Category Archives: Security

Cloud Storage, Dropbox, Encrypt Dropbox Folder, Free Software, Privacy, Security, TrueCrypt

Protect Your Privacy with TrueCrypt – Part 3

October 4, 2012 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

In our last post, we created an encrypted volume using Truecrypt. This volume could be thought of as a folder but it’s a bit more than that. If you think of this thing that you created as a separate drive on your computer, you will have a better picture of what it really is. When you add a new hard drive to your computer, you have to mount it before you can use it. Before you can use your newly created folder, you also have to mount it. Using Truecrypt, we’ll show you how to mount the new volume in order to make use of it. 1. The new volume (folder) should be on your desktop. It may or may not have a three digit file-type designation, depending on how you chose to name it. If you didn’t use a three letter name, such as .avi or .mp3, Windows will not use an icon to give you an idea of what it thinks it is. Here’s what our volume looks like:

Photo of Truecrypt folder — **Windows knows there is something there, it just doesn’t know what.**

Just a simple, generic page icon. Windows does not associate a program with this volume/folder. You can’t double-click it to open it, right? Don’t forget that. Open Truecrypt now. 2. When Truecrypt is open, you’ll see this screen:

Photo of Truecrypt opening menu — **You are looking for ‘Select File’ then ‘Mount’.**

This is a standard Windows dialogue/menu, nothing different from most other programs. You open the program first, then use it to open a file that it can handle. Click on Select File, find the volume that you created then click Open to go back to the menu shown below. 3. Here is what you should see next :

Photo of Truecrypt menu — **The path to the file is there in the window and a drive letter may or may not be highlighted in blue.**

You will see a number of drive letters in this menu, everything from G to Z. Choose a letter that isn’t currently being used by your computer. You’re pretty safe with anything past O or P. We have chosen T for this drive. Click on the word ‘Mount’ on the lower left of the menu. 4. Make sure you have the password that you used to create this volume. Truecrypt will prompt you for the password:

Photo of Truecrypt password menu. — **Type in the password that you used to create this volume.**

If you forget your password, there is nothing that you can do to retrieve it. Whatever volume you created is lost for good. Don’t lose your password. You’ve been warned. 5. Once you enter the correct password, Truecrypt will mount the volume. In other words, it will allow you to access it. It’s not open yet but it is accessible. This is what you should have on your screen now:

Photo of mounted Truecrypt drive. — **There it is by the letter T. Note the size difference of the folder.**

This drive is now accessible in two different ways. You can either double-click it now on the Truecrypt menu or navigate to it through Windows Explorer. In our case, it is listed as ‘Local Disk T’. Once you open the drive/volume/folder, drag and drop something into it. We chose to keep our encrypted text password document in ours. In this way, our passwords are protected by two walls, one through Notepad ++’s encryption and the other through Truecrypt ‘s. TIP: After you put the files into this volume/folder/drive, make sure that you dismount it before you close down Truecrypt. The process is this: Mount the drive, add or subtract files into it, dismount it. You can’t open the volume without mounting it and you should not close it without dismounting it. This is the only way that Truecrypt can guarantee to keep its contents safe. Two long and fairly convoluted posts, right? Keeping your data safe isn’t simple but we feel that using Truecrypt doesn’t require much tech savvy. If you follow our simple step-by-step instructions, you’ll be fine. What’s next? Moving this folder around inside of Dropbox. One more post on this topic and we’re done. Thanks for reading!

Cloud Privacy, Cloud Storage, Encrypt Dropbox Folder, Encryption, Security, TrueCrypt

Protect Your Privacy with TrueCrypt – Part 2

October 3, 2012 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

In this post, we’ll describe how to encrypt a small folder using TrueCrypt, a free and very powerful encryption tool. You can put anything you want in this folder, of course, but the point of this exercise is to have something that is extremely safe from prying eyes that will allow you to keep your passwords or online account numbers private. Once you create this folder, you can put text files, documents…basically whatever you want to, as long as the total size is not larger than the folder you create. We’ll explain that later.

1. Download and install Truecrypt. You can install Truecrypt or run it from a folder. You could even keep the Truecrypt folder inside your Dropbox folder in order to make it available on every computer that you access Dropbox with.

