It seems that hardly a day goes by when we don’t hear about some company, organization, or government agency falling victim to a data attack or intrusion.
As international tensions heat up following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, more American companies are strengthening their data defense measures. Many are using expert consultants and online tools to help them verify that they are taking the correct steps.
Datagrasp was founded last year to help corporations and other entities discover and analyze potential security risks. It provides a cloud-based platform that clients user to determine how well their organization adheres to current compliance laws and policies.
Datagrasp provides a digital toolbox that can be used by any designated person within an organization, no security expertise required. The system guides users through the process of examining their security programs and organizing their documentation and audit trails so they will be ready when auditors come knocking.
The Datagrasp system collects and stores documentation on internal and external audits. It also creates an internal audit checklist that includes a ranking and comparison to current business practices and processes. Audit reports and risk analyses can be retrieved quickly using the Datagrasp dashboard.
Some of Datagrasp’s primary assistance tools are available for free in the starter package available to companies with five or fewer employees. They include a security assessment, risk register, and compliance checklist.
Packages for large businesses or enterprises are also available. For more details, visit the Datagrasp website.
If you frequently use a bridge or highway that charges a fee for access you’ve probably noticed that something is missing: the little toll booths where you drop a few coins or hand someone your dollar bills. Across the US and around the world, those booths are being replaced by digital cameras that scan and record license plate numbers as fast as the speeding vehicles pass under them.
Those cameras are connected to computers equipped with ALPR - Automated License Plate Recognition. The computers check the plate number against a cloud-based database of vehicle registration data. Even if your car is registered in a state hundreds of miles away from the bridge you just crossed, chances are you will get a bill for the toll.
ALPR is a technology that helps the bridge and highway owners pay for construction and maintenance costs by reducing or eliminating toll collection expenses (i.e. the people who work in the toll booths). It also helps maximize revenue by insuring that no users get a free ride.
Now vehicle number recognition is also starting to deployed in other locations such as parking lots and garages, business districts and even private residential areas. In the Toronto area city of Oakville, developers are using ALPR to manage access to a new complex of condos and townhomes. Instead of keypads or fobs, permitted vehicles breeze through gates and garage doors by simply by driving down approach lanes and passing within a camera's view.
When the system captures a license plate number, it compares the number to a database of authorized users and automatically grants access. Vehicles that try to sneak past the checkpoint are also identified and added to a blacklist. The system saves money by eliminating staffing costs and it allows developers or individual residents to use a vehicle's arrival to trigger other smart home or office technology.
ALPR can also be used to add a new dimension to neighborhood watch programs. In 2018, Portola Valley, a small city in California’s Silicon Valley area, installed ALPR cameras to monitor traffic on the roads leading into and out of the city.
This year, residents of Los Altos Hills, another small city is Northern California, began exploring an ALPR system. Resident Rajiv Bhateja, a proponent of ALPR technology, told the Los Altos Town Crier that the system would be a deterrent to crime and he recalled a burglary at his apartment when he lived in Berkeley. “It is important to give people a sense of safety and security around their home, because I do remember when I was burglarized, it wasn’t so much the monetary cost; it was the sense of security and the violation.”
Companies such as Camdog offer vehicle plate recognition as part of their cloud-based surveillance services. At Camdog, ALPR is included in the company's High Security and Business Video Analytics Plan.
Passwords have long been the bane of the Internet. Experts have all these rules for keeping them safe: make it complicated, don't write it down, use a different one for each website.
And, how do you keep track of all those passwords, especially when you're constantly moving between your desktop computer to your laptop, tablet or mobile phone?
AuthPass could be the answer. It's a password manager program that stores and remembers all of your passwords and makes them accessible regardless of what device you are using. AuthPass supports all of the major mobile and desktop platforms, from iOS, Android to Windows, MacOS and even Linux.
In addition to storing and retrieving passwords, AuthPass encrypts them to add a layer of safety. The programs use the KDBX file format and the KeePass Password Database. The password data files can only be viewed if the user has a master password, so there's really only one password to remember.
