How dare I call this a blog — and call myself a “blogger” — when the last post was written about 10 months ago? Lots of nice stuff for everybody to read, eh?

Guilty as charged. If I had a scrap of sense in my body, I’d just let it die a slow death and try to sell it for a couple hundred bucks. Thankfully, while I am pretty good at security (and there will be a simple / “obvious” tip a bit later in this post), I don’t always exhibit what most would call “common sense” when it comes to my blogs and my business efforts.

So I’m resurrecting this blog and we’ll see what happens.

It all came about this morning as I was thinking about the Savvy Blogging Summit (which I will be attending this week). Lots of my blogs are pretty specific and cater to a narrow range of people. Others are there solely to support some other, more important feature of the web site. But I wanted a blog to put on my business cards for the event.

And after a period of reflection, I realized that this blog is the perfect candidate. It has mass appeal (everybody needs security, right?) and has lots of potential for future development. LOTS of future development (nudge-nudge…)!

So, Savvy Bloggers, if you actually looked at my business card (and I know that all of you did — at least ten times!) and came to my site, you now know that you have been at least somewhat deceived. While the blog has been here for a while (since March 2007), I’ve been kind of ignoring it while I work on different projects.

But I’ve come to the realization that:

  • I love to write.
  • And I love to help people.

So it’s time to get this thing going again. There are a lot of good people in the world that I can help, based on my years of security experience. And the Internet has made it all that much easier to scam and steal, and I think I can help better protect you against those threats.

Oh, and there’s one thing I absolutely HATE — and hope to do something about this on this blog:

  • I hate it when people experience loss because they didn’t know about some little security “trick” that could have helped them.

Really. I hate it when people get ripped off or experience some type of loss that could have been easily prevented. It burns me up, and I’ve decided to do something about it.

So Savvy Bloggers, I apologize for sending you to a “dead” blog that is being resuscitated. If nothing else, think of this as the “before” example and feel free to watch from home as I implement what I’m going to learn at the Summit this weekend.

And I’d love to hear your suggestions, etc. — just go to my contact form at Protector Support (it goes to my “good” email) and tell me what’s on your mind, what you would do with this site, etc. I’m looking forward to meeting you all this weekend and am sure that I’ll walk away “pumped up” to make this — as well as my other blogs — the best they can be for “anybody and everybody” who is fortunate enough to stumble across it as the cruise the Internet.

For the rest of you… Here’s your tip (feel free to use it yourself, Savvy Bloggers!):

It doesn’t cost all that much to have a key made. Pay once and you have it, and it only takes a few minutes to have one made. If you don’t have the cash, go to Fiverr, do a couple of jobs, and get the cash.

Having said that, why in the world would you want to leave a house key under the door mat or under a flowerpot? That is probably the first place that a would-be intruder is going to look if they target your house for a break-in. So if you’ll spend a few dollars to have an extra key made for whoever needs it, it’s cheap insurance against the threat that a criminal will find your poorly hidden key.

And “yes”, my wife saw somebody in our neighborhood doing this a few weeks ago. Incredible, isn’t it?

Again, “thanks” for coming back to this blog, and I’ll do my best to once again make this one of the best places you can go to on the Internet to find simple security tips.

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University Of San Francisco Online — Consumer Confusion

by Administrator on September 21, 2010

While reading a security article about a cross site scripting vulnerability on Twitter (which has since been fixed; no need to worry about that), I saw an ad for the “University of San Francisco Online” (URL is www.usanfranonline.com but I won’t give them an actual link). The ad offered an “Internet Marketing Certificate” after an 8 week course of study.

Wow, I thought — an actual university offering an Internet Marketing certificate? Well, not quite.

This link leads to the *REAL* University of San Francisco. It’s a Jesuit Catholic College (one of only 28 in the world) and is the oldest university in San Francisco (according to their website). And since they have a real, live .edu domain, they must be a real, legitimate university.

