3 Tips to Improve Your Security Online

Today, I was thinking about Gov. Palin’s Yahoo! email account hacking back in September of 2008.  I’m not a security expert or anything, but I do have a few personal recommendations for anyone looking to reduce their vulnerabilities.

1. Do not answer security questions honestly. While security questions can help you recover a password if you’ve forgotten it, it can just as easily do the same for others.  In the case of the Palin break in, all that was needed to gain access to her account was her DOB, Zip, and information about where she met her spouse, “which was answered (Wasilla High) by a simple Google search.”

Instead, treat these answers as secondary passwords. Choose an arbitrary word and use that as your security answer, regardless of the question. Or, since the same security questions are usually available for different accounts, choose an arbitrary word as the answer for each type of question.  So, for example, “Name of first pet” could be hectic; the “Street you grew up on” could be tornado; your “High school mascot” could be thyroid.  I used a random word generator for maximum randomness. The point is for these answers to be something you remember (partly because they are so strange), but something no one else could guess, even if they know a little bit about you or your history.

2. Spruce up your passwords. It’s easy to get into the habit of using the same password for every site you use. What happens when that one password is confiscated? Or, worse, what happens if you don’t know it’s been confiscated and all of your accounts are being accessed without you realizing?

Here’s what I’d recommend: Take your normal password (which we’ll call “root” and define as ‘pa33w0rd’) and add something before and after it.  This works best if the additions have something to do with the domain you’re logging into.  Say you’re creating an account on Twitter. You could make your password:

first and last two letters of domain (in this case ‘tr’) + root + number of consonants in domain (in this case 5; t, w, t, t, r).

You’re left with: trpa33w0rd5.  Say you then want to sign up for Stuffopolis.  That password would be sspa33w0rd7.  There are lots of variations on this.  Use whatever makes sense to you and that you feel you can remember.

3. Write down all your passwords. I do this in my moleskine, and usually write the domain name I’m referencing, my login name, my password, and the email I used to register it.

If you decide you want to save passwords electronically, however, one trick you want want to try is hiding text inside an image. While I’ve only played with this briefly, Hidetext.net seems to be a good site for this. There are other password managers out there, but frankly, I’ve never trusted them.  Granted, this is without any research or evidence of vulnerabilities, just personal preference.

BONUS piece of advice: Create at least one email account solely for spam. Giving out your email address is required for most things online, but there’s no reason to give out your personal email address to every site you sign up to use.  This is why a spare email account (or more) come in handy. Use these to collect the messages you don’t want to read instead of allowing them to clog up your personal account.

If anyone has any other tips, please leave in comments.

The Little Wart That Could

Yesterday I had off of work due to Hopkins Graduation.  How did I make the most the day? By going to the doctor’s to battle a pesky wart on my hand, of course.

The war began sometime around 12th grade.  Telling my current the last time I had a doctor attempt to dry-ice this bad-boy off was at that time made me realize that was 5 years ago, which made me feel really old.

I have a vivid memory of deciding I was finished being plagued with the thing one day in AP Calculus. From the back of the room, between differentiation problems and infinite limits, I started picking away flakes and pieces. It started to bleed a little. I blotted it with a tissue and continued, determined to rid myself of the nuisance. With a final surge of endorphins, I jerked away what I am now guessing was the root. Free advice: don’t do this. It’ll likely bleed. A lot.

And… in my case, it came back.  And after a few years, it spawned itself a friend.

Today, I have three half-sphere blisters, each about 2mm tall on my hand. The third is where I thought another was starting. After my doctor started applying copious amounts of dry ice to my skin and it hurt 10 times more than expected, I questioned whether or not that tiny discolored circle was really the start of a new wart.

I’m supposed to have an idea if it worked or if not in about 3 weeks.  Hopefully white flags are on the horizon.

Be A More Relaxed Driver By Remembering These 5 Things

With my commute to work, I spent a good amount of time in my car. A little while back, I even calculated the number of days I’ve spent on I-70 over my lifetime.  In the time I’ve been commuting to work, it’s been pretty obvious that making that drive has affected me.  I now find myself driving a little faster than I used to and a little less patient with other drivers.  And, although I do try to be conscious of these changes, because I’m not proud of these things, the simple truth is driving can be really stressful when you do it frequently.  So, the other day on my way home from work, I came up with a list of things I’ve found personally help me relax while driving if I keep them in mind.  Hopefully they’ll be helpful for others, too.

ONE: On one of my recent drives, I watched in my rear view mirror as a car behind me was approaching quickly. The driver was swerving in and out of lanes, and I knew s/he’d like to fly by me like everyone else. As he got closer, with the way traffic was, all 3 lanes of cars aligned and there was no space to pass. The man, I could see now, had every intention of getting by us as soon as possible. He revved his engine and tailgated the car beside me. About 10 seconds later, our alignment broke, he dropped into 4th gear, and burst ahead of us, continuing on to tailgate and weave his way through traffic.

