We’ve written many posts that help you hide different parts of your Facebook persona. This post will help you hide things outside of Facebook, those things that you don’t even know you are sharing.
Facebook makes its money by selling information about you to other websites. Basically, they sell your likes and dislikes in order for companies to better target their approach to get you to spend money. These pieces of information include the websites you visit, your email address, what ads you click on, etc. Facebook also tracks your activity as you travel around the Internet. How much money does Facebook make off of all of this? Well, one of our Facebook accounts generated just under $1,000 a year for Facebook. Multiply that by a few million Facebook users and you can see why Facebook is so interested in everything you do online.
A new app is available that helps you hide yourself from Facebook’s prying eyes. PrivacyFix, available here: https://privacyfix.com/start works inside either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. Go to the site, allow PrivacyFix to access your Facebook data and you’ll soon be invisible, at least as far as Facebook’s web customers are concerned.
Click on the “Run PrivacyFix Setup” button. Follow the prompts.
Once you run the setup, PrivacyFix helps you close the gaps in your Facebook privacy settings. Quite honestly, we thought our settings were fairly secure but found out that we were wrong. Read the prompts carefully and let PrivacyFix repair everything for you.
The only part that we found didn’t work well was when we were trying to email companies who had our information, asking them to delete any details that they have. PrivacyFix uses the old-fashioned ‘mailto’ link for this. That only works if you have an email client, let’s say Windows Live Mail (new) or Outlook Express (old), set up and ready to send out emails. Most of use webmail such as Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail. This particular step did not work at all and we’re curious why they used this old-style script. We’ll investigate and update this when we find the answer.
Using PrivacyFix, our value to Facebook has gone down from just under $1000 to just under $10. For a few minutes work, we think that’s pretty good. Let us know how you’re worth, both before and after.
Facebook will send you an email today, November 22, 2012. Here’s what the email looks like, just in case you think it’s not really from Facebook:
This is the real thing, an email from Facebook.
There is a link inside the email, here it is: https://www.facebook.com/fbsitegovernance The link leads to a Facebook page titled : Facebook Site Governance. Even though the email only went out today, 2.4 million Facebook users have ‘liked’ the page. Go figure.
The information that Facebook wants you to read is on the Documents box or ‘tab’, as they call it. Here’s a shot of it:
Click on the Documents box to read the new rules.
Read the next page carefully. It outlines the changes and contains some interesting wording. Here’s something that we have mentioned before but you should take note of it now: “Reminders about what’s visible to other people on Facebook. For instance, when you hide things from your timeline, those posts are visible elsewhere, like in news feed, on other people’s timelines, or in search results.” Even though we try to help you hide things on Facebook, even Facebook tells you that those things may be visible elsewhere. You’be been warned.
The links to the changes are down at the bottom. If you want to read about the changes now, click on the top link in each group of two links. The ‘Redline’ link leads to a page which allows you to download the ‘redlined’ version of the changes. Basically, this is a .pdf file that shows each change from the last site governance. The changes are in red. Here’s what they look like:
See what ‘redline’ means?
Read the redlined pages carefully. Make sure you know what Facebook is doing with your data and what they are sharing with their advertisers (basically Google).
Two things bother us about this email. With all of the fake Facebook emails that we get almost every day, why would Facebook not use your Facebook name at the top of this message? PayPal uses your name when they send you an email, just so you know it’s from them, right? There are plenty of fake PayPal emails but when a company uses your name in a message, you can be pretty sure that it’s what it says it is. Secondly, most Americans are on holiday today and will be for the next few days. It’s Thanksgiving in the United States. If this message from Facebook was so vitally important, why would they send it out on the very day that most of its recipients will be doing something else? Call us sceptics but we think that Facebook doesn’t really want its user to actually read about these changes. What do you think?
While we like Facebook, we don’t trust Facebook. We think the company is irresponsible and totally lacking any kind of moral responsibility to it’s millions of users. Facebook is a business, plain and simple, only interested in money, not the safety and privacy of the people who use it. Remember that. Have fun with Facebook but don’t share things that you wouldn’t share with a complete stranger.
