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What’s the difference between Anonymity & Privacy?
Alongside the use of ad-blockers and private browsing normal people are resorting to using alias email addresses - provided by the likes of ‘Me and My ID’ - in order to maintain a modicum of privacy. This does not mean that we are paranoid or want to be anonymous so that we can ‘troll’ fellow human-beings. Privacy yes, anonymity no.
Tools such as ad-blockers have become popular because although 1% of advertising is relevant ninety-nine times as much is not. Admittedly new technologies might have increased the figure expressed in this rule of thumb to 2% - by retargeting you if you forgot to buy the thing you expressed an interest in, or showing you something that other people like you found interesting - but that still means forty-nine times as much just gets in the way.
Irrelevant clutter still outweighs valued advertising and that’s only one type of marketing communication. What about direct marketing by email, text message (SMS) and post? Whether it’s retailers demanding your email address in order to send you a receipt or mobile apps requiring you to log in via Facebook before accessing your information stored there the reality is maintaining your online privacy has been difficult until recently.
Read on for how to further protect yourself against unwelcome direct marketing and spam, whilst increasing your online security at the same time.
Privacy means maintaining control of who has your email address (amongst other things, such as the cookies stored on your devices), what they use it for and who they share it with. This includes not giving your real email to legitimate businesses just because they ask for it; they are only going to lose it or get hacked.
It doesn’t involve trying to misrepresent yourself, hide your identity or engage in any unseemly activities such as ‘trolling’ or spamming. Such group use ‘burner’ emails for reasons of anonymity but these tools are not useful to the rest of us who want to have some control over their inbox and on-going relationships with brands. ‘Me and My ID’ is a pioneer in helping busy people maintain and protect their identity and therefore privacy. At a time when hacking is a growing epidemic and spam spiralling out of control the team at Me & My ID is committed to helping you stay safe online.
‘Me and My ID’ is a free service that enables you to give each business or organisation that you deal with a separate email address. Each of these addresses is still synced to your personal email so you only have to open one inbox to see everything but can pause or delete each alias or block individual senders at any moment. There is the added benefit of being able to see who leaked your data should you notice that one of these aliases is receiving spam.
‘Burner’ email addresses are often open for all to see the emails which have been sent to them, rarely last indefinitely or allow you to create new addresses without logging on whereas ‘Me and My ID’ enables you to make them up on the spot when in a shop, restaurant or similar). Our solution was designed for ordinary people to use, like you would ad-blocking.
To find out more about how ‘Me and My ID’ can help protect your privacy head on over to https://meandmyid.com
Why Owning A Website or Personalised Email Address Domain Makes You a Target
Some time ago did you buy a website domain for use one day when you get around to that project you keep putting off? Maybe you reserved the URL spelling out your newborn’s name the day after you shared out the cigars? Did you get married and decide to jointly use an email address such as together@mr&mrsXYZ.com as well as sharing a bank account? Might it be your job to manage your employer’s portfolio of websites? Or possibly you run a blog or small online store, even one on eBay? Even if not recently it could be that you did one of these things a few years ago and have long since forgotten.
As a result it’s likely that your personal or work email address is now in the public domain, for spammers to find and then hit you day after day with junk. Owning a website or email domain can unfortunately leave you even more vulnerable to spammers for two key reasons:
WHOis - when you register a domain the details you put in are displayed in a public directory known as the WHOis directory. This enables the rest of us to see who owns and is running each website. It’s mandatory that you use a real email address, i.e. one that can be sent to and does not bounce. Unless you pay for extra protection your email address is available for all to see and as a result spammers and their robots scrape the data from the directories and begin spamming you relentlessly.
Predictable email addresses - sadly for us spammers are quite sophisticated in their operations, which means that when they know you have registered a new domain they hedge their bets and begin spamming likely inboxes such as info@… or sales@… and so on. Statistically these are the most common email addresses that will be set-up and as spamming is basically free they have nothing to lose and your inbox and potentially your PC to gain!
