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Are Antivirus and Firewall Sufficient for Good Security?

10th November 2011 19 Replies Alan

Whenever people talk about computer and internet security, they talk about malware which consists of virus, trojan, worms, spyware and many more. When they come to talk about the solution for those threats, the solution is to get an antivirus and firewall to do the work.

The question now is, are they sufficient for a good computer and internet security? I would say ‘No’. It is very irresponsible to put the blame into that awesome software when you become a victim of malware infection. I believe that software like antivirus and firewall are there to help you in achieving good security, but not creating some sort of plasma shield to you.

The reasons why you have a poor security

As I said, you can’t blame the software for being too poor as the reason that you to get infected. Part of the reason why you are infected can be several below.

You are too careless when handling incoming links from email

Incoming links from emails especially from an unknown sender are usually malicious. They don’t lead to valuable site but either phishing site or malicious site. If you happen to land on a malicious site, your computer will most probably infected with virus, trojan, or worm the next minute.

If you don’t update and patch your operating system, the wounded area is the target for hackers

Sad to say, there is no such thing such as perfect software. Software is always 95% complete where 5% is the section for bugs and vulnerabilities to exist. It is the matter of time whether those vulnerabilities are found.

If the creator happened to find those vulnerabilities before the bad guys, they will still able to patch the wounded area. So if you don’t update and apply the patch, you will the one targeted by hackers to exploit your vulnerabilities.

You are the owner of your computer, not the administrator

Many of us think that being the owner of the computer means being the administrator as well. But do you know that Microsoft did not design it this way for us? There is an option to create a Standard User and there is User Account Control (UAC) so that we will use our computer in the way that we don’t have full privileges to do everything, same goes to the hacker.

By having a strict UAC, you will realize that every single time you run an application that might affect your System files, you will be asked for permission. The benefit here is, if a hacker tries to run an application to harm your system files, I bet you will know it as well when your UAC pops up.

My verdict to poor security

Having a bad security does not mean your antivirus is not efficient enough or your firewall is not solid enough. At times, it is the user who lacks of experience in handling computer threats. As a result, it is important to always stay alert whenever you are browsing the internet.

If you want to learn more about security, you can grab my copy of eBook for free on how to Build Your Own Security.

How to choose the right iPhone 4S for you

28th October 2011 23 Replies WhatContract

Buying an iPhone 4S is more complex than brain surgery! There’s a mind boggling 6 options to choose from if you count the black and white colour variants. Next you’ve got to make the dare devil decision as to how much memory you’ll need (or rather how much memory you can afford!).

After all that it’s a question of whether you buy SIM free, pay as you go or on contract. Choose to get the iPhone 4S on contract and you’ll walk into yet another wall of confusion.”Help!” you say! If you’re thinking of getting your paws on Apple’s latest must-have, then the following guide should point you in the right direction.

It don’t matter if you’re black or white!

There’s no difference whatsoever between the white and the black iPhone 4S. The white option is slightly more prone to finger marks as the black is to dust gathering. Whether you choose virgin white or classic black is down to taste. For whatever reason, the white iPhone 4S does sell on eBay for a touch over what the black fetches – so if you’re concerned about re-sale value, white is right for you.

Don’t forget your memory!

The difference in price between the 16GB and 64GB versions is around £200, so you best think carefully about how much storage you’ll actually need. With the A5 chip from the iPad on board, the iPhone 4S is capable of delivering a gaming experience like never before, but as such we can expect the games themselves to grow in size considerably (the current version of FIFA 12 for the iPhone is already more than 1.5GB). Download more than 10 games of this size and you can kiss your 16GB goodbye (let alone any music, films, pictures, videos and email attachments you want to store on your device).

Own an iPhone already? Check to see how many MB’s you’ve munched and then add 15% on top – if this adds up to more than 16GB, splash out the extra and go for 32GB option. On the hole, the 64GB monster should be reserved for the rich or super-geeky – but if you’re not the one stumping up the cash, then why not?

SIM free, Pay As You Go, or Contract?

