Safe Screensavers

There are a few basic screensavers that come with Windows, but they get boring very quickly. People often look for and download screensavers off the web, but this can be risky if you aren't careful.

There are risks that you should be aware of when looking for free screensavers. Some screensavers contain spyware. Some do not contain spyware, but if you go to their web sites to get more screensavers, the web sites will download adware or spyware onto your computer. Remember my "revenue model" rule of thumb: think about how the company makes their money producing the software product. If there is no obvious advertising on their web site or in the screensaver itself, or if they don't try to upsell you to a better version, be cautious. They have to get money from somewhere to produce the product, right?

Case in point: Really Slick Screensavers is a site where you can get some very cool screensavers for free. Think about my "revenue model" rule of thumb, how does the author make money on this product? Fortunately he answers this here in question #14. You may also notice all of the ads on the web page, which themselves point to other screensaver web sites.

You can also do a little bit of research too. Using a search engine such as Google, enter the name of the screen saver and words such as "spyware" and "problem" and search the web. If others have had problems it may show up in the search. Also, remember to scan your PC with good antispyware products (see my Downloads page) after installing any software.

Really Slick Screensavers are safe and spyware free. Always make sure that you do a little bit of research and exercise caution when selecting a free screensaver from the web, and remember my "revenue model" rule of thumb!

Tags: computers, freeware, screensaver, shareware, software, spyware, t4t

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Download: Clean up Risky Documents with TRACE!

If you use Microsoft Office at work or at home, you'll be interested in a free download that scans for unintended or inappropriate content in Microsoft Office documents.

WorkShare is a company that specializes in software that helps organizations make sure their documents are secure and are compliant with company policy and any legal requirements. The offer a free tool called TRACE! that scans Office documents and reports back to you the level (High, Medium, Low) of each risk as well as an overall document score on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being highest risk.

For companies this is invaluable, but it can also help individuals or even students avoid embarassing problems. Not many people check their document properties, or use the reviewing toolbar when making changes. For businesses, TRACE! checks against some US legislation such as the Data Protection Act.

I wrote up a quick invoice as a MS Word example document. TRACE! discovered every one of the items I hid in various areas of the document. These items are there but aren't always visible unless you are looking for it:

• In the document properties, I had a profanity in the comments section.
• I hilighted the invoice total of $400 and placed a hidden comment that said "Was $300 but I don't like this customer."
• There was a mild profanity in the document body.
• It revealed all of the document properties, including who worked on the document and when.
• My private unlisted home telephone number was in the document properties.

In each of these cases, TRACE! discovered the risk and reported them to me. My sample invoice was a medium-high risk with a score of 4/5. If you are the only user on your computer, this tool might not be that handy but if you share your computer with others or create business documents, TRACE! may one day help save you some embarrassment.

You can download TRACE! for free here.

Tags: computers, freeware, microsoft, software, t4t

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Safe Password Tools

Too many people have bad passwords that can be guessed in a matter of minutes by a password cracker, which are available quite freely on the Internet, such as here. You don't want to read another article about strong password best practices, so I'm going to make this easy and give you some cool tools to making them yourself.

Password Tips

Like I mentioned, I won't bore you with the details on how to create better passwords. You can read about that elsewhere on the web, such as here, here and here. If all of the advice can be summed up in one sentence, it would be "A good password is one that cannot be easily guessed".

The Password Strength Meter

This is the fun part. Most people I know absolutely hate figuring out a strong password, which is why they usually pick a weak password. Consider this: "rover" is a very weak password while "!3%y3^&S(r&34m!" is a strong password. Password cracking programs can guess "rover" in a couple of seconds. But how do you know when your password is strong?

SecurityStats.com has a tool that allows you to type in a password and it will tell you how strong or weak it is. Use the examples I gave above here on SecurityStats. Don't worry, they won't store your password but it is always a good idea to not send them your real password, just use one that is similar.

Strong Password Generators

But how do you come up with a strong password yourself? And what if you have multiple passwords for many sites, such as your credit cards, banks, leisure and travel sites, utilities, etc? There is a way to generate a strong password using a single master password and a secondary word, such as the site name. So for instance you could use "Stella500" as your master password, and for each of your sites (such as banks) you could use the bank name. Go to Angel.net and type in "Stella500" as the master password and "royalbank" as the site name. Click on Generate and the password it produces is "96e6c398" which is a medium-strong password.

Another site is a French one that has 2 password generators. One gives you a password up to 8 characters only, and the second is more secure and gives you a longer password.

Using a master password of "Stella500" and site name (also known as a parameter) of "royalbank", go to their Regular Password Generator and punch in those values. The result is "GgXSwMY0" which is a strong password, stronger than the Angel.net site's generator. If you run those words through their Long Version Password Generator, you get "GgXSwMY0gIIrte+Dh526pG2gfP0" which is the strongest and most difficult to guess of all of them.

Using these systems, you won't have to remember or type in that long password, just remember your master password and site names, then you can go to the generator page and generate them. I don't recommend letting Internet Explorer remember your passwords for you, since your computer can be stolen and the thief would have access to everything.

Where to Store Passwords?

Right about now you're probably thinking how much work it would be to go to one of those sites and generate a password everytime you wanted to log into your bank account. You don't have to do that; there is an easier way. You can store all the passwords in a secure database on your computer, and print them out if you like and file them away in a safe place. What kind of secure database?

There are programs that you can get free that will act as an electronic file cabinet to store your sensitive usernames and password information. They require one master password which allows you to get in. Without this master password, even if someone steals your computer they will not have access to your accounts.

The one that I would recommend is Password Safe which is an open source project and available at no cost. Another one which has been recommended to me although I haven't used it is Oubliette.

Just remember that a strong password is the only thing between thieves and your money and personal data! Keep all of your data safe by using strong passwords.

Tags: business, security, internet, technology, passwords, freeware, t4t

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