Category: information

January 31, 2017

Preview of Safer Internet Day 2017

The Safer Internet Day for 2017 is Tuesday 7^th February.

What does this mean?

The UK Safer Internet Centre has a website at www.saferinternet.org.uk and its aim is to make the Internet a safer place for everyone but they do concentrate on children and young people who are generally the most vulnerable.

They are a partnership between Childnet International, Internet Watch Foundation and South West Grid for Learning. It is part-funded by the European Union.

Their job is to promote safer us of the Internet and they have created Education Packs and complementary TV films tailored for 5 to 7 year olds, 7-11s, 11-14s, 14-18s and parents and carers.

These free packs include lesson plans, posters, presentations, activities and more!

Safer Internet Day in 2016 reached 4 million people, mostly young people on social media and over a thousand organisations got involved so it’s quite an event.

One of the campaigns for this year is to look at the power of photographs through the impact they have. There are various photographic projects specified – each with a learning aspect to it.

If you want to take part – go to www.saferinternet.org.uk

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January 25, 2017

How to Buy Fake Website Traffic

Website owners are always keen to know how much traffic their site gets i.e. how many people visit the site, which pages they read etc.

We all know that some of the ‘traffic’ on the Internet is fake, but most website owners hope it is a small percentage of the real traffic. However, some companies in the field of advertising believe that up to 50% of traffic achieved through advertising could be fake.

In this context ‘fake’ means it’s not a person looking at your website – it’s another computer.

This is the reason why so many websites these days insist you answer a Capcha query to prove you are a human being.

Suppose you have a new website and you believe the content is worth sharing. You want to get a lot of people to view your website. How do you go about this?

The starting point is to tell everyone you know, use social media to advertise your website content, tell anyone in the industry that you know and ask everyone to spread the word about your website.

Then if you need more traffic i.e. people looking at your website – you might consider paying for traffic – from Google, Facebook, Twitter etc. This is good traffic (i.e. real people viewing your adverts) but it does cost.

If you can’t get (or afford) the traffic you want then you may look at the cheaper traffic providers.

Cheap Traffic

How do cheaper suppliers get traffic for your site – there’s lots of ways e.g. clickbait, spam messages, posting fake comments on popular blogs or forums, fake adverts, advert marketplaces, fake SEO, traffic exchanges, etc.

Clickbait is such a source that is increasingly used on popular news aggregator and entertainment websites. You will see mini ads with labels such as “10 things you didn’t know about Scarlett Johannsen” or “See what happened to these child stars”. When someone clicks on the ad they don’t get what they expected but are directed to a website where the owner has paid to get more people viewing their site.

Clickbait is annoying but harmless. More of a problem are “bots”. This means pieces of software that mimic people in viewing websites and clicking on links.

Using these techniques, your website may get lots of traffic but it could be largely other computers and is very unlikely to be people wanting to do business with you.

How Can You Identify Fake Traffic?

This is a complicated matter and needs expertise, but you would start by examining the statistics/analytics for the website :-

A very high Bounce Rate can indicate disinterested visitors or bots.

A very low Pages/Session figure can mean people attracted to the site are only interested in one link then they leave. If combined with a very short average length of visit can mean automated viewing not people.

If you don’t go down the route of buying cheap traffic then you shouldn’t normally have to worry about fake traffic.

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January 4, 2017

Update on Yahoo Breach

In November 2016, Yahoo realised it had suffered a data breach back in 2013. Yahoo released information on what had happened and informed everyone who may have been affected by this.

See blog post https://fightback.ninja/test/the-yahoo-data-breach-reported-december-2016/ for more information.

Yahoo has now released more information concerning how this happened.

Yahoo say they called in outside forensic experts to examine what happened and there has been the creation of forged cookies that could allow an intruder to access users’ accounts without a password. Based on the ongoing investigation, the outside forensic experts have identified user accounts for which they believe forged cookies were taken or used in 2015 or 2016.

The company is notifying the affected account holders, and has invalidated the forged cookies. They have connected some of this activity to the same state-sponsored actor believed to be responsible for the data theft we disclosed on September 22, 2016.

If you have not been contacted by Yahoo specifically about this, then your account will not have been affected.

However, if you have a Yahoo account then you should have changed your password and security questions and answers recently. If you haven’t done this then you should ASAP and also any other accounts that use the same login and password.

