houseforge recommendation December 2007: Protection

[housetier]

Jeff Atwood over at Coding Horror muses about digital certificates and the security they are said to provide. I am mentioning this to raise awareness about uhm "digital security" (even though your government wants you to be aware of terrorists instead).

Digital Certificates can be safe and secure, but they can also easily be forged, and the average user has a hard time figuring it out. So, not only should you look out for the lock symbols, but also you shouldn't be carefree once the lock is locked.

Provide as little information as possible, change your passwords frequently, use different passwords for each site/service.

[housetier]

And one more follow-up: there is an OTR-plugin for psi as well.

[housetier]

There is GPG4win now which ought to make using GnuPG on Windows easier.

[Gothi[c]]

Speaking of encryption,
I would like to remind you all that donationcoder.com is accessible over HTTPS, in case you want to encrypt your forum posting/browsing.

eg:
https://www.donation...x.php?topic=11316.25

[housetier]

Oh yes, a very good point there Gothi[c]!

If possible, users should try to access websites via https, especially when they are transmitting sensitive data. This includes passwords, credit card numbers, your SSN; basically anything that a website asks for to identify you.

There are numerous websites I haven't signed up with because they don't let me use https; gulli.com for example reserves use of https for admins and moderators.

And if you don't have a choice, like on my website, make sure you use a unique password, so I can't break into you other sites and services.