I hate being around these kinds of drivers. It’s not only dangerous to be around, but it has a long-lasting affect.  Because it angers the people impacted, I think it leads others to be more likely to be aggressive. I don’t have hard facts for this or anything, but I know I’ve definitely felt an increase in aggression after being tailgated or cut off.

So, here’s my advice for handling the stress these drivers illicit: call Non-Emergency 911.  In MD, the number is 301-644-4151. I  have this number saved on my phone’s speed dial for easy access. I called after the incident I described above, said I wanted to report an aggressive driver, described make/model of the car and the last exit I passed, and the dispatcher said, “Okay,  we’ll put a look out for the car.”  Even though nothing happened, really, nothing was resolved, I felt so much more settled. I’d done all I could.  I would highly recommend this.  I’m pretty sure 311 routes to the person I’ve found through this number, and you can look up if your city supports 311 (non-emergency 911) here.

TWO: It’s okay to miss a turn.  I see so many people who miss turns and instead of just getting off at the next exit and righting things, they make things 10 times worse by cutting across traffic, using unauthorized roads, going in the wrong direction, stopping on the off ramp to try to get back on the highway… the list goes on.  When driving anywhere, but especially in an unfamiliar place, remember that it’s okay to miss a turn.  You’ll be delayed a few minutes by turning around, but you’ll potentially prevent hundreds of other people from being delayed by not cause a huge incident where people have to slow down, or worse, an accident.

THREE: Driving faster really doesn’t get you there that much faster. The scenario: you’re late.  You overslept.  Whatever.  Now you’re putting pedal to the metal to get to work on time.  I did the following calculations for my drive, (which I hope are accurate; cross-multiplication don’t fail me now).  It takes me about an hour to get to work (50 miles total), about 40 miles of which are on I-70.

mph	Time it takes to drive 40 miles
60	40 minutes
65	36.9
70	34.2
75	32
80	30
85	28.2

So while it feels like you’re going to get there super quick when you’re barreling down the road going 85, it’s only going to get you there a few minutes earlier, but will probably add a lot of stress when you’re worrying about getting a hefty speeding ticket.

FOUR: Remember when gas was $4/gallon and you could consistently find people driving the speed limit — or even sometimes under the speed limit (oh my!)? Yeah, those days are long gone. Gas is now $2.25 in Frederick, and people seem to have completely forgotten all about the quirky little habits they developed 6 months ago in the name of saving money and taking it easy on their gas consumption.

Sometimes when I’m tense in traffic, I take my speed down 5-7 mph, pop on cruise control, and think about the money I’ll save by giving my engine a breather.

FIVE: I never used to be a horn honker. Then I did it only out of self defense; in other words, to give drivers around me a heads up that I was near them.  Now I confess, though rare, I lay it on when I’m annoyed or feel like another driver is being especially careless or reckless.  I know it doesn’t do anything but add stress to myself, but sometimes it’s hard to stay calm. But, when I can, I try to remember to give the other person the benefit of the doubt. I try to assume the person who just annoyed me is having a terrible day.  And if it’s greater than “annoyance,” I  assume they are having a “very bad day,” or “the worst day of their life,” or are headed to the hospital, etc. (Hat tilt to the famous David Foster Wallace commencement speech).

If none of these things help, last ditch effort is to play Loudon Wainwright III’s Little Ship album.  I’ve found this works pretty well, too.

3 Reasons This Blog Has Not Been Updated

I read on a blogging tips website once that you should never let your blog go stale only to update by noting the lack of updates.  So, although there are many reasons it’s been weeks since last updating, I’m going to list three. 

Reason 1: Chess.com.  I’m not great at chess.  Okay, I’m probably teetering between that okay and wow, I should really be better for how much I play level.  But somehow I caught the chess bug a few weeks ago and since then I’ve been really into learning and playing.  Chess.com has a live component where you can play against others (free registration required).  I’ve found chess to be really fun because every game, no matter how long or short, gets my heart pumping with aderenaline at some point.  I’ve found the 3-5 minute blitz games to be especially fun.

Reason 2: NHL Playoffs. At this point, only 4 teams remain (Chicago and Detroit in the West, and Pittsburgh and Carolina in the East).  To get to this point there’s been a ton of hockey over the last month, and several truly superb series. Throughout the Capitals/Penguins series, Steph and I engaged in quite a bit of trash talk, mostly centered around Ovechkin and Crosby.  Luckily, I got the last laugh.

Reason 3: Google Sketchup. Last week I read this blog post on Google SketchUp’s blog about a 16 year old who used Google SketchUp on his way to winning the NASA Space Settlement Contest (Inspiring story actually — read the kid’s 90+ page report — the amount of detail and planning is ridiculous).  Since then I’ve been having a ton of fun creating 3-D models of tables, furniture, and other real life objects, as well as imagining these things repurposed and improved… AND "sketching" up some new stuff.  I designed the sickest cat tree, for instance. 

So there you have it.  Oh, and here’s one reason I may be updating more frequently: WordPress now allows for updating via email. I’m going to try it on this post, actually.  *Crossing fingers*