http://www.defendingthekingdom.com Security and Privacy in Your Digital Life Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:08:38 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en A thief used a job advertisement to plant unsuspecting decoys before robbing a bank and escaping in an inner tube on the Skykomish River in Monroe, Washington. http://www.defendingthekingdom.com/archives/a-clever-heist Making strong and easy to remember passwords is amazingly easy. But what do you do when you're asked to choose a secret question for an account - something like, "What is your mother's maiden name?" or "What was the name of your first pet?" A weak security question and a too ... http://www.defendingthekingdom.com/archives/whats-your-secret-question The previous post discussed the amount of money you ought to be willing to pay per year to avoid getting phished. By using statistics about the average cost of phishing and the probability of experiencing it, it was possible to come up with a meaningful figure. Given the right statistics, ... http://www.defendingthekingdom.com/archives/viruses-and-spyware-expected-costs In the previous post, I calculated the cost, in statistical terms, of identity theft for the typical person. But identity theft is not the only danger - what about the risks of phishing? Consumer Reports, in their 2008 State of The Net report, claims that the likelihood of getting phished this ... http://www.defendingthekingdom.com/archives/phishing-expected-costs A friend recently told me about LifeLock, a company that, for a fee, says it will protect you against identity theft. It does this by persistently renewing fraud alerts with the credit bureaus (which means, according to the FTC, that "potential creditors must use what the law calls 'reasonable policies ... http://www.defendingthekingdom.com/archives/identity-theft-expected-costs A few posts from the Defending the Kingdom archive, which summarize well the reasons I keep this blog. Why security is a problem that will, unfortunately, always be with us. Why we can't expect technology to solve all of our security problems. How to think about security problems as a compromise between security ... http://www.defendingthekingdom.com/archives/best-of-dthek In September 2007, I wrote that "IE7 seems consistently to have more unpatched vulnerabilities than does Firefox". Worse, Internet Explorer owned the more serious vulnerabilities. That's still true. According to Secunia, Internet Explorer 7 has 27 security vulnerabilities, ten of which remain unpatched. Firefox has 23 security vulnerabilities, nearly as many ... http://www.defendingthekingdom.com/archives/firefox-and-internet-explorer The Defending the Kingdom eBook is now just $4. It neatly encapsulates all the best advice found on this site, plus a bit more! The information on this website will always be free, but I'm betting that many of the 7,000 readers of this site will find it more convenient to ... http://www.defendingthekingdom.com/archives/price-drop-on-ebook Bruce Schneier has an article in The Guardian that describes some strategies to keep your data private when crossing borders. What do you want customs agents to see when you bring your laptop, USB drive, mobile phone, or PDA across a border? Last month a US court ruled that border agents ... http://www.defendingthekingdom.com/archives/protect-data-at-border-crossings Where real kidnappings are common, criminals can stage fake kidnappings and get the same payoff: The phone call begins with the cries of an anguished child calling for a parent: “Mama! Papa!” The youngster’s sobs are quickly replaced by a husky male voice that means business. “We’ve got your child,” he ... http://www.defendingthekingdom.com/archives/virtual-kidnapping-in-mexico