It is wise to review all of your accounts for suspicious activity and be cautious of any unsolicited communications that ask for your personal information or refer you to a web page asking for personal information.

Yahoo are doing everything they can to protect their customers data.

For further information go to https://help.yahoo.com/kb/account/SLN27925.html

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December 19, 2016

The Yahoo Data Breach Reported December 2016

If you are a registered user of Yahoo then you will have received an email from Yahoo explaining what happened in the data breach that has been reported on TV and in newspapers this month. Someone collected a huge amount of information from Yahoo without their knowledge in August 2013 and it was only in December 2016 that Yahoo found out it’s security had been breached.

Yahoo believe the data copied contains name and email address, telephone numbers, date of birth and in some cases hashed passwords and security questions and answers. But does not include any financial information or credit card numbers etc.

Yahoo only found out about this when asked by Law Enforcement to examine some data that turned out to be from Yahoo and their investigation proved what had happened three years previously.

As a Yahoo User What Must I Do?

If you have not changed your Yahoo password recently then do so quickly and make sure to set a safe password [https://fightback.ninja/test/how-to-keep-your-passwords-safe/]. You should also change your security questions.

Check your accounts for any suspicious activities and remember that scammers sometimes only take small amounts for a period of months, hoping to be ignored.

What About Other Online Logins and Passwords?

If you have other accounts that use the same login and password as Yahoo then you should change them quickly. Once scammers have your login and password they will check other websites to see if you’ve used the same information.

Ideally you should use different logins and passwords for each website you’re registered with. However, that may be impractical for people with lots of such logins but you should at least use a set of logins and passwords and not the same one for every web site.

Note: If you receive an email or call from someone claiming to work for Yahoo – be suspicious and do not divulge any confidential information even if they seem to have your information already.

Go to http://yahoo.com/security-update for further information from Yahoo.

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December 14, 2016

Consumer Rights and Scams

The Consumer Rights Act of 2015 covers a lot of areas including – the quality of products and services, returning goods, repairs and replacement, digital products and more.

One approach scammers use is to supply goods that are poorer quality than the buyer expects and has a right to receive e.g. fake perfumes, fake medicines etc. As a consumer you don’t have to write off shoddy products or fakes as ‘you get what you pay for’ but realise the Consumer Rights Act is intended to protect you against this.

Products and Services (including digital products) must be of satisfactory quality, match their description and be fit for purpose.

Satisfactory Quality

Products must not be damaged or incomplete or faulty when received, otherwise you can claim a replacement. If you buy a cheap item then you cannot reasonably expect it to last as long or work as well as a more expensive version.

Match The Description

If the product or service does not match the description e.g. missing features, then you can claim under the Consumer Rights Act 2015

Fit For Purpose

The products must be suitable for the intended use as long as the intended use matches the description of the products. You cannot use a plastic snow shovel for digging your garden and claim it doesn’t work – that use is different from the intended use as described by the supplier.

Make use of the Consumer Rights Act to stand up for your rights.

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December 9, 2016

How to Block Spam Emails

What is Spam Email?

This is a little like trying to define which plants are weeds. Spam emails are mass emails that you don’t want to receive.

The big emails services such as Google Gmail, Microsoft Hotmail, Yahoo email and others automatically delete as much spam mail as they can be sure of, but huge amounts still gets through to us It is estimated that 50% of the world’s email is spam. That’s a lot of billions of emails per day.

So, how do you block this stuff?

Your email provider will have a series of settings available that let you choose whether to accept all email or automatically filter out anything suspicious. It’s your choice – block everything and risk losing important emails or put up with the spam to ensure you get all relevant emails.

Your email service will learn from your actions – as you mark emails as spam or not spam it learns which ones you do want.

Spam Blocking Services

There are specialist services that can filter your email and only allow through the ones you want. This can be a little hit and miss as the service has to learn which ones you want.

Here are some of the most popular spam blocking services:-

Mailwasher (www.mailwasher.net)

This is a free service and is used by several millions of people. It claims to work with Windows Live Mail, GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo, EM Client and every other email program.

Unsubscriber (www.getunsubscriber.com)

After you sign up, an Unsubscribe folder is created in your inbox. Drag in unwanted email and Unsubscriber will block email from those senders from entering your inbox.