AuthPass will generate secure random passwords for each online account. The app supports biometric locks, such as a fingerprint or face recognition lock, and it will generate multiple is you need one to share. And users can store their password database at a remote location using DropBox, Google Drive or iCloud.
Last summer someone cruising our alley in red pickup swiped three nice bicycles that were parked behind a neighbor's house.
My front door and my Ring doorbell have a view of that alley. So when I heard about the missing bikes, I browsed through my stored videos and there it was - a red pickup truck with the bike clearly visible among the stuff piled in the back.
The video didn't capture the truck's license plate. But after I posted a still image on Nextdoor, a neighborhood-focused social network, I heard from several neighbors who recognized the truck. One of them knew the owner, a man who frequently cruised the neighborhood streets collecting discarded items.
Doorbell video cameras like mine have become watchfull eyes all across America, according to a story published yesterday in the New York Times. The article recounts a number of examples of how the cameras have foiled criminals and assisted neighbors, including a woman who had been locked out of her home on an icy winter night.
It also reports that police agencies in many communities have obtained access to Ring doorbell videos, with the permission of their owners, to assist in criminal investigations. That hasn't happened in my community, but I think that if asked, I would be inclined to agree. How about you?
Here's a link to the Times' story and a YouTube video of a thief stealing a $100 item -- the doorbell that recorded him in the act.
Every time I hear a report about someone's private chats getting hacked or snooped I wonder why some talented programmers haven't created a secure alternative to the common chat programs we all use.
It turns out that the coders at Rockliffe Systems have done just that. Their product is called AstraChat. It lets users communicate securely in real time using almost any platform, from iOS an Android mobiles to Windows, Mac and even Linux desktops.
With AstraChat, users can communicate one-to-one or in groups both small and large. In addition to sending and receiving text messages, they also can exchange photos and conduct VoIP conference calls.
A key element in the AstraChat structure is its use of its own enterprise server instead of using a commercial chat platform with a cloud installation or a proxy server. AstraChat clients support SSL and TLS encryption and optional encryption using OTR (Off the Record).
The AstraChat client software is always connected to an XMPP server running in the background to provide immediate push notifications of new messages. And the elimination of a proxy server add enhanced security.
Client apps are available for free from the Apple App Store, the Google Play Store and the Amazon App Store. The apps connect directly to the AstraChat server and do not require users to sign up or create an account.
For a closer look, check out the video below and for more details, visit the AstraChat website.
Your email address has become the lingua franca of the digital world. Want to read a story on a news site? Post a comment in a forum? Get a discount coupon? There’s a good chance you’ll be required to register with an email address.
But there is often to requirement that it be your primary address. If you want to avoid the chance that your personal or work address will be added to somebody’s span database, consider getting a temporary email address from a site like Correotemporal.
The website will instantly generate an email address that stays live and viable for 10 minutes. All you have to do is click the bar on the site’s home page that says “Create your temporary disposable e-mail now.”
You can’t miss that bar - it’s almost the only thing on the page. There’s an “About Us” button, but it leads to a placeholder page, so I can’t tell you anything about the people or company behind this service.
But I do know that a temporary email address can be a very useful thing to have when you don’t want or need to share your primary address.
I have a friend who sells real estate and her job sometimes takes her alone into sketchy neighborhoods. I need to tell her about Covert Alert.
Covert Alert is a mobile app that can an instant lifeline to friends, work colleagues and, if necessary, to emergency services. The app operates covertly because it listens to your voice and automatically sends pre-programmed messages to selected contacts.
When you say "protect me now,” it immediately begins recording both your voice and the sounds around you. And it begins listening for other trigger words or phrases that will launch those messages.
To set up Covert Alert, you start by choosing which friends or family members receive your alerts. You can enter a contact manually or select from your current contact list.
Then you choose your personal trigger words. It might be something like "leave me alone" or a more innocuous phrase like “popsicle” “German shepherd.”