2. Run Truecrypt. Here is the window that comes up at the start:

A volume is something that only Truecrypt can open. As you will notice later on, there is no three letter file designation to the folder/file/volume that you create. No other program will recognize it, not Windows, not Notepad, only Truecrypt.

Menu for TrueCrypt — **For the next few screens, you’ll just accept the default settings. Here, choose ‘Create an encrypted file container’ then click Next.**

Menu for TrueCrypt 3 — **Click Next to start creating a Standard TrueCrypt volume.**

Don’t get confused here. You’re not choosing a file or folder, you are really creating a volume somewhere you are on your computer. We chose our Desktop but you’re on your own here. All you do in this menu is simply type in a name, make up anything you want. You can even use a three letter file name to make this Truecrypt volume look like another kind of file. The default program for that type of file, .avi or .mp3 for instance, will NOT be able to open it, remember? Only Truecrypt can open this file.

Photo of TrueCrypt — **You’re on your own here but we chose a 1 MB file, lots of room for our password text file.**

10.

11.

12.

Move your mouse all over this menu for a minute or two then click Format. Truecrypt will then format the volume that you just made, creating, more or less, a separate drive on your computer. That drive is controlled by Truecrypt, nothing else. Windows doesn’t know anything about it, other than it takes up space. It cannot open the volume and will not even suggest a program that might open it.

13.

14.

That’s it for now. This post is long enough but we’ve accomplished a lot. You now know how to create a locked volume that can be opened only by you. Even if someone gets access to your computer or your cloud folder, they will not be able to see what is inside this folder. Cool huh?

Next time, we’ll show you how to use this volume. Basically, you just mount it using your password, open it then drop files into it and then dismount it. Once you dismount it, it is locked again.

Thanks for reading!

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Facebook, Facebook Tricks, Scam, Security

Facebook Scams – Don’t fall for them

July 18, 2012 Computers Made Simple 2 Comments

Don’t respond or click on any link that you get from Facebook, unless you are 100% sure it is from Facebook. Here’s why:

1. We got this email today in one of our junkmail folders:

Photo of junk mail from Facebook — **Looks legitimate, right?**

2. We do have a Facebook account for this email address but we rarely use it. We’ve got our email settings in this Facebook account set to never send email. We also don’t know anyone named Christine McLain Gibbs.

3. We didn’t click on the link, that’s for sure. But we were curious as to how this think worked. We knew it was a scam but didn’t know what it was supposed to do. The links led to the following address: (We’ve left spaces in it so it doesn’t work and don’t try to make a link out of it) http://www. unitedtec.org /mobile.html

Our browser asked if we wanted to use Java when we pasted the link into a new window. We didn’t allow it and after a few seconds, we were taken to a real Facebook page. We assume the link sucked Facebook passwords from our cache using Java. Even though we didn’t allow Java to run, we changed our Facebook password anyway.

4. Unitedtec.org is a legitimate site, we think. It seems to be some sort of religious, Christian teen site. The url in the IP address leads to Site5 hosting. We’ve notified both of these sites in the hopes that these emails can be stopped.

If you remember to never click an email link from Facebook, you’ll be safe. Good luck!

Thanks for reading!

Back ups, Backing up your computer, Cloud Storage, Computers, Windows

How do I back up my computer? Part 3

May 8, 2012 Computers Made Simple 1 Comment

Once you have figured out where all of your stuff is, including documents, photos and videos, it’s time to sort it all out and back it up. Sure, you could dump everything onto one or more DVDs but it makes more sense to organize things a bit beforehand. In this case, photos are more important to arrange than anything else because the files names are arbitrary unless you rename every one. Once you have the various folders in one place, you can sort them out by date, naming the separate folders by when you took the photos or by subject, if all of the photos in a folder can be identified by a few words.

Videos can be named or arranged by date but taking a bit of time now to rename each avi file will make it easier to find what you are looking for at some point down the road. If you have recorded any HDTV shows that you want to save, make sure you convert them to XVID files using Format Factory or Handbrake to save storage room. Both programs do a fine job of transferring recorded video files to the DIVX or XVID format. The file choice is optional, of course. Use the type of file that you’ve had experience with and works best with your other hardware.

