Tuesday Sweep: 19 December 2017
Your weekly reminder to back up your data, update software and otherwise pay attention to your digital environment. (Oh, and to go to the CRASH Space meeting…)
Feeling defeated over NetNeutrality? Shake it off. Don’t be troubled. Be trouble. (Shout out to John Lewis’ “Good Trouble“). Time to be the pebble in the shoe of the cable companies. Lets make legislation instead of regulation. Call state and local lawmakers. Here are some new scripts. I care about NetNeutrality, not because of some silly price bump to Netflix, but because of the voices and services that get disappeared when monopolies take over. I care about senior officials at government agencies that knowingly lie. We can still build a safer fairer internet.
Jump in Here
- Welcome. If you haven’t been following along, it’s okay. You’re not behind, you’re just where you are.
- I highly recommend the coach tool at the Crash Override Network has a great step by step break down for many of the same introductory steps we did here. There’s a new one on the street: https://securityplanner.org Haven’t used it but it comes recommended by people I trust.
- Feeling more ambitious? Review the list of OneThing articles and pick one to catch up on.
Sweep
The basics.
- Updated software recently? Pick a new device to check on today.
- Backups still up and running? When was the last time you made a clean disk image? Here’s a new great article on how to design a backup system.
- App and Password Gardening: Delete a low quality app from your phone or delete an account that you don’t need that doesn’t make you happy. Digital cruft builds up. Delete it. If you’re keeping it, can you move the password to your password manager (delete it from everywhere else) and add two factor authentication?
- Move to offline archive & delete your histories where you can find them.
- Double check privacy settings on your phone, social media accounts. The folks running the companies can change the TOS and add “features” before you notice them.
- Have you frozen your credit yet?
Learn
Where do you scan for news?
- Last years Holiday shopping guide for IoT: don’t. This year? Still don’t. Even the FBI has issued a warning about connected toys. If you ignored this advice, take steps to mitigate the threat.
- Passwords. Still bad. Get a password manager. Krebs on why thieves want your passwords anyway.
- On a related note Troy Hunt has posted the first in a series on Fixing Data Breaches.
- Suspicious BGP Event routes traffic through Russia. Compterphile will get you up to date on what the heck the Border Gateway Protocol does anyway.
- I’ve seen a lot of people recommend this article “Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear.” I’d be interested in people’s thoughts. AI’s building AI’s, and their own cryptography? Who’s actually teaching the AI’s ethics?
- I’m anti-biometrics in general. The fact that Apple’s facial recognition has trouble telling Asians apart has all sorts of problems.
- Microsoft ends forced arbitration for sexual harassment suits.
- Security@ videos online
- Microgames assignment and its results.
- I thought this was interesting. Similar malware, each in it’s own unique wrapping paper, thereby evading anti-virus scans.
- Connecting Arduino to a Unity3D project with no latency.
- I’m super loving @JacobJoaquin‘s feed right now. The image is a Conway’s game of life derived plotter drawn print. Did you know about plottertwitter? Might I recommend the AxiDraw?
Reflect
Feeling dumb or stupid about how not-l33t you are? Angsting over some silly thing you “know better than to do.” Stop. That isn’t useful. Regret is only of use if it prompts an actual change in behavior. Maybe it’s NOT you that sucks. Could be it’s the technology and you could come up with a fix that would help lots of people. Look forward and make a plan.
Engage
We are a community. You are a welcome part of it.