Your primary trigger words will send a text message to your selected contacts telling them that you are in trouble and asking them to call 911. The message includes a mapping link to let your contacts know your exact location.
The developers of Covert Alert say they will soon enhance the app to link it directly to local 911 emergency services. Instead of going through a call center, as some safety apps do, Covert Alert will connect connect to 911 dispatchers and provide both a GPS location and live audio from the user's phone.
Users can also program two custom messages that have their own trigger words. They covertly send a text message to your friends. You might use those messages to tell a friend that your blind date is a bomb and that you will call them within the hour. Another could ask them to call you so you can stage an early exit from an uncomfortable situation.
When you tell the app to “stop protecting me,” Covert Alert stops listening but saves the audio that it had recorded when it was active.
Covert Alert is available as a free download for Apple or Android devices. New users get 15 minutes of recording time and 50 text messages. When those are exhausted, users can buy more minutes and messages through the app.
We've all become accustomed to using passwords, PINs and challenge questions to secure our identity, but the hackers and fraudsters are getting smarter and raising the stakes for identity protection.
So be ready for a new generation of identity-verification procedures. For example, I currently do some work for a company that routinely asks me to snap and submit a selfie with my mobile phone before it grants access to its online platform.
AU10TIX Limited is one of the leading companies that is developing and deploying many those second-generation tools to automate the capture, authentication, validation and creation of identifying documents such as passports, identity cards, and driving licenses.
AU10TIX uses applications that were initially designed for secure environments such as airports, power plants or government facilities. Those applications are now being expanded for use commercial and public service areas.
Identity verification is particularly important in the financial services sector where fraudsters create phony identities to open accounts and transfer money around the world. The booming online payments market is also being targeted by cyber criminals.
Its specialty areas include capturing, authenticating and digitizing documents; ID forgery detection; biometric inputs; and image authentication and conversion to digital records. For more details, visit the AU10TIX website.
In an era in which danger and violence can appear almost any time or anywhere, we are often anxious to know where our loved ones are and what they are doing.
Phone-tracking apps and car-tracking devices can help provide some peace of mind and now there's a new people-tracker that takes personal monitoring a step further into a connected future.
It's called Seam and it's a personal safety platform that uses a mobile app and a small wearable device. Working together, they let people share their location and environment with selected friends, family member or caregivers.
The app is available now and the wearable device, called Lotus, will be available in June. Lotus is a remote control that lets the app record a person's GPS location along with the sound and images in their current environment. The images, audio and data are streamed in real-time to up to five chosen contacts who also have the app.
I would have welcomed something like Seam years ago when our teenage daughter told us she was going to a football game, but sometimes slipped away to a party. When our son travelled in South America, we could have joined him online to see the places he visited and the people he met. And Seam would have helped family members keep a closer eye on my mother when she was in the early staged of dementia.
But I expect most users will value Seam for the increased sense of safety and protection they will feel when they are out on their own. The "panic button" feature, for example, will make emergency phone calls to a designated contact or to a local emergency service. Seam says its app is the only personal safety app that integrates with Google Assistant voice control.
The data and images captured by someone wearing a Lotus is stored securely in the cloud for up to 24 hours. An upgrade version of the system, called SeamPlus, allows storage for up to three months and downloading for offline viewing.
In the early days of the commercial Internet, putting your business online meant getting an artist to create a digital brochure with a logo, some text ad a few graphics. Interactivity was limited to an email link or a comment box.
Today's online businesses allow customers and partners to order merchandise, enter credit card details or download software. But by opening those digital doors, companies are also inviting trouble in the form of hackers and similar malicious visitors.
Now hardly a day goes by without a report of stolen customer data or ransomware injected through some new web application vulnerability. How bad is the situation? A recent report by Positive Technologies found vulnerabilities in every web application that it tested in 2017 using the company's Application Inspector technology.
