IT-CRUISERS: Everything IT

Once again I bring to you online security tips; this time it is about the popularly used mobile messaging app  - WhatsApp.  Two-step verification ensures safety of the application and prevents intruders from taking over your account. Here are the steps to enable the two-step verification. Step 1: Open WhatsApp Settings. Step 2: Tap Account > Two-step verification. Step 3: Tap Enable. Step 4: Enter a six-digit PIN of your choice and confirm it. Step 5: Provide an email address you can access (Recommended) Step 6: Confirm the email address and tap Save or Done. You should see the final page as show below With this you have successfully enabled two-step verification on your WhatsApp account. Remember to keep your six-digit PIN safe and never disclose to anyone. Hackers can come by way of social engineering and trick you to release sensitive information like the six-digit PIN, beware of such. Thank you for reading and I hope you find this quite helpful. Stay safe!

Following recent Facebook data privacy issues, Twitter has taken proactive steps by notifying users of their current privacy settings, acknowledging the fact that current default settings allows them to share certain users' private information with business partners. Users are encouraged to turn off the sharing if not desired. This blog post will guide you through the steps to check and adjust these settings to prevent your data from being shared by Twitter. Step 1: From your Twitter mobile app main menu, go To "Settings and privacy" Step 2: Go to "Privacy and safety" Step 3: Go to "Personalization and data"  Step 4: Uncheck "Share your data with Twitter's business partners" Step 5: If you decide to disable all settings related to personal data, simply toggle the button at top right corner. If logged on via web browser simply go to Profile and settings > Privacy and Security > Personalization and ...

Few weeks ago a data privacy scandal was in the news which involved Facebook and a political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. User information of over 87 million Facebook users where either exposed by Facebook to the consulting firm or the firm "inappropriately" obtained the data, beginning from year 2014. Following this incident Facebook has come up with some security settings that can help users evaluate third party apps already connected to their accounts. There are several third party apps on Facebook which by way of design accesses user information and can possibly share such information illegally. Therefore Facebook has released a statement advising users to review these settings and see exactly the apps currently connected to users accounts from the time the user joined Facebook till date. The statement reads "We understand the importance of keeping your data safe, and we are making it easier for you to control the which apps you share information wi...

20 WORST PASSWORDS OF YEAR 2017 Just like the keys to your houses or cars, do you know your “online keys” are even more important? These online keys are simply your passwords and passphrases used to login to your personal or workplace accounts such as computer logons, online portals, internet banking platforms as well as the social media platforms. Image from Pixabay So how conscious are you concerning your passwords and how strong they are? Year 2017 witnessed a lot of online hack cases across the world, yet people still use passwords like '123456', “password”, “abcde”, and so on. According to a research carried out by SplashData ; They examined more than 5 million passwords that were leaked in 2017. Taking the top two spots for the fourth consecutive year are the old standbys, "123456" and "password." A number of variations of each, such as "123456789" and "passw0rd" also made the list. Here are the top 20 worst passwor...

Got home last night and tuned to CNN and here is the headline I saw "ONE BILLION YAHOO ACCOUNTS HACKED" I had to look closely to see if that was "M" as in Million but its actually "B" as in Billion! Mehn... That's huge, had to quickly snap my TV screen with my phone! ONE BILLION YAHOO ACCOUNTS HACKED Anyways here are some tips for every yahoo mail user; 1. First, if you get an email saying your Yahoo account may have been hacked and to click this link to re-secure your account, it's bogus. Yahoo's official, "you're screwed" emails have the subject line: "Important Security Information for Yahoo Users", anything else is just a phishing scam. 2. you must change your Yahoo account password on Yahoo services such as Yahoo Mail or Flickr. To do this, go to your Yahoo account page. Once there, go to Account Info and click on Account security. Then, on that page, choose Change password. While you...

250,000 HACKED USER ACCOUNTS: TWITTER TO INTRODUCE  TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION Following the recent attack on twitter over the weekend which resulted in compromise of over 250,000 users accounts, twitter is on the look-out for a competent software engineer to implement additional security layer for user logins to the social media cum micro-blogging website. Two-factor (multi-factor) authentication is a way of adding additional layer of security in addition to the regular username and password combination, usually in the form of additional random token generated by a hardware or software, or even a message received via SMS which is valid for a short period of time and cannot be chosen by the user or a potential hacker. It has become obvious that multi-factor authentication is the way to go in handling the simple but ever important authentication question of "who are you" we encounter on on web login forms every now and then!