Scrub Yourself From the Internet

Heather Kelly explains how to remove most of your personal information from the internet .

-DD

From Passwords to Passkeys?

Mark Spoonauer reports that passwords may soon be replaced by passkeys on Apple devices.

-DD

Secure URLs

Ben Fried exhorts the use of HTTPS for website security.

-DD

Stifling Scams

Kristie Canegallo writes about her efforts as a Google executive to takedown scams and illegal content which might be indexed by Google products.

-DD

FireFox Security Tip

Michael Horowitz shares how the user can restrict FireFox to only display sites employing Transport Layer Security version 1.2 or higher . The good news is it makes web surfing safer, while the downside it is it may restrict access to safe sites which have not updated their technology.

-DD

The Spread of HTTPS

katherine Noyes promotes a Google report on HTTPS and Internet security

. -DD

Internet Security

Anastasia Salter offers online security tools of use to any knowledge handler.

-DD

Replace The Internet?

Ben Warthen interviewed scholar Ben Lazowska, the computer scientist who says that "The Sky Really Is Falling " as he describes Internet security in the United States. Ed Lazowska says of the Internet:

Patches and updates won't solve this problem. "Many of the protocols that we use are inherently insecure," Lazowska says. "They can't be made more secure by evolution. They need to be rethought."

Unfortunately, the only solution is replacing the Internet with something new, just like CIOs have to replace old Cobol systems that wear out.

The entire Internet was actually replaced once before in the early 1980s when the whole Internet switched over to TCP/IP on one prearranged day. Back then there were only about 1,000 computers connected to the network, however. Today, says Lazowska, "It will be a big, expensive, worldwide job. The United States does not currently have a plan for switching to a more secure and more reliable Internet, but it needs to have one," he says, "because the cost of not doing it is too great."

-DD

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Note that Lazowska is a big believer in the positive future which technology may bring:

Browser Privacy Plug-Ins

Rick Broida lists Web browser privacy plug-ins , some of which are free or shareware, and some of which are commercial products. These tools prevent malicious people from tracking a user's journey around the Web. The downside of these plug-ins is that they may prevent useful applications from functioning, if their function requires tracking user behavior.

-DD

Google Bolsters Browser Security

Zach Miners explains how the Google safe browsing service will scan Chrome, FireFox and Safari downloads for components which will add new programs or otherwise alter your computer as a virus might. Users will get a warning that the download has been blocked from loading by the browser. Users may still open the file in their download folder.

-DD

IPv6 Security

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a publication called "Guidelines for the Secure Deployment of IPv6 ."
IPv4 (the current addressing standard for the Internet) has a limited number of addresses for identifying things (computers, devices, etc.) on the Internet, and the store of unused addresses is almost exhausted. The move to a larger addressing scheme is readily admitted, but security problems need to be avoided during the move from the old to new addressing methods.

-DD

Security Tips

Robert Mitchell suggests actions to maintain personal security .

-DD

Have I Been Pwned?

Lucian Constintin discovered that a new website, haveibeenpwned.com, allows a user of the site to discover if their personal login information has been compromised during security breaches at Yahoo and other major Internet firms. The only identifying information that the user of haveibeenpwned provides is their email address, so this is not a means for harvesting user information.

-DD

LinkedIn iPhone App

Colin Nagle reports "How LinkedIn Snuck Intro Info Into Emails on iOS ." The article describes how the LinkedIn technology team bypassed security on iPhones and iPads to to allow email senders to include a links to the sender's LinkedIn profile with each outgoing email. The technology is described in more detail on LinkedIn's Engineering Blog.

LinkedIn addresses the privacy concerns of routing a person's email through the LinkedIn proxy server. There are a couple of additional concerns about the proxy technology being employed. First of all, having all of a person's mobile-generated email routed through the LinkedIn proxy server creates a new point of failure in email transmission. If the LinkedIn server is overtaxed or fails, then there is a potential for email to be delayed or undelivered.

Second, as this service was developed without Apple's approval and counter's Apple's security provisions, the possibility exists that that Apple will block the usage of the technology in a future iOS update, resulting in the inability to transmit new email from an iPhone or iPad until the LinkedIn technology is deleted.

In summary, I think the LinkedIn engineering team was very creative, but I would not opt-in for the service if I used an iPhone for critical emails.

-DD