What are they doing with our data?

With the 'breach' at Facebook they won't get my trust back again.  They can call it anything they want, but, from my point of view it is a 'breach'.  MY data was taken and used in ways I did not give MY permission for.  It isn't just Facebook, but, anyone who offers services over the internet that we need to be more aware of what they know about us and are willing to share to others.  It doesn't matter that it is 'free' like Facebook or a paid service we need to demand that they treat our personal information like crown jewels and do their best to make sure that it isn't taken without our knowledge and permission.

I don't know what they put into the document for data analysis by that 'researcher', but, here are a few things I can quickly think of for anyone who is thinking about people getting access to our data.

• Where is the data stored?
• What is the data you need, why do you need it, and, for how long will you require to keep the data for?
• How is the machine secured both from a physical access point and software?
• Does the system which holds the data accessible from your LAN and/or internet?
• What software tools are being used for data storage and analysis and are they up-to-date for patching?
• Has your hardware been patched for the latest identified vulnerabilities?
• How did you test the security of your systems?
• Who has access to the machine?
• Do you limit access to 'need-to-know' and only the data required?
• Do you limit how the data is moved off the system when 3rd parties have access?
• If so, how?
• What agreements do you have in place for 3rd party access and what do the agreements say?
• If law enforcement or government request access to the data what is the process you follow to grant them access?  
• Do you notify the original owner of the data for such data requests?
• What is the process you follow when there is a network or physical breach of your system?
• How are the backups done and secured and who has access to those backups?
• When you are done with the analysis how is the data deleted?  
• Does that include all backups?
• How do you prove that the data was deleted and can never be recovered?

I understand that they need to make money, but, when the data leaves their control then anything can happen and they need to do a better job documenting what was requested, why it was requested, how it was secured and how it was deleted when done.  For myself I have downloaded my Facebook data to see what they have and I am now looking at other services that respect my privacy more.  It will be hard as Facebook has a massive population, but, other communities in the past have fallen (MySpace, AOL come to mind).

Android and Facebook app

After a long wait Facebook has finally launched their lite version for Android.  The old app was not too bad, but, massive and slow.  On the tablet it wasn't all that bad, but, on my cell phone it slowed the device so much I logged out, purged the cache and stopped running.  I was running the messenger lite so I could chat with some people when I was away and had only my phone, but, Facebook itself I wouldn't launch.

I installed the lite app on both my tablet and phone and it appears to be running much faster.  The options I use are all there and whatever they took away I don't use and don't miss. The one thing it does is when you click on messages it goes to Messenger (or Messenger lite which I use) and not the internal version.  When it is installed on the phone you need to be patient for a minute as it appears to download some content and may generate a message that it crashed (it didn't).

On my tablet Facebook was using 295 megs of storage space and even when not running it used 38 megs of memory.  The Lite version uses 7.7 megs of storage and 4.3 megs of memory.  On the phone it shows using 6.5 megs of storage and 1.7 megs of memory.

One warning, when you search for 'Facebook lite' in the play store make sure the  author (below the software title) shows 'Facebook' so you get the legit version!

Facebook Lite in Play Store

Software and Tools - Social

A large part of people being online is the various 'social' applications.  For myself the major ones I use is Twitter and Facebook.  There are others, but, the basics I will cover here should be applicable to the other sites/applications.  I use Twitter mainly to quickly comment and notify about various events and information that I find of use.  I have the account linked to my Facebook so that my friends and family can get the information at the same time.  I like Twitter as it is small enough for my low end smart phone to run without a problem.  Facebook to be blunt, is a pig on resources and when I did have it running on my phone it would take 5-10 seconds at times to do a simple action like posting an update.  Facebook runs well on my tablet and my laptop and that is the main way I socialize electronically with friends and family.  I use both to supplement my contacting friends and family and it does not replace face-2-face.  I like them both as I can quickly set up photo albums of events and quickly share them for those who could not make it to the event.

One of the first things you should do when joining is to read the terms and service.  I know they are extremely long, boring and full of legalese, but, you should be aware of the basics just-in-case there is a problem in the future.

Settings

Next up is to check the settings, especially the privacy settings to make sure you share only what you are comfortable with and turn off the rest.

Facebook Android Client Settings

Facebook Android Client Privacy Settings

Twitter Android Client Settings

Twitter Windows 10 Client Settings

Facebook Windows 10 Client Settings

As you can see above the applications have a similar look-and-feel and the web browser rendering looks very similar.  Take 15-30 minutes and navigate through the various settings and read up on what they do and then set your account to what you want people to know about you and the marketing firms gets to see.

Once you are set up then you can think about what to post.  What ever you post always assume that your employer can see all your postings so exercise some prudence on what you post!  You may have your account locked down so that only friends and family can see what you put up, but, if they re-post or share and they don't exercise good judgement on their privacy settings they can expose what you put up.  I have seen people put up photos of events that to put it kindly was less than a positive image they wanted to project socially and professionally.  When in doubt ask yourself - what would mom think if she sees it?

