Internet Security and Privacy...
August 16, 2014 at 4:43 am
(This post was last modified: August 16, 2014 at 6:18 am by Aractus.)
Okay so I thought I thought it might be useful for us to discuss our internet security experiences/measures.
Starting with browsers... over the past few years the browser that has consistently let the most "viruses" go though to be blocked by my antivirus is Google Chrome. True enough that I lowered the security for unknown files, but that's still no excuse. On the other hand I've never once had this happen with Maxthon, and so I may go back to exclusively using Maxthon as my browser as I used to do.
For the last few years I've not bothered with adblock I only used the mvps.org hosts file. With my new PC this has changed. I've gotten sick of seeing Youtube ads, and the broken image/page content where ads should be so now I'll use both. I haven't clicked a single ad for at least 5 years while browsing the internet anyway so I hardly see the point in them being there, at least on my PC.
Privacy... As some of you may know, the Australian government wants to pass a bill requiring that ISP's store "metadata" for two years. This really is not that different from storing phone call logs, and for a balanced news article read this where it is revelead that ASIO boss David Irvine sees it as "absolutely crucial" for Australian security.
But, that doesn't mean that I or anyone for that matter has to simply allow our content to be logged. VPN's already get completely around this, you could in principle get your ISP to sign an NDA which should take priority over such a proposed data retention law, or as I've done, simply switch to a different DNS provider (OpenDNS) and then there's nothing to log (without spying). -edit- *I should note that while my router is configured to use OpenDNS, my PC is configured to use the Canberra CloudNS server which exclusively serves through DNSCrypt (ie it doesn't serve regular non-encrypted DNS enquires).
Lately I've been using google directly much less, and mostly using startpage. I've also set startpage as my default search engine as opposed to what it was on my last PC (thepiratebay.se). Opera used to be my favourite browser - but now you cannot even change the default search to ThePirateBay, or StartPage, or any other search other than the 5 built-in. Talk about selling-out. IE11 requires manually putting it in the registry, but at least it does work. It annoys me to no-end that "modern browsers" are so inflexible with customization (eg. toolbar customization), and Max's cluttered toolbar is one giant put-off and the complete opposite to how the original operated.
In all my bowers I've altered the user agent to remove reference to my actual OS (most at the moment are replaced with Windows NT 5.01 which is Windows 2000 SP1).
Starting with browsers... over the past few years the browser that has consistently let the most "viruses" go though to be blocked by my antivirus is Google Chrome. True enough that I lowered the security for unknown files, but that's still no excuse. On the other hand I've never once had this happen with Maxthon, and so I may go back to exclusively using Maxthon as my browser as I used to do.
For the last few years I've not bothered with adblock I only used the mvps.org hosts file. With my new PC this has changed. I've gotten sick of seeing Youtube ads, and the broken image/page content where ads should be so now I'll use both. I haven't clicked a single ad for at least 5 years while browsing the internet anyway so I hardly see the point in them being there, at least on my PC.
Privacy... As some of you may know, the Australian government wants to pass a bill requiring that ISP's store "metadata" for two years. This really is not that different from storing phone call logs, and for a balanced news article read this where it is revelead that ASIO boss David Irvine sees it as "absolutely crucial" for Australian security.
But, that doesn't mean that I or anyone for that matter has to simply allow our content to be logged. VPN's already get completely around this, you could in principle get your ISP to sign an NDA which should take priority over such a proposed data retention law, or as I've done, simply switch to a different DNS provider (OpenDNS) and then there's nothing to log (without spying). -edit- *I should note that while my router is configured to use OpenDNS, my PC is configured to use the Canberra CloudNS server which exclusively serves through DNSCrypt (ie it doesn't serve regular non-encrypted DNS enquires).
Lately I've been using google directly much less, and mostly using startpage. I've also set startpage as my default search engine as opposed to what it was on my last PC (thepiratebay.se). Opera used to be my favourite browser - but now you cannot even change the default search to ThePirateBay, or StartPage, or any other search other than the 5 built-in. Talk about selling-out. IE11 requires manually putting it in the registry, but at least it does work. It annoys me to no-end that "modern browsers" are so inflexible with customization (eg. toolbar customization), and Max's cluttered toolbar is one giant put-off and the complete opposite to how the original operated.
In all my bowers I've altered the user agent to remove reference to my actual OS (most at the moment are replaced with Windows NT 5.01 which is Windows 2000 SP1).
For Religion & Health see:[/b][/size] Williams & Sternthal. (2007). Spirituality, religion and health: Evidence and research directions. Med. J. Aust., 186(10), S47-S50. -LINK
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
The WIN/Gallup End of Year Survey 2013 found the US was perceived to be the greatest threat to world peace by a huge margin, with 24% of respondents fearful of the US followed by: 8% for Pakistan, and 6% for China. This was followed by 5% each for: Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, North Korea. -LINK
"That's disgusting. There were clean athletes out there that have had their whole careers ruined by people like Lance Armstrong who just bended thoughts to fit their circumstances. He didn't look up cheating because he wanted to stop, he wanted to justify what he was doing and to keep that continuing on." - Nicole Cooke
