The issue is even more important when children are involved. Most parents aren’t even checking what is going on with their kids on facebook, and in many cases, their kids are leaving themselves wide open for all sorts of abuse, from cyber bullying perpetrated by other kids, or attack by child predators that can easily locate the kids using the information on their Facebook profile.

Should I just delete my Facebook account?

No, I don’t believe you should. Facebook is a great way to stay in touch with more friends and family more often, and while I still think a good get together every so often is important in any relationship, I believe Facebook can be a great tool. If you are someone who just can’t be bothered logging in every so often to see whats going on, then by all means, delete your account. There is no point having it if you don’t want it, and you might as well take that final step.

If you decide this is for you, then after you have logged into facebook, visit the delete account page, and you can say goodbye to Facebook forever.

Where do I set my privacy settings?

UPDATE: Use this website; http://www.reclaimprivacy.org/facebook to check your privacy settings.

UPDATE: Good post from Mashable walking you through some common issues;

Take a look at the image I took from my own Facebook page; The account settings are currently at the top right of the page, and after you click, head down to PRIVACY SETTINGS.

You should go through all the different areas of facebook that are listed. There are quite a few, so this will take you a few minutes, but it’s well worth the trouble, as you will see that some of the settings are probably set to EVERYONE. You should change them all to a setting you are comfortable with; The default ones are;

• Everyone – The whole world will see it.
• Friends of Friends – Anyone your friends have made friends with on Facebook will see it. Do you know all of your friends friends? No, so this is almost as bad as “everyone”
• Friends – Only people you
• Customise – More on that next….

Can I have more control than that?

You sure can. One of the great features of Facebook is that it lets you group your Facebook friends, and once they are grouped together, you can set privacy settings for the group as well.

If you click on the FRIENDS link on the left side of your Facebook page, there will be a button at the top that says “CREATE A LIST”. Click that, and you can make a new list, and add specific friends to it. A good use of this would be to create a WORK list, and add your co-workers to the list. I have a “KIDS” list, so that all the younger people on my friends list can be separated out;

Then, when you go back to your privacy settings, you should choose the CUSTOMISE option. From here, you can go one of two ways;

First, you can choose friends (or groups of friends, if you have setup lists as we just talked about), and exclude them from seeing things the rest of your friends can see. Just add the list, or specific friends, to the “HIDE THIS FROM” list.

Alternatively, you can choose to set the main privacy to “SPECIFIC PEOPLE”, and then choose exactly which friends, or lists of friends, can see that part of your profile.

Using lists, rather than selecting specific people, makes organising this much easier; You just add new friends to the right list(s), and they automatically are restricted the way you want.

Facebook Photo Albums are tricky

You will want to check this from time to time, because Facebook sets your photo privacy separately for every photo album you have on Facebook. This can be a good thing, of course, because you can let everyone see your nice nature photography, but the drunken party pics of you in a nurses outfit can be restricted to your nearest and dearest friends only.

What about my kids Facebook use?

Personally, I don’t think kids younger than 16 should use Facebook at all. Most parents let their kids use facebook, however, so you will want to make sure your kids take some basic precautions. Here are the top tips I would suggest for your kids using facebook;

• Make sure ALL their privacy settings are set to FRIENDS ONLY
• Make sure they only “friend” people they have met in real life, and that the account really IS their friend.
• Make sure they NEVER “friend” a celebrity. Celebrities setup their Facebook PAGE, which is not the same as a user profile. You “LIKE” a page, and that’s fine. Where kids run into trouble is people setup fake profiles to get kids to “friend” them, and once they do, they can see all the kids personal information.

Further Reading (or watching)

• The Huffington Post have a good little video that will walk you through the top 5 important settings in a quick, 2 minute video.
• A nice video from Sophos going through the way the current privacy settings work.
  • This guy has stuff he doesn’t want shared with anyone; I would suggest simply not putting that information into Facebook in the first place.
• Another video showing you through the privacy settings.

The basics of the idea is to simplify and standardise the communications businesses have with government, so that business owners don’t end up reporting the same information multiple times to multiple government entities, improve and simply the way business owners authenticate and encrypt their communications with government, and the big ticket item, moving the communication into the software businesses already use, even going so far as to make the reporting just a simple by product of natural business processes.