Finding cracks in chinks in a business's digital armor is one of the jobs performed by the Positive Technologies' Web Application Firewall (WAF). The device uses a built-in source code analysis module to detect vulnerabilities and create instant "virtual patches" block any attempts to exploit the specific flaws in the web app code.
Another product called PT Telecom Attack Discovery focuses on flaws in signaling protocols that allow hackers to intercept calls, track subscriber locations and perform other bits of mischief. The company's SS7 Protection Solution uses a signaling intrusion monitoring system and an analysis module to detect anomalous activity on a wireless network.
For more details about the WAF and how it can protect a business website, check out the Positive Technologies website.
You can't expect your car to run forever without some upkeep, maintenance or repairs and it's the same story for your personal computer.
If you want to keep your computer humming and avoid disasters, you need to pay attention to things such as virus protection, malware defense, operating system updates and device drivers.
The CureYourPC Blog can help. It posts regular reports about security threats and reviews of software that can defend against them.
On my recent visit to the blog, I found a review of ad-blocking software and an analysis of the Premium version of the popular Malwarebytes program. Other articles offered Internet security tips that for online shopping, tips to protect your online privacy and an explanation of how hackers use "phishing" techniques to get you to reveal passwords and other personal information.
I especially liked an article that listed bad tech habits -- reused passwords sound familiar? -- with advice on how to break them.
Check out all of the articles online at the CureYourPC blog.
Now that we know how careless Facebook can be with our personal data, I expect more people will be exploring alternative sharing services that offer a higher level of security.
The recent news prompted me to take another look at SecureTribe, a private sharing app that I reviewed when it was launched last year.
The iOS app lets users create photo albums for different groups called tribes and it uses encryption technology to keep photos and videos secure. Only members of the designated tribe have the decryption key required to view that group’s album.
Tribes can be public or private. You might create a private tribe to share images from that weekend in Las Vegas and public tribe to share photos of your band or sports team. Check out my video below to see how I set up and used SecureTribe.
This month the app's developers released several new improvements that make the app more secure and useful. For example, users can now include more details in their personal profiles and a tribe owner can see which of their friends 'liked' post.
A new security feature will detect an attempt to make a screen capture. Images in a private group are for member eyes only and anyone who tries to screen capture will be ejected from the group. Other improvements include easier navigation, faster response times and support for iPhone X.
My friends who drive for Uber and Lyft tell me one of their constant worries is the forgotten phone. When a passenger leave a phone in their car, it's big headache for everyone to get the phone located, identified and returned.
The misplaced phone is one of the issues that the developers of miFon tackled in their recent rounds of updates and new features.
I wrote a full review of the Android app last year when I said "no app that I’ve encountered takes tracking, security and recovery farther than miFon." Now, they've made it even better with a security suite that helps mobile phone owners deal with real-world problems.
A good example is the story one woman tells on the miFon blog about how she used the app to catch a phone thief. Once she discovered that the phone was missing, she checked her email and found a photo -- and location -- of the person trying to open the phone. She made contact and got the phone back the next day.
Another new feature added to miFon is the Family & Friends Locator. It lets users create a personal group called miGroup that tracks everyone in the group. Users no longer have to send each other text messages asking "Where U at?"
Other miFon features include anti-virus and malware protection, the ability to remotely change your home screen lock code, a map that shows the phone's "last seen" location, a quick SOS alert sent to selected phone numbers, and automatic event notifications that will tell your friends when you arrive at a pre-set location.
The app is available as in the Google Play Store. You can download and use the basic version and test the advanced features for free. More details, including pricing for the Pro version, are available at the miFon website.
Last year CEO Mark Zuckerberg celebrated Facebook reaching 500 million monthly users by posting a photo of himself on Instagram. The background of the photo also made news.
One sharp-eyed viewer noticed that the Mac on the desk behind Zuckerberg had tape over it's camera.
No big surprise there - folks like NSA leaker Edward Snowden have warned us about snoopers getting access to our webcams. Even former FBI director James Comey covered his laptop camera.
But the photo also showed a bit of tape over the microphone port of the MacBook behind Zuckerberg.