To help save yourself from spam-hell (and this cause is worse than all others, believe me!) there are a few strategies you can employ to dodge the spammers:
When you register your domain consider paying for identity protection; this masks your contact details for a few pounds each year. If as part of your business you buy a lot of domains and this would not be feasible then create a special email address only for this purpose and refrain from checking it too often in order to keep your blood pressure down.
Consider creating more unusual generic email addresses for your business; rather than info@… you could use helpme@… and so on (please feel free to be more creative than this!). These will not fall foul of the spammers’ typical algorithms.
Better still, don’t forget to set-up and use a number of Me and My ID email aliases when registering domains or commenting on public forums etc. - these are free of charge.
Even if you do the above you will still get spam, but at least by using Me and My ID you are protecting your real email address and can block individual senders or switch to another alias when necessary. As well as this:
Don’t ever reply; even when you are furious and sick of it, replying merely tells them your address is active and so you will receive more.
Don’t click unsubscribe; it won’t surprise you to learn that these people play fast and loose with internet marketing laws and often stick a fake unsubscribe link on their email, again to test which accounts are active.
Switch off automatic picture downloads; spammers often send tiny pictures (literally 1px) in their emails, when you open the email they receive a notification saying the attachment has been downloaded and confirming that the address is real. Set your email client or phone to “not download images from the server” (without you pressing a button to do so).
Don’t allow automatic delivery and read receipts; spammers who ask for and receive these receipts are made aware that your email account is active and therefore the level of spamming increases dramatically.
One of the many reasons we set-up Me and My ID was because of this problem. We hope that we can help you in the same way. Try our solution now.
Whilst news reports often paint the internet as a dark and scary place full of people and websites wanting to harm you and your family, it’s important to remember that all the tools you need to protect yourself already exist. So don’t suffer through ignorance but instead invest an afternoon to put them in place at home.
They are of course not flawless and sometimes things slip through but using up to date technology that is both simple and affordable vastly improves the security of you and your family.
Here are some of the safety options available to you including tools like domain blocking on your router:
Search Engine Restrictions
Almost all of the major search engine providers including Google have options allowing you to refine the type of results you see. To activate these you may need to create a free account but in general it is quick and simple; just don’t forget to register using a Me and My ID email address in order to protect your real one!
They generally have two options available to you:
1) Private Results
Selecting this option means results will be based on your usual internet behaviour. If you spend a lot of time researching a particular subject this will be taken into account. Whilst this isn’t a specific protection mechanism if you do not spend any time on adult-only sites then it is highly likely the search engine will put a lower emphasis on these results.
2) Safe Search
The second option available to you within each search engine is ‘safe search’. This is a setting designed to block most violent and adult results from your searches. Again it is not failsafe but will capture most of the websites you may not wish to see displayed.
Domain Blocking
Here at Me and My ID we recommend that you configure your router to block certain domains using a central knowledge-bank like OpenDNS. Some manufacturers supply their routers with a whitelabelled solution powered by the likes of OpenDNS. It doesn’t take more than an hour to read the instructions and configure the dashboard. You can set a default level of access for all devices in your home and if necessary then open up access to specific devices. You might want to block streaming sites like You Tube on the iPods of young children but not teenagers etc. This can often be controlled from an app on your smartphone, such as Netgear’s Genie.
By default these services also block sites that are being used to distribute malware and often web addresses in the dark web as well.
Internet Service Providers
Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is the company that physically provides the internet within your home. Most of these ISPs helpfully provide the option to activate added security layers sometimes called ‘parental controls’. Usually you will find the settings in the online account provided by your ISP. Again this layer of security is designed to prevent search results including adult sites, violent sites and potentially harmful forums and arenas discussing harmful subjects.
Typically these ISPs are a few steps behind security specialists such as the major manufacturers of routers and the anti-virus software providers so relying only on this step will probably not be enough. Barely a month goes by without another story about poorly secured freebie routers being hacked.
If you are really serious about online security at home you might consider upgrading your router. At minimum remember to re-boot your router once a month in order to download the latest software patches for vulnerabilities. Just turn it off, wait two minutes and then power it up again.