Security

On the security side of things be careful on what links you click, especially in Facebook.  I have noticed a large increase in what is claimed to be news (or at least what people want to you think is news), but, is at best clickbait or trolling and at worst a link to sites that may contain scripts that can infect your machine.  Best thing I can say is to exercise caution with links to news.  If the articles come from friends and family still exercise caution, but, if it is a promoted article then be very suspicious.  Most of the clickbait sites are there to make money by showing you a lot of ads and the content at best is misleading.  For the fake news sites they tend to show to people articles written in a way to inflame them (or troll them).  Personally when I get unsolicited 'ads' I click the drop down and pick the option telling Twitter/Facebook that they are not interesting.  Before I re-post a tweet or a Facebook news story I check out the article and review it.  If it is clickbait, inflammatory or misleading I just ignore it and not give them additional views by re-posting.

When I am done with my session in Twitter and/or Facebook I log out of the account.  It is a bit of a pain, but, if for some reason some gets access to my phone, tablet of PC they don't get easy access to my accounts.  When I leave the machine I also lock it!  It takes only a few seconds to unlock the machine and then log back in, but, if someone gets access to that device they can destroy my account and credibility in a few seconds.

Another thing I strongly recommend is a good anti-virus package.  It may not stop 100% of the nasty virus/Trojans out there, but, it is another layer of defense to make it harder to get access to your device.  You can read my short blog on this topic to give you an idea of what is out there.

Adding friends/family/businesses

One of the other things I am very careful of is adding people to Twitter or Facebook when I get a request.  It does not matter who it is doing the request!  All friends/family get vetted as to who they are before I add them.  I have received requests from people claiming to be a friend or family, but, when I check with the person directly I find out they didn't make the request.  When that happens I have the friend or family member report it to Twitter or Facebook and I do the same.  On Twitter I regularly get requests to add people and I  review them very carefully before I add them.  For a while the requests were from very questionable accounts and the content and images were not the type I wanted associated with my account.  In the past several months I think Twitter has gotten better nuking the accounts quickly as it is a very rare event when I get such a questionable request.  Every couple of weeks I review who I have linked to and those who link to me and verify that the accounts are still legit and the content is what I want associated with me.  I have found that some Twitter accounts looks legit for a month or two and then the true nature shows itself.

Images

On uploading images I try to be careful of what is uploaded, especially when someone tells me they don't want a particular photo posted.  I also resize the image to around 1024x768 or 2048x1536.  Not everyone has high speed internet and at those resolutions the image is still good enough and is small enough for them to download quickly.  I keep the originals on my machine so if they want the original image I can send them that when requested.

Backups:

Twitter does have the ability to backup your posts.  The link on how to do that is here.  Facebook has a similar facility and the link on how to do that is here.  I strongly recommend that you do this now and then.  If for any reason you lose access to your account you have a backup.  When you backup your accounts you may also want to think about how to backup your phone/tablet/PC at the same time.  Machines do fail and I remember a person calling me to see if I restore their hard drive.  They had thousands of images and a lot of the pictures of their children when they were small was on the failed drive and they had NO backups.  I couldn't restore a lot of images, but, I could restore several thousand images.  They now have an external USB drive they backup their files to on a semi-regular basis now.  External USB hard drives are fairly inexpensive and capacities are in the multi-terabyte range now. 

Software and Tools - Browsers

This is the second in a group of blogs on software, tools and repositories.  One of the main tools I use and I suspect the majority of people is a web browser.  There are a number of great browsers out there and the one you use and like depends on your personal preferences (and biases).  For me since I run a Windows laptop (gaming), Android (tablets and phones) and Linux (laptops and netbook) I prefer Firefox and Chrome.  They run equally well on a cell phone right up to the laptop I am composing this blog on.  The Windows laptop (Windows 10) has Edge on, but I don't run it.  I may be biased, but, I don't trust the security on it and how much it is reporting back to MS about my searches and browsing habits.  I know Chrome and Firefox does do some reporting, but, so far they haven't abused my trust there.

This won't be all inclusive, but, a quick tour of my basic setup and hopefully will give you an idea of what they look like and a couple of things I added to assist me and secure my browsing.

If you use Windows click on Firefox if you want to go to the Mozilla site,  click on Chrome if you want to go to the Chrome site.  If you are using Android it is in the Play store and for just about every distribution of Linux it is part of the repositories that you can install (for me that is Synaptic).

For the rest of this blog the screen shots are from my Linux machine, but, Android and Windows have a similar layout and look-and-feel.  For all of the screenshots I used KSnapshot.  Gwenview is used for quick-and-dirty edits (like rotate, resize and rename).  Google Drive is used to store all of my blog images and the GRIVE tool syncs that up for me (with my writing a BASH script front-end, my previous BLOG on that).

