TechBubble Weekly Internet Security

Adam Milton-Barker | Jul 16, 2014 | Web Apps, Security & Hosting | 1403 Today TechBubble will touch on the subject of Internet Security and Privacy, a subject that has been receiving massive amounts of coverage at the moment due to the recent events involving some of the biggest tech companies in the world and the US Government. In a world where your entire identity and financial transactions are stored online, and sensitive data bounces around the servers of the world for hackers to try and get at, security is one of the most crucial topics in the world, yet so very often overlooked or laughed off. We all see the jokes on Social Media sites about how annoying creating and memorizing secure passwords is, and some of them of them are indeed very funny, but give the impression that it is OK to laugh about. The truth is that your pets name as the password for all of your online accounts is not only critically endangering yourself, but also anyone that uses the same computer, network and even other people that use the services you register to and enjoy online. One of the hardest tasks I face as a developer is getting people to use secure passwords. One of the most common passwords you will use is your email password, this password is more than likely connected to all of your online accounts, including banking, which would provide a hacker with access to everything! Using publicly available information as passwords is asking for trouble! Recently tech companies such as Google and Facebook met with President Obama to discuss restrictions being placed on the NSA that would protect internet users after leaked reports claiming that the NSA had been acting as Facebook's servers and invading the privacy of the general public. This meeting has spawned a wide movement in internet security worldwide including a total rebuild of the platform that allows applications to access your data via Facebook. Tech companies will keep protecting you, but without your help it is all wasted. Over the following weeks we will bring you tricks to stay safe and keep you posted with information about the latest security advancements as well as reviewing recent internet risks such as Heartbleed. I will see you next week where we look at the current tech war going on between giants Facebook and Google. Stay safe.