Anti-virus and Firewall Software
There are a huge number of options of anti-virus (”AV”) and firewall software available on the market and some of the common names you may have heard of include: McAfee, Norton, AVG, Kapersky. Operating systems such as Windows also come with their own versions.
A firewall should prevent unauthorised access to your device and your AV package clear-up the mess should anything get through, even if as a result of you clicking on a link.
Again within the settings of the software you can choose different levels of content blocking as well: adult content, violent content, forums, streaming sites, websites that do not allow HTTPS connection (more secure), pop-ups and more.
Remember, the AV software on your PC is unlikely to protect your router, rest of your local network (maybe you have a NAS as well) and other devices at home. This is but one of several tools you must deploy, which work hand in hand.
Protect Your Email Address
Finally, use Meandmyid.com to set-up separate email addresses within seconds that all still get sent to your existing inbox. This means if a company decides to sell your data on, you know exactly who it was and can delete just that email alias without it affecting your main email address. Protect your email address now andset-up a free account Meandmyid.com
Used in combination the above options will protect your loved ones from a vast amount of inappropriate content. Combine this will appropriate supervision and regular open and honest conversations about the dangers of the internet and you will be in a great place to protect your family to fullest extent possible.
Never before has it been so quick and easy to sign-up for services or shop online. As a result never before has so much information been held about you by companies that you are trusting to protect your personal info.
Simultaneously we’re hearing about more and more ‘data breaches’; there are seemingly more occurrences of hackers obtaining our information and often from the most reputable of organisations like banks and building societies.
So how do you keep data about you safe and how do you when your privacy has been breached?
Here are a few terms you need to understand before we share how to keep your information safe:
Dark Web: The dark web is a generic term for a section of the internet deliberately hidden from search engines and heavily encrypted; you need to know where to look for it, typically by IP address. (Whereas the ‘deep web’ is simply everything behind a username and password, where Google cannot spider but the logon page is public.)
Data: In this context data means any of your personal information that would otherwise be deemed private and confidential. This may include medical information, credit card details, national insurance numbers and addresses (postal and emaill) as well as phone numbers.
Data Marketplace: These are marketplaces similar in design and function to eBay but hosted on the dark web and mostly used to sell things that may be illicit or illegal in nature like stolen personal data for example.
These are some steps you can take to ensure your data remains safe:
Whenever you sign-up for anything on or offline, be sure to read the terms and uncheck any box that gives them permission to sell, share or rent your private data.
Use strong passwords that include a variety of capital letters, lowercase ones, numbers and symbols. Be sure to change these passwords regularly, use different passwords for all your key accounts and ideally a different ‘Me and My ID’ email address each time as well.
If you receive a suspect phone call be sure you can hear a dialling tone (i.e. the line is cleared) before then calling to report it to the police or bank, otherwise you are likely to still be on the line to the scammer who will then pretend to be the organisation you called. If you are in any doubt use a separate phone line or mobile.
Never respond to random or unsolicited phone calls, emails or letters. Don’t click on links or give out your data unless you know in advance where they will take you.
Check your credit report regularly to be sure all information is up to date and no new accounts have been opened without your knowledge. Most credit reference agencies will provide a free trial. We’ll be doing a specific blog on this soon.
Ensure you have anti virus internet security software on all of your devices and it is working and upto date.
Don’t do any internet banking or access secure websites on open networks such as cafes that provide free and probably unprotected Wi-Fi.
Don’t put personally identifiable information in public domains. This includes not putting your real date of birth and postal address into social media sites (do they really need it?)
Alongside all of the above tips there is a service offered by some of the major credit reference agencies called Web Detect. This service claims to scour the dark net for your personal information and send you an email or text alert if your information does appear online. Because of the encrypted nature of the dark web this information can rarely be used to track-down culprits but it does give you prompt warnings that your data have been compromised and thus allow you to change passwords and notify credit card providers etc.
If your information is available on the dark web it is likely only being sold for between $1 and $5 per record, based on supply and demand. That said, clearly the value of your data to those buying it does not correlate to the amount of stress, and frustrating phone calls you have to make to card providers etc when your data are compromised so by employing these steps now although they take a few moments means you will be able to avoid the stress at a later date. Prevention is always better than a cure.
