Tag Archives: Tony Anscombe

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What can you do to mark Safer Internet Day?

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Safer Internet Day is fast approaching on February 10. and now is a great time to think about what we can all do to help make the Internet a safer place for everyone, especially children or those just coming online.

I am pleased to announce that AVG is a registered supporter of Safer Internet Day and that this year we will be working with the Anti Bullying Alliance in the UK to create valuable resources for young people and parents.

Safer Internet Day

 

The Internet is an incredible tool and every one of us uses it in our own way. It is important to think about small steps that you can take to make the Internet a safer place for yourself, your friends and family.

These days, being safe online doesn’t just mean on your computer. Mobile browsing and gaming is more popular than ever and with micropayments available at the click of a button, staying safe on your mobile is a must.

Here are some great tips on how to stay safe on your Android device.

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Mobile Safety Tips

 

Get Involved

Whether you run a business or just use Facebook, Safer Internet Day is about working together to create a more secure, harmonious web for us all to enjoy.

The Safer Internet Day website has several resources that can help you get started if you are thinking of getting involved.

Here are a few ways I plan to mark Safer Internet Day 2015:

  • Social sharing spring clean: A quick double check to make sure I’m only sharing with people that I want to.
  • Two Factor Authentication: Enabling this on my email and banking will help make sure my online accounts are as safe as they can be.
  • Set a passcode on my tablet: Protecting your online world starts with the devices and setting a passcode will help keep my devices and data safe.

 

At very least, I would recommend taking the Safer Internet quiz, which has loads of great tips on staying safe online.

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Why I’m not worried about fingerprint hacking

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The holiday season is a time of relaxation with family and friends. However, the news doesn’t stop and over while on the road with my family I read a story that seemed to take a sensationalist and quite negative angle.

The story titled “Politician’s fingerprint ‘cloned from photos’ by hacker” was posted on the BBC News website. It explains how, in October 2014, a hacker took photos of a politician’s hands at a news conference and managed to replicate their fingerprint from the photos. The ‘hacker’ quips that after this discovery, all politicians will most likely start wearing gloves.

Image courtesy of BBC

 

In the article, reference is made to the fact that both Apple and Samsung devices use biometric fingerprint technology to secure their mobile devices. It seems that this is meant to scare us into thinking the technology is not safe and that we cannot rely on our fingerprints to secure us.

We need to start the year with some perspective on this story. The process of recreating someone’s fingerprint this way is both difficult and time consuming and therefore unlikely to be an issue for the mass consumer audience.

It goes without saying that we have all seen locks being picked in movies yet continue to lock our doors with similar keys. Nobody is writing articles about how easy it would be to take a picture of your keys and accurately reproduce them.

I believe we should be celebrating that authentication mechanisms once only used by large companies and government agencies have found their way into our everyday lives.

If you look back a few years, only a few people used PIN numbers on their phones. If the introduction of swipe codes and biometric security increases the number of people with locked phones, isn’t that a good thing? It shows that more consumers than ever are protecting their devices in some way to stop people stealing their information.

I do of course understand that research into weaknesses in security such as this should be carried out and exposed so that better technologies can be developed.

But my final thought is to encourage people to use security on their phones rather than trying undermine the systems that might well protect them.

So how can you keep your mobile device safe? Here are some tips from AVG Academy on securing your Android mobile:

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How to keep your Android device safe

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AVG CloudCare wins VB100 antivirus award

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AVG CloudCare™ is a platform that simplifies IT management for the small and medium-sized business. It protects devices, data and people with a set of flexible services that you can manage remotely from any web browser. Activate or deactivate services, roll out policies, install software, and simply take care of issues, all in a single platform.

The importance of independent reviews on products designed for the SMB’s is that these businesses do not have the time and resource, nor the inclination in many cases, to research which solution will give them the security and reliability that their business requires.

In large enterprises teams of IT professionals evaluate multiple products and select based on criteria that their business demands. In small organisations the requirement to have a solution that answers the business needs does not change but the ability to research a market does differ.

Most SMB organizations trust their IT security to a partner, a reseller or consulting company that provides them the services and selection of products that an enterprise IT department would. The fact that the purchaser can easily validate the proposal from their IT partner by looking to see what accolades and awards the solution being offered has achieved makes the decision process much simpler.

VB100 is a comparative review conducted by Virus Bulletin, who put antivirus solutions through their paces with rigorous testing. In this case the testing was for servers running Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Try AVG CloudCare free for 30 days

 

 

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Tony’s Tips: Online Dating and Relationships

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For many of us, online dating is a daunting prospect. After all, you’re often not sure who you are talking to or sharing with in the online world.