Firefox

Once you install Firefox and launch it you will get a screen something like below.

It is a rather plain and simple screen.  This is my personal preference as I don't like or want a lot of clutter.  I have turned off the menu bar, bookmark toolbar and the status bar.

I did add a few extensions (from the Mozilla site) for the status bar and for shutting down those annoying ads.

My Plugins are default to my Linux distro.  When there are bug fixes I use Synaptic to update when they are available.  I still have Flash installed, as much as I hate it for the security holes I still need it for accessing corporate materials when I log into the company site.

To see preferences click on the icon at the top right (looks like a hamburger) and click on the preferences icon (looks like a cog).  You will see a number of options that you can click on and are presented with a variety of settings.  On content I turned off the option to play DRM protected content and to block pop-up windows.  I also changed the font to Arial as I find that easier on my eyes.

For privacy I turned it up to as high as I can go.  I know sites can still snoop, but, I want them to know if they want my information they should ask me first.

For security I also have that set to maximum.

For good measure I use  uBlock Origin to shut down as much of the annoying ads and tracking when I do surf.  I turn it off for sites that respect me and don't flood me with annoying ads.  To see what the dashboard looks like you will need to keep on reading as it is in the Chrome section.

To summarize my settings:

• Check to see if Firefox is my default browser;
• Show blank page at start;
• Search right now defaults to Google, I did disable Bing and Yahoo;
• Disable play DRM;
• Enable pop-up protection;
• Privacy tracking on for private windows;
• Never remember history;
• Security, Warn & block all turned on!
• Sync bookmarks, I have that turned on so it is easy to keep phone, tablet and laptops synced to the same set of bookmarks;
• Downloads, ask me where to save; 
• uBlock Origin, set up to hide as much crap as possible.  Good sites I open up;
• Advanced I left at their defaults. 

Chrome

My other browser is Chrome.  There are times that sites have problems with Firefox and I use that.  It is also set up to link to my personal Google calendar and to use Google Docs.  Part of the time I run it for Facebook to chat with family and post various updates and use Firefox for general web browsing and gaming (Runescape).   Like Firefox I have a minimal screen display, I really don't like clutter.

To go to your settings click the vertical ... on the top right side, then click on settings.

By default the advanced settings are not displayed, scroll down to the bottom and click on +Show advanced settings.  You can see your browsing history, Extensions and Settings.  For privacy you can click on content settings and it pops up a privacy setting screen.

For extensions it will show what you have installed.  At the bottom it has Get more extensions that takes you the Chrome Web Store.  I really suggest you use just that site as you know that Google has done some checks on the quality and security of the extensions.  I know nasty extensions can slip in, but, when found they get yanked PDQ.

Like in Firefox I use uBlock origin.  It is small, light and very configurable.  I used to use Ad-Block, but, when they went to white listing ad sites I dumped it.  I pick what ads are presented to me and I will retain full control of that.

To summarize my settings:

• Show blank page on startup;
• Google is the default search page;
• No 'Guest' browsing;
• Cookies, clears when I shut down Chrome and 3rd party is blocked;
• Let me choose when to run plug-in;
• Do not allow tracking;
• All other content settings at default;
• Downloads, ask me where to save;
• Cloud print is on, I use this only for stuff that isn't sensitive;
• uBlock Origin, set up to hide as much crap as possible.  Good sites I open up;

Summary

Hopefully this is of use and a good starting point for your using either Firefox or Chrome as your main browsers.

A new tool for my wife

Yesterday I picked up a new tool for my wife.  She does have a laptop and it is in our office.  The problem is that she has had a stroke a year ago and it is much too large and heavy for her to carry it downstairs and use it while sitting on her lap.  Factory Direct up the street had refurbished models of the Acer Chromebook for $129 (Canadian) that looked like it could do what she wanted and is light enough she can carry it around with one hand.  Her needs were simple, web browsing (news, weather and a few other sites), email and Facebook.  She has a tablet for her gaming and Facebook that she uses daily.

The Chromebook did it all right from the start without issues.  I made a minor tweak to turn off the touch-pad as I installed a wireless mouse.  It took only a minute to find how to do that on the web (I bookmarked that for future reference on the Chromebook).  The only minor quibble I have is that 16 gigs isn't enough (and I am not spending more money to install a new larger SSD).  It appears that the O/S takes up a fair bit of space and leaves 1 gig for the user.  I can live with that as she is using it only for light weight web work and does not need a huge amount of drive space.  I did format in Linux a SD card (16 gigs) and inserted it in the slot and pointed the downloads to that so we don't use valuable drive space for when she downloads files.  I don't see how to change the directory for the cache (yet) to point it there.  I did try to install our wireless printer, but, we have an older model and isn't supported by Cloud Print.

I did set up links at the bottom of the screen to email, browser, Facebook, Google drive so most of her normal tasks are one click away.  Next up is to see how the battery life is for her without it being plugged in.  If you are looking for a lightweight machine for simple tasks that don't depend on local storage the Chromebooks are an option to look at.

A new midrange laptop for me and what I use for specific jobs

Some people may think that three laptops that I have are too many, but, I don't.  I have machines for specific tasks.  The netbook is an old machine that I bought years ago on sale and the HP is a refurbished model.  The Dell machine is the only new laptop and I bought it specifically for gaming and to store a lot of digital images.
 

Netbook:

I have the netbook set up with LUBUNTU.  That is great distro for a five year old netbook with 2 gigs of memory.  It allows me access to web mail, Facebook, Twitter and a few other things when I travel and it is very light and the battery lasts about 4-6 hours depending on what I am doing which is great when traveling.  If I am doing light digital editing it isn't to bad, a bit slow, but usable. 

HP Laptop

I picked up a nice mid-range laptop for my every day work at home.  It is a HP EliteBook 8440P.  Eight gigs of memory and one hundred and twenty-eight gig SSD.  I originally had LUBUNTU, but, something in how I did and configured caused the screen to go 'nuts' at times.  I put on PCLINUXOS and it has been rock solid.  This machine is my daily machine rather than my high end gaming system.  It allows ready access to social media (Facebook and Twitter), email and light gaming.  It also is used for digital editing and other daily work.

PCLINUXOS installed a lot of software I don't need and it was easy to remove them. I like the distro and I used it years ago and I see it has gotten better over time.  The desktop is KDE and it is close enough to Windows that anyone accustomed to Windows (up to 7) will be at home using it.  It is light enough on system resources that it is snappier than windows.  As an example this laptop launches in about thirty seconds (including the time for my to type in my password) and shuts down in about five seconds.  My gaming system takes about a minute to launch and about two minutes to shut down.

I am now playing Old School Runescape on the machine and it is as fast in a browser as when I am using my gaming system with the Runescape client software.

Todo

• I transferred my various Bash scripts from the netbook here, but, I had to make minor tweaks due to the difference in terminals and the options used to compile Bash.  My next mini-project will be to look at the scripts and figure out how to rewrite them so that run on both systems without changes.
• Set up and configure the Brother network printer.
• Set up and configure the old scanner to work on this machine.
• Install and configure additional software to play DVD movies.

Dell Gaming system

My high end machine is a Dell.  Right now it is running Windows 10.  I use this for heavy duty gaming and software that runs only on windows (income tax).  This machine has eight gigs of memory and a one terabyte drive.  This is my main machine for all of my digital photos and scanned documents.  Anything I do on the HP for digital images gets transferred here and once a month the files are backed up to an external one terabyte drive.

Facebook and Android - Updated

I am a frequent Facebook user.  I like the way to keep in touch with friends and family and the rare chat.  The thing I don't like about Facebook for Android is that it is a pig on resources.  I have a Huawei cell phone and it has very limited memory.  Facebook and the messenger app takes almost 200 megs for the app itself and a lot of memory when running.  It is the same on the Google Nexxus device I have.  I looked around for a replacement as when I tried to download and install updates on the phone I didn't have enough free space.  The other problem is that at times it would take over a minute to launch at times when all I want to do is quickly log in, see if there are any updates from family and then log off.

There are a good number of apps on Google play and I tried a number of them and quickly uninstalled them.  I won't name them, but, full page add on start is not a way to get me to use it long term.  I understand the need to make money, but, a small ad at times would not be a bad thing.  Others took up the bottom 20% of the phone and cycled continuous ads.  Again, I understand the need to make money, but, that chews up my monthly data limit each month. 

I finally found an app that looks good, no ads, small (200k) and did what I needed it to do.  The app is 'Social Lite' and it looks like the web version of Facebook.  It launches within a few seconds (even on the cell phone), uses minimal memory (76 megs on the tablet when running) and very responsive when touching various items.  I haven't tried to upload photos yet, but, when I do that I am usually on my laptop as that is where most of my photos are stored.  Facebook is launching a 'lite' version for other countries, but, not here.  I don't understand why they have to have a massive app with every bell & whistle when I don't use most of that on my Android devices.

I will be playing with this for a while and if it looks good I will be upgrading Jane.  She really hates the massive impact the Android App has on her machine and when it runs in the background it also has an impact on her online gaming.

Update 2015/07/12

I installed Social Lite on Jane's machine and so far she loves it.  When she clicks on the icon it is there in about 5 seconds.  She is playing games and she will be letting me know if there is an improvement on the responsiveness of the games without Facebook running in the background.  What we all love is that she gets back almost 200 megs of storage space.