This doesn’t just apply to credit card and bank accounts; some of the most commonly hacked systems are those such as: Uber, eBay, Skype, Paypal and email accounts.
Don’t forget the useful option that meandmyid.com provides. Simply create a new email address for each of the different companies you sign-up to (either via our site or remotely - it couldn’t be easier) and should it be abused block then it. At least this way the compromised email address (i.e. an alias) won’t be the one you used elsewhere and so updating it on the site you signed-up with will be quick as well.
Do you remember the film ‘You’ve Got Mail’? If not, it was classic 90s movie starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan about a budding romance, developed over email. The really incredible thing that you notice if you watch this film now is how excited they are to hear that little ping announcing they have new email.
Times have certainly changed. Not only do we now get on average around 150 emails per day, we also no longer look forward to the ping. In fact, many of us dread the noise and avoid opening our inbox at all costs!
The most infuriating thing is that a ton of those emails are in fact spam. Either unsolicited or technically legitimate but still unwanted. More often than not, we don’t know how they got our email address or how to stop them filling up our inbox with garbage, especially when there is no opt-out link at the bottom (eh, Transport for London?).
Here are five simple steps to stop yourself getting so many spam emails:
1) Guard your email address with your life (perhaps not quite so)
Email addresses can be shared, rented or sold by one company to another. All websites should have a privacy policy stating what they intend to do with your details. Of course this doesn’t mean that they are all abiding by their privacy policies; they get hacked, disgruntled staff walk out the door with the entire customer database on a USB stick or an incompetent employee decides to use a file of old data regardless of the policy in place at the time you signed-up.
Be cautious about putting in your email address for things like giveaways and competitions. If you wish to keep entering them then use an alias by signing-up to our free service and create new email addresses within seconds, even without logging-on.
Check it out here https://meandmyid.com
2) Unsubscribe
Yes it’s long and tedious but it can drastically reduce the number of spam emails you receive. At the bottom of every email you receive it should say something along the lines of ‘Unsubscribe’ or ‘Remove Me’ and clicking on this link should then open another window from where you can ask to be unsubscribed.
Legitimate senders will adhere to your wishes (subject to when it goes wrong - see 1. above) but the only way to stop the real spammers is to click on the block button on the ‘Me and My ID’ console next to that sender; then we’ll do the work for you and regardless of how many times the spammer emails you we’ll delete the spam.
BUT do not click the unsubscribe link in emails from obviously dodgy senders; clicking simply reveals that you are a real human-being and lawbreakers can rarely be trusted to do what they say. Once you confirm that you are alive they will have something more valuable to sell to other spammers.
3) Configure Your Inbox
Most email providers now allow you to configure your inbox. That is to say, you are able to ‘teach’ your inbox which emails you like receiving, which you don’t want and which you hate. Taking a two tailed approach is an effective way to significantly reduce the emails you receive:
Tail 1 ’Whitelisting’/ ‘Approve’: The emails you want to receive teach your email provider that you like them by marking them as safe.
Tail 2 ‘Spam’ / ‘Promotions’: Similarly to approving emails, you can in most email providers, disapprove them. While this won’t stop you receiving them, it will mean they immediately go into your spam or promotions tab and at least mean they don’t fill your inbox with unwanted junk.
After diligently doing this for a while your email provider will begin to learn which emails you want, which you don’t and will transfer this algorithm to new emails as they are received.
However do not mark emails that ‘Me and My ID’ forwards to you as spam. Instead block them from the ‘Me and My ID’ console. Our product is more powerful than your regular inbox if used correctly. Logon once a week and take control.
4) Make Sure Your Email Cannot Be Scanned If Online
Robots (’bots’) and other bits of clever technology can scan websites and scrape the data from them to compile lists. This means if you put your email address in a forum that is visible it is more than likely your email will be scraped and added to hundreds of spammers’ lists.
To avoid this write your email address in a way that can be read by humans but is unfamiliar to robots. As an example rather than writing [email protected] which is a format robots are built to identify and scrape you would write this: myemailaddress at myemail dot com or myemailaddress [at] myemail [dot] com.