OK, so as you might expect, there’s no definitive right answer here. There’s plenty of reasons that you might choose any of these options – it’s just a case of figuring out which is best for you.

A SIM free iPhone 4S will suit those who don’t want to be ‘tied in’ to a particular network. Perhaps you move regularly between two locations where signal is only available on a certain network, or maybe you’re moving abroad imminently.

Choosing Pay As You go for regular use will always work out more expensive than contracts, but if you want total control over your bills it’s worth investigating further. Remember that if you buy the iPhone 4S on Pay As You Go, it’ll be locked to the network that you bought it with.

Although SIM free deals are marginally more expensive than Pay As You Go, if you’re planning on switching networks, unlocking your iPhone 4S might be more hassle than finding an extra tenner for the SIM free option.

If you make a lot of calls (by a lot I mean more than 300 minutes worth per month) an iPhone 4S contract will work out far cheaper than Pay As You Go, plus you won’t have the hassle of ‘topping up’ regularly.

Another advantage of choosing an iPhone 4S on contract is the inclusive data. Unless you’re going to be using your 4S for phone calls alone, it’s likely you’ll need to connect to the internet. Email, apps, social media and of course web browsing will all use ‘cellular data’. Most contracts will come with a monthly data allowance of between 250MB and 1GB (stay away from contracts that don’t!).

Finding the best iPhone 4S contract for you

Finding the most suitable contract is largely a case of matching what you’ll use with what’s on offer, then finding the best price. If you’e already on contract then finding out how many minutes, texts and how much data your using is simple. Just give your network a call and ask!

Most of the UK networks now have login areas of their websites where you can view your latest bills. Take a look at your usage from the past 3 months and note down how many minutes of calls you’ve made, how many texts you’ve sent and the number of MB’s you’ve downloaded.

Now you know roughly what you’ll use in a month, the quickest way to find the best iPhone 4S deals is to compare contracts using a specialist mobile phone contract comparison site. These sites make it really easy to pick and choose your options and see all the tariffs available without the need to visit every network’s website. Buying your iPhone 4S online also means you avoid commission thirsty ‘assistants’ you seem to find in every high street mobile phone shop.

When you make your contract comparison, you’ll notice that the shorter the tariff length, the more expensive the monthly cost tends to be. 12 month contracts are the most expensive and although networks must offer 1 year deals by law, they more than make up for it with excessive monthly charges. Most will find that a 24 month contract works out cheapest with 18 month tariffs falling somewhere in between.

So that’s about it! I hope you enjoyed my first post on Technology Bloggers, please comment below and I’ll do my best to answer questions.

Must have WordPress plugins

18th October 2011 34 Replies Christopher Roberts

Many blogs like to publish a list of their favourite plugins. This often helps readers find new, exciting plugins that they too can use. Therefore I have decided that I should do the same on behalf of Technology Bloggers. Here is my (Christopher Roberts) list of ‘must have’ WordPress plugins 🙂

User Role Editor

In no particular order, my first must have WordPress plugin is User Role Editor. This is a very useful plugin if you run a blog with multiple users, as it allows you to change account type (e.g. contributor, author etc.) privileges, and even create whole new types of account.

A great example of when I have used this plugin is when Matt has been helping me with some ‘behind the scenes’ coding. I needed help to fix some bugs, so I created a new user account type called ‘Matt’. I then changed Matt’s account from ‘contributor’ status to ‘Matt’ status. Matt was then able to fiddle around with the plugins and blog code, whilst not being able to change any comments, posts or pages. When he was finished, I changed his privileges back to ‘contributor’.

You could also use this plugin to give users extra abilities, for example you could let them moderate comments, or upload media. All contributors by default WordPress settings can’t upload media, a real issue for a blog like ours. A quick user role edit later and everyone can now add pictures, video and music to their posts. 🙂

CommentLuv

CommentLuv is a really great plugin which enables you to give a little bit extra back to your commenters, by giving them a link back to one of their most recent posts at the end of each comment.I have written about CommentLuv before, so I don’t intend to go into any depth about it here. If you want to know more check out my post on why you should use CommentLuv.

Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin (GASP)

Growmap Anti Spambot Plugin (or as it is also know, GASP) is one of the very best plugins you can use to combat spam.

Here at Technology Bloggers we get hundreds of comments every month, but I am sure that we would get thousands more if we didn’t have such a good spam filter. Of the comments that we get I would estimate that around 10% are spam. If Technology Bloggers stopped using Akismet and and GASP, then I think we would see our comments double, but the extra ones would all be spam.

GASP places the tickbox (or checkbox for my American friends) that you see underneath the comment box. Logged in users need not worry about this, but users who are not logged in will need to make sure that they tick this box (and they will be prompted if they don’t) in order to make sure that their comment is approved.

Akismet then helps us out by throwing any user written/generated potentially spammy comments into the spam folder. We can review these and it is then much easier to sift through and fish out any good comments which may have got caught up.

Akismet is good, and very useful, but if you really want to stop spam, I would always make sure you have GASP.

ReplyMe

I have written an article about ReplyMe before, giving an explanation of what it does, who uses it and why it is useful. To briefly sum it up it is a plugin which sends commenters an email when someone replies to their comment, helping to improve the blog’s community. For more information please check out our ReplyMe article.

Prettier Trackbacks

Some themes present trackbacks just the way you want them to, other themes unfortunately don’t. The way I like trackbacks is the post title linked to the article that sits amongst the comments. Our current theme shows some text from the article too, which can look good, but often doesn’t.

Prettier Trackbacks displays trackbacks the way I like them, and with a bit of editing/tweaking, you can make it show them just about anyway you want!

Move WordPress Comments

The next plugin on my list is Move WordPress Comments. Have you ever had someone comment in reply to someone else, but they forgot to hit the reply button, or have you ever done it yourself? If the answer is yes, then this plugin is a very useful one indeed!

What the Move WordPress Comments plugin does is put a few extra details an options below comments in the dashboard and on the blog. These details are the comment’s number, the post number and the parent comment’s number.

If the commenter has published their comment on the wrong post, just simply change the post number and click ‘move’ and the comment will shoot off to the correct post.

If the commenter has published the comment in reply to someone, but hasn’t joined the comment to the parent comment, then all you need to do is scroll up to the parent comment and find out what number it is. You then take the parent comment’s number, put it in the reply/child comment’s ‘parent comment’ box and click move.

Confused? Check out the images below 🙂

The second comment is in reply to the first, however it is not threaded - to solve this just take the parent comment's number and then put it in the 'Parent Comment' box on the reply comment and click 'Move'

Et voilà! The reply comment is now threaded under the parent comment!

Digg Digg

Digg Digg is a really great plugin if you like to make your blog ‘social media friendly’! At the top of every article Technology Bloggers displays Google +, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook buttons, so that you can easily share our content.

Technology Bloggers social media share buttons, as provided by Digg Digg

This is all thanks to Digg Digg which gives you more social media buttons and options than you could shake a stick at! If you want to create a social media friendly blog, Digg Digg is one of the best plugins out there!

Top Commentators Widget

WordPress’s Top Commentators Widget is definitely one of the best plugins I have ever installed. It gives you the ability to thank your commenters by adding a widget to the sidebar (or in our case the footer navigation) of your blog, which displays your site’s top commenters, however you like!

It has loads of easy to customise options. You can choose how many commenters get shown, how long names can be before they are replaced with an ellipsis. You can also choose if names are hyperlinked, show the individuals Gravatar, how big that avatar is, whether an award icon is shown by commenters with more than a certain number of comments, how often the list refreshes, etc.

There are more!

Listed above are some of the very best plugins I have ever used. Despite this, there are many other great plugins that I haven’t included, for fear of making this article university paper length! Lets save them for another time.

So, what plugins do you use? Why do you like them? Are you going to try any of the plugins above? Do any of them look interesting/useful?

Talk to me below 🙂

Technology Bloggers

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