element of privacy. It can be done by controlling your visibility. All Apple users can click on the profile and change the settings to ‘Photos are private’ while Android users need to tap on ‘photo privacy’. With this feature enabled, anyone wishing to view your photo will have to send a request and it will be subject to your approval or disapproval. Also now your confidential information such as geolocation, and photomaps can only be seen by those you approve of.

Secondly, you need to revoke access that you might have allowed for third party sites by going to ‘manage Application’ under ‘Edit Profile’ section. This will prevent your images from popping through search engines. You can also block or report abuse under the ‘Edit Profile section’.

Next time when you sit down with your kids to talk about Instagram, armed with this knowledge, keep in mind that at the end of the day one has to choose wisely what to post and what not to. Let you kids be aware of the dangers posed by fraudsters posing as kids or friends of friends to follow them.

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