We should mention now that some programs save their files in places other than My Documents. CamStudio, for instance, saves its avi files in the CamStudio main folder. There is a link to those files in My Documents but that is only a shortcut. The files themselves are kept somewhere else. This also applies to Audacity. When you have been working on an audio file in Audacity and you haven’t completed your work, it’s a good idea to back up all of the Audacity files BEFORE you lose them in a hardware crash. Once you export your files in Audacity, you can choose the format and, if you are satisfied with your efforts, you can get rid of the working files. But if you are still working on the files, save them. You’ll find them in the main Audacity folder, not in My Documents.

If you’ve been diligent about telling each program where you want it to save your work, your job is much easier when it comes to backing up your computer.

What’s next? Well, we use Burnaware to make backup DVDs. Burnaware is fast, stable and free. Since DVDs are relatively cheap, we can get 100 for less than $20, you might even want to make backups of backups for important files. Keep each backup in a separate place, maybe even distributing family memories to various relatives. Mark the disks with a Sharpie and put them in a protective package which is also clearly marked with the date and some descriptive words.

Lastly, think about backing up any material that’s ‘in the cloud’. Dropbox is about as secure as you can get but who knows what their financial status is? Backup the Dropbox folder on your computer whenever you back up everything else. That backup isn’t dynamic, of course, so be sure to only use it as a backup in case of emergency. Don’t try to integrate the old files with your current Dropbox files at some date later on. Saving old files over newer files never works.

We can’t hold your hand all the way through but we’re here to help. If you have questions, ask us. Comments are welcome, yays or nays, it doesn’t matter.

Thanks for reading!

Privacy, Security

My View on Internet Freedom

February 20, 2012 Computers Made Simple Leave a comment

Remember the Berlin Wall? It was one of the last relics of the Cold War. Built in 1961, it was a symbol of backward thinking politicians, persecution and the loss of personal freedom until it was torn down in 1989. You might also remember Ronald Reagan’s famous line, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” How dramatic that line was! It’s still used in stirring and patriotic speeches about God Bless America and freedom. Unfortunately, the western world is far less free than it was in 1989.

This week, Canada will enact legislation that will allow police and governments to spy on its citizens without a warrant of any kind. The legislation will force ISPs to provide vast amounts of information without any kind of judicial control. Canadians, showing their natural good humour (we spell it with the ‘u’), reacted to this legislation by using Twitter to make fun of the government minister who promoted the bill. We tweeted everything we were doing, everything we were thinking and everything that our cats and dogs were doing. Providing a mass of unrelated information just might be a way to hide your tracks if you are up to something sinister. Unfortunately, this would also hide real criminals and terrorists from being identified.

Hasan Elahi used much the same kind of tactic when he was questioned by the FBI for six months in 2009. Here’s a description of what he did: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/opinion/sunday/giving-the-fbi-what-it-wants.html?pagewanted=all

Hasan’s website is here: http://www.elahi.umd.edu/track/ and you can track him virtually everywhere in the world. He’s taken privacy to a whole other level. By making himself completely open in all of his activities, he has invented a way to, perhaps, cloak his actions in behind a wall of transparency. Here he is on Youtube (Ted TV):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAdwurHhv-I

explaining what happened and how he handled the situation.

Americans have already lost their freedoms. You might not know it but you have. The NSA, the FBI, the CIA and even the EOP (look it up) are already spying on you. Through the use of expert scaremongering, successive presidents and legislators have teamed up to deny your constitutional rights. The Occupy riots have proven that even the most basic right of freedom of assembly, is long gone.

Canadians are by nature quite peaceful. This bill, hopefully, will stir us into action to defeat the government that introduced and supported it. Our political system is different from the American system. If we get ticked off with the current party in power, it’s not unusual for us to completely trash them in the next election. We’re not a two party country up here and we don’t vote along team lines. It’s a little bit harder for Americans to get rid of a party that threatens to limit their freedom but it’s still possible. As the Arab Spring might* have shown us, change is possible if we work collectively to promote it. Isn’t it curious that the communist principle of a collective voice against oppression seems to be the ideal tool in our post-capitalist society.

Thanks for reading. I’d love to see a few comments on this post.

*I say ‘might’ simply because neither Egypt or Libya seems to have succeeded in enacting the ideals that they fought for. In the power vacuum that was created after the ouster of the old leaders, it seems that the military in both countries has taken over. Just as church and state should be separate, there is no place in the world for a military state.

a little bit of hi-tech, a little bit of common sense and a lot of fun