Better still simply sign up to our free service and create new email address (an alias) within seconds. You can even do this remotely i.e. without logging in to our console, once you have signed-up. Check it out here https://meandmyid.com
This is especially useful if you own a web domain and your email address is shown in the public ‘whois’ record. Always use a ‘Me and My ID’ alias in this situation, such as ‘public.[your part2]@meandmyid.com’.
5) Uncheck the box!
Whenever you put your email address in there will usually be one or two boxes that can be checked or unchecked. Commonly the first box is agreeing to the terms and conditions of that site which may not be optional, however the second box is often optional and says something along the lines of ‘would you like to receive our latest discounts and offers or information we think might be interesting’. This is a ‘catch-all’ designed to entice you to allow them to send you anything they like from either that company or anyone they choose to give your email address to. By unchecking that box it removes this permission and prevents them from spamming you … if they are a trustworthy organisation (see 1. above).
Reducing spam cannot be achieved overnight. Follow the above tips, in conjunction with a service like ‘Me and My ID’ and you will soon start to see an effect. You can also monitor which organisations are abusing your data. If you start getting emails from Brand B to a unique email address that you only gave to Brand A then you know who is at fault, whether directly or through incompetence. (We’ll be launching a reporting tool soon and together we’ll be able to spot which organisations take the least care with our data.)
Staying safe online has long been a buzzword and catch phrase for anyone interested in protecting themselves or their family from the risks presented online. In reality, what does ‘staying safe online’ mean in a rapidly changing world, with constantly changing social media channels, increasingly sophisticated technology and software? Is it possible to stay safe online and if so, how?
If you are reading this blog you are likely not a tech genius nor have any desire to spend your free time swotting up on the latest hacking techniques and strategies. Here’s the good news, you don’t need to be. Here at ‘Me & My ID’ we like to keep things really simple, so here are 10 simple steps for protecting yourself and your family in the online world. Don’t forget to use our service and sign-up to each site you visit with a different email address as well!
1) Protect Your Personal Information
Previously you were most at risk from having your identity stolen by a thief grabbing a copy of a letter or bank statement with your personal information on. Thanks to the internet a vast amount of this information is now readily available online which means protecting the rest of your data is even more crucial. Personal information to be especially cautious about include: full name (including middle names that hackers are often not aware of), National Insurance number, passport number, bank account and credit card providers, phone numbers and email addresses.
Whilst the most common reaction from people is that they would never consider posting this information often times they over look photos that are shared on social media. Pictures include; funny passport photos (without blocking out private information), flight tickets, statements from credit providers etc.
2) Use Free Wi-fi Providers Cautiously
It’s almost a deal breaker now that every cafe, pub and restaurant must have free wi-fi before we will consider frequenting their establishment. While this is useful for checking Facebook, email and perhaps doing some work these connections are not secure and highly risky for anything involving personal information such as logging onto online banking. Don’t forget that your mobile phone will save the wi-fi password and next time you visit will connect automatically so you might not be aware that your connection is open for all to see.
3) Google Before You Click
Perhaps the single most important ability the internet has given us, is the ability to share information and quickly! This means that when scams occur you can quickly read about them online and don’t need to ‘make your own mistakes’. When you receive an email or click on a link that makes you wonder even for a second, search online for information relating to that email. Fortunately, there are millions of people worldwide that are willing and happy to take the time to update sites on the latest scams. (You can even Google telephone numbers you don’t recognise and that keep calling you - just type in the number in full.) Read the feedback and follow it!
4) Keep Your Computer Clean
Depending on your machine and / or the software you use, running and updating anti-virus software can seem like a time consuming bore however keeping your software up to date and conducting regular deep scans is key to protecting yourself from malicious software usually designed to steal your information. The default setting (monitoring in real-time plus weekly full scans) is the only way to go.
5) Trust Your Gut
Online as in ‘the real world’ you quickly discover a ‘gut feeling’ for things that appear to be misleading or inappropriate. Don’t ignore this feeling. Rather listen closely and ensure you are following the remaining advice in this article.