Can snoops also listen to us throughout computer's microphone jack? The answer, it turns out, is yes. An article published by Wired magazine described one possible approach:
Researchers at Israel's Ben Gurion University have created a piece of proof-of-concept code they call "Speake(a)r," designed to demonstrate how determined hackers could find a way to surreptitiously hijack a computer to record audio even when the device's microphones have been entirely removed or disabled.
And now one company has come up with an easy device to block that vulnerability.
Mic-Lock is a small device that looks like the plug end of headphones or earbud. The Mic-Lock developers say the device "tricks your computer" into thinking that it is connected to a live mic.
With the Mic-Lock plugged in, it becomes the computer's default microphone - but no audio is transmitted. In essence, Mic-Lock makes the computer or smartphone deaf.
The device is designed to work with Windows or Mac computers and with Android or iOS phones an tablets.
The Mic-Lock sells for $4.99 and is available on the Mic-Lock website.
Now that our daughter is old enough to have her own family, she’s delighted to tell us about all the tricks she played on us when she was a teenager.
We would drop her off at the local shopping mall where she said she would spend the evening with her friends. But in fact, they slipped out the back door where boys were waiting to take them to some unknown house party.
I’m betting that her daughters will all have the Lotus by Seam as one of their required fashion accessories.
Developed by Seam Technic, the Lotus is a small wearable device that lets parents and friends keep track of loved ones by recording and transmitting a variety of environmental information including GPS location , photos and audio.
At home, her mother could use a mobile app to see what she sees and hear what she hears. And if any difficulties would arise, she could make a hands-free phone call while sharing her location.
The Seam system lets users record audio and still images captured from two button-style recorders, one facing to the front, the other with a rear view.
Users can share the data and images privately with up to five friends our guardians. Or, they can have the system trigger a call to an emergency phone number while still capturing GPS location data. The data logs are stored in the cloud for up to three months while the service is in its launch stage.
As a parent, I was especially attracted by the safety element of the Seam system. But Seam founder and CEO Drew Henson said he created the system primarily to help his family members feel more connected to him while he was away from home traveling the world. “It’s a seamless way to feel connected, social and safe,” he said.
The Lotus by Seam is scheduled to launch a funding campaign on Kickstarter on Nov. 1. The Lotus recording devices are expected to see for $119 but early supporters will be able to reserve them on Kickstarter for up to 40% less.
Considering how much we love our mobile phones, you’d think we would take better care of them. One report I found said 3 million Americans lose their phones in a year’s time and 2 million more have their phones stolen. The numbers were higher in many other countries.
New phone-tracking apps are helping reduce phone losses, but no app that I’ve encountered takes tracking, security and recovery farther than miFon does for Androids. Developed by a group of Indian professionals working in the UAE, miFon is a collection of utilities and mini-applications designed to keep your Android phone secure, healthy and in your possession.
An example of the miFon features is an option called miVac that scans all of the apps installed on your phone looking for evidence of viruses, malware or other malicious code. Another called xFit weeds out unused and extraneous files to keep the phone working smoothly.
The app will automatically run backups on your contacts and media files and it places an SOS button on the miFon home screen so a user in danger can discreetly send a message to a trusted phone number. That’s four very useful programs, each of which typically requires a separate app, that miFon has packaged under one umbrella.
But I installed miFon because I was especially interested in the security and tracking features that it offers. Like other tracking apps, it located my phone as soon as I installed the program and it tags that location, with a timestamp, on a Google map on the miFon home screen.
I wanted to see what tools I could use if I left my phone on a park bench, in the back seat of an Uber, or if it got stolen. I logged into my account on the miFon website and used the miFon Genie to get its “last seen” location with GPS coordinates, directions from my location, and the option to see a satellite view.
Now, let’s say someone is messing with the phone. Using the Genie, I activated the seeKie feature, which caused the access screen on my phone to go black and display a stern notice: “This is a LOST PHONE” with a phone number to call to “contact the rightful owner.” That’s not exactly accusing anyone of stealing the phone, but they’ll get the picture.
