What is and what to do about Heartbleed

Heartbleed has been all over the internet. Everyone who knows IT should have heard about it. In fact this is so serious that your grandmother should hear about it if she does online banking.

Instead of writing more on this subject, here is a collection of links on the Heartbleed story, with different focus.

One important thing though, the heartbleed bug is such that some when you login to some websites or web services, your passwords are exposed. However, if those sites have not fixed the bug, then changing your password would mean that the new passwords are also revealed.


Some write-ups on heartbleed from regular news organizations
ABC Australia - http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2014/s3982491.htm
Forbes - http://www.forbes.com/sites/josephsteinberg/2014/04/10/massive-internet-security-vulnerability-you-are-at-risk-what-you-need-to-do/


The technical details of the Heartbleed flaw and a solution
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/04/how-heartbleed-works-the-code-behind-the-internets-security-nightmare/

Don't change all your passwords
http://www.crn.com.au/News/382523,heartbleed-dont-change-all-your-passwords.aspx

10 passwords that should be changed
http://www.crn.com.au/News/382519,heartbleed-10-passwords-you-need-to-change-right-now.aspx

Extensive list of organizations on what passwords should be changed
http://mashable.com/2014/04/09/heartbleed-bug-websites-affected/


Tools that test if a URL/website is affected:
http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/

Instead of going to the above website, you can type the name of the website directly into the URL box like:
      http://filippo.io/Heartbleed/#<URL>
where <URL> should be replaced by the website name such as www.example.com

Notes Android Apps

There are several other blog post here at xtechnotes.blogspot.com about apps for Android but they have been scattered. The goal of this post is specifically on Android Apps and presented in their relevant categories. 

One obvious point is that there are thousands of apps out there. The list below deliberately contains only a few apps per category. The goal is to list the top apps only, so readers don't need to face with hundreds of apps for the same functionality, especially many of the available apps are questionable.

For reference, the other older sites are:
http://xtechnotes.blogspot.com.au/2010/12/notes-zenithink-zt-180-epad-android.html
http://xtechnotes.blogspot.com.au/2010/06/mobile-applications-for-apple-android.html

All apps listed below are for Android (may be available for other Operating System as well) and totally FREE.

NEWS
Feedly - aggregates websites and blogs.
Pulse - aggregates websites and blogs with offline cache support?
Flipboard - creates personalized magazine from specified topics.
Zite - learns your reading habits and compiles into a magazine format.

PHOTOS
Instagram - take photo and edit with many filters.
Snapseed - photo editor with gesture control.

UTILITIES
Onavo Extend - track data usage of apps And compress data download.
AutomateIt - setup triggers and actions to automate tasks on device.
Astro File Manager
ES File Explorer
File Manager Explorer
Inkredible - Note taking app that is not sensitive to palm accidentally resting on the tablet.
WiFi Analyser and Surveyor
Disk Usage - DiskUsage Shows How Your Android's Storage Space Is Used

VOICE / VIDEO / TEXTS
There are numerous apps that allow for voice calls, video calls and text messages. The list is available in:
http://ausfinance.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/mobile-apps-free-apps-for-call-text.html

SOCIAL
Whatsapp Messenger - free sms send from phone.
1stavailable - Medical booking program.

BLOGS
Blogger
Wordpress

PRODUCTIVITY
Evernote - note taking, image capture, OCR on server side.
Receipts (Proximiant) - scan receipts

LIFESTYLE
Runkeeper - measures pace, distance ad calories.
Kindle - ebook reader.
Zeebox Au - electronic program guide for free tv and foxtel. 
Jamie's Recipes - instructions for a variety of dishes

MEDIA PLAYERS
MX player
RealPlayer
RockPlayer

MUSIC - Radio
Pandora Radio - specify artist, song or composer and it Will create a radio station with relevan music for free.
TuneIn Radio - listen to radio from local and worldwide stations.
Stitcher Radio
Live365

TV
Aview - Free TV from BBC.


GAMES
Clash of Clans Free
Real Racing 3 
Dead Trigger

TRAVEL
XE Currency - conversion of world currency with historic rates, works offline.
TripAdvisor Hotels Flights - research and review hotels, restaurants, flights.
Kayak - comparison for flights, hotels and car rentals.

GOOGLE
Handouts - live chat and video calls.
Translate - translate between different languages.
Maps - street and satellite maps.