However, with more than 40 million Americans looking for a for love online, it is really important that they know how to behave in a safe and appropriate way.

Watch the video to find out more!

 

AVG

Protection for your family, plain and simple

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Sadly, the hassle of managing the family technology is only going to get greater. The number of connected devices in our homes is growing rapidly. In 2013, the average home already had more than five connected devices. Homes like mine, with more than 20 devices, are driving this average up with every passing day.

As we start to realize that our families are spending so much time online, it is our responsibility as parents to ensure that they are doing so safely. Then the long to-do list of Internet safety comes into focus.

Our tablet has run out of space? Has my son set his privacy setting correctly on social media accounts? Is the security software on my own phone updated? What can I do to speed up my wife’s laptop?

As our list of devices continues to grow, so too does the to-do list of the family tech wiz.

There must be a simpler way to manage my family’s devices without having to actually track down each device every time I want to do something.

That’s why for 2015, AVG is launching AVG Protection: the one-stop solution to help me keep my family protected across all our devices—no matter how many—wherever we are.

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Welcome To AVG Protection

AVG Protection brings together our best security products for all platforms: AVG Internet Security for Windows desktop, laptops and tablets; AVG AntiVirus for Android smartphones and tablets; and AVG AntiVirus for Mac under a single subscription. Add to this AVG PrivacyFix and AVG Cleaner for Mac and Android, which are free, to complete my protection, performance and privacy needs — the solution is a compelling one.

But most importantly, AVG Protection has AVG Zen to tie them all together. AVG Zen allows me to manage all of our devices from one screen, fix issues, scan machines, and enable protection remotely from my PC or my Android device when mobile. And the alerting system lets me know when something needs my attention so I can rest assured my family is safe online. The days of checking up on each of my direct family or my extended family devices one by one are over.

It couldn’t be easier to start protecting your family using AVG Protection, click here to get started.

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In Pictures: Child Helpline International, London

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Lunch Session in Tower Bridge:

AVG kicked off its session with an informal lunch inside one of London’s most iconic landmarks, Tower Bridge.

Lunch at Tower Bridge

 

Celebrity Speakers

We were very lucky to be joined by Maddie Moate and Luke Franks who have earned thousands of fans on social media. Maddie and Luke gave a talk to the group about how you can stay safe and private while using social media.

Maddie and Luke

 

Geotagging Workshop

AVG’s own Tony Anscombe then led the group in an interactive sessions to demonstrate just how much they might be sharing online without realizing. In a few simple steps it is possible to find out some very personal information about a complete stranger using nothing but a few public websites.

Tony Session

 

Social Media Session

In his final session, Tony gave some easy to follow advice on how we can all stay safer while using social media and debunked a myth that messages sent over apps like Snapchat cannot be saved.

Social session

 

Interview:

Two primary school children, Felix and Tom conducted an interview with our two celebrity guests. They quizzed them on everything from technology addiction to online safety. You can read the full interview here.

Interview

 

Tips:

After a long day discussing Internet safety, here are some of the best tips raised in our session:

  • Always turn off location tagging when using photo sharing apps like Instagram.
  • When sharing a post on Facebook, always check to see who will be able to see it.
  • Never share any inappropriate images of yourself, even on apps like Snapchat. There are always ways to save the images.
  • Don’t open an email attachment from an unrecognised sender, even if it has your name on it.
  • Using a tool like AVG PrivacyFix can be an easy way to control your settings across several networks.

If you have any tips on how to stay safe on social media, let us know on our Facebook community.

 

AVG

What is the POODLE Vulnerability?

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The vulnerability relates to version 3 of an encryption technology known as SSL (Secure Socket Layer) that dates back to 1996. SSLv3 is still supported by most of the browsers and webservers on the Internet but has been replaced as the default encryption selection by newer encryption technology known as TLS (Transport Layer Security). Encryption is used to secure our connection on the Internet when we do, for example, online banking or purchase online.

When a browser connects to a webserver that supports this older technology there is a risk that if SSLv3 is the primary encryption or the connection security falls back from the newer TLS technology to SSLv3 then an attacker could potentially exploit this vulnerability. While it is unusual for websites to still be using SSLv3 as the default encryption technology, it is possible for an attacker to cause connection failures that force the server to default back to the older, insecure, technology.  By exploiting this vulnerability, an attacker could gain access to things like passwords and cookies, enabling him to access a user’s private account data on a website.