Pretty loft ideals. Considering how badly these types of upgrades can go, such as the Customs ICS upgrades that have been causing headaches for years (as far back as 2005 that I could quickly find via google), one could be forgiven for thinking this will turn out to be a giant headache for business owners. However, if we assume that after 4 years of planning and development it will work as intended, here’s what we can look foward to;

Business software such as MYOB will be able to put together the information for goverment forms, and even submit the data directly to the government agency. One imagines the first roll out will include such tedious things as BAS and IAS statements, as well as PAYG summaries at the end of the year (for those businesses that employ staff). What would really help small business owners would be the inclusion of reporting payroll information to Centrelink and the Child Support Agency.

MYOB (the software we use to keep the books here at Shift Computer Solutions) has not implemented  SBR, despite launching new versions of MYOB only last month. SBR is being launched on 1st July, and we hope that MYOB will release a point update then to allow submissions via SBR.

Another big ticket item is simplifying the way businesses authenticate themselves when they want to transmit data to government agencies. Called AUSkey, the new system will eventually be a single sign on for ALL government agencies, but initially, will replace the complex digital certificate system currently used by the ATO. Because of this, we expect nearly all small business owners to sign up for AUSkey immediately, as the ATO represents the biggest reporting burden. Despite all these changes being in the works for years already, however, ASIC and other agencies are not expected to be on board for another two years.

One great bit of news; Provided you use AUSkey at least once a year, it will never expire. Anyone who has had ATO digital certificates expire will know how wonderful this news is!

It is unclear exactly what AUSkey really is, but from what has been published so far, it seems it will be a software solution, which you install on your computer, or a USB stick or even on your business server. We will do a follow up article after AUSkey is launched to provide more details. The ATO is saying AUSkey will be available from the 27th April, so we don’t have long to wait.

Further Reading;

• SBR Blog
• SBR Website
• ATO on AUSKey

Multitasking

With iPhone 4.0, certain functions will be able to run in the background; For example, you might be listening to streaming internet radio through an app, now you can exit that app and do something else, and the streaming music will keep playing. GPS applications will be able to keep tracking your location while you check in with another app too.

Apple have done exactly the right thing by limiting full multitasking to those core functions that need it, while not letting everything do it. This way you won’t chew through your battery too quickly, and you aren’t likely to have the phone lockup or crash, which is a problem with other systems where full multitasking is running.

For applictions (like games, for example) that are not allowed to multitask, when you exit them their state will be saved, so when you go back, the app or game will be exactly where you left it. This is perfect for most apps as you can go back to where you left off (which is all you really do with most apps on a PC too), but while you are away, the app is not chewing up your phones battery and processing power.

App Folders

Realising that apps are the big reason so many people are switching to the iPhone, Apple are making it easier to organise them with a folderu system in iPhone OS 4.0. Now you can group similar apps together in a folder. The first thing I’ll be doing when I get the update will be putting all my games into a folder, so I won’t have to troll through them all to find other apps.

Local Notifications

The new OS will let applications send notifications internally, rather than just from an external server as it is now. This means, for example, you could be cooking a recipe using an app, which allows you to tell it when you put the food in the oven; Instead of you having to time it yourself, you could close the app and go do other stuff, and when the time is up, the app can notify you the food is ready. This will be great for apps that upload stuff to facebook, flickr and the like too, so you can close them and do something else while the data uploads, and the app can let you know when it’s done.

New Mail App

The Mail application has been ugpraded too, so now if you operate multiple email accounts, you can see all your email in a unified inbox. Another welcome addition is mutliple exchange accounts, something that we will be using extensively as soon as it’s available.

Custom Backgrounds

Not a big deal, but something a lot of people would like, is the ability to set a custom background image for the entire phone experience, not just the lock screen. Well, soon, you will be able to.

There are plenty of other minor adjustments and updates, and we think that iPhone OS 4.0 will ensure the iPhone is the lead smart phone for at least another year or so; If Apple manage to release another hardware update later this year, the competiton will have to do plenty to close the gap all over again.

Today Google rolled out another service to add to its ever growing back of tricks, this one called Buzz. The folks over at Google are clearly running scared of companies like Twitter and Facebook, which to me is rather strange, as I don’t see either of them as a threat to Google.

Google Buzz integrates with Gmail (so as far as I know, if you aren’t a Gmail user, or don’t use it on the web, no buzz for you!), and shows up an option within the Gmail website interface.

Much like Facebook and Twitter, you can post status updates, and in the case of Google Buzz, by default those updates are fully public. You can choose to share the update with specific groups of people, but those people must be in your Gmail contacts, and you need to setup groups in that interface (much like you can already do in Facebook)

You can also share links and photos, the latter get uploaded to Picasa Web Albums. That all seems to be pretty standard, although it is very strange that Google didn’t include video sharing via Youtube as well.

