Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

Ask any newcomer to the Internet if he has ever been conned, the answer would invariably be yes. Here comes the concept of a Trusted Internet , wouldnt it be great if before interacting with someone on the Internet, you would know if he/she is genuine ? , what if there was some way to tell that the person whom you are buying that auction product is going to defraud you.

Trusted Internet as a concept appeals to me, although i do feel that a 100% trusted Internet will never be a possibility. The use of secure certificates i believe is a part and parcel of trusted Internet. You can now know which sites to trust with personal info and which sites not to trust. The Identity of sites can be verified, so can the fact that your communication with a certain site is properly encrypted.

In the trusted Internet of tomorrow, computers shall be able to take decisions autonomously with a very high accuracy rate as to the authenticity of transactions. However money always comes and spoils the fun. I will take the example of our college computer labs, all of them run on AVG, and all of them have viruses because initially no AV was loaded on them and only when viruses started emerging the software was loaded as it became necessary. In case this trust was free, all S/Ws were free , wouldn’t it be better ? Comodo is looking to introduce free tools to make the Internet a little bit better for all

I have linked to Comodo above, i came across this concept of  a trusted Internet from their site only. I must say its a very interesting read

What do you feel ?

Well, we had made these videos a few months ago telling people how to secure their Wifi connections quite frankly because many people use other people’s internet without their knowledge. We had made the videos to prevent pranks where kids use other people’s networks to save some money.

But the recent blasts in India opened a new picture. Terrorists used the Wifi connection of an American citizen living in Navi Mumbai to send threatening emails and emails taking responsibility for blasts. As an Internet user, its your responsibility to secure your connection and make sure criminals are not using it. The following 2 videos will help you secure your Wifi connection. I will also make another video, showing you how to implement MAC address filtering to further strengthen your Internet security.

These videos are for Linksys WRT54G series, if you have some other router, refer to your user manual to see how this is done or search youtube, someone might have made a video for your model too.

Securing your Wifi connection (WPA security , only people will passphrase will be able to logon to it wirelessly)

Password protect your Router also

This post is issued in public interest

A word of caution for anyone using WordPress version 2.1.1 , upgrade it to 2.1.1 immediately. It appears that some crackers gained access to WordPress servers and changed a part of the WordPress 2.1.1 download code.They changed the code in two WordPress download files (“theme.php” and “feed.php”) that would allow someone to execute remote PHP code on your blogs. Thankfully the guys at WordPress detected this in time and averted a catastophe (hopefully).

Anyway i am safe now and hope your version is safe too !

Got Questions about this ?

You can email them to 21securityfaq@wordpress.org , which has been specially setup to deal with this particular problem.

This is from one of our readers (didnt know we had any :P)

Anyway , i got a call around 2 years ago from a bank (bank name not listed for privacy concerns) , they told me i had ‘won’ a lucky draw , i would get a free credit card and also a free bag. I never really liked the credit card concept but thought a free one wont hurt. I called them to my home and i signed on the dotted line.

After 5 days i receive the cards , an addon card was also sent w/o my knowledge. it was ok till then , but 2 days later i got a bill for rs.2000 for the cards , horrified i called the bank customer care which was not responsive and i was put on an indefinite hold. then i decided to write an email to my bank. They replied 14 days later promising to look into the matter. I replied ‘i am not going to pay’ and threatened consumer court. Within 1 day they send me a reply with 2 options

1. Cancel the card

2. pay the fee and get 500 reward points

By this time i had realised the direct selling agents were actually frauds so i didnt really want them to have any commission and i decided to cancel the card, tore it diagonally and sent them back to the bank’s office.

Our take is that always take it from written from the Direct Selling Agents who offer you credit cards. Anyone who says you won in a lucky draw is lying, banks dont conduct lucky draws to see who can be their credit card customer for free. Similar things happen in insurance sector also , a story about that too will be published soon.

Credit card companies have been harassing you since god knows when, take this card, take that card, its free, that’s free and in the end it turns out to be paid. Well I have got a solution to your problems.

1^st Step: Get a free for life credit card, ICICI bank claims to offer one but always read the fine print. Take it in written from the agent that the card is free of cost and then only apply for one and sign on the dotted line.

2^nd Step: Receive your card, now the first thing you should do after receiving your card is to memorise the CVV number which is written on the back of your card after 4 digits. CVV is a three-digit number used to verify online applications. Now scratch this number out with a knife.

3^rd Step: Memorize your Card’s ATM Pin and tear it and burn it away.

Now to get your money’s worth, make a promise to yourself that you will use the card only for things which you have decided to buy already, buy everything you can with a card only, DON’T use cash.

The rationale behind it is that your credit card statement will come next month and you will have till end of next month to pay the bill, so that means instant 2 months interest savings. Plus let me warn you always pay the full amount due on your credit card and never only the minimum amount due if you don’t want to be in a debt. Plus you also earn reward points for which you can get something decent from your bank.

Some general safeguards for using Credit Cards

1. Always make sure they are swiped in front of your eyes.
2. Make sure they are swiped only once
3. Be on a lookout for an extra attachment to the card machines, these are called skimmers and can clone credit cards.
4. When using the card on the Internet, make sure it’s not a public computer, even if it’s yours, run an anti-spyware scan before the transaction.
5. Use your card only on the gateways of banks and legitimate reputed brands, NEVER use your credit card for a get rich quick scheme or similar such offers or on cheap websites of which you know nothing about.
6. Don’t make gambling transactions on your card, its illegal in India.
7. The second you see your card is missing, call the call centre number of your bank and get your card disabled, any money spent before that becomes your liability in most cases.
8. This is my personal trick, in your credit card jacket or for that matter your debit card jacket even, place a chit with a random 4 digit number which is not your REAL PIN, but write PIN on that number, in the event your card is stolen the thief will think he has got a jackpot and if he tries to withdraw money using a wrong pin your card will be swallowed by the machine.
9. Dont use it at a restaurant where the card will be charged away from your direct view or insist on the card being charged in front of you , remember a little bit of inconvienience can save you from that large shock.