I also like their mission statement (from this link):

USF exists to provide a rigorous, world-class education to a new generation of leaders, who will work to create a more humane and just world.

You aren’t going to reach that goal with an 8 week Internet Marketing certificate!

But what about the people who seemingly have ripped off their good name? Let’s do a bit of digging, shall we?

usanfranonline.com is hosted on IP address 67.134.215.5, which is registered to Bisk Education of Tampa, Florida.

Obviously there must be a San Francisco, Florida — right?

Uh, no. In fact, I can’t find another San Francisco in the United States.

So to me, Bisk Education is taking advantage of the REAL USF’s reputation to make a quick buck.

I didn’t find out much about Bisk Education, and much of what I did find was on sites like Ripoff Report (where people write about their experience and the site owner uses it to extort hush money from the website owner, so take what you read there with a grain of salt). I won’t link to the site, but you can go to Google and type in “Bisk Education site:ripoffreport.com” and get the link. Not very flattering, to say the least.

So I think Bisk Education is trying to confuse and trick people with their “fake” University of San Francisco Online web site. And while the reviews are mixed, I’d personally stay away from anything that has Bisk Education written on it. Yes, you’d get an education, but probably not the kind you really want!

If you want a college education, go directly to the college or university of your choice and deal with them. No need to get yourself embroiled with an intermediary.

And legitimate institutions of higher learning will, for the most part, have a .edu domain, not a .com domain. If you visit a website that claims to be a educational institution but they don’t have a .edu domain, be careful.

And I can only hope that the 8 week Internet Marketing certificate comes in a roll so that you can get SOME use out of it…

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UPS Delivery Notification Email = Trojan

January 14, 2010

I received several copies this morning (in different email accounts) of an email that claimed to be from the United Parcel Service (UPS). Here’s the text of one of them (The “From” name and “Subject” varies, but contains “UPS Tracking Number”): Dear customer! The courier company was not able to deliver your parcel by your [...]

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Don’t Leave Your Mail In Your Car

December 4, 2009

I just came across this article about not leaving mail in your car. Your mail contains all sorts of personal information that is of value to a thief. And if a thief has a copy of your bank statement and your home address, the balance just might convince them that a home invasion could be [...]

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A Neat Way To Hide Your Email Address On Web Sites

September 4, 2009

I’ve been looking for a good tool that will obfuscate (or hide) my email address on websites. I wanted something that is easy for a legitimate visitor to see, yet would be impossible for those ‘bots that scrape the Internet, looking for email addresses on web pages that they can send their worthless spam to. [...]

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How Google Protects Your Gmail Account

August 18, 2009

I locked myself out of my Gmail account a few days ago and needed to have the password reset. That’s when I found out that Google has implemented a system that can prevent somebody who knows the answers to your security question from hijacking / stealing your account. Google now sends an email to the [...]

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How To Reduce The Amount Of Spam In Your Inbox

August 18, 2009

Got spam? We all do, to one extent or the other. And because of that, there are a lot of products that can help you better manage the spam that hits your Inbox. Would you like to know how to get and use one of the best anti-spam devices available? Would you want to know [...]

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A Resource To Help Identify Fake Security Products

June 24, 2009

Thanks to the good people at Sunbelt Software (makers of VIPRE Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware, all of us now have a great resource that can help us identify if a program we stumble across on the Internet is a legitimate security product. To get started, head over to their Rogue Anti Sypware blog and type the [...]

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Elcomsoft, Adobe, and Strong Passwords

May 3, 2009

I couldn’t have said it better myself (although I’ve been saying it for a long time): Use strong passwords: At least 12 characters. At least one upper case letter. At least one lower case letter. At least one number. At least one special character (those things above the numbers on your keyboard, etc.). Never use [...]

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How To Keep Malware Off Your Computer

April 28, 2009

I’ve been using my current laptop for about three years now. I gave my old laptop to my wife when I got my current one. She doesn’t do much except for shopping and writing emails to a few friends. I had installed some applications on that laptop before I passed it off to her and [...]

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