But here’s the big risk factor; People know Twitter is fully public, and when they use it, they know what they say is out there for everyone to see. People also know that with Facebook, they can be more private, sharing only with their friends and family.

Google Buzz is anything but private; When you start using Buzz, it makes public the people you have emailed / chatted with the most. This alone could be highly embarrassing for people, who have always used their email as a private communications medium. You will also notice that things you do on other Google websites will suddenly start being shared on Google Buzz, and that too may be something you do not want.

My major concern here is that because Google have so many varied web properties and many people use a variety of them, now that they are tying them together and publishing publicly what you are up to on them, peoples privacy is likely to get seriously invaded until they take the time to go through and adjust a myriad of privacy options.

Add to this the story that some bloggers who were using a gmail account to interact anonymously with their audience have suddenly been outed by the new Buzz feature, and the problems with the sprawling mass of websites that Google has become is brought into focus.

If you have started using Buzz, you should definitely get over to the Google Profile that you will now have (that link will take you to yours if you have signed into Gmail) and go through the settings there; You can turn off some information such as your full name and your followers from being published publicly, and if you don’t put much information into it, Google don’t include it in search results.

I’ll be turning it off shortly, once I’ve had a good play with it; Twitter and Facebook are enough for me.

Business owners should be especially worried; A single malware infection on your business computers can cost you thousands of dollars in lost revenue, and worse, can expose your private business files to hackers and others online. It’s vital that you do everything you can to avoid getting infected in the first place, so making sure all your staff have read this post is an excellent first step.

Anti Malware Software
You must ensure that your systems are fully protected by proactive anti malware software. This software needs to be installed on every workstation, and if you have staff that use their own personal computers at work, or for work, then you need to insist their machines are protected the same way. Any machine that is left unprotected can be the gateway for an infection that can take your entire network down.

We use and recommend ESET Anti Virus. This award winning software is very reliable, highly effective, and an easily affordable solution. We believe that no computer should be left without it. We believe using this product gives you the very best protection available.

Setup an account and use OpenDNS
DNS is the system that allows your computers to find a website when you type in the name, such as www.shiftsolutions.com.au; Because every website has to be looked up at least once, it’s possible to make a list of known dodgy websites and block them. By configuring your computer or network to do all it’s lookups using OpenDNS, you can have them simply refuse to let you go places they know are bad. This takes some configuration, and is not for the non techie, but our engineers can set it up quickly for you. If you want to give it a go, head over to www.opendns.com and check them out.

Use Firefox to browse the web
Many infections start when the attacker uses a known flaw in the software on your computer to sneak through and install onto your machine; Unfortunately, there are so many flaws being found in Internet Explorer all the time, that we think it is just safer to use something else. Mozilla Firefox has many features built in to help prevent infections by malicious websites, and we think everyone should be using it as their primary web browser. We install it on every machine we service.

Be more suspicious of emails
Many malware authors will spread their nasties by collecting email addresses off an already infected persons computer, and emailing all of them with a specially crafted email designed to look like something you would normally open. They include a link, or sometimes an infected attachment, which if you open, infects your system. Be very careful when you get emails that you didn’t specifically request. It wouldn’t hurt to either delete them immediately, or compose a new email back to the sender asking them to clarify what the email is about.  You should always delete emails that appear to be jokes, videos or pictures from your friends, these are one of the more common ways malware spreads.

Continue that suspicion onto Facebook, MySpace etc
Now that you are suspicious, be extra dubious about “that hilarious video” your friend messages you about in Facebook. Lets face it, if they wanted to share a video, they’d upload it to Facebook, and it would appear in your news feed; If you get a mesage with a link, just delete it, and ring your friend, they are probably infected already, and will need our help to clean their system!

USB Drives can be dangerous
If you are running a business, the safest rule is to make sure nobody brings a USB drive from anywhere outside the business and plugs it into a work computer. Just don’t do it, it’s too easy for malware to infect USB drives and move onto every machine you use the drive on. If USB drives are a handy tool in your business, buy each employee a company USB, and have them only use that one within the office, never outside of it. The same theory works at home; Use your own USB drives at home, but make sure they never get plugged into random computers, and that your friends and family leave theirs at home when the visit.

Don’t download software online without looking into it first
Many users get infected when they download “video players”, or “smilie packs”, or even screen savers. While there is plenty of good software online, there is also plenty of rubbish, so it’s best not to start wandering the internet downloading things to “try them out”, because it will usually lead to disaster. If you are after software for your machine, try download.com, a reputable site that makes sure things it provides are not infected with malware.

