Newsletter Archives

• No Crappy Passwords — Secure passwords, no password book

  Posted on October 17, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  You have a password book. You know the one. That ruffled little book with the cover falling off and marked-out passwords dating back to the Clinton administration.

  What would happen right now if that book got destroyed or stolen, perhaps along with the computer that remembers all those passwords?

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.42.0, 2022-10-17).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, encryption, passwords

• Cryptomator – a little foil on your head is quite fashionable

  Posted on August 29, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.35 • 2022-08-29

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  You can say you don’t trust the cloud with your files, but you do store files in the cloud. Your emails, your cat pictures on Facebook, your virtual farm in Farmville, your credit info, your bank account … yep, the cloud.

  But you don’t have to go all-in with full trust. Take matters into your own hands!

  I love my cloud storage services. I use Dropbox (my favorite), Google Drive (or whatever they’re calling it this week), OneDrive (will always be SkyDrive in my heart), and iCloud (we all make mistakes). Do I trust them to encrypt my data? Sure I do. Encrypt away, geeks! Do I also encrypt the files again from my end? Heck, yeah! Now, one might call me paranoid, but I’m really just a bit of a history buff. Words like “unhackable” and “uncrackable” sound an awful lot like “unsinkable” to me.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.35.0, 2022-08-29).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, encryption, security

• Portable Text Encryption — Your super-secret decoder ring

  Posted on August 1, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Deanna McElveen • Comment in the Forums

  FREEWARE SPOTLIGHT

  

  By Deanna McElveen

  Ever send an important and sensitive email to the wrong person? Wouldn’t it be great if the reply you got back was “Why did you send me gibberish?” instead of “Bob makes HOW MUCH!?”

  U.S. developer Dana Booth has created an easy-to-use tool to encrypt text before pasting it into an email, chat message, or anywhere else. Portable Text Encryption uses AES, DES, Blowfish, and RC4 symmetric encryption ciphers to make sure that if the recipient of your message doesn’t have the password you provide (tell them verbally — not in an email), they aren’t gonna be reading anything but gibberish.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.31.0, 2022-08-01).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Freeware Spotlight AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Deanna's Freeware Spotlight, encryption, privacy

• Apple plans to break its end-to-end encryption

  Posted on August 30, 2021 at 02:42 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  Apple Computer shocked computer-security experts when the Cupertino company announced on August 5 that it plans to circumvent end-to-end encryption in Mac and iOS software, reporting US users if more than a few photos in their iCloud account match a national database of child pornography.

  “We want to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit and exploit them, and limit the spread of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM),” Apple said in its announcement. But people with experience in the subject said the technology would be used for everything other than that.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.33.0 (2021-08-30).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender Apple, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, encryption, privacy, Public Defender, security, Surveillance

• Check or change Win10’s file-sharing encryption level

  Posted on April 12, 2021 at 01:04 CDT by Fred Langa • Comment in the Forums

  LANGALIST

  

  By Fred Langa

  If you’ve upgraded your PC from Win7, Win8, or early Win10 versions, it may still be using a thoroughly obsolete and nearly useless level of encryption for file sharing!

  Plus: More on “stuttering mice” and a potentially dangerous charger-cord fire hazard!

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.13.0 (2021-04-12).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, LangaList AskWoody Plus Newsletter, encryption, hardware, LangaList

• Microsoft 365 privacy tools

  Posted on September 6, 2020 at 21:05 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  SMALL-BUSINESS COMPUTING

  By Amy Babinchak

  I’ll assume that most AskWoody readers take their personal privacy seriously.

  But how many of you extend your privacy concerns and actions to your work? Linked tightly with security, protecting business privacy extends to coworkers, clients, and all stored data.

  In the past, Office has been both a critical business tool and a significant security risk. Fortunately, today’s Microsoft 365 for business has an excellent collection of robust security features.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.35.0 (2020-09-07).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Small Business Computing AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Business privacy, Data Loss Prevention, encryption, MS 365 for Business, Security tools

• Is your deleted cloud data really gone?

  Posted on March 9, 2020 at 01:10 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  LANGALIST

  By Fred Langa

  Most Windows users know that clicking “delete” does not actually erase local files. The same holds true for your data stored in the cloud.

  Those files can remain in remote backups or in online services’ logs for a very long time. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to keep your left-online data protected, even when it’s no longer under your full control. Here’s how.

  Plus: More on the demise of Windows’ screen saver.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.10.0 (2020-03-09).

  LangaList AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Cloud storage, Deleted data, encryption

• Comparing three file-compression tools

  Posted on February 24, 2020 at 01:00 CST by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  GENERAL COMPUTING

  By Lance Whitney

  Windows includes its own tool for compressing and uncompressing single files, multiple files, and entire folders.

  But the two most popular third-party compression tools — 7-Zip and WinZip — are far more powerful and capable.

  Windows’ built-in ZIP tool will get the job done for basic compression tasks, but it has some important limitations. For example, it has no option for creating or unzipping encrypted files. You also can’t control the compression format or level. Those are all options 7-Zip and WinZip handle with ease.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.8.0 (2020-02-24).

  Utilities 7-Zip, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, encryption, File compression, WinZip, ZIP files

• Freeware Spotlight — CipherShed

  Posted on July 8, 2019 at 01:00 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  Best Utilities

  By Deanna McElveen

  In a digital world that’s becoming increasingly less safe, data encryption is one of the better tools for keeping cyber thieves at bay.

  That’s especially true if you travel with a laptop or a flash drive — just imagine the damage you might incur if your device were lost or stolen. But keeping sensitive files, folders, and/or entire disks encrypted will make your files inaccessible to the device’s “new owner.”

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.25.0 (2019-07-08).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Utilities AskWoody Plus Newsletter, CipherShed, encryption, security

• On Facebook Secret Conversations…

  Posted on July 8, 2017 at 18:02 CDT by Kirsty • Comment in the Forums

  In the wake of the recent Snapchat location sharing change, I received a message concerning end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger:

  “… as of late last year FB messenger has end to end encryption BUT…one has to select it for each message they want to make “secret”.

  It won’t work with MS desktop FB unless its Win 10 (never for me).”

  Now I’m not a Facebook user, but this intrigued me. What I found did not seem to be very user-friendly.

  The app that introduced encryption is only available from the Microsoft Store for “Windows 10 and Windows 10 mobile”, but only the mobile app appears to have the chat encryption. It seems older OS devices must use prior app versions which do not support encryption. Naturally, apps are also available for Android and iOS.

  
  (and note the mediocre ratings…)

  HowToGeek.com have a post which details the rigmarole required to effect the much-lauded chat encryption. It discusses what parts of conversation are actually encrypted (not any video calling, or any images it allows you to send), and problems with using more than one device with the app.

  Their post contains details on how to select which device you’ll be using, how to start a new Secret Conversation, changing an existing conversation to a secret one, confirming your conversations are secret, self-destroying messages and deleting secret conversations.

  I was surprised how difficult this all seemed, when other messaging apps seem to be a little simpler.

  Thanks to @hiflyer

  Other encryption, Facebook