And if you want add some extra punch to that notice, you can deliver it with an accompanying siren. I tried that feature and it spooked the dogs and startled my wife, who was two rooms away from me. It will thoroughly get their attention.
miFon has other weapons in its security arsenal. The Genie will let you remotely change your screen lock code, for example. And a feature called thEfie will snap a photo of someone while they are trying to get past your lock screen. When I entered a few random numbers, thEfie silently activated the phone’s front-facing camera, snapped a photo, and immediately emailed it to me along with a location map. I was impressed by that trick, though not by my unexpected selfie.
All of the tools offered in the miFon app are listed on the miFon website and on the app’s download page in the Google Play Store. The listings are short on details and I had to learn the program using more experimentation and trial and error than I would have liked. But once I got comfortable with miFon, I was convinced that it would be a valuable addition to any Android phone.
Users who download the app for free can use the app’s advanced features such as thEfie for 30 days and can keep them after that period by paying an annual subscription fee.
Every month or two, I get a request to become Facebook friends with John, a retired banker who I’ve known for more than 20 years. John and I have been Facebook friends for about three years, so why is he sending me new requests?
The answer is he’s not. The requests are coming from someone who has taken over John’s account. Access to a real Facebook account can be a valuable tool for a hacker trying to create a false identity in the online world.
Over the past few years, Facebook has taken several steps to make its user accounts more secure and easier to customize. But it’s up to individual users to fine-tune their own privacy and security settings. These tips will help make your Facebook experience safer and more secure.
Change your password. That’s a good practice for all your online accounts, especially if you use the same password with multiple services. To update yours, click on the triangle in the upper right corner of your Facebook page and select Settings from the drop-down menu.
On the General Account Settings page that appears, you can enter and confirm a new password. Make it something that’s easy to remember but not easy for others to guess. You can share your password with a close friend or relative so they can get into your account in an emergency.
Get login notifications. Most people use Facebook only from their computer, tablet or mobile phone and Facebook can tell you if someone logs in using a different device.
From the Settings page, click the Security icon in the left column, then click Edit for Login Alerts. You can choose to be alerted through Facebook or by email or both.
For an additional layer of security, select and edit Login Approvals. There you can tell Facebook to send a code to your mobile phone when someone logs in from an unknown browser. If that’s you logging in from a public computer or at a friend’s house, entering the code will prove it.
Limit friend requests. While a Facebook page run by a business or organization may welcome any and all friends, many individuals prefer to get requests only from people they know.
To restrict who can contact you through Facebook, click Privacy Settings and edit who can contact you. Clicking Friends of Friends will limit requests to only people who are already linked to your current circle of friends.
Control your public profile. People looking for you can find your Facebook page using your email address, your phone number or by entering your name in a search engine. This can be helpful if you don’t mind hearing from a distant cousin who is researching your family history.
But if you would prefer a lower profile in the digital world, you can restrict who can look you up to just Facebook friends or friends of friends. The Privacy Settings also let you decide who can see what you post on your page.
Facebook makes it easy to adjust many of these settings with its Privacy Checkup and shortcuts. To get to them, click the padlock icon in the upper right corner of any Facebook page.
If you suspect that your account or a friend’s account has been hacked, the Facebook Help Center on the web has information on how to report that and other issues.
Almost every week we hear about some Hollywood starlet having her private photos hacked and distributed. But online privacy is not something only celebrities need to be concerned about. Do you want to explain those bachelorette party photos to your grandmother?
There are plenty of online services that let you share photos with groups of friends, family members or business associates. But they typically don’t provide a high level of security. That’s the niche that is targeted by a new iOS social media app called SecureTribe.
The app’s name is a pretty good summary of what it does. It lets users join and create photo albums for different groups or tribes. And it uses encryption technology to keep photos secure. Only members of the designated tribe have the decryption key required to view photos in their group’s album.