Here at Computers Made Simple, we tend to collect quite a few older computers. Most are laptops, some are desktops and a few are older PDAs. Remember them? Instead of giving these old workhorses away, we like to use them for different tasks around the office. Some of the tasks are ‘works in progress’ for future articles, some are more current. Here are some ideas for your old piece of technology:
1. If all you’re doing is writing your memoirs in Word or Wordpad, you don’t need the latest and greatest computer. Even if you’re using an older version of a word processing program, you can bet that Word or LibreOffice (free) will be able to open it on your main unit. Whatever you do, make sure you have some way of getting what you write out of your old computer and into your new one.
2. We picked up an older Compaq laptop the other day. It was very overpriced, costing us $30.00, but it has a 3 1/2 inch floppy drive. Since modern computers do not come with floppy drives, we can use the older computer to access our old floppies, transfer our files to it, then connect it to our network and transfer the files to one of our other computers.
3. If you’re concerned about Internet security, you could use an older desktop as a Linux-based dedicated firewall. A router serves the same purpose but most routers are not Linux-based, although some can be changed by the user. Besides, learning about Linux and firewalls at the same time seems like a lot more fun! Here’s a link, an old one, that will give you an idea of what steps are necessary:
4. Along the same lines as number 3, you can use an old computer as a network server. If you have thousands of MP3s and you want to access them from every computer in the house, any old computer can act as a file server. (We’ve always found it amazing that two computers are able to play the same MP3 file at the same time.) Speed isn’t really a necessity. This isn’t as hard as number 3 but it is still about 7 on a tech difficulty scale. The software is free, here’s a link: http://www.freenas.org/
5. If you have a decent sound system, you can hook up an older computer as a media player, provided that you have a video card with an HDMI out. Anything that used to run Windows Vista should be able to serve as a simple media centre. We’re not talking streaming media here, only direct connection to an HD TV.
6. We’ve got a couple of old Panasonic Toughbooks around the office. One of them, a lowly Pentium 166, is tough as nails with a waterproof keyboard and a plastic covered screen as well as a hard-drive that is protected from bumps by a gel pack. All of this is packaged in a magnesium case that you could, literally, stand on and not damage the computer. What good is this old relic? Well, it runs Windows and has superb battery life, we mean hours of life, so we could slip this dinosaur into a back pack and travel across the country with it. Using Wordpad, we could write about our adventures as they happen. Alternatively, we could write our memoirs out by the pool with a cool Margarita beside us.
Our very tough Toughbook
7. If you’ve just recently ditched a desktop that may not be quite as powerful as the modern ones, you could use it to take care of things such as video file conversion or data recovery. Both jobs take hours and frequently tie up your main computer, making it run slower than normal. Using your not-so-old computer for these chores would free up your current one. For the functions mentioned, you wouldn’t need an Internet connection, either.
8. Depending on your tech level, it is quite possible to host your own site on an older computer. Again, speed isn’t all that important. Linux has the software you need and, yay, it’s free! Check out Ubuntu or LInux Mint. If you run a small hobby site, this is a fun project. For a business, you’re better off with professional hosting. Remember, if your home power goes off, so does your website. A few years ago, we came across a site that was hosted on a very old MacIntosh. Here is a link to that site, still up and running on a computer made in 1989: http://littledork.err0neous.org/ (The ‘littledork’ is the computer’s nickname.)
A IIci server.
9. If you have a lot of scanning to do, hook up your scanner to your old desktop and scan while you use your main computer for other things. If you set yourself up with the two computers side by side, it would be easy to switch back and forth, given that scanning (especially at hi-res) can take a long time. Again, no Internet connection is necessary.
10. While we don’t condone file-sharing, it’s easy to set up an older computer to serve as a downloading robot. Yes, your Internet connection will slow down a bit (that is adjustable), but your main computer would be free for other chores.
We’re sure you have more ideas for keeping old computers useful. Why not share them with us?
We own quite a few domain names here at Computers Made Simple. All are registered with one company, all are up to date and all are set to automatically renew on their respective anniversary dates. We get substantial amounts of email from our domain company but we also get emails from the vulture service that is known as ‘Domain Service’.
This particularly loathsome outfit scours the web for domains that are about to expire. Once they find such a domain, they send out an email, from a hotmail account if you can believe it, that looks like this:
This looks vaguely like a domain renewal notice.
