I'm interested in asserting a lot more control of my personal information and communications to prevent prying eyes of both governmental and criminal types. I'm interested in general best practices to secure my personal information, passwords, data and communication (including phones, texting and email). I am not an expert in software or anything of the kind. I use an iPhone and Apple computers. There's a few more specific requests inside.
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posted by anonymous
on Jun 9, 2013 -
15 answers
What's a better-security alternative to Spam Arrest for challenge-response email?
I received a password reminder email from Spam Arrest today. It included my full password in cleartext, and when I went to change my password to a long semi-random string of hashed characters I discovered that they silently truncate entries to 20 characters, which would have locked me out if they didn't keep everything in the clear to remind me. Frightening. Is there anyone out there who offer C/R email and knows how to store passwords?
posted by migurski
on Sep 8, 2012 -
3 answers
A friend has had an old Hotmail account hacked. The hacker used information in the archives there to access a YouTube account where apparently some compromising videos were uploaded. The hacker copied the videos to another YouTube account, and then sent links to the videos to my friend's family - and worse still, to members of the executive board of the nonprofit organization by whom my friend is (was?) employed. He reached out desperately to me, but I know nothing but the most basic things about Internet security and privacy law...
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posted by OneMonkeysUncle
on Jul 31, 2012 -
13 answers
A while ago, my Gmail account notified me of suspicious activity. The IP that accessed my account seems to be from Microsoft.
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posted by clearlydemon
on Apr 12, 2011 -
16 answers
How should a business that's about security set up its own secure communications?
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posted by woot
on Dec 28, 2010 -
15 answers
What is the best email provider for security and privacy? Requirements and more info inside.
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posted by Aya
on May 1, 2010 -
11 answers
When I log into Gmail, Firefox redirects me to a page on Facebook. What gives?
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posted by reenum
on Feb 1, 2010 -
10 answers
I occasionally need to email PDFs and Word docs that contain confidential information. My clients claim their email is "secure" and don't see the need for any encryption or any approach other than me emailing them the files. What can I do?
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posted by PatoPata
on Nov 26, 2008 -
17 answers
Online Security Filter: Welcome email contained plain text password. Specific examples of why this is bad needed.
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posted by TauLepton
on Nov 23, 2008 -
19 answers
It's become apparent that my computer may have a Trojan. I just received a Returned Mail notice for mail I never sent, which instead of displaying my name it displayed "jasen kimberly," and was sent to a strange russian email address: munsov@pobox.spbu.ru. I'm concerned that this may be the result of a trojan "phoning home," or using my computer to send spam.
posted by matkline
on Oct 5, 2008 -
9 answers
My cousin's Facebook account was compromised and some person or bot is sending spam to his Facebook friend list. He canceled his Facebook account a month ago, but spam keeps arriving in my email box -- as if my cousin is still a Facebook member. The spam seems to be arriving from a legitimate Facebook domain.
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posted by valannc
on Sep 12, 2008 -
8 answers
Send a password over email (to a non-techy client) without compromising its security.
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posted by bjtitus
on Jun 28, 2008 -
21 answers
Where can I find information about email headers? I'd like to learn how to look at an email header and answer such questions as "Was this email forged?" and "What is the IP of the sender and the sender's ISP?"
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posted by about_time
on Feb 12, 2008 -
9 answers
I love Gmail, but with all the security and privacy concerns, I'm thinking of bailing. Whereto next?
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posted by melissam
on Dec 25, 2007 -
15 answers
What are the legal implications of a university monitoring, storing, and cataloging all incoming and outgoing email into a searchable database? What if I have first hand knowledge of a university doing this?
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posted by anonymous
on May 21, 2006 -
15 answers
What's the absolute simplest way for two or more people to share encrypted information via email, either in the text body or as a file attachment?
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posted by taz
on Oct 3, 2005 -
13 answers
So I've gone to www.thawte.com/email and got myself a Freemail certificate and imported it into Thunderbird, and my friend is about to do the same thing, and we want to exchange encrypted mails. What do we actually DO with our shiny new certificates?
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posted by flabdablet
on May 1, 2005 -
11 answers
stop reading my email filter; I type an email, I send said email to person X, I immediately delete said email from sent folder, and I delete said email from the deleted folder. I can no longer see said email. Now the fun begins! Fast forward 24 hours. Person Y tells me that he is looking at my screen and said email and can quote from email.
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posted by busboy789
on Mar 24, 2005 -
21 answers
Due to "security concerns," my web host provider has just banned two
Form-to-email scripts (Formmail and NMS Formmail). Now I'm hard up to find a replacement. Any ideas? I'd prefer a solution that doesn't require a mastery of PERL to configure.
posted by Pinwheel
on Jan 17, 2005 -
4 answers
I've been reading my mail on the server for a long time, but I'm starting to provide hosting for people here, and some of them want to read their mail through a regular old POP client. Is there a secure way to provide this service? [more]
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posted by majcher
on Mar 24, 2004 -
8 answers