6) Be Cautious of Duplicate Sites
There is an increasing number of sites set up with the intention of confusing the public and stealing the information entered. The most common of this type are banks, credit card providers, HMRC and the like. This even involves solicitors and law firms nowadays. If you are involved in a potential transaction and receive an email or letter informing you of a change of email address of bank details, be sure to phone the organisation on the number you have previously been using and confirm that this is in fact correct. Hackers will target you if they hear that you are about to transfer cash like a deposit for a house, maybe because you emailed your solicitor from the local pub using their wi-fi; it’s called ‘spear-phishing’.
7) Change Passwords Regularly
Please, please, please avoid using common passwords like ‘password1234’ (yes, people still use that one). The next step is to ensure you don’t use the same password across your important accounts like bank accounts. This ensures that if thieves obtain access to one of your accounts they cannot access them all.
When choosing passwords, best practice is to use a random combination of letters, numbers and symbols to create a password, making it increasingly difficult to be hacked. This can pose other problems (remembering so many different passwords!) so a second-best is to append a word, phrase or number, to a common stub, which means something to you in relation to the particular site you are using.
In addition use a different email address each time you sign-up, where the ‘Me & My ID’ part1 is related to the website in question; that’s what we are here for.
8) Beware Metatags and Location Sharing
When photos are taken with digital devices like smart-phones a vast amount of data is retained and accessible in the photo. This information can include: time, date, location and more. If this photo is then posted online it is possible for people to ascertain whether or not you are at home and therefore consider breaking into your house. The same rule applies when posting information about being away on holiday and exact travel information. This risk is further exacerbated by the use of real time streaming services like Facebook Live or Snapchat. By sharing your location in real time you are potentially advertising that your home is unattended or where you can be mugged.
9) Use two-factor authentication
Two-factor authentication is a service provided by organisations like Google, Vodafone and most banks that means you receive a text when someone attempts to log into your account and provides you with a code to enter. It can seem slightly frustrating, but is most certainly a one minute delay worth putting up with. This slight delay is considerably less time consuming than it takes to resolve a hacked account!
10) Don’t Give Out Your Password
Again, we often smile wryly under the assumption that we would never give out our password but all is quickly forgotten when we need something done urgently and give out our password without a second thought. While the person we give the password to may intend to keep it safe, if they have not updated their internet security or been diligent with their own passwords they may be hacked and your information is then compromised. Better be safe than sorry and not give out your password.
We hope you’ll set-up a ‘Me & My ID’ account now and follow these tips if you want to reduce the chances of identity theft and also curtail inbox spam.
O2 customer data has been found for sale on the 'dark web'. It's bad enough discovering that your mobile phone account has been hacked but that's only the start of it - 'credential stuffing' is when hackers try your compromised email address and password combination on other sites, like Ebay, Gmail and PayPal. Before you know it all your accounts are being cleaned out and then used to defraud other customers.
One solution is to ensure that you use a different email address everywhere you sign-up. Using a tool like 'Me and My ID' you can create hundreds of aliases, which are easy to remember because they contain the brand's name e.g. [email protected]. We re-direct all your marketing email to your main email address.
An added benefit is that when - not if - this alias email address is stolen, and you start to receive SPAM, you can block it via our console.
More than half the world has suffered from Cybercrime
The annual tome (#InternetTrends) from Mary Meeker (of venture capital firm @KCPB) contained something we hadn’t seen before - figures for the number of data records breached globally. At ~4bn since 2013 you can be pretty sure that, as wealthy ‘Westerners’ and so valuable targets, you have been compromised at least once. Read the rest of the article (http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends) and you’ll be left with the feeling that this is only going to get worse. No matter how well businesses and governments protect your information with good hardware and software your data will still ‘walk out the door‘ when bad employees are offered bribes. Expect it to happen and so refrain from using the same email address in different places with tools such as ‘Me and My ID’.
If only you had used ‘Me and My ID’ for your LinkedIn account
Nothing in life is guaranteed to be completely secure but if you use a ‘Me and My ID’ email address (aka an alias) when signing-up for sites like LinkedIn you reduce the personal impact when details get stolen. As they will ...