SECURITY
Avast Mobile Security
Avira Antivirus Security
BitDefender Mobile Security
Lookout
Trend Micro Mobile Security
Eset Mobile Security & Antivirus
Qihoo 360 Mobile Security
Norton Mobile Security
Zoner Antivirus Free
Wiper - app for doing various things like messaging, songs, but in a secure manner

Security - Manage Privacy with Google

Google is implementing significant changes to its privacy policy from 1 March 2012. Most users would have received notification of this.

Here's a news article discussing it:

If you use Google, you may want to read this
Stephen Hutcheon, February 29, 2012 - 7:33AM
How your web history page should look after you've clicked "remove".
Opinion: Australia absent in Google privacy feud
"Today is your last chance to adjust your Google privacy settings ahead of a major change to the way Google collects and collates data about you, its users.
From March 1, the company will begin to aggregate all the information it acquires about its users who are logged in to Google services into a single, unified pool of data."


Here is a list of tools on Google's page to help address privacy concerns:
http://www.google.com/intl/en/privacy/tools.html


Here are a few interesting items:

1. Use Google Search in Encrypted form:   https://encrypted.google.com

2. Block Third party cookies and site Data.
For Chrome Browser:
a. Go to Options - Under the Botnet - click Content Settings - select "Block third-party cookies and site data".
b. On the same page, click on Manage Exceptions, to create a white list of trusted sites where cookies are allowed.
c. On the same page, click All Cookies and Site Data, and check which cookies are stored.

3. Instructions on how to transfer content in and out of Google products such as Google Docs and more:
http://www.dataliberation.org/

How to avoid spam when giving out your email address

This article covers specifically when you need to / have to give out an email, but you want to maintain some sort of control over the spam that you might get. Typically your situation may be:
1) You register for some service /  forum / website / free software / etc that require you to give out a valid email.
2) The thing that you register for may need to send you the email for confirmation. This means you need to give them your email which you can check.
3) You are concerned that they will email you with junk, spam, malicious email at a later date.
4) You think that they have low security and that they do not keep your email safely such that your email address could end up to some malicious entities.
5) But you still need to register with them and need to give them your email anyway.

     ..... then READ ON ........

Before describing the steps on how to give out your email, yet maintain a level of control, here is a list of things that this article is not covering:
1) your email posted somewhere on the web and was discovered by web spiders / crawlers.
2) using various software to protect against spam.


     ..... Now for the Solutions ......
Here are 3 possible solutions to give your email to an untrustworthy company or person and how to deal with it later.


1. Create an email account solely for the purpose of potential spam mail. This is the email you give out to those that you do not trust will keep your email address safe and with respect. Over time, the list of receivers of this email may be so large that it can still be hard to maintain.

2. Obtain a third party service to manage your spam mail. One such service is pckingsford. To contact them, please email them with user name "help" and the domain is "pckingsford" dot "com". This is a free service but you need to arrange for them to handle your email.
For example,
  1. You register for something with company ABC, and they need to get your email.
  2. ABC tells you that they will send you an email, which you have to reply to confirm your registration.
  3. You contact Pckingsford and explain that you need to wait for an email from ABC and click on something in that email.
  4. PCKingsford will give you and email to use. When ABC sends the email to PCKingsford, it will then click on that email on your behalf.
  5. All future emails send by ABC to your PCKingsford email will be ignored until the next time that you notify them.

3. Make use of a feature in Google Gmail that lets you create multiple virtual gmail address.
For example, if your email is me@gmail.com, then when you register with company ABC, you can give them your email as me+ABC@gmail.com. Anyone sending an email to this address will be directed to your me@gmail.com inbox. The way this trick works is that although spam and virus may be send to me@gmail.com, those email will be listed as being from me+ABC@gmail.com. You can then use Google Gmail's filter to catch these emails in the future.

To use Gmail filter,
- go to the top right corner of gmail and press Settings.
- on the horizontal bar slightly below the top, click on Filters
- on the Filters, click the link "create a new filter"
- when creating the new filter, in the To field only, type me+ABC@gmail.com. Leave the other fields blank. Click Next Step.

- Under the Choose Action section, you can decide how you want to treat the emails send to you by ABC in the future. For example, you can delete it or apply a lable to it.

- Finally click on the Create Filter. From then on, me+ABC@gmail.com will be treated depending on the action chosen above.

Online Scanning websites and links for virus, malware, spyware

The content of this site has been moved to Online Scan - Websites
It contains links to online scanning tools to scan websites to check if websites are infected with trojans or malware.