Sir Tim Berners-Lee — the inventor of the World Wide Web — has won this year’s A.M. Turing Award, which is frequently described as the “Nobel Prize of Computing,” by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
Turing Award is named after Alan Mathison Turing, the British mathematician and computer scientist who was a key contributor to the Allied cryptanalysis of German Enigma cipher and
With all the data breaches that happened during 2016 – just think back to the 32 million Twitter passwords on the Dark Web or the time we found out that Mr. Zuckerberg’s password was ‘dadada’ –one should think that people have managed to notice that password security is a good idea and somewhat important. Think […]
The post The 25 worst passwords of them all appeared first on Avira Blog.
At local airports there might be local WiFi available. But is it free? And what’s the password?
The post Your free wifi map for airports appeared first on Avira Blog.
Do you know all the laws about online activities in your country which could come into play?
The post These 7 online activities could land you in jail appeared first on Avira Blog.
It’s been a long year, with many unexpected incidents – be it good or bad ones. One thing remains a constant though: People are still using Google to search for … yes, for what? Google was nice enough to put together a list with the top searches of 2016 – and since it’s fun to […]
The post Top 5 Google Searches of 2016 appeared first on Avira Blog.
The newest phishing email to hit my Outlook inbox had a visual message: Spammers have learned that design sells. Most phish are really like fish – they smell, and not just after three days. There usually is something that screams “FAKE” and practically pushes you to trash it. The obvious forgery of most phish also […]
The post Spammers dive into design for better phish appeared first on Avira Blog.
With Christmas just 11 days away, shopping is still in full swing for most consumers around the world. According to a survey of shoppers by the National Retail Federation, as of Thanksgiving 2016, only 9 percent of US shoppers are finished with their Christmas buying. With the majority of shoppers choosing to shop online, the […]
The post How to Shop Online in Secret, and Other Tips This Holiday Season appeared first on Avira Blog.
In simple terms, a VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is a connection between a group of discrete networks that exchanges encrypted data between your computer and a distant server.
Sounds like boring technical jargon? Well, VPN’s can actually be used to perform some pretty neat tricks online that you’ll be missing out on if you don’t employ the services of these privacy boosting devices:
VPN’s are an essential tool for professionals out there who travel and have to access important files from a distance. Individuals can use a VPN to access network resources even if they’re not physically connected to the same LAN (local area network).
Why are they perfect for dealing with important data from afar? Well, a VPN is also an efficient and easy way to maintain your privacy when you’re surfing the web. In fact, many experts recommend the use of a VPN when browsing the Internet on a public Wi-Fi hotspot as they guarantee that all the data you’re sending and receiving is encrypted and inaccessible to hackers.
If anyone tries to pry on your internet activity, all they’ll see is the VPN connection, all other data will remain anonymous.
A controversial function of the VPN for sure, they can be used to bypass government censorship anonymously. Whether you agree or not with censorship online, it’s an undeniable fact that certain websites are blocked for legal reasons, almost every government worldwide blocking certain websites within their country.
Meanwhile, the ability that a VPN gives its user to go undetected online has been highlighted in the news recently as police in Holland confiscated 2 servers from VPN provider Perfect Privacy without releasing a public statement.
The German and French governments also want to controversially force mobile operating systems, by law, to allow them to access encrypted content if they deem it necessary in federal investigations.
Here’s where the fun begins! Many, many people are using VPN’s merely for entertainment purposes. The reason for this? Companies like Netflix, Youtube and Hulu use geo-blocking mechanisms to make some of their content unavailable outside of certain countries due to legal requirements appertaining to arguably outdated content laws in this age of free information.
In fact some people argue that, though this is only speculation, the content laws being so outdated, recent attempts by companies like Netflix to crack down on VPN usage have only been for show. In other words, the streaming giant wants to keep Hollywood distribution companies, who are responsible for creating a great deal of the content shown on Netflix, happy whilst harboring no real desire for making it harder to access their shows worldwide.
As an example of the numbers, in the US, Netflix offers the full experience of roughly 7000 shows, whereas in the UK slightly more than 4000 are available. Countries that have only been reached by Netflix recently are far behind.
Netflix though, has recently been trying to crack down on VPN usage, whilst also admitting that it is almost impossible to do so effectively.
The company’s Chief Product officer recently said that “since the goal of the proxy guys is to hide the source, it’s not obvious how to stop VPN Users. It’s likely to always be a cat-and-mouse game.”
Though the streaming company have blocked certain VPN users from accessing the site, providers like Express VPN and Buffered VPN claim to have great success at getting around these measures.
The post What is a VPN and how it Works? appeared first on Panda Security Mediacenter.
The German Public Prosecutor’s Office in Verden, in close cooperation with the FBI, Europol and other global partners, has smashed a worldwide botnet.
The post Worldwide botnet Avalanche smashed appeared first on Avira Blog.
One of the most common and most sensitive documents that companies handle on a daily basis is invoices. Issuing and receiving them is a fundamental activity for every business, however, people are not always aware of how important they are even after being paid or collected.
Together or individually, they can expose critical information that can be very valuable to your competitors, such as customer lists, product and service descriptions, prices and promotions, or details of key agreements.
However, these files are so common in organizations that they are often treated carelessly or with a complete disregard for security by employees, to the point of being sent via email in unencrypted formats, through instant messaging applications, stored in virtual stores more or less accessible to the public, in physical devices such as pen drives, etc. In fact, it’s quite easy to overlook the importance of the information they can provide to a third party.
Invoices are so common that they are often treated carelessly.
Just do a couple of searches on Google and you’ll realize the extent of the problem. Search for such simple, obvious terms as ‘invoice euros vat inc address tax number date total’ with a filter to show only PDF files, and you’ll find an endless number of sensitive documents that are accessible to the public without companies knowing.
Companies in the textile sector, integrated service companies, travel agencies, etc. The list is too long, especially if you consider how easy it is to protect invoices if you take the appropriate precautions.
First, these and other critical files should never be stored on Internet-facing servers. However, as this can be difficult in the day-to-day reality of the majority of companies, at least it should be checked that those servers are not accessible to the public in such evident places as Google.
In reality, the presence of these and other confidential files in the popular search engine is almost always due to the wrong configuration of corporate servers, or to the fact that these include directories that can be easily crawled by Google’s bots.
Being aware of this and taking the necessary steps to prevent it is one of those simple, effective protection measures that companies often forget about. However, it is very important to understand that invoices contain far more valuable information than may seem apparent at first glance.
The post Be careful not to keep your invoices where your competitors can find them appeared first on Panda Security Mediacenter.