Using the same email address everywhere helps the identity thief. Once they have your details from, say, LinkedIn, they will try them elsewhere. You can add an extra layer of security by signing-up to websites using a different MMID alias each time. (This has the side effect of protecting your real email address from SPAM as well, and you can later block senders to the alias or cancel it altogether ... leaving your personal email address unaffected.)
If you also add a prefix/suffix to a common password, which is related the site and so easy to remember, then you are doing more than almost all other users. As they say, to escape from the lion/tiger just make sure you are faster than the other human.
Maybe, is the answer. Let’s not get confused about what the ‘Cloud’ is. Whilst most data breaches have been from private networks (Sony, Ashley Madison etc.) the same security flaws exist in the Cloud. Virtualised computing across shared hardware is theoretically more secure if configured correctly (and data ‘sharded’ for example) but humans are still involved, and there is your weakness.
Why not reduce the risks by giving each site you sign-up to a different email address, using something like ‘Me and My ID’?
Most people reading this will be, in one way at least, lucky enough to have grown up before the internet became ubiquitous. But for young people today, much of their daily lives is now documented, published globally and archived in perpetuity. Their youthful indiscretions are shared on Facebook, pictured on Instragram and debated on Twitter.
A new movement has been formed to seek to protect young people from their online persona later in life. Called iRights, it called for children and young people to be able to:
Remove or edit information about themselves
Know what data is held about them
Be safe and get support when confronted by illegal practices
Make informed choices
Be digitally literate
The new minister of internet safety and security, Joanna Shields, has endorsed the plan, and it has widespread support from leading technology companies, and EU law is moving towards enforcement of these rights.
But for the rest of us, our digital footprint will remain harder to remove. That’s why we created Me and My ID as one further defensive weapon in your armory as you battle to retain your privacy online. By using a separate, unique email address for each online connection you establish, it becomes much harder for others to build a single picture of all you do, or to tie that back to you personally. Sign up for your lifetime free account today, and keep your personal email address private and your business a little less public.
Popular password saving application warns users about security breach
Introduces “two-factor” authorisation in response
Users advised to change their master password
Popular password storage app LastPass has issued a warning to all its users that it has “ discovered and immediately blocked suspicious activity” on its network.
The company states it is confident that its subscription algorithms will protect the passwords it stores, but has nevertheless changed its login process to require new IP addresses and devices to be specifically authorised.
Industry experts commented that such changes to systems would have taken several days to implement, and questioned how swiftly the company disclosed the security breach while it was preparing these changes.
Putting all your eggs in one basket by storing all your passwords in one applications has always been a questionable strategy from a security perspective. Such high profile applications are bound to be attractive targets to highly sophisticated hackers.
Me and My ID provides a simple alternative security measure for your online activity. By creating a unique email address for every site you access, and using this as your login username, there is no risk that when your username and password combination are stolen from one site, that the same combination can be tried on hundreds of other popular sites in the hope you’ve used it in several places. And while we would never advise using the same password on multiple sites, if you do find it hard to remember lots of passwords, instead of using an app such as LastPass, you can make small changes to a similar core password that you never even write down, and rely on the fact that you have a unique username for every site instead.
Sign up today for a lifetime free account at http://meandmyid.com
MargaretThatcheris110%Sexy - was the most secure password ever (until now)
Edward Snowden offers advice on password security
Wikileak informant laughs at most passwords
Using BOTH a Me and My ID email address and a strong password to login will reduce risk even further
In a fascinating interview on US show “Last week tonight” with the British presenter, John Oliver, Edward Snowden laughed at the security of passwords most of us would consider pretty hard to crack.
His advice was to “shift thinking about passwords to passphrases” - they should be too long for brute force attacks (where a computer tries every possible combination of letters, numbers and symbols), and not comprised of words you find the dictionary.
Our free service allows you to create a new email address for each and every account you create online - if you use that as your username, then you will never have the same username and password combination for any two sites. So that way, if one site’s security is breached, hackers will not be able to take your username and password combination and try using it on thousands of other sites in the hope you access those sites with the same details. By doing this and having a “Snowden approved” password, you are making yourself safer than 99.9% of all internet users.