I created a personal account on SecureTribe using a pre-release version of the app provided by the developers. The security features start immediately with the setup process. Once I entered a username and password, the app generated a QR code that users will need if they forget their password.
Unlike most other services, you can’t simply click a “Forgot password” link to get a new one. The app prompts you to store the code in a safe place and it delivers this stern warning:
“Without this there is NO WAY anyone (including SecureTribe staff) can help you gain access to your account.”
For additional protection, SecureTribe requires your password every time you launch the app. It doesn’t store the password in a keychain or password vault.
Once my account was in place, I could begin creating my personal tribes, joining other tribes and sharing my photos. Pressing the + symbol on your My Tribes page lets you give a new tribe a name, choose an image for cover art, enter a description, and start adding images.
Photos and videos can be captured live using the device’s camera, or selected from the user’s camera roll or iCloud drive. Each tribe has its own option menu to enable mature content, allow members to upload or download files.
How do you add members to your tribe? That’s handled from the main menu in an option called Create Invite Graphics. I assume it’s labelled that way because the process generates an image containing a QR code. You can send the invitation through email or messaging. You can even post it on Twitter or Facebook, just be sure you’ve selected the correct tribe.
I created a tribe to share photos of my grandchildren and sent invitations to several family members. The app would be a good way for parents to share photos from youth activities such as a sports team or dance group while maintaining control of the images. And SecureTribe suggests using the app at an event. For example, a musician or artist could display the scannable QR code invitation to give attendees at a performance access to songs, images, stories or other special content.
The basic version of SecureTribe is available for free in the iTunes App Store. A Premium version includes support for additional features such as custom graphics for invitations, high-resolution images, and time or user limits on subscriptions to tribe content.
The app was launched today in the iTunes App Store. To see it in action, check out my video below and for more details, visit the SecureTribe website and follow the discussion @SecureTribe on Twitter.
For the past year, I’ve been exploring the Dark Web. I wasn't there to buy guns or drugs, I was assisting with author and consultant Stephen E Arnold with research for his latest book.
Dark Web Notebook is a practical guide to the digital underworld used by criminals and terrorists. It was written specifically to assist law enforcement, intelligence, and corporate security personnel.
In one chapter, Arnold tells how obtain an untraceable computer, how to create a legend (a false identity), how to use Tor (the encrypted browser), and how to buy and use Bitcoin without revealing your true identity.
Other chapters present profiles of Dark Web vendors, open-source tools for investigators, and descriptions of the services private companies offer to government agencies and corporations.
The 250-page book costs $49 and is available as a PDF download at from Gumroad, a digital publishing service. For more details about the book and the topics it covers, visit Xenky.com.
My work takes me to a wide variety of Internet web sites and services and my view is that what I read or do online is nobody’s business but mine. That’s why I often use a cloaking browser like Tor and a virtual private network (VPN).
A VPN hides your IP address so that any person or machine monitoring my traffic can’t identify my digital fingerprint.
TorrentGuard is a VPN service aimed specifically at people who share data using BitTorrent, a communication protocol that is typically used for peer-to-peer sharing of large files such as video. By routing those files through TorrentGuard, only the IP address of the VPN is visible to sniffers and snoopers while the user remains anonymous.
A VPN can also be useful for connecting to a website or service where access is restricted to certain geographic regions.
TorrentGuard says its service provides unlimited and unmetered traffic without the speed penalty that often comes with VPNs.
The service costs one dollar for the first month and $4.99 a month after the first month. It’s also available for an annual fee.
I started reporting on gadgets and gear when Atari ruled electronic games and computers used floppy disks. My weekly column ran in the The Louisville Courier-Journal and online at USAToday.com and ABC News.com. I was a regular at tech trade shows including COMDEX, CES and the CEDIA show for home theater. Follow @GizmoEditor on Twitter and on Facebook. Contact me at ricman@iglou.comI also create short videos for vendors to use on Amazon and YouTube. Click here to see a portfolio of my recent videos.
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