Tag Archives: Prvacy

Email, Encryption, Privacy, Security

Hushmail Email Security

If you’re concerned about email security, my next few posts will discuss some aspects that you might want to consider. My feeling is that email is far less secure than it used to be, even compared to five or ten years ago. Whether or not anyone is reading your email, you might want to think about some way of securing your private and/or business communications from prying eyes. If you are already involved in illicit activity, you are likely more advanced in this area than I am. All of this is new territory for me. We’ll learn together.

My first stop on this journey is a Canadian web-mail site, Hushmail. Hushmail advertises itself as a ‘free secure email’ provider. It is free and somewhat secure. There is a pro version for use on your own domain but we’ll stick with the free version for now.

Hushmail encrypts your email to other Hushmail users, plain and simple. Once you are logged in, Hushmail provides an encrypted connection. The key to this connection is your password. If, for some reason, your Internet connection is being watched, logging-in to Hushmail will protect everything for you. Your emails are stored on the Hushmail site in encrypted form. Your passphrase isn’t stored anywhere by Hushmail. If you lose your passphrase, you can’t recover it…at least not through Hushmail. It all sounds quite secure, right? It is but Hushmail is very open about its limitations.

I don’t think anyone really reads the EULAs or FAQs that abound in the computer world. Hushmail’s FAQ was both incredibly easy to read and extremely honest.  Take some time to read it and you’ll start to understand the limitations of a web-based email security system. Here’s a link to Hushmail’s FAQ: http://www.hushmail.com/about/technology/security/

Hushmail is perfect for the average person who wants a bit of privacy and simplicity with their free web-based email. There are ways to encrypt a regular email on Hotmail or Gmail and I’ll get to those later but for now, Hushmail is worth investigating.

The key to Hushmail is the passphrase. Sure, the email and the connection to Hushmail are encrypted but how can you keep your passphrase secure? That’s the problem, right? If you can manage to come up with a mnemonic passphrase, something that is easy for you to remember but ridiculously hard for anyone else to crack, you’re fine. If you have to write the passphrase down, things get substantially less secure. That’s for you to work out but I’ve got some tips here in another post.

Lastly, if you think that you’re immune to all of this and that no one really cares about your email, check out this PBS documentary. It’s an eye-opener: Nova: The New Thought Police 

Thanks for reading!

Facebook, Privacy, Security, Twitter

Facebook Privacy – Apps

The last time we wrote about Facebook privacy, we dealt with the setting which controls the information that your friends bring into apps that they use. You can read that post HERE. Today, we will write about editing the settings for the apps that you use.

Facebook can be a lot of fun, right? There are many apps and games plus you can link other social networking accounts, such as Twitter, to your Facebook account. However, each app uses your information in different ways. Some apps only use a little of it, others use a lot more. Here’s how you can limit every app so that it only uses the information that it requires in order to work.

Click on the little arrow to the right of the word ‘Home’ up on the top right of any Facebook page. Choose ‘Privacy Settings’. Then choose Apps, Games and websites. What we are looking for on the next page is ‘Apps you use’ and the ‘Edit settings’ button on the right.

Once you click that button, you’ll see something like this:

Menu for App Settings in Facebook
This is where you can edit each app that you use on Facebook

This is the menu for the Fotobounce application. I’ve written about Fotobounce before. With this application you can download complete photo albums on Facebook as well as many other sites. Here is the post on that. 

Fotobounce needs to access some of my information in order to work. You’ll see what it needs to access on the right side where you see the words ‘required’. However, at the bottom, you’ll see that Fotobounce wants to do two more things. It wants to access my Computers Made Simple Page and it wants to have the right to ‘Post to Facebook as me’. Hmmmm. I wonder why Fotobounce needs to do this? Since I don’t want this application to do either action, at least until I know why it needs to, I will click on the word ‘Remove’. I can still use the app but it won’t be able to Manage my Pages or Post to Facebook as me. Done!

On the top right of this menu  you will see the words “Remove app’. If you have any doubt about an application that you use, clicking these words gets rid of that application for good. Give it a try. Do you really need all of those applications accessing your personal information? Think about it.

Facebook can be a lot of fun. We all know that. But Facebook also likes to use your information for their own gain and for reasons that have nothing to do with your enjoyment of the site. Facebook also won’t tell you what information it’s using. Setting your privacy limitations is vitally important. Get to know these settings and use them often.

Thanks for reading!

Facebook, Privacy, Security

Facebook Privacy

1 Comment

The most important Facebook privacy setting is in the ‘Apps, games and websites’ section of your settings menu. Click on Home and choose Privacy Settings. From there, choose Apps and Websites: Edit Settings.

In this section, you can delete Apps that you don’t use any more, which is a great idea, but what you are interested in is the second section: How people bring your info to apps they use. Click on the Edit settings button. Once you’re there, you will see this:

Facebook Apps Settings
Make sure that nothing here is checked.

To me, everything on this menu is private. Some of these things I don’t even share with my friends. Why would I want to let Facebook spread this information around websites that my friends visit? Why are my religious and political views even part of Facebook? If you don’t uncheck everything here, Facebook has the right to tell complete strangers everything about you. Don’t let them!

By the way, the words at the bottom of this menu are completely false. They read: : “If you don’t want apps and websites to access other categories of information (like your friend list, gender or info you’ve made public), you can turn off all Platform apps. But remember, you will not be able to use any games or apps yourself.”

This has nothing to do with this particular menu. Allowing an application to access your information is up to you. You choose the app, you say yes or no to letting the app use your information. Same goes with a website. That is separate from this particular menu.

This menu has to do with letting apps that your friends use access your information. It’s a blanket YES to whatever apps and websites your friends use. Make sure that everything here is not checked. Then click Save Changes.

TIP: As I surf the ‘net, I see many Facebook graphics with little pictures of Facebook users on them. If you click on a user, you will be taken to their profile page on Facebook. This is whatI mean:

A Typical Facebook 'Like" graphic
Do you want your photo in graphics like this?

This is the same as trolling, in my opinion. You have no idea who is clicking on your picture and accessing your profile and reading whatever information is there. My profile is very basic, no personal information at all. Someone can send me a message, no problem. Someone can add me, no problem. Unless they do, they won’t be able to know anything about me. But, they also won’t be seeing my pic on a Facebook graphic. Why? Because I have unchecked everything in the menu above. There is a class action suit about this use of user photos in California, as a matter of fact.

I will be writing more about Facebook privacy in the next few posts. Stay tuned and stay private.

Thanks for reading!