Disable the use of your name/photo for Social Advertising on Linkedin.com

Using your name/photo for ads.. I thought we already saw enough disapproval from the Facebook trial.

http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/17/linkedins-social-ad-misstep/

Disable it on linkedin.com by doing the following (text below copied from article above):

First, hover it (your mouse) over your name in blue in the top right corner of any page and click “Settings.” Then click “Account” at the bottom left. Look for “Privacy Controls” and click the first choice, “Manage Social Advertising.” In the pop-up window that appears, uncheck the box beside “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising” and hit “Save.”

Enabling https on Facebook

Below is a screenshot of how to enable https on Facebook.

This will protect you from people trying to see what is being transmitted over the network, and also things like Firesheep, a free Firefox extension that allows people to log in as YOU.

A more secure Facebook connection

Nice! Facebook is now making secure connections to it possible.

From today's Facebook blog entry:

Starting today we'll provide you with the ability to experience Facebook entirely over HTTPS. You should consider enabling this option if you frequently use Facebook from public Internet access points found at coffee shops, airports, libraries or schools. The option will exist as part of our advanced security features, which you can find in the "Account Security" section of the Account Settings page.

This protects any information (including profile pages, contact information, location of you and your friends, etc) sent to/from your browser and Facebook's server from any eavesdroppers. So, if you are in a public area, such as an airport, library, coffee shop, where there are many people (possibly malicious), you'll definitely want to enable this. Because you have to log in to turn it on, you'll probably just want to go ahead and enable it.

I tried going to the "Account Security" section of my Account settings, but did not see the option available yet. Maybe tomorrow.

See my previous blog entry about using free public internet.

Anti-virus software

People have sometimes asked me what anti-virus software they should use and if there's any good free stuff out there. (Beware, some of the "anti-virus/anti-malware software" you download might contain some malware itself. So, be sure you trust the source of your software before downloading it.)

If you're running Windows, Microsoft offers Microsoft Security Essentials for free. I haven't tried out too many different anti-virus programs myself, but I've heard good reviews for Microsoft Security Essentials.

[ Microsoft Security Essentials ]