Mozilla Firefox has a wonderful plugin or Addon gallery that allows anyone to have additionally functionality to surfing the web. Often this is used for notifiers for Twitter, Blog Subscriptions, Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Mail or GMail Inbox. 

There are security specific Addon's for Firefox that help protect people from exposing their login information when logging into bank sites, social media or webmail like https-everywhere (see more details here).
Google's Chrome browser also has something called Extensions that do the same thing as Mozilla Addons, but for Chrome.

Internet Explorer has been trying to offer these technologies in their newer browsers, but have been lacking in their overall security features. Recently Microsoft introduced InPrivate Filtering which is a type of protection against known bad websites. It allows you to build your own lists of sites that you want to block or allow when using Internet Explorer. This was a great leap in security for Microsoft browsers and as of today, if you use Internet Explorer 7 or 8, you can download pre-built lists (like the one offered by John Delizo) tthat can be imported directly into the browser under Tools -  Manage Addons.
Microsoft recently released Internet Explorer 9, and with it has changed the technology to block or allow web sites. They are trying to get closer to the design of Mozilla's famous blocking Addon called AdBlock Plus. If your machine is running windows XP Professional, this does not apply. For all machines Windows Vista or Windows 7 (or Windows 8) , you can no longer use Internet Explorer 8 InPrivate filtering to import block lists, but you can use a method more similar to Firefox called TPL lists. TPL lists are well described in the website PrivacyChoice. They also include a great FAQ about their list and the overall technologies.
(Credit: thanks for lifehacker for the image!)

Short Video on How to Tell if an Email is Fake

New trends in malware and security breaches include using personal email address books and sending email from your account, to someone you know. Typically the email may only include one sentence, if anything, an attached link to a website, sometimes with a leading sentences like:
"Check out our recent vacation pictures..."
"The funniest video I have seen in a long time..."
"I captured a picture of you naked"
"Sign up to get a free iPad"
"Your account has been deducted"
"UPS delivery"
"Important Intuit account information"
"IRS fraud notice"


It is the best policy to simply DELETE the suspicious email and NEVER click on the link.


Here is a video that can help you determine if you are seeing a fake email:

How to Create A Strong Password

Years ago when the Internet was still 'wet behind the ears', using a simple password seemed like a good idea.

Today things have changed and it is critical to update this policy for every individual. There are too many ways for bad people to figure out your password, to leave it as a simple work or word and number. 
Here is a great and quick primer video from Google to help understand how to create a great password.

ALWAYS make a unique strong password for your email so other people cannot verify your password changes.

Password Checker Sites - Use these!

A recent popular Trojan that took account passwords from a famous technical blog site, Gawker.com has been a focus of geek attention.
The UK paper called The Telegraph also wrote about the 25 weakest passwords in use today. These accounts at Gawker were broken into because of weak passwords.
Hackers have been showing more and more interest in breaking into web accounts like Gmail, Hotmail.com, Comcast.net, Live.com, Twitter.com, Ffacebook.com, etc.

While Gmail has released something called 2 step verification as an EXCELLENT option for your Google Account, most other sites are still not doing this.

For a sanity check there are some reliable and trustworthy web sites you can use to test your existing passwords; to see how strong they are.  These great sites let you know if your password is strong enough for today's web:

Microsoft Password Strength Checker
How Secure Is My Password?
The Password Meter
WolframAlpha
our favorite Steve Gibson Password Haystack Webpage 

For creating a very complicated password, consider using Steve Gibson’s  Password Generator Webpage

This is so importnat that we have now published this on both blogs.
- credits to lifehacker.com and grc.com !

GMail, Google Calendar and Google Docs Offline

As more clients find purpose and use in Google Apps, we are often asked about functionality while away from Internet access. Google recently announced Google Offline, which gives that exact feature to some of their products.

Simply install Google Chrome on your Mac or Windows machine and download the Offline App from the Chrome store for free.

Then, while on a plane without Internet access or even before turning on a battery draining WiFi card in a laptop or mobile tablet, prepare emails in Google Offline and access your calendar and documents (documents have not been made editable offline, but they are working on this to get make it available ASAP).
When completed with your emails, reattach to an Internet WiFi hotspot (that is WPA/WPA2 protected!!) and send your emails.
According to the GMail team's recent announcement:

Google Calendar and Google Docs let you seamlessly transition between on- and offline modes. When you’re offline in Google Calendar, you can view events from your calendars and RSVP to appointments. With Google Docs you can view documents and spreadsheets when you don’t have a connection. Offline editing isn’t ready yet, but we know it’s important to many of you, and we’re working hard to make it a reality. To get started using Google Calendar or Google Docs offline, just click the gear icon at the top right corner of the web app and select the option for offline access. 

 This again shows how forward thinking Google is with their cloud technologies. For those mobile professionals looking for this technology built into their mobile devices, consider the laptop replacement called the chromebook. It comes in both wi-fi and 3G releases.