Next, farther down the email, comes the prices:
Ridiculous prices for nothing, absolutely nothing.
Lastly, here is a description (in fine print) of what this email is actually soliciting:
This is a ‘search engine submission’, something that is completely unnecessary these days.
Once you read the fine print, you’ll see that this is just another scam. With the likes of Google and Bing, there is no need for ‘search engine submission’ at all. Additionally, this looks vaguely like a domain registration renewal, doesn’t it? Even if it it was, the prices are at least three times higher than any other company out there. There is no ‘lifetime’ renewal, by the way.
The big clue in this would be the originating email address. We can guarantee that no reputable company uses a hotmail address. The web is full of scams like this. We’ll try to help you identify them as they come to our attention.
We received a very suspicious email this morning. On the surface, it looked innocent enough but the clue that told it was a ‘phishing’ email was simple. The email was from Air Canada, Canada’s national airline but the person who received it does not fly…ever. Here’s how we figured it all out. This is the email we received:
Here is the subject line.
Here is the email itself. Hotmail has prevented some of it from loading.
If we had recently booked tickets, this email might have tricked us into clicking the links in it. Where do the links lead? Let’s check. If you hover your cursor over each link, you will be able to see the actual link that it leads to. Please don’t make a mistake and click on the link. Ever! This is what we saw when we hovered over the links:
Look down that the very bottom of your browser. See where it says ‘www.lakewoodpool.com/PDF/ticketRX749CA.zip ? Nothing to do with Air Canada there.
This one has a contact PDF file which probably has a piece of malware in it.
Neither link leads to the Air Canada website. We didn’t click on the links but we did open up a new browser window and typed in ‘www.lakewoodpool.com’. This is what we found:
This website is real but it’s out of date. It hasn’t been updated since January 2010.
We showed you how to check the IP address of a suspicious email here: Check IP Address First we checked the email source by right clicking the closed email in the junk mail folder. (This is how to do it in Hotmal/Outlook/Live but your email system may vary. It may not be the same as this but EVERY email system allows you to check the source of any email you receive.) Here is the menu you’re looking for:
Choose ‘View message source’.
This is what you see next. Yes, it looks like gibberish but all you have to look for are the numbers that are marked in blue here. Highlight them (click just to the left of the first number, keep the mouse button pressed and drag to the right until you get to the end of the last number, then release your mouse:
Near the top, look for ‘(sender IP is …) That set of numbers is the sender’s IP address.
Next, we headed to http://whois.net/ip-address-lookup/ to find where that IP address is in the world. Whois is a Unix term which is a command, asking literally ‘who is this?’ Here’s what we found:
This IP address is in France…a long way from Canada.
We went through this exercise to prove to you that the email in question is a fraud, a phishing email. The senders expected us to click the links and subsequentlydownload their malware. Once our computer is infected with the malware, they could either take control of our computer or gather information about our identity. Identity theft is much more common now than any other kind of criminal activity.
Besides all of this, the email had many clues in it that, hopefully, would make you suspicious.
Clues that an email a fraud or a phishing scam:
1. If indeed we had purchased a ticket from Air Canada, they would have our name, right? Air Canada or any other company would not send us an email with the opening line: Dear customer.
2. We hadn’t purchased a plane ticket. That’s simple but important. If you haven’t purchased anything from a company but they send you an email which says you have, you can be pretty sure that it’s spam or a phishing scam. This goes for banks, shipping companies and ticket outlets.
3. The links in the email did not lead to an Air Canada site. Hover over any link in the email, then look down near the bottom of your browser window. The real link address will be there. Whatever you do, do not click on any link in any email that you think is suspicious.
4. One of the links contained a zip or compressed file. Malware can be sent via PDFs but usually it is sent in a zip file.
The Lakewoodpool.com site has been hacked by someone, that’s obvious. It hasn’t been updated for two years but someone has guessed the administrator’s password and taken control of the site. Once inside the host server, the criminal is able to send out emails such as this from anywhere in the world.
Hopefully, we’ve educated you a bit in figuring out what an fraudulent email looks like. If you have questions or comments, use the form at the bottom.
Thanks for reading!
a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun
