Facebook remote log out

Have you logged into Facebook at the library or your friend's computer, and forgotten to log out?

Facebook also has a remote log out feature.

"...you can see if you’re still logged in on other devices and immediately log out on those devices from one central control in your account."

BTW, you can also have Facebook send you a message via SMS or email whenever a new computer or mobile device logs into your account.

Facebook one-time passwords

Facebook is enabling a feature that I wanted Gmail to have a long time ago: one-time use passwords. These are passwords that you can only use one time. This is helpful if you're using a not-as-secure computer and are worried that someone might have captured your password (and you don't want others to be able to use your password.) In order to use this, you have to register a mobile phone with your Facebook account, and send a text to Facebook to receive a one-time password (that must be used within 20 mins.)

From the Facebook blog:

First, we're launching one-time passwords to make it safer to use public computers in places like hotels, cafes or airports. If you have any concerns about security of the computer you're using while accessing Facebook, we can text you a one-time password to use instead of your regular password.

Simply text "otp" to 32665 on your mobile phone (U.S. only), and you'll immediately receive a password that can be used only once and expires in 20 minutes. In order to access this feature, you'll need a mobile phone number in your account. We're rolling this out gradually, and it should be available to everyone in the coming weeks.

I try not to use other computers/devices to access personal information unless absolutely necessary. And nowadays, with all the smartphones out there, you don't really need to use someone else's computer. But it's nice to know there's this feature for passwords.

Dropbox

Dropbox is a neat tool that lets you store files online, synchronize your files across multiple computers, and share files with others. It’s quite useful and convenient, especially because they give you 2GB free! (I've used it to share files that were hundreds of megabytes large.) From a quick scan, they do seem to have their bases covered - all transmitted and stored data is encrypted, and they say they have strengthened their web servers and client application against hackers.

Similar to all other online accounts you should:

• Be sure to use a strong password (If you use a weak password and Mr. Stranger guesses it, he could gain access to your files.)
• You will also probably not want to store any of your personal, confidential data on Dropbox.

If you are thinking about using Dropbox (or other tool) to synchronize files between your home and work computer, here are a few things you may want to consider:

• Does your company allow you to install external software on your company-issued computer?
• Does your company allow you to use external software to store your work (possibly company confidential) information?
• Are you putting company information at risk of being compromised?

Chances are external software is something your company does not want you to use and is against your company's employee security policy. From your company's perspective, your company has no control over the external software provider or the external software (such as Dropbox, Google, etc,) and if that software were to have some kind of security failure, your company confidential data (and possibly entire computer) could be compromised. Better safe than sorry.

Security checklist by Gmail

Here's a pretty good help article that Google has posted to help you make sure your gmail account is secure.

Gmail security checklist

Some of it is pretty basic, common sense stuff that perhaps you already do (or maybe not,) but it has lots of good things to review.