Never install music and other downloading software
So called “peer to peer” or “p2p” software is one of the leading causes of malware infection; Nearly every machine we see infected has a program called Limewire installed. People install it to illegally download music, but it brings with it a whole host of malware when you install it, and once installed, it can allow more to get in. Plus, it tends to upset your internet service provider, so all in all, its best to avoid this type of thing.

Get your machine serviced at regular intervals
This is probably our best piece of advice; Getting your systems serviced at least once a year ensures that everything is humming along as it should, and the users of the machine haven’t started doing dangerous things that might lead to disaster later on. Business users should always have a maintenance plan, which takes the worry off the business owner, as it ensures an engineer is onsite regularly to checkup on the systems.

From what I have seen so far, chances are the best option is to not allow application’s access to your email address in the first place. I haven’t seen any app notifications that were important in any way, so this might in fact be a way for users to reduce the amount of stuff they are being bombarded with, which might be a nice side effect.

That being said, I can imagine times when communicating between the developers of your favourite facebook app, and you, might actually be useful, and it boggles the mind to understand why Facebook weren’t smarter about this; First off, most users will not want to give out their email address to heaps of unknown app developers, we all get enough spam as it is.

Facebook could have moved these notifications to email, but made it so that app developers had to send that email through Facebook. Facebook could then mail out the stuff to the users email addresses, the end result being the same, but users email addresses would never need to be shared with the application developer. This idea improves privacy for users, gives facebook more control and leverage, and even allows facebook to think about charging application developers to use the system.

The recent privacy settings changes, coupled with this bone headed move, makes me wonder if the decline of facebook has begun. Time will tell.

With Lastpass,you download an addon for whichever web browser you use, and it then remembers passwords for you as you enter them into websites to login. There are other ways to do this too, but Lastpass is better because;

• You can have it auto log you into sites
• It syncs the passwords securely to Lastpass servers so you can access them anywhere
• When you return to a site, Lastpass always fills in the login fields
• When you change the password on a site, not only does Lastpass change it’s recorded password, but pops up allowing you to let it generate a random password to use.

If you are happy to pay $14 a year, you can also use the iPhone application, then you have access to all your passwords wherever you are, and of course you can then use those passwords to login on your phone!

We highly recommend the service; If you need help setting the software up, give us a call and one of our engineer’s can visit you and walk through it with you.

The app is free, so you’d be mad not to download it and give it a go if you enjoy your music!

Windows 7 is more reliable; learning from all the hiccups of the past, especially from the 8 year old Windows XP, the team at Redmond have developed what is probably the most reliable version of Windows ever. I don’t recall having a single problem with it, even when running pre release versions that are supposed to be buggy.

Security has been improved; Microsoft have tweaked up user account control, improved the way security issues are reported to the user and given the whole security architechure a rev up. Considering the host of flaws present in Windows XP, this is a good reason to move up.

Aero Glass / Peek / Shake are quite useful new interface tools. I particularly like the new snap feature, where I can grab a window, drag it to the side of the screen, and it snaps to take up exactly half of the display. Aero peek, where you hover over an icon on your task bar and a thumbnail of the window is displayed, is also super handy.

The new task bar in Windows 7 is awesome; You can pin your favourite applications to it so they are always just a click away; Multiple instances of a program don’t add up to multiple icons though, they stack up, and you can use Aero peek to see them all. Plus, you can right click the icon on the task bar and get a jump list of tasks that program can do.

XP Mode; If you are stuck with an outdated software program you cannot replace just yet, and that program refuses to run on anything more modern than Windows XP, then you can take advantage of Windows XP Mode in Windows 7, which we have tested, and lets you run your app in a Windows XP virtual machine; The application runs just like any other app, so you can keep on working without a worry.

These are just some of the reasons I think Windows 7 is the first “must have” upgrade since Windows 95. Now that you can have it, give us a call and find out the best way for you to upgrade.

7Zip is a file compression program that you can use to “squash” files into smaller packages to free up space, and many backup solutions including our Managed Backup solution, use it.

For some reason, Norman anti virus has started detecting 7Zip as a trojan, which of course, it is not; It is deleting the programs executable part, so that from then on, the program cannot operate, and in some cases, backups stop working;

Our clients who have migrated across to ESET anti virus need not be concerned, as this anti virus package is not having this issue. Clients who are taking advantage of our Managed Backup Solution also can breathe easy, because if this problem occurs for them, we will automatically fix it for you!

If you would like more information about upgrading to ESET anti virus, drop us an email at support at shiftsolutions.com.au

As always, if you are concerned you may have a problem, give us a ring at the office on 3814 1131 straight away!