Me and My ID will protect you from exactly this risk
British Airways have contacted some customers to warn them that unauthorised access may have been made to their online frequent flyer accounts, leaving them without the air miles they’ve accumulated over the years.
BA wrote to an undisclosed number of customers to warn them they may have been hacked. The email suggests the most likely way was that the attackers found login credentials for other services used by BA customers, and were able to use the same username and password to break into their accounts.
One passenger noticed their miles were used to book a hotel in Spain. Others have reported their entire balance of Avios points was wiped out by adjustments made to their accounts.
Me and My ID allows you to used a separate, unique email address for each online account you set up. By using that email as your username, you will NEVER have the same username and password combination for more than one online account. So if any one of them is hacked and your credentials compromised, the rest of your online life remains safe and secure. It simple to set up and free to join for life.
Half of all computers vulnerable to 'Rowhammer' attacks
Manufacturers scramble to redesign their computers
A new hacking technique has been discovered, with 15 of 29 computers tested found to be vulnerable.
Electromagnetism leaks from transistors which store the millions of 1s and 0s that make our computers work.
By targeting a specific transistor with excessive load, researchers found hackers could cause the memory in neighbouring chips to be corrupted, with 1s becoming 0s and vice versa. In theory, if you target the chip next to the one which is tasked with keeping the computer secure, you are able to trigger a mini cyber-bomb close enough to disrupt its work.
This all took the combined efforts of Google, Intel and Carnegie Mellon University researchers, so don't panic too much that "rowhammering" as it is known, is about to be taken up by schoolkid hackers operating from the bedrooms, but hardware manufacturers have been alerted and will doubtless be rethinking their designs.
Of course, to be at risk from such an attack you need to have allowed a virus or worm to infect your computer. Good anti-virus software does help, but cannot always spot the latest form of attack.
If you use a unique Me and My ID email address each time you sign up somewhere new, you will get one more clue to a hack attack - emails you receive which are not from the source you originally gave that one address to will be immediately obvious. So if an email appearing to come from Tesco is sent to the account you created for Tesco, you will smell a rat. It might be just enough to make you think twice before clicking on the "attached special offer" which in fact is a virus.
Old favourites still dominate the list of the most used passwords
2014 sees new entries - batman and superman
If you use these passwords, expect your online accounts to be hacked
The annual rankings of the most popular passwords has been published, and it turns out we're not learning from the many reports of high profile hacking over the past year.
123456 retains its position at number one in the chart with "password" again hot on its heels at No 2.
At Me and My ID, we have offered plenty of advice on how to create complex, hard to crack passwords (see list earlier blog post here), but we also recommend you use different usernames for every account you create - that way if a hacker does guess your password and username for site A, they can't also use it on site B, site C, site D etc.
We allow you to create a new email address - for free - every time you sign up somewhere new online. You still get the emails in your inbox - but can block them if they get spammed and you've never had to give out your private email address. And by using that unique email address as your username when you log on to a site, you've guaranteed that it is the only place you use the same combination of username and password. So even if you are using a password from list (and please don't) - or this longer list of the top 500 that hackers try out when breaking in (here) - then you'll only ever be exposes on the one site they crack, not all the others you use.
So - get create a difficult to crack password (14 characters or more long, using letters, numbers and symbols and no recognisable words), and use a different log in email address from Me and My ID for every site, as you will become a lot less vulnerable to cybercrime.
Iain C
Chief Privacy Officer
Me and My ID
Data source: http://splashdata.com/press/worst-passwords-of-2014.htm
The maths behind secure password - in cartoon format
10 character complex passwords can be cracked in 3 days
Make it a little longer, and it can take years to break it
Here's a useful cartoon explanation of why we argue for lengthy passwords, no matter how complex they are in terms of the use of symbols and numbers - at the end of the day, a password becomes a series of zeros and ones in the binary language of computers, and that means with enough tries, you can crack it.
Cartoon courtesy of xkcd.com
So even if you can't make your password complex, at least make it long and there's a good chance the hackers will devote their processing time to someone more worth such a lengthy effort.