Companies have kept this old technology on their servers to ensure backward compatibility if needed. The two main options for companies to fix this vulnerability are to disable SSLv3 entirely, or change the security downgrade feature so that only the newer TLS encryption is used so that users remain safe.

As we have seen with these previous vulnerabilities it takes companies time to upgrade or in this case disable the software that is causing the issue (SSLv3 support) on the server and browser sides.  72 hours after the disclosure of the vulnerability, AVG researchers reveal that 37% of the top 100,000 domains are still vulnerable.

Staying safe:

Although web users can’t take any direct action to stay safe from POODLE, it is always good practice to keep all their systems and software updated.

For Windows users, run Windows Update to ensure you have installed all of the latest security patches. For Apple Mac users, ensure you run the Mac App Store and update to the latest security patches for your system.

By keeping your browser, operating system and security software up-to-date, you will ensure you have the best chance of avoiding malware and web based vulnerabilities.

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The truth behind Snapchat “hack”

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Well, it’s happened again. Another security breach, more embarrassing photos and films leaked all over the Web. Throw in privacy issues and possible child pornography charges and Cyber Security Awareness Month is getting off to a really bad start…or at least, to put a more positive spin on it, hopefully making people more aware.

“Snappening,” as its been called, which was revealed over the past weekend, is a breach involving users of a web site called SnapSaved.com and consists of approx. 90,000 photo’s and 9,000 videos  shared by as many as 200,000 Snapchat users.

SnapSaved.com, as you can probably tell by the description is a web service that allowed users to covertly save incoming message. The service did this by using your login credentials to access Snapchat’s servers and then store the images permanently on the SnapSaved servers.

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Staying Safe on Snapchat

Hackers managed to access the SnapSaved.com web site and steal the content that users had been storing there. While most of the content is reported to be of every day life there is of course some content that is more personal and inappropriate for viewing by anyone that it was not specifically meant for.

It’s important to understand that the hack was not on Snapchat’s servers.

It’s important to understand that the hack was not on Snapchat’s servers. Snapchat has built a growing and loyal user base on the promise that anything sent over its network disappears after a set period of time, typically a matter of seconds. This obviously promotes users sending material they would not send over other services and can possibly lead to people being a little more daring than they should be. You can read Snapchat’s reaction to these issues here.

The breach brings home the message that whatever you post online may well end up online forever and could be seen by people that it was not intended for. In fact recently we highlighted the potential issues that Snapchat users may have if someone decides to take a copy of something that was not intended to live beyond a few seconds. You can view the video for this here.

 

Here are some quick steps you can take:

  • Consider which third-party apps you and your family use. Clearly many of these apps have more vulnerability and less oversight than the actual services themselves. For the two bigger services, Facebook and Twitter, you can check: With Twitter, click on your profile image and select “Settings” and “Apps” to revoke access to applications you no longer use or do not trust. And for Facebook, in a browser, click the lock icon on the upper right corner and do a “Privacy Checkup” to review “Your Apps”. AVG PrivacyFix allows easy access to the privacy settings of major networks, you can download it here.
  • Review your Security Settings on all your programs. Consider who you are sharing information with, and who has access. Do you know whom your child has friended? Clearly there are trust and privacy issues here as well between you and your loved ones, but a healthy discussion is certainly not a step over the line.
  • Consider what content is being shared. It’s a matter of education that this content could be made public and may have value to hackers. This can be discussed with children in the same way you might discuss the danger in posting vacation plans or financial info.

 

We all need to be more vigilant in keeping our families, our businesses and ourselves safe and cyber-secure. And some the best tools we have are education, communication, and awareness.

AVG

Amazon announce Fire Phone UK launch

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The Amazon Fire Phone, which launched in the US in July was launched in the UK this week.

The Fire Phone, which has a unique Dynamic Perspective feature which alters the display to offer the user a 3D screen from any angle. It achieves this via four front facing cameras which track the user’s face and allow gesture input.

The AVG team took full advantage of the unique head movement gesture control and built into the AVG Alarm Clock Extreme app so that users get can get the full Fire phone experience. This means that users who download the AVG app can nod or shake their head to ‘snooze’ or turn off their alarm and other physical gestures will provide a richer, more impactful experience.

We have developed two new apps, AVG AntiVirus PRO for Fire phone and AVG Alarm Clock Xtreme Free for Fire phone, both available to download from the Amazon store for FREE and are designed to take advantage of all the exiting new functionality built into the Amazon Fire phone.

Just as Amazon has done with the device, we wanted to provide users with a great experience that is engaging and exciting.

Download AntiVirus PRO for Fire phone

Download Alarm Clock Xtreme Free for Fire phone