In terms of online security a daisy chain is a collection of online accounts that interconnect, where each allows access to the next.  If you can log into your Pinterest account through your Facebook account, you’re building a diasy chain.  If you can reset your Facebook password from your GMail account, the daisy chain is even longer.  If a hacker compromises one link in your daisy chain, they can gain access to all the other accounts on that chain, no matter how secure your password are.

This week’s tip is to break the daisy chain.  Find an account that lets you …

Today you should take a moment to view your profile the way a stranger would.  With the announcement of Facebook’s new Graph Search, user privacy settings are getting renewed attention.  Any public information on your profile is now a possible introduction to your personal brand.

Thankfully, Facebook has given us an easy way to see which information that is.  Go to the privacy settings menu (shown), open “Who can see my stuff?” and select the box labeled “What do other people see on my timeline?” Hide or remove any likes, …

You know the Joneses, right? They’re the socialite/neighbor/competitor who always seems to have the newest version of everything. The newest car, the hottest handheld technology, even the most current version of WordPress.

Our culture constantly pushes us to keep up; to buy, newer, better, and faster whenever possible. This can place a great drain on our attention and resources. Eventually it becomes necessary to ask, “just how important is this latest update?”

This is especially true of software.  Programs like WordPress, can come out with updates as frequently as once a fortnight. Recently, one of our longtime clients …

There was a time when campers would spend their lengthening autumn nights huddled about the laptop, warming their hands above the processor and letting the eerie blue glow of the monitor light their faces from beneath. It was during hours such as these that people would take turns telling tales about digital gremlins and computer projects gone wrong. Here are just a few excerpts from those half-told tales.
“The Next Day, It Was Gone!”
Who hasn’t heard the story of the phantom server? Hour after hour of labor poured in to perfecting a website until it is a resource for one and …

For the life of the Internet, the art of protecting online e-mail addresses has rested upon the ability of web developers to come up with effective ways to sort man from machine.  In short, a CAPTCHA.

If a machine can identify and grab your e-mail address, you will become a target for SPAM - but removing your e-mail altogether is not an option if you want to provide legitimate clients and leads with a way to reach you without having to leave their computer.

When I first started looking at website code (back when a 28.8 baud audio modem was state of …

SPAM is the ultimate form of shotgun marketing.  Most SPAM marketers expect fewer than 1 in 5000 e-mail recipients to ever follow one of their links (and less still to actually buy the product advertised on the other side).  In order to support such an inaccurate form of marketing, spammers need to build up huge pools of e-mail addresses at very little cost.

That’s where e-mail spam-bots come in.  According to Wikipedia:
E-mail spambots harvest e-mail addresses from the Internet in order to build mailing lists for sending unsolicited e-mail, also known as spam. Such spambots are web crawlers that can gather …

You’re working with your web developer and you’ve determined that not all your content is for everyone: maybe you want your site to have added value for members; perhaps you handle medical, financial, or other sensitive documents; it could be one of your protections against SPAM bots; it may even be that you like hiding “Easter Eggs” for customers who gather promotional codes from elsewhere in your marketing campaign.

Whatever your reason is for partitioning off a section of your website, you need to decide how secure it will be.

One for All

At first blush …

A month-and-a-half ago Google launched Sidewiki - a service that lets web browsers with the Google Toolbar view and write comments along side of any website.

Setting aside my professional mask for a moment, Sidewiki is one …

This week I continue my series on e-mail deliverability inspired by the Lyris Inc panel featuring Michael Kelly of Click Mail Marketing, Craig Spiezie of the Online Trust Alliance, and David Fowler of Lyris Technologies.

In the Beginning

When the internet began, it was dominated by academic and government agencies.  Such agencies had little reason to hide their own identities or mimic the identities of others.  As a result, a system was built that made it easy to apply domain names (like @stanford.edu or @whitehouse.gov) as …

As I mention in, “Who is That on Your Website: Man or Machine,” a CAPTCHA is any automated process designed to differentiate between human and computerized posters.

CAPTCHA is especially useful for protecting your online forms, though it can also be helpful in keeping spammers from hijacking your blog, forum, or sign-up procedures.

Depending on your security needs, different kinds of CAPTCHA may be preferable.

Pre-built CAPTCHA

If there is a reason why someone would want to create multiple accounts on your page or frequently access some of your restricted information, you will want